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Why American Internet Service Is Slow and Expensive
An anonymous reader writes "Reporter David Cay Johnston was interviewed recently for his new book, which touches on why America's Internet access is slow, expensive, and retarding economic growth. The main reason? Regulatory capture. It seems the telecommunication companies have rewritten the regulatory rules in their favor. In regards to the fees that were meant to build a fast Internet, Johnston speculates those fees went to build out cellular networks. 'The companies essentially have a business model that is antithetical to economic growth,' he says. 'Profits go up if they can provide slow Internet at super high prices.'"
Screwing over people for profit the the American way???
You have to consider the cost relative to our income. Sure south Korea has cheaper internet, but what is their per capita?
And also figure in how much we use.
Americans have to work 5 minutes for 20 megabits of internet - or whatever.
There was an interesting NY Times article on the cost per customer for Verizon to deploy their FiOS product. Essentially it was $4k per subscriber. That's an awfully long payback when you are only getting less than a few hundred bucks a month and you also need to have money to operate the network, provide sales and technical support, etc http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/technology/19fios.html Perhaps continued development in technologies like LTE will provide less expensive methods to get customers in the future
went in to the fat paychecks and bonuses of all the bigshots & executives in the businesses
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
What about American exceptionalism?!?! Don't worry the internet is just fine the way it is. Soon gold plated eagles with laser eyes are gonna blast out of the American interwebs and run all the naysayers out of the country!
According to the usual industry apologists (who will be posting shortly), it's actually because the US is so BIG, gosh-darnit!
Never-you-mind the fact that we're one of the strongest economies in the world; never-you-mind the fact that countries with less population density than the ass end of North Dakota completely kick our ass in broadband speed and availability. Ignore the idiocy of local governments handing out monopoly contracts, the FCC allowing Bell-like establishments, or price gouging by these useless carriers.
Nope, our Internet sucks simply because the US is BIG!
Communications is a basic service provided by government. It's defined in the US constitution as well, as the Postal service.
There's no reason for private internet providers to exist.
Get rid of them, implement a government-designed system, like the roads. It would be far cheaper than building the highway system.
The best part of government ISP is that it has to follow constitutional freedom-of-speech rights, whereas a private ISP can shut down any message critical of the company, since private organizations don't have to follow the constitution.
Built for the 1%.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The country is big, with lots of low density areas. Thousands of miles of cable don't just pay for and install themselves, and the incentive to cover a lightly inhabited area just isn't there.
I worked for a regional telco/ISP that provided service to even the most remote customers in a mountainous region. You could probably count on your hands the number of people in their service area that didn't have broadband available, and if you visited them you'd immediately know why. Their broadband penetration was nothing short of astounding.
But it was slow and (by these metrics) expensive, and it was slow and expensive for legitimate reasons. The equipment is expensive. Running lines is expensive. Maintaining the lines is expensive. And if your data center isn't in the city, upstream bandwidth is expensive.
Serving tightly packed populations lets you consolidate your expenses and profit from the customer volume. Out in the boonies? Forget it. My old company spent more money providing service than they took in from customers. They ability to stay in the black and make their profit came from subsidies like the Universal Service Fund.
The US needs better broadband and it can have better broadband. But when you're serving spread-out populations, sometimes it really just is slow and expensive.
Everyone is complaining about so many things. Primarily things that are concerned with Citizen's United, corporate citizenship, overbearing government, corrupt politicians, and institutions we no longer believe in.
So what do We The People do? 40 years ago, we'd organize and take action. Today we whine online, fearful the Man is watching us. So how about it slashdotters -- any ideas?
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
Your US and local Gubmint wrote, rewrote and and continues to rewrite rules to keep themselves funded and local monopolies de jure.
Pleas stop blaming the (now thousands of) companies because you keep electing leeches.
No brain, no pain.
Wow, it turns out that letting business write the laws that govern them is a terrible idea! Who would have thought? Shit, I wish we had thought of that in the 90s when it was all the rage!
Shitty service and high prices are just the start for the cynical euphemism that is "deregulation". In reality deregulation is just more regulation designed to put public money in to the pockets of private business owners. - The real endgame is that companies don't actually know how to write good legislation, and end up shooting themselves in the foot anyway. - Ex. PG&E in California. They literally wrote the new dereg laws, and in a fit of greed left in loopholes that screwed them later. California residents - Do you remember the rolling blackouts. Did you know there was plenty of power to go around, but bad actors were able to distort prices so badly that nobody could afford it?
Don't different countries subsidize the internet in different ways, and to different extents?
If I pay $20 a month to my ISP, then another $20 to my government, to subsidize the ISP, it's the same as paying $40 a month for an unsubsidized ISP. But this calculation may only look at the money paid directly to the ISP.
American corporations are now largely ripoffs, overpriced with low quality goods and services, protected by their legislative "friends". Brands are advertising phenomona that often bear little correlation to product quality. Prices are built on padded costs, regulatory manipulation, and marketing bs. Overseas service is much, much better, even in some lower rated 3rd world countries. It was once a great, competitive country.
As much fun as it would be to bang up a bunch of lines and start serving people no one wants a jungle of cable hanging between buildings or on their own property or city property or it must be built to city/state/national codes using certain kinds of labour...
Why if it wasn't for Everything Else it would be cheap and easy!
This breaks down when you *aren't* far away from major, major cities (1 million plus), aren't far away from commuter towns (30k)... and can't get anything but Satellite or line of sight wireless. I am in this situation. It takes me 5 minutes, more or less, to get to town. I am within range of the circuit. The problem? There's a load coil in the line. Good for phones, bad for DSL. That's really the only thing stopping me from having way cheaper roughly 1.5mbps DSL.
This also breaks down when you pay lots of money *in the middle of the city.*
IMO, the basic, fundamental problem is that, because of the nature of the service - like electricity - we have monopolies with basically no competition. You either get DSL or Cable, pretty much... unless you're in one of the few fiber areas. That doesn't exactly generate much competition - one DSL company, one cable company. It's difficult to maintain a market-driven good-for-consumer-pricing environment when there's only one player, maybe two.
And then we get into caps and speed and all that, and it gets worse. ;)
There is no problem that cannot be solved, or created, by adding another layer of regulation.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Both technologies are great examples of the FAILURE OF CAPITALISM in an unregulated and greed driven free market system.
Unregulated? You mean aside from the FCC?
If it's so *unregulated,* why does so much money go from telecoms to congress in the form of lobbying?
The country is big, with lots of low density areas. Thousands of miles of cable don't just pay for and install themselves, and the incentive to cover a lightly inhabited area just isn't there.
There were huge federal subsidies given to the telcos to build out internet infrastructure for exactly that reason. It was stolen and used to line the pockets of the telco investors instead.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Yes, this is so blindingly obvious that the only surprise is that people are still asking the question.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Our Cell industry IS largely unregulated - we think of the FCC as performing that function - but compared to most other Western countries, they aren't doing much. Same as ISPs (which, in fact, overlap the Cell industry quite a bit.)
Lobbying (and the results it produces) are a capitalist idea, and they result in bad or no regulation..
Any book that wants to claim to talk about US Internet speeds has to deal with the fact that our average local loops are significantly longer than those of most other countries.
I think there is a great detective story here, because it isn't just a rural or suburban detached house issue, but even in cities the average local loop length is longer, and every meter cuts down on DSL speed.
I suspect that in the 70's and 80's a lot of central offices were consolidated, which made tons of sense for efficient voice delivery, but had the knock -on effect of crushing DSL speeds with long local loops. Today, there is little desire to spend the capital on more distributed central offices.
Now I am sure there also is regulatory capture as well in terms of lowering competition through regulation or local franchising. But you have to address the fact that we are starting with longer loops.
Pretty much what has been happening in Brazil for the last 10 years. Telcos get the rules written to support themselves, get tax cuts from the government, and find ways to work around the law without actually doing anything illegal. I could expand this to pretty much all businesses here: very large profit margins and a government that turns a blind eye to them, since after all, they are paying taxes to keep our bloated government alive.
They're there in their room. You're on your own.
Yet we managed a national phone network with less density and you ignore the fact that actually many states have similar population densities as European countries. Not every state is like the ass end of the mid-west.
America's Internet access is slow, expensive
It'll always be of a certain speed and at a certain price. Some people will be happy with that. Some will think it's too slow. Some will think it's too expensive. Some will think both and write books about it.
Profits go up if they can provide Internet at super high prices.
I took out the word "slow" and now it's just supply and demand (with the occasional de facto monopoly, admittedly), same as usual.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's called "choke the market once you got it by the balls". Happens all the time in the 3rd world, believe me. Artificially restrict supply once your market is hooked on your product and they'll pay exorbitant sums for whatever you sell them.
The problem is not really regulation. The problem is that we have a huge amount of legacy investment in telecommunication infrastructure.
A local telephone cooperative in northern Minnesota has rolled out fiber optic cable to compete with Qwest and Mediacom for new customers. The result is that I have a fiber optic connection to my home in a small rural community of 10,000 people and there is even a fiber optic connection to a family cabin 15 miles outside of town that 40 years ago lacked electricity.
But the coops' existing customers continue to be served by copper wire. The cost of putting in fiber doesn't make financial sense where they already have an investment in dated technology. This is capitalism at work.
If we expect to stay competitive with the rest of the world, we can't rely on the free market. For private businesses it makes a lot more sense to invest elsewhere rather than replacing valuable existing infrastructure. And that is not a problem limited to internet connections. Most of our capital is controlled by money managers with access to investments all over the world. The best return on the dollar is overseas. That's where the investments are being made.
I mean, why pay one horrendously high price for a cut-rate service with a cryptic pricing structure when you can pay for two at twice the price?
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
It is so obvious that it makes one wonder why countries who have more low density areas than the US have faster and cheaper access.
If it's so profitable to build a telecommunications company then why are more local ones not popping up and serving our desires?
Oh yeah, that's right... Everyone forgets that the main reason that everything is so expensive in this country is because of the population density. Face it friends, we live in a rural country (I live is a small town in Vermont). We have great transit systems in many of our cities, and we also have better internet connections there too. It's not economical for companies to string us all together with fiber, if it were, there would be way more of them participating. Plus... we are the outliers, we WANT high speed internet, most Americans don't give a F. If it's not economical and many people don't care about it, then why should companies provide it? What's wrong with high speed (LTE) wireless? Hell, I get faster speeds in NYC on LTE than I do at home on my WIFI network... It's the same for high speed rail. It works in high density areas.... No so much in South Dakota...
This isn't an issue with the government or companies. The real problem is that the majority of our country doesn't care. Imagine if Fiber to the home was on everyones mind and we turned it into an election issue.
There is one annoying gotcha to network capacity planning -- network costs tend to increase in a non-linear fashion though the subscriber base (and hence revenue) does.
If you can maintain a pure hub-and-spoke network topology where all user connections connect to the same central point, then the network cost grows in direct proportion to the user count -- each time you add a new user, you add a new spoke. So the total number of network links is the same as the total number of users. As long as the hub is adequate, this works.
The opposite topology (which you almost never see) is that for each point added to the network, you add a link to all existing points, so that each network node has a direct link to every other node. This means the total number of links is, for *n* number of users, is (n*(n-1))/2 -- or, if you prefer, O(N^2) growth. The more users that are added, the more expensive it becomes to add more users. (A crude visualization would be that the user base represents the circumference of a circle, and the network represents (a fraction) of the area of the circle that connects each point on the circumference. The growth of the length of the circumference is linear, but the network growth is squared.)
Realistic networks fall somewhere in between, but that still means that each new user/network node added to the network is slightly more expensive than the previous one in terms of cost. This plays merry hell with trying to juggle network capacity planning verses performance verses revenues verses growth. Even assuming the most altruistic company that is making only a minimal profit, network growth increases costs more than it increases profits, barring the introduction of more efficient technologies. (And the introduction of new technologies (i.e. new vendors) in a large network can be a huge, profit-eating cost in terms of the capital expenditure, and can be a surprising drain on operational expenditures to maintain multiple vendor platforms at once.)
So there is a certain pressure, capitalism-wise, to be only as large and fast as one has to be, and not one penny more.
South Korea has a special circumstance: (According to a marketing guy at a router company where I worked) About 95% of their population lives in giant apartment buildings - large enough that they have telephone central offices in their basements.
You don't have to dig up the neighborhood to get the service to them. You can just put an edge router in the basement, run indoor cat5-or-better up the existing communication conduits (if it wasn't there already), and feed them 100M (maybe 1G by now) Ethernet, which gets from building to building and to the backbone via fibers in the bundle that was already there (in old construction) for the telephone service. This makes installation VERY cheap and wiring distances short enough that high speeds are easy.
With that speed available the biggest bandwidth user (according to this guy) was live 1-to-1 naked video "phone calls" between youngsters of opposite sexes still living with their parents. It let them do their courtship form their bedrooms without being in each other's presence unsupervised, or making physical contact (either of which would cause much consternation with their elders in their strongly regimented society). It's much like the way affordable automobiles and drive-in movies changed the courtship habits in the US, especially after WW II.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The real story behind the Telecom Act of 1996 bamboozle and how we were SUPPOSED to - legally, mind you, mandated by the Act - and also PROMISED by Ma Bell have fiber to our doorsteps long ago.
http://www.teletruth.org/docs/ShortSCANDALSummary.pdf
The entire book is available freely here: http://www.teletruth.org/docs/broadbandscandalfree.pdf
This was telco malfeasance on a massive scale, facilitated by the Federal Government and Congress - perhaps $200B or more misappropriated directly because of the Telecom act. Read on and draw your own conclusions.
Most locations have one or two sources of broadband and cable. A few lucky places may have three or for (two fiber, satellite ...). Price increases should be regulated like a utility then. Our power company has to justify increases due to capital projects and pass-through commodity increases/decreases. So should broadband.
The main reason American Internet service is slow and expensive is that it's been left in the hands of private corporations instead of treated as a regulated utility.
The secondary reason is that there has been such an enormous consolidation among providers that there are now 3 or 4 companies providing most of the nation's Internet.
End-game laissez-faire looks like this: dog eat dog leaves just a few very big dogs, and they can then pretty much just split up the customers so there is practically no need for competition. It's happened across American corporate culture. Five or fewer corporations where there were once hundreds if not thousands. I was reading the other day that there used to be hundreds of corporations in the packaging business. You know, making boxes and cartons? Now there are basically two and one of them is a multi-national based in New Zealand. The number of banks has been cut in half every couple of years for three decades.
Does anyone believe that AT&T feels it has to be competitive?
You are welcome on my lawn.
If it's so *unregulated,* why does so much money go from telecoms to congress in the form of lobbying?
The word you're looking for is: bribery.
This is a point where ideology really fraks things up: all regulation is not bad. You drink clean water, eat safe food, and breath clean air BECAUSE OF REGULATIONS. Regulations are bad when they favor the few over the many, especially when the few are taking advantage of the many. In this case, the "regulations" in place are largely from the few (wealthy and dishonest) managing to bribe enough people to make laws to give them more power and control, AT THE EXPENSE of everyone else.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Both technologies [high-speed Internet and cellular phones] are great examples of the FAILURE OF CAPITALISM in an unregulated and greed driven free market system.
As I understand it this is primarily a failure of the regulators, who mistakenly thought that two competitors are "competition". In fact the equilibrium with two is to split the customer base about equally and keep the price as high as practical. They can do this with price signals and market research rather than explicit collusion (and don't even have to do it deliberately - it's where the profit maximum sits.) Competition driving the price down toward costs doesn't typically happen until there are at least three players and can't be counted on until there are four or more.
In the case of cellphones, in the early rollout the FCC split the available bandwidth into two equal chunks, giving on to the current phone monopoly in an area and the other to one competitor. Eventually more bandwidth became available (at very high prices) to let more than two play. But by then the first two had a strong early-mover advantage compared to upstarts trying to suck in their customers.
In the case of wireline the FCC initially forced the telephone companies to rent the legacy government-subsidized copper wiring to competitors at reasonable rates. But then it deemed that, for "information services", a one-cable-company, one-phone-company "duopoly" was enough competition, and eliminated the requirement for data. Oops! (The wireless alternatives don't have the price/performance to be an effective third competitor.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This Catbeller has been banging this drum for over eleven years, may I just say?
The "free market" ain't, and never can be, free, when you are dealing with players who understand the markets better than you do, and, furthermore, will cheat like motherfuckers. Conspiracy isn't necessary. The unwritten rules are always clear. Manufacture scarcity.
The new forestry corporations did it in the late 80s, buying up forests and rights, until in 1992 they tripled wood prices overnight, blaming Clinton and his evil environmental regulations, which didn't exist yet, being as he just was elected, for the cause. They cornered the market and fixed prices. The on;y congresscitter to object was fabulously ejected by them funding his shiny new opponent. No one else dared say a word.
Enron INfamously pretended that evil regulations made them incapable of restraining costs as they shut down power plants on mathematicians say-so to jack prices. California's entire budget mess for the last ten years can be traced back to that robbery. Free market is only free for those who control the market.
Enron not-so-famously was hell-bent on cornering the world's water supplies in drought areas - guess why... but don't worry, in their absence other bastards have bought up water rights, and soon "scarcity" will quintuple water prices across the world.
Kucinich in Cleveland was right, when he said the new private power companies would raise rates after they took over power grids. Cleveland to this day still has lower electrical bills than all the surrounding cities with free-market electric companies gouging them for decades.
And internet and radio internet... ah, so damned obviously they have refused to build infrastructure and have been "forced" to raise prices while the rest of the world simply licenses companies to build infrastructure at a decent price. Eleven YEARS ago, here, I posted a quick calculation: how much have people paid, in total, for DSL, cable, and modem charges combined - and how much had the telcos actually spent. It's eleven years later. We've pumped a good chunk of a trillion into their pockets, and they've spent a tiny fraction of that on actual buildout. They are taking us like a lost tourist.
Most of the rest of the world does it correctly. Scale has nothing to do with it. We don't have a limited amount of cash and a limited workforce; our companies can scale up any buildout. THEY DON'T WANT TO.
Copy whatever country did it right. Let local muni governments build out the systems for a fraction of the cost that these lying sacks of excrement quote. Let this end. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Market. Not when the "free" market companies can buy each other or merge, thus eliminating the market, or simply cooperate by obeying unwritten rules to jackup prices.
Capitalism works better for some things, just not infrastructure. To many systems not enough consistency. Dare I say it, not enough regulation.
well cable can do better but it needs more newer hardware to make room.
Most cable systems are stuck if lot's of old MPEG 2 only boxes and stuff that top's out at 750 MHz - 864 MHz and lot's of sd only boxes as well.
node splits and SDV can help as well.
DSL is running on the old phone wires and it's needs RT near by to be able to offer high speeds.
Fiber is fast but digging up to install it is the hard part and all the other wires and pipes in the way makes it even harder to install.
That's the usual crap excuse by people who don't want to admit that it's just a matter of money, i.e. regulation, incentives, taxation etc.
Europe and Russia have well developed (hence popular) passenger railway systems. Oh and the US used to also. You may want to look up why it was run down.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
We have passed law that allows business to exact full payment for undefined partial service. Clever business use of phrases like " service up to " followed by phrases like " for only $$$.$$/mo* " then " * other charges may apply " and the like have led to a business environment where business can provide whatever they feel like and customers have to take what they are lucky enough to get.
Just one change in the interpretation of the law, where the customer's right to withhold payment for service not received, regardless of what the business printed on their contracts would do the trick.
It would incentivize customer service instead of incentivizing legal trickery as it does now.
Can you imagine the legal representatives of some company defending themselves against a defamation lawsuit where some plaintiff is suing because the company screwed up his credit report ? The plaintiff shows the judge a http://www.speedtest.com/ report showing 23kB/sec when the company claimed a 3MB/sec speed? The corporate lawyer approaches the judge and shows the bill clearly showed $53.93 and the plaintiff only paid fifty cents!
The judge looks at the plaintiff's speedtest report and asks the corporate rep if the IP address on the sheet is theirs.... well follow your imagination of how that meeting should go.
A business license should not be an open pass for theft-by-one-sided contract.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Must be why Wyoming has no water or electricity. Can't be done.
Speaking as a Finn I find this ridiculous. We have a population density of 16/km2 or 41/sq mi for you who go by the imperial system, that is 201st in the world. The United states has 33.7/km2 or 87.4/sq mi.
In Finland we, in contrary to Sweden, have the industry building out the networks for their own money. Very little is subsidized unlike in Sweden. Still we are able to have really good internet connections. Currently we pay around 30-50euro/month for 24 / 2mbit ADSL (depending on where you live and ISP) in most places where fiber isn't avaliable but fibre is in general being expanded in most population centers and then some local areas such as small municipalities build their own fiber networks.
Where you can get access to fiber you pay the same for a significantly faster connection. I know for example that in my appartment building I would get 250mbit for 50/euro month.
As a matter of fact we are aiming at being able to provide 100mbit to everyone by 2015 source from the finnish broadcasting company
It doesn't matter how you reason, there's absolutely no reason what so ever that the major population centers in the US wouldn't have high speed internet access for affordable prices except the telco cartels.
To take a current example, look at Samsung vs. Apple. No matter who wins, users loose. Where Apple is winning they are trying to eliminate Samsung, and vice versa. Whoever wins, your costs will be artificially high, and your service will suck.
The banking industry is the same way. So is agribusiness. At the consumer level supermarkets have razor thin profit margins, but the big players in food production also form a corrupt insiders club: Monsanto, Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland. Individual farmers are not agribusiness insiders, they are another group of victims.
This is capitalism in name only. It does not produce the benefits for society that is the claimed rational for a capitalist economy. As a consumer you have no meaningful choices because all the vendors are corrupt and inefficient. It's organized theft at a global scale.
Why is Snark Required?
I hear this all the time. Sweden is less population dense than the US is! Estonia is less population dense than the US is! Norway is much less population dense than the US is! Why does New York City and San Francisco (the most population dense areas in the United States) get slower and more expensive internet than rural areas in Germany? Hey, Mexico has slower and more expensive internet than the US, and it is more population dense! Maybe it's an inverse relationship after all!
If you plot population density vs internet quality in countries, I don't think you'll come up with any clear trend. And if you only look at urban environments, internet in the USA is still crappy, which is another reason not to bother considering population when wondering why US telcos charge lots of money for low quality service.
Maybe they didn't get the memo?
The CEOs clearly are being overburdened and need a tax break. I am sure if we give them more tax payer money they will help us out from the goodness of their hearts. Trickle down is here to stay
http://saveie6.com/
The US is falling behind because we've got intermediate options. In many places, it's easier to jump from nothing to broadband, skipping slower options. Here, we've already got the slower options in place, so many people (consumers, not just companies) are perfectly happy to stick with those rather than paying the cost of getting broadband. Eventually, those areas will fall behind enough that that won't be true anymore, and the US will jump out in front again, while others fall behind. Then they'll jump ahead again, etc.
Actually, it doesn't break down at all.
The coverage area for the telecoms are HUGE. They don't have the luxury of replacing a few dozen routers, switches, and some backbone ( read that optical links ) for magical high speed access for everyone. Yes, they can upgrade your area first to make you happy, but then catch hell from everyone else they didn't start with first.
They have to replace HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of routers, switches and backbone infrastructure. The core network has to be upgraded to handle the higher bandwidth demands first, then the outlying parts of the network can be upgraded. All of this costs lots and lots and LOTS of money. To the tune of 8 digit sums of money PER YEAR. This is just on my puny little network of maybe 5000 - 7000 routers and switches. Not even taking into account the other internal networks yet. ( Routers, switches, T1's / T3's / Optical level links, and all the hardware that has to be in place to make it happen is damned expensive )
Hell, we're still upgrading my little network to the latest and greatest gear, only to find out we get to replace it yet again for IPV6 compatibility. Everyone wants high speed internet. Everyone wants high speed wireless, they want everything under the GD sun right this damn minute.
We're working on it, I assure you. But, unlike the government, we don't get to print up money to make it magically happen as fast as some would like.
Did you read the article, or even the summary?
Imagine there were some company that figured out how to deliver internet at high speeds at low cost. They would not be allowed to because of regulatory capture. There is absolutely no motivation to improve service. There IS motivation to make service worse, because they can cut costs like that, and they have no fear of competition.
you are full of she-ite up to your ears
The internet backbone has multiple routes between two points, but it is far from a complete graph. It is probably pretty close to being a planar graph, in which case the number of links grows linearly with the number of nodes. The number of nodes per subscriber is probably higher in rural areas, but that doesn't explain why many urban areas can't get fast and cheap internet either.
Below the backbone level, the vast majority of connections has only one upstream route, so the topology there is a tree. Certainly consumer connections, which is what this article is about. Trees can be seen as a hierarchical version of the hub-and-spoke topology you described, so they are pretty cost effective. Adding a hierarchical level is only necessary if the capacity hub cannot be upgraded anymore and adding one level exponentially increases the number of subscribers that can be served.
So I doubt the extra cost for a larger network is all that much. And I cannot imagine it outweighs the gains from being large, such as being able to do marketing at a larger scale, buying in bulk, spreading research costs over more subscribers etc. Also, if being large isn't an advantage, then why have there been so many mergers in the telecom markets?
It'll always be of a certain speed and at a certain price. Some people will be happy with that. Some will think it's too slow. Some will think it's too expensive.
Is "substantially slower than what is available in other countries at a comparable price" objective enough?
Same thing, or what? They have a much smaller area to cover, but speeds have historically been worse than the US.
What's wrong with high speed (LTE) wireless?
The fact that it's being rolled out with the same single digit GB/mo cap as 3G and satellite.
"The US has the best government money can buy." This whole regulatory capture issue starts at the top. With de facto bribery being legalized, people who are best at that fundraising game become politicians. They are the ultimate regulators, a frightening thought. They are first legislators. They write the laws and appoint people to see that they are enforced.
"Crony capitalism" is the term we're looking for. When government intervenes in the markets, hold onto your wallets. It's always done under the guise of supporting the public good, but ultimately it winds up extracting more wealth from the population and benefiting favored industries.
"The fish rots from the head." This is why so many industries are able to extract wealth from the society and concentrate it in the hands of the well connected few.
Well said. Also Telcos sue the local governments when they compete. Apparently the state competing with a monopoly is unfair. I'm still waiting for UPS and FedEx to sue away the Post office.
God spoke to me
It's funny down here in Oz, we tend to have a separate problem.
There is tons of choice for consumer broadband, we don't have tethering fees on mobile broadband.
However commercial server bandwidth is stupidly expensive, good luck trying to find unlimited data there.
Even a terabyte a month can be several hundred dollars.
News at 6, featuring Republican and Libertarian pundits declaring: "it's all because there's too much regulation - deregulate everything and ... umm ... they will magically feel compelled to start a costly (for them) and profit-damaging innovation war". Or setting up a strawman argument: "yeah, but what are you gonna do about it? SOCIALIZE everything? *krak-a-thoom*"
Yeah yeah, I know, the above could also be branded strawman argument. Except that I've heard flesh-and-oil^H^H^Hblood Republican and Libertarian politicians using these flawed arguments countless times.
I think US Internet and wireless service suck: they are slow and overpriced. And Johnson is right: that's due to regulatory capture, insanely consumer-hostile regulations written by Internet and wireless companies. We either need a lot more regulation of these companies or a lot less regulation (and more competition), but right now, regulations make entry into the market hard, yet allow these companies to screw consumers any way they want.
Having said that, however, keep in mind that the French have much less disposable income than Americans: the US median disposable household income is $31000, in France it is $19000. In addition, there are hidden costs, such as special taxes on media and equipment, and the annual television tax (when you buy a TV, your name is passed on to the French tax authorities). Furthermore, the prices cited in the article for the US are a bit exaggerated: that $160 package is an obvious waste of money, and you can get something comparable for half the price. So, in the end, the differences between the US and France are not all that dramatic. But given the size and potential efficiency of the US market, Internet and wireless prices should be much lower here than in Europe, and they fail to be so.
If the number of links grows linearly, then your performance is going to be poor -- though this may be hidden by over-subscription.
Keep in mind that if your network is actually a tree, there is only one route from any point to any other, so you have no redundancy. (It is also possible the redundancy/network complexity is not directly obvious -- when I was dealing with these matters we had a single IP PVC set up over a frame relay network -- even though it looked like a single IP connection, there were failover paths setup within the frame-relay network, so the network topology was actually a bit more complex than it looked from the IP level -- and more expensive than it looked from the IP level, too.) Most of the IP networks I dealt with at the time had no single point of failure between any interior node, so it was a partial graph.
The costs can be tricky. Occasionally you hit the corner case of 'we want to upgrade from a T1 to a T3 in this location, but that requires a larger router, and there is no more space left in that colocation, so we would have to re-home all the customers to a different colocation.' (Also, if the equipment changes, on-site spares have to be factored in, plus tech training.) If you want another non-linear cost, consider customer support -- if you maintain X support staff per N customers, for every so many support staff, you will probably require an additional manager/human resources/etc. person. That requires a certain number more customers to cover the costs of that position, etc.
It is possible to beat this, no question, but there are an awful lot of small ISPs that tried to become big ISPs that failed that suggest that a lot of folks did not figure out the scaling problems ahead of time. The goal of a business is *profit*, not necessarily *size*. If growing 'larger' would not result in more profit, there is no incentive for the company to build out -- that's pretty basic business. It may depend on the right opportunity/technology to make the growth possible.
(You might do a google search on business 'growing too fast'. Growth is not always a good idea, nor always profitable.)
As far as mergers go, you need to factor in whether or not the merging companies have a 'paid for' network infrastructure, etc. If the two networks are already functional as is, then there is no need to do any expansion or new interconnection -- there is no additional capital expenditure involved. The networks could be run as is. (And of course, it's cheaper to buy out someone who has failed, or at least their equipment, cheap, after they've grown too fast and went bust.)
The problem I am referring to is the build-out stage where you have to invest cap-ex to build out capacity and need to be able to recoup that (before the equipment becomes obsolete.) The bigger/more complex the network is, the more it costs to fiddle with it. (Well, if you want to keep it running, that is. If you toss quality out the window, you can do these things really cheap.) The problem can be beat, but it's not necessarily an easy one.
So, given that growth does not always equate to profit (and growing too much or over-extension can lead to an implosion), and that revenue does not scale with costs (network growth is non-linear (even trees), personnel growth is non-linear, etc.) there is a certain pressure not to grow. There has to be a trick that enables the scaling -- better customer support system, new network gear at a cheaper price point, etc. However, if that requires new cap-ex/op-ex to implement, then there has to be a business case to do so.
Also, margins per customer can be really, really important. If you are trying to do a mass market, consumer service with tight margins with the goal of making a profit through volume, you are extremely subject to market prices. (I.e. in an extreme case, if the profit margin per customer is only $1 per customer, with a million customers, then that would be $1 million per month in profit. If anything happens which either raises th
They are also heavily subsidized and protected from competition, and they are still very expensive. In the end, they are not a good deal.
Do you call your internet connection slow and expensive?
Why don't you come to Brazil to pay US$ 25 for a nominal 1 Mbps, which garantees no more then 100 kbps, connection?
Then you can notice that you have a fast and cheap internet connection
Replace it my hairy ass! They might want to actually attempt to install some of it! The fact that they choose not to and cherry-pick areas where density and demographics provide the highest and fastest payback likely has more to do with their choices of installation areas.
YOU are an apologist for these companies and there is no way around it. I first received DSL in my area in 2001. Optical links, used correctly, should be less, not more, expensive. It's not the hardware, it's the politics. The industry wants us to be THANKFUL of their generosity in providing such wonderfully expensive crappy service.
bob@Osprey:~>
Think American service is slow and expensive ? You haven't had the Kiwi internet experience. Data caps on most residential plans. There is a national initiative to bring UFB (Ultra Fast Broadband) to 75% of the nation by 2020 (only thing slower than the internet in NZ is the roll out of the new service).
France is roughly equivalent to the state of California in size and population density. Please explain why California doesn't have passenger rail and internet service equivalent to France (listed in TFA).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
In the end, they are not a good deal.
Compared to what? Driving or flying over medium distances? I beg to differ.
Oh and the car/interstate and airline/airport systems aren't heavily subsidized and protected?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Just separate hardware- from service-providers.
Companies - or municipalities, if there isn't a cheap enough offer - can provide hardware. Any ISP can enter the market and pay for their share of hardware use.
The correct answer for any question revolving around "why can't we have _____" is always corporate greed. Why can't we have socialized medicine? Corporate greed. Why can't we have jobs here to the US? Corporate greed. Why can't we have a thriving economy and middle class? Corporate greed. And why can't we have fast, reliable, and cheap broadband, television, and cell phones? Corporate greed.
Starting to see a trend here?
Second time today I come across some stupid comment from you that sounds insightful at first but in reality it is only a demonstration of a well-indoctrinated republican voter.
Please refrain from commenting on topic you don't know about or go ahead and elaborate your above comment, I'm really curious. I'd also appreciate an in-depth comparison of why US passanger rail service is better than lets say, the French passanger railway system, taking into account the following:
Washington DC -> Chicago, $150, 17h, 700miles (~42mph average)
Lille, Fr -> Marseilles, Fr, $160, 4h45, 625miles (~131mph average)
With a TGV, it would take ~5h20min to do DC->Chicago for ~$180, and you saved half a day.
Or even better, Washington DC - New York: 227miles and $58, done in 1h45, instead of the famed Acela Express ($145, 2h45).
To spite Ayn Rand for writing Atlas Shrugged, of course.
Well, I can still dream, can't I?
Have gnu, will travel.
Yes, we can! Go Romney!
Do you have any sort of reference for this? I'm not doubting you, but I'd like to have something more concrete to point at.
...and never again pay for a service that should be dirt cheap, if it weren't run by a bunch of profiteering gluttons...
Our Cell industry IS largely unregulated
You're on crack. Besides all of the technical restrictions that the FCC applies, a cell phone carrier can't raise or lower any price for any service without some bureaucrat's permission.
Lobbying (and the results it produces) are a capitalist idea,
Wrong again. Lobbying is a statist phenomenon, and it's a symptom of a government intruding into matters it would do better to leave alone.
Our internet is slow, but the cost is still somewhat in the realm of feasible. I don't mind spending $30-50 for broadband. What I can't manage is INSANE phone bills. Smartphone plans starting at $75? WTF? When I lived in both Korea and Japan my monthly mobile phone bill was $25-40. And I used them all day every day. (Off point, but my internet was around $30 in both places... and crazy fast!) Why do we have to pay when someone calls us or sends us a text message in the US? It's ridiculous! Anyone should be able to pick up a smartphone plan for under $30. What's going on? Price fixing?
Bandwidth can't be stockpiled - unused it is lost forever.
The fiber and wires should be public property just like roads because they are a natural monopoly.
It's reasonable for a private vender to own a web site or a TV show. It is not reasonable for a private vender to own the only sewer line on a street or the only rail line to Chicago.
We shoud use eminent domain and take the telecommunications lines back (most were built with tax payer subsidies on public land grants). They could then be turned into co-ops.
Yes, compared to driving, buses, and flying.
It's not a question of opinion. European passenger rail systems are losing money, are unreliable, and have high ticket prices. Driving is overwhelmingly popular in countries like Germany despite the rail system and car ownership is as high as in the US. And the (mis-)use of rail for passengers in Europe means that the rail system is actually inefficiently utilized, while large numbers of trucks are clogging the roads and polluting the environment.
Furthermore, it's not like the US isn't using rail. The US still has a rail system that is twice as large as all of Europe put together and it is nearly 100% utilized. But the US rail system is primarily used for freight, something that rail is excellent for.
I've driven all over Germany and I've taken the ICE.
After driving from Frankfurt to Munich, you're tired, ready for a shower, and have exposed yourself to quite the accident risk (and we don't even need to talk about the amount of energy it took.)
The ICE is faster, you can read or do whatever, and you're fresh when you've arrived.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Well I live in south africa, where most people have to make do with internet download speeds of up to 30kbps and to get an internet connection of over.1mbps you are expected to pay over 1000 rand pm(133 dollar aprox) and most of the time you are still capped anyway. I pay 750 rand (100 dollars) and I get 250kbps dl with a 5gb cap (I can only download 5gb per month before I am charged extra for my internet usage). all this and I live in a country where half the population does not even own a computer,... So pls excuse me if I find it hard to take you americans seriously when u complain about "slow" internet speeds at "high" prices...learn to appreciate what you have cuz some people in other countries have it a lot worse.
Uh, I like the idea of driving being a privilege. No one should be on the road without demonstrating that they have the capability to handle a ton of metal without killing people.
You are confusing the issue.
The problem is not about "capability to handle a ton of metal"
The problem lies in the fact that why does it have to take a ton (and often more than that) of metal to carry a person from point A to point B?
If the materials that are used to build up a vehicle weight much less than the weight of the passenger(s) then the matter regarding the "capability to handle heavy things" is all but moot.
Plus it has the effect on fuel savings, as well.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
And in some parts of the world, you're damn lucky if you get a couple hours of power a day. Someone always has it worse off than you do.
Taking trains is clearly very pleasant and a wonderful alternative to the car; I take them every time I can when I'm in Europe.
That doesn't make it a good deal: most Europeans pay for these rail lines through taxes, but rarely if ever get to use the infrastructure. Worse, Germany outlawed long distance bus transportation in order to protect the rail system from economically more efficient competition, which means that large parts of Germany have no good or low-cost long distance public transport at all.
But, hey, as long as a few wealthy people and tourists can cruise in style from Munich to Frankfurt (or SF to LA), who cares about the peons who actually have to pay for it, right?
> If it's so profitable to build a telecommunications company then why are more local ones not popping up and serving our desires?
The fact that AT&T and Comcast will have every lobbyist and lawyer on their payroll swarming the city/county commission, state regulators, and anyone else they can think of to get the local government authority prohibit you from doing it? Kind of like they do every time some uppity community gets fed up and decides to lay its own fiber?
Compared to the massive subsidization of American roads and air travel that you just ignored?
Compared to the big money maker that is the Interstate Highway System?
Big corporations are above the law. The only thing that can make them accountable may be a violent revolution.
Oh wait..compare it to India you might be thankful enough for what you have.
I've given up my cell phone for a SIP phone (phone over wifi) and it's working out alright for my needs.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Subsidies are irrelevant to the question of whether a system is efficient. Assuming no subsidies to any mode of transportation, rail is not competitive with an infrastructure consisting of air and road travel.
And talking of subsidies... The US Interstate highway system cost about $450 billion in modern dollars, for 47000 miles, almost all financed by its users (through various driving-related taxes). California high speed rail costs $55 billion for 430 miles, and it is never going to recoup that cost from users, and people all over the country who are never going to benefit are forced to pay for that.
Sure. And Internet access is much better and cheaper across (almost) every European country (and even in most of Russia) than in the US, despite the fact that US companies were as subsidized (if not more) to lay down their networks. Great deal!
Even in Siberia, you can get a 1 mbps pipe for ~37 USD/month.
But... yeah, I know.... the US is a big country with low population density, unlike Russia, right?
Evil, evil socialism.
With the same breath you could tell why America gets this useless electricity of two phases of 110v in 180 apart, instead of proper 3 phases that actually can turn motors in uniform torque?
I seriously don't get it this prices.. maybe lack of good competition? I know the country is huge but still... here in Portugal i'm paying 30 euros for 100MB/s download and 20MB/s upload fiber optics with free landline calls 24/7. Even 4G connection with 50/25MB/s is priced as 40 euros per month with unlimited bandwidth.
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
n.t.
Luckily, there is balance in the world. While you're waiting for your slow, expensive Internet connection to load your pr0n, you will have the time to drink your copious amounts of cheap beer: http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/25/1657224/beer-is-cheaper-in-the-us-than-anywhere-else-in-the-world
God Bless America
I have this exact issue currently. I live the largest city in my state, and I only have internet service available from one(1) ISP. That ISP has chosen to provide only 2 levels of service, I can buy 5Mpbs unlimited for $55/mo or I can buy 50Mbps limited to 50GB of bandwidth, with each GB over costing $0.50. I've checked my bandwidth usage and the limited, albeit higher speed, package would end up costing me well over $100/mo with my current usage. I don't subscribe to cable, because I prefer to stream from Netflix et al. If I were to use cable I would be able to get cable tv plus 50Mbps limited to 100GB of bandwidth per month for $90. As you can see, they're not very interested in providing just internet service to people, and since they currently have the monopoly I have no choice but to pay the exorbitant rates, or purchase service that I won't even use.
This whole things sounds like good reason for everyone to root for the Google Fiber experiment in Kansas City to be a huge success. If they can prove this as remotely profitable, then there's really no reason not to roll it out everywhere.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
The reason we don't have passanger rails is becuase the automotive industry bought them all and dismantled them.
The Deutsche Bahn is a publicly traded corporation. My parents took a bus halfway through Germany just a few years ago. They didn't like it but it was some nearly free deal.
You are full of shit.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Surprised by regulatory capture? It's one way to reduce competition and has been going on long before the internet; some guy even one an award for describing it. Despite all the complaints companies make about "regulation;" they don't want *their* regulations removed to the extent someone could *gasp* actually offer better service at a lower price. Look how long it took SWA to end the Wright Amendment prohibitions on its operations. Can't have some upstart come in and end our comfortable existence; and no, Romney ain't gonna do jack about either.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
In Portugal I have fiber internet 100mbps, television with +-100 channels and free call telephone for €50/month :)
ahhhh ahhhh
Dow!
The fact that cable companies still have customers with MPEG2 boxes just shows they are cheap and soaking every last dollar before they upgrade.
They bitch that bandwidth costs money, then refuse to upgrade to MPEG4 video because they would have to give customers new settop boxes!
SDV is a joke, it’s a bad idea that saved them again from switching to new settops in the house and using IP to the settop to just do multicast joins and unicast VOD, instead SDV with its dynamically assigned QAMs is a mess, and a huge waste of money, when eventually they are going to want to be at IP to the settop anyway. Allot of these cable companies own their own backbones and bandwidth is cheap, but I know many are still talking about billing per used bandwidth! I know TWC in my area will start putting your used bandwidth per month on your bill, but not charging yet for it, they just want to let you know they are watching! I would say this had tons to do with them trying to figure out how to make you not want to use bandwidth watching TV on the internet, instead of them figuring out how to compete and provide better services, its game based on how to hold on to more for longer. And yes you subsidize they guys with your tax dollars!
...The industry wants us to be THANKFUL of their generosity in providing such wonderfully expensive crappy service because it puts more money in the pockets of those at the top.
I fixed that up a little for ya. Sorry.
:)
Please explain why California doesn't have passenger rail and internet service equivalent to France
Lawsuits Anja Raudabaugh, executive director of the Madera County Farm Bureau, a plaintiff in one of the suits, said an injunction is the only avenue available to "prevent permanent damage and irreparable harm" to agriculture from construction and operation of the train system.
Yes, and it is 100% owned by the German government, as well as heavily subsidized.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Bahn
There are some airport transports and some foreign operators, maybe they took those. There is no private long distance bus service in Germany because it was illegal until this year.
http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/germany-lifts-ban-on-long-distance-bus-travel.cfm
You need to do a bit more background research before you start insulting people.
WTH are you talking about? I've been all over Europe in both trains and cars (even drove right in to central Asia from Germany once) and very little of what you're saying is true.
Buses are reasonably common in Germany and regular people use the railways all the time. DB even has special weekend passes where you can pretty much have unlimited travel in Germany for 35 Euros (granted, these are for slow trains and this was ~5 years ago so the price is probably different nowadays)... this alone seems a little contradictory to your "large parts of Germany" statement, but it would seem you can get to most of Germany fairly easily - but if you just want to get from A to B, the high-speed trains are there.
In most countries ticket prices are the same or less than driving - last time I drove from Nice to Barcelona the cost of tolls was similar to the cost of the actual petrol and not so far removed from the price of the train ticket (for comparison, I did the same route a month later by train). Moreover, the trains are highly reliable throughout most of Europe, except when there's a strike on, but those are *relatively* infrequent, even if they are disruptive when they happen. In places like Italy and Spain trains get delayed but, that's not necessarily a railway problem, that's the nature of the country you're in (India, where I live nowadays, is the same or worse).
On the other hand, trains in Scandinavia are top-notch, fairly reasonably priced (arguably cheaper per KM than Germany) and well used. Austrian, Czech and Ukrainian trains are reasonably comfortable, not too expensive and for the most part seemed reasonably well used. ...Anyway, in all countries the railways are built with tax money (not much isn't) but the roads are too - not just with your municipal/federal taxes but at least in Germany the cost of your TUV certificates, insurances and tax from petrol and everything else all contribute to keeping those magical autobahns in service.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
It seems the telecommunication companies have rewritten the regulatory rules in their favor.
The inevitable result of a free and unfettered market is monopolies that pay for laws to be written that regulate all their competitors out of business.
THINK! It's patriotic
German highways are more than covered by the nearly 100% gasoline taxes and user charges on trucks, so they are actually self-financing.
As for rail, if you live in Oberbumfuck (as most people do) and want to travel anywhere, the train is going to be slower than going by car (slow feeders, train changes, frequently delays) and just as expensive. You can't use Greyhound because that's verboten (or used to be). In the end, only 7% of German passenger traffic moves by rail.
Germany is a textbook example for why government-subsidized high speed rail is a bad deal. It's mostly tourists and politicians that like it.
OK I didn't know that the DB IPO had been canceled and I'll have to apologize.
But that buses are somehow illegal doesn't make sense. There are buses all over the place. That's probably one of those laws that nobody takes seriously so everybody ignores it.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
City buses aren't illegal; there are plenty of those. Private long-distance buses were illegal for nearly a century, for the explicit reason that they are cheaper than rail travel and rail can't compete with them.
The monopoly started because the victors of WWI wanted to have a monopoly on transportation in Germany and extract the excessive monopoly profits as war reparations. Later, Hitler used the monopoly to subsidize a railway he used for military purposes and to send Jews to the gas chambers.
Your attitude is why we lose more rights every day.
The difference is a right can not be denied if without good cause. A "privilege" can be refused by a bureaucracy for any reason regardless of competency or cause.
The US Constitution recognizes that no rights come from the government. The people have all the rights, and grant the government limited authority to restrict some of those rights for the greater good. Some rights are so important it was deemed necessary to remind everybody with the Bill of Rights that the people have those rights and that they are not be infringed.
So yes, driving is a right. It can be restricted in some ways for the greater good, but cannot be denied. Do not fall for the propaganda that it is a "privilege". There are no "privileges" in a free society.
If you are a US Citizen, you should be deeply, deeply ashamed of yourself. Your right to vote should be revoked since you know so little about your country.
The United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8 grants Congress the exclusive power to establish a postal service. There can be no other postal service without the approval of Congress, and so far they haven't approved any.
And then there are the Private Express Statutes, which codify making private delivery of letters illegal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes
At least one private delivery company tried to compete with the USPS and was shut down:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company
Except that's not true. The Constitution does give Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads", but the world exclusive is nowhere to be found. A competing postal service is no more unconstitutional than privately owned highways, of which there are hundreds in the US.
Now, you were going on about being embarrassed?
Capitalist idea? The capitalist idea would be that they should *freely* compete with each other. You don't have to lobby to compete. You have to lobby when you need some sort of permission or you are seeking some sort of protection from the government; i.e., constraining the market in some way. I don't advocate a totally unregulated market. However, to say that lobbying is a capitalist idea is rather odd. Well, maybe not - I guess in the event of total state control, you don't have lobbying because you don't have the company in the first place, just the state.
Regulatory capture... regulatory capture .. OF COURSE!!!!!!!!!!
We have roads to every home in the United States - every one. Surely it would be thousands of times cheaper to run a cable to a home than build a road to it. And since we obviously could afford to build the road, we could build a high speed Internet access to it for next to nothing, comparatively speaking. The "too expensive" excuse is a cop out for the real reason which is based on return on investment. The easiest and cheapest way probably would be to upgrade and enhance the cell pnone RF network that already exists throughout the US. Need several hundred more cell towers of course.
You think US internet is slow and expensive?
Try Canada, I think we probably have you beat in both traditional service and mobile solutions. By that I mean ours is more expensive and slower. For much the same reasons, but worse. Only a handful of companies, with little or no compatition, most simply mirror each others prices. A reglator agency (CRTC) firmly in bed with industry as well as politicians to keep things favorable for them.
My internet is pretty fast, but I pay 80$ a month for the privliage.
The Federal Register has very little known vestiges harking from the decades in the earlier half of the last century where Congress repeatedly called in the titans of the communication industry and electricity providers for public berating over why they were too stingy to invest in miles of costly copper to serve a handful of subscribers per mile. At that time, rural voters outnumbered urban voters. Several unsuccessful public cajolings later, Congress capitulated and asked the titans to outline terms that would motivate the titans.
The titans got two things. One was the ability to re-depreciate fully depreciated investment in fixed plant. Fixed plant is the term used in the industry to describe the assets such as buried and aerial copper, signal repeater huts, switching stations, and network nodes that are built-out to serve the customer. Normally, the copper, and now glass, lasts hundreds of years if buried in the ground suffering only the occasional errant trench digger. Normally the costs for this investment represents 90% of the cost of providing service to the customer. The repeated depreciation allows the telecom and electric industries to re-depreciate 90% of their costs all over again every 30-40 years, but at inflation adjusted replacement cost rates. The false costs build up the longer the incumbent stays in business with AT&T being the king of the hidden gravy train. The false costs both reduce income tax liability and inflate the base upon which state regulatory authorities tack on the 11.5%-12.25% profit (50 year average of S&P 500) to determine the tariff rates that utilities are allowed to charge the the public.
The result is a true cash ROI of 20-60% depending on how long ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers) have been in business. To hide this golden goose, companies like AT&T go on acquisition sprees and run their acquisitions into the ground to create losses and divert public attention away from the scheme. The internal operating costs are also inflated by buying the best of everything, The regulated utility and telecom industry is the only industry remaining with AAA health insurance plans and defined pension benefits among other rare perks. The higher the operating costs, the higher the 11.5-12.25% regulated profit.
The regulatory, "justification", for retaining the repeated depreciation in the federal register is that if the plant ever fully depreciated and regulated rates charged the public were reduced by 90% to reflect the fully depreciated fixed plant, then the public would quickly acclimate to the lower rates and be so outraged so as to prevent the the utility company from ever reinvesting to replace and sustain worn out fixed plant due to the public backlash that would prevent the service providers from raising rates to fund the reinvestment.
To join this corporate welfare gravy train, get connected with a telecom or utility executive to either sell them products or services at wildly inflated prices or have them sell you a spin-off company at 5-15% of the acquisition cost.
Comcast ain't that bad, Verizon FIOS ain't bad. But I don't disagree that AT&T (and other DSL providers) generally suck. It's the technology limitations of phone wires.
Sorry sorry sorry, did you say delays? In Germany? Nein nein nein!! Das ist verboten!! The crew would be shot :P
However, at the same time, Germany is a (comparatively) small country compared to, say, the US. Germans, being the stereotypically efficient folks that they are, have worked out that they can probably can get from Frankfurt to Berlin by car faster than they can by train - and it's less hassle than a plane (while I seem to recall Berlins airports being all accessible by train, they're not as well connected as Frankfurt)... but distance is comparable to what... DC to NYC? (I'm guessing wildly here), so it becomes a matter of value/time. No tolls on Autobahns (unlike, say, France and Spain) so driving is perhaps cheaper too, even with the taxes... and so on. But that doesn't mean the German rail network isn't brilliant.
Germany is a great country to go through, so for getting from point A to point B (say, Paris to Vienna - even though I assume this isn't what you mean by tourist**) it's a great option as opposed to flying shitty budget airlines.
And if you don't appreciate it, come to where I currently live (India) - or try my homeland (NZ), where the problem is basically the same: a small island country which you can drive major centre to major centre in ~8 hours even at 100km/h, thus, trains are grossly underused and the roads, similarly free of tolls, are preferred due in part to the pricing but also the scheduling.
**Also, I spent too long in Europe to be a mere tourist.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)