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ITU Aims At 20Mbps Broadband For All By 2020
Mark.JUK writes "Dr Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), has proposed to 'dream big' by setting a new broadband access target for the world. In short, Touré would like to see the United Nations (UN) update its global digital development targets to include a commitment that would require countries around the world to ensure that everybody can access broadband internet speeds of 20Mbps from just $20 by 2020. Easier said than done, especially in poorer countries."
20 Mbps for $20? Easier said than done in the United States of Monopolies.
And I want to stop world hunger and end all wars. We can even feed everyone on this planet and their goal is 20Mbps? I love the Internet and all, but considering the fact that many people still die of hunger and disease, isn't this goal a little lofty?
Yes, networks span over fiber optic. But to power the junction points that light up the fiber and distribute over coax and twisted pair is a big problem in many 3rd world nations. Reason being copper theft. It's big deal. It's a big deal here in the US too. But don't expect to sink a large investment into a nation if said investment can't be reasonably protected. South Africa comes to mind.
Life is not for the lazy.
20 mega-ponies-per-second.
About as realistic.
Seriously, this is a laudable "target" as long as everyone agrees that we are playing "horseshoe and hand grenades" rules, where close counts. If anyone thinks "we must do this, period, and if even one person on the planet can't get 20 Mbps for $20 by the end of 2020 then we've failed" and expects to "succeed," they are delusional.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Middle of the US: $50/month for 5meg cable, $60/month for 3meg DSL (clightly better coverage so they can force the people just past city limits to pay extra), or $20/month for 56k dialup (hasn't changed price or capabilities in over 15 years).
I wish I could say this small town atmosphere trades technological opportunity for safety, I really do. But we've had two incidents of crazies shooting at the cops and 3 murders within spitting distance of my house so far this year...
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Like telephone service spreading to the developing world, this won't happen with wires.
I've got a 5Mbps wireless broadband connection right now, and that's WiMAX, old tech. Verizon's LTE does close to 10 Mbps..
My connection costs me $50/month; if we imagine opening things up to real competition, $20/mo doesn't seem unreasonable.
If we had the political will to make 20Mbps broadband as accessible as voice communication is today, yes, we could do it in under a decade.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Yeah, be afraid of the terrifying organization with an annual budget under $5 billion. And meanwhile, completely ignore the mega-corporations that would like to enslave everyone on the planet who's not a shareholder, that send that much lobbying U.S. government every year.
We get 360 Kbps on a good day with Frontier DSL, the only choice aside from satellite. Frontier bought Verizon's rural operations a few years ago and they refuse to upgrade. You can pay more (~$60-70/mo.) for a "high-speed" tier, but people report that your speed actually drops. Frontier is scum, the poster child for crap internet service.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
> Reason being copper theft. It's big deal.
Well. Here in India, Internet and cable TV use wires hanging between buildings, and have done so for decades. Theft is not really a problem.
The cheapest wireless internet we have is 256 kbps at $5 a month. That's quite adequate for everything but video. $10 for 1 mbps wired.
The important thing is for everyone to with the most basic literacy to be able to afford unmetered Internet *access*. Higher bandwidth is much less important. Upper tiers just get used for entertainment and are not critical.
I feel that making basic Internet access at limited bandwidth (256 kbps is fine, 1mbps is better if we are to target online education), available as free as radio waves or water, is a better goal than 20 for 20 by 20.
Mobile phones are already very cheap here. Incoming calls are free. Outgoing call balance can be recharged with cards as low as 50 cents. So a poor family living in a hut with a leaky roof can still afford phones for each of its members for essential use. Internet should be as affordable as that and it will surely get there here without any ITU directives.
ensure that everybody can access broadband internet speeds of 20Mbps from just $20 by 2020.
I'm surprised they didn't make it "up to 20Mbps from just $20," in which case, mission accomplished!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I hear they're run by lizard men and are responsible for 9/11 too!
Then how do you explain politicians?
Don't forget the pony!
Please define everybody.
Does this include folks in third-world countries? Does this include all regions of India, Africa, and China (as a few examples)? There are may regions without access to, for example, safe, clean, potable water - is high-speed access to Amazon really a priority in those locations?
Ken
I somehow don't think they really care that we should have better internet connection. But how do you want to sell movies (sorry, rent them) via internet if you can't stream them in good quality? How do you want to keep tabs on everyone if their connection is clogged and they might be interested in reducing the traffic they don't benefit from?
I'm not really sure I'm looking forward to these great times.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're not being even remotely accurate.
Most corporations would like to enslave shareholders too.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
15 mbps for DSL lines, 30 mbps for cable TV lines, and 60 mbps for optical fiber lines. And that's the minimum. For cellular wireless, it should be 15 mbps for HSDPA+ 3G and 40 mbps for 3GPP LTE minimum.
That's about what I pay for 6mbps, doesn't sound farfetched to have a little more than three times that speed for the same price in 7 years, seven years ago I had 2 Mbps for a similar price.
You can already get over 20Mbps for under $20 in the UK... the kicker is the "everyone" bit - people out in the sticks can't get 20Mbps cheaply, nor do I really expect them to be able to be 2020... nor am I entirely sure that 20Mbps access for everyone is something that we should be subsidising - you don't need 20Mbps to do the essentials (tax returns, getting the news, etc); the only thing you need that kind of bandwidth for is entertainment, and there are plenty of other non-internet methods of getting entertained already, without the general public having to subsidise another... (Frankly, whilst I certainly wouldn't _mind_ my DSL being upgraded, I don't find my current 8Mbps particularly slow... Upgrading certainly isn't something I'm interested in spending money on, so I'm not sure why I should expect other people to spend it on me instead)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
There's enough food on the planet to feed everyone, every day.
The problem is not one of science, but of politics. How do you get some tiny African state, or Middle-Eastern country, with a hatred of the country offering help because of past wars etc. to let you wander across their country with thousands of people, vehicles, planes and cargo, fixing all their starvation and asking for "nothing" in return? You don't. They are (rightly) very suspicious if you try.
The logistics issues (getting the food there), the personnel issues (finding someone willing to wander into a warzone holding nothing but rice), the farming issues - they are all pretty much solvable already. It's the politics. When a warmonger in charge of a state says "No", you risk war to carry on doing it anyway, which will kill a lot more people than basic starvation.
And the politics aren't something that are going to be resolved any time soon (if ever). Ironically, world hunger will be solved when world peace comes about, and not before - short of some fantastical technological miracle that can fabricate any substance out of thin air while running off a battery. And then that device will be used to create guns and fatten troops, not feed the starving.
Yeah, this is a "first world problem", but we're pretty stalled on solving most of the third-world problems not because of a lack of science, technology, industry, funding, power or anything else. Purely because of a lack of acceptable foreign policy. We are happier to sell these countries guns than give them food for free and most of the time do both as if it makes up for it.
Think of this next time your country wishes to invade another, next time you hear reports of prisoner abuse, torture, kidnapping, imprisonment without trial, bombing (with "collateral damage") or particular groups / religions / nationalities being the target (did the US go after Bin Laden or did it bomb the crap out of some foreign countries that were nothing to do with him?).
There's nothing stopping us feeding the starving, except people in charge hating other people in charge (usually somewhat justifiably: if you consider what would happen if, say, those countries told the US - for example - how to run their own country, you sort of begin to see the problem from their side).
However, that's not really a factor in the ongoing advance of science. If we really waited until we cured world hunger / world peace before we actually moved on to more complex things, we'd still be in the stone age right now.
Surely there are better things to do with our time and money than to pursue goals like this.
the only thing you need that kind of bandwidth for is entertainment
That is simply not true. One of the reasons that areas like Cornwall and Somerset are getting grants to improve broadband speed is precisely to attract businesses who can work almost anywhere provided they have the bandwidth.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
That is simply not true. One of the reasons that areas like Cornwall and Somerset are getting grants to improve broadband speed is precisely to attract businesses who can work almost anywhere provided they have the bandwidth.
And so businesses can pay for it, just the same as they would pay for an office if they were expecting employees to use that instead of working from home...
(For the record, I too work from home and I don't find 8Mbps too slow at all... I could occasionally do with a faster upstream, but the downstream is fine)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I'll give you 20MB/s for 20$ right now.
(with a 10MB cap and 5$ per MB overage)
That is pretty much the model these days anyway.
$20 in today's value, or in 7 years of inflation?
I can already get 20M for $20. It just comes with a 5GB data cap...well I used to at my old address, now I'm further from the exchange and only get about 12Mbps. In two years I'll have access to 100Mbps, like most of the rest of my back-water country.
Because 1080p is not enough! you need 3D 8k video streaming!
Although it was good to see at least mild-mention of the Poor,
it'd be better to have service cost expressed -equitable- units,
that recognized the vast differences in amount of human-time
it takes - across the world - to earn $20.
Recommending sustainable living is usurping sovereignty? I don't get it.
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