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ITIF Senior Fellow Claims "America's Broadband Networks Lead the World"

McGruber writes "In an Op-Ed published in The NY Times, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF.org) Senior Fellow Richard Bennett claims that 'America's broadband networks lead the world by many measures, and they are improving at a more rapid rate than networks in most developed countries.' Mr. Bennett also says, 'the most critical issue facing American broadband has nothing to do with the quality of our networks; it is our relatively low rates of subscribership.'"

298 comments

  1. Re: "improving at a more rapid rate" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Only possible because they had further to go in the first place.

  2. Says the man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    using dialup.

  3. What!? by willthiswork89 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are nations with 50 mbps for pennies on the dollar to our cost in America, not to mention absolutely no throttling or data limits. Wake up Richard Bennett! There are far too many monopolies in Americas internet connections and THATS the problem, no competition means they can do whatever the hell they want!

    1. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yup, I'm on the same 1.5 Mbps, I've been on for years. It just costs more now. This guy needs a lashing.

    2. Re:What!? by operagost · · Score: 5, Informative

      Akamai published the Q4 2012 edition of their State of the Internet report yesterday, and it's pretty much as expected: the trends that have been evident since 2010 are continuing. Globally, Internet connections are growing incrementally faster, and we see this trend in the U. S.

      The U. S. has picked up one place in the "Average Peak Connection Speed" that's the best measurement of network capacity, rising from 14th to 13th as the measured peak connection speed increased from 29.6 Mbps to 31.5 Mbps.
      In terms of the "Average Connection Speed," widely cited by analysts who don't know what it means, the U. S. remains in 8th place world-wide. but we're no longer tied for it as we were in the previous quarter; Sweden is right behind us on this one.
      In terms of "High Speed Broadband Adoption", the proportion of IP addresses with an Average Connection Speed greater than 10 Mbps, we remain in 7th place, but now we're tied with Sweden.

      http://www.hightechforum.org/u-s-broadband-speed-slightly-better-in-latest-akamai-report/

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    3. Re: What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can it be so that the Swedes uses their mobile broadband solutions a lot bringing down speeds. I got 30/30Mbps at home (max 100/100 available) ~$50, mobile broadband in my phone ~$10, mobile broadband in my laptop (paid by my phone) and mobile broadband in my work laptop. I use all connections regularly and even in ural and/or crowded places so my bandwidth on average is low but peak is good. the mobile solutions are for convience and my home connection is heavy duty usage. none of my subscriptions have data caps.

      Sweden have a problem with over crowded cell networks but 4G is starting to reduce that crowding slowly. the operators improve there 2G and 3G networks at the same time they install 4G all over the country.

    4. Re:What!? by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 1, Funny

      Yup, I'm on the same 1.5 Mbps, I've been on for years. It just costs more now. This guy needs a lashing.

      Yeah, this guy is totally wrong because [insert my own personal anecdote here] !!!

    5. Re:What!? by Cenan · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, this guy is totally wrong because [insert my own personal anecdote here] !!!

      Yeah, this guy is totally right because [insert cherry picked data points here] !!!

      --
      ... whatever ...
    6. Re:What!? by alen · · Score: 0

      yep, and if you read the details most of these cases are you get this speed only if you live in the center of the nation's largest city. and its not available in the entire city either

      most of the people complaining in the USA about broadband live out in the exuburbs or rural areas and want the gubment to pay for the infrastructure

    7. Re: What!? by Wovel · · Score: 2

      Many of the countries you believe are better have state run networks with no competition. The best have state owned infrastructure where providers compete with equal access.

    8. Re:What!? by alen · · Score: 0, Troll

      time warner cable doubled my speeds for free last year. i'm on the cheapest tier.

      don't live in a place where the farm animals outnumber the people

    9. Re:What!? by kamapuaa · · Score: 1

      I'm in the US and get 55mbps for $30/month. Really if you can get very fast internet for $30/month I just don't see a cause for complaint. And then I get 4G/LTE with my $50/month contract-free phone.

      --
      Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
    10. Re:What!? by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 2

      Yup, I'm on the same 1.5 Mbps, I've been on for years. It just costs more now. This guy needs a lashing.

      Yeah, this guy is totally wrong because [insert my own personal anecdote here] !!!

      The issue is that all of these personal anecdotes add up to a disturbing picture. I consider myself extremely lucky to be on 50Mbps for $60/mo with Charter on the West Coast. I've already come to terms with the fact that when I move next, it will likely be to a much worse service provider. Kinda funny how all of the free-market lovers refuse to break up these telecom monopolies, or at the very least regulate them into being dumb pipes.

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    11. Re:What!? by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      There are far too many monopolies in Americas internet connections and THATS the problem, no competition means they can do whatever the hell they want!

      Which may be his point when he said we're "leading."

    12. Re:What!? by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is that so long as you like vegetables and meat, somebody is going to have to live out there. Are you really saying that we should relegate our food growers to dial-up speeds?

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    13. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      when you're coming from 1MBPs, going to 15MBPs or 1GBPs is a many-times multiplier- eg lots of growth. We're only leading in growth because we're coming from shitville.

    14. Re:What!? by jd2112 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      yep, and if you read the details most of these cases are you get this speed only if you live in the center of the nation's largest city. and its not available in the entire city either

      most of the people complaining in the USA about broadband live out in the exuburbs or rural areas and want the gubment to pay for the infrastructure

      The gubetment already paid for the infrastructure. The telcos pocketed the cash for themselves instead.

      --
      Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
    15. Re: What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Number of providers in an area is possibly the most important factor. In my suburb apartment outside Stockholm, Sweden I got 6 ISPs in the fibernetwork, 5 real mobile network operators and a bunch of virtual all offering broadband. If the house had cable-TVi would have had another ISP to choice from. If there was any POST cable the number of ISP would increase further.

      But my aparment is newso no cable, no phone just fiber for evrything.

    16. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's called a counterexample.

    17. Re:What!? by ScottyLad · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The author only compares America to other "developed" countries, but if I wanted the best Internet access, I would go so somewhere like South Korea, or anywhere in the Middle or Far East where the uptake of IPv6 and build-out of high speed access leaves Europe and America looking a bit last century.

      The whole article seems to be missing the fact that the developing countries are setting the pace these days.

      --
      Philosopher (n) - a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity
    18. Re:What!? by Krojack · · Score: 1

      I find the problem is, they keep increasing the speeds (and sometimes the cost) but what I want is half the speed I currently have at half my current monthly bill. The cable company would still be getting the same $4.66/1mbit that I'm paying now. They don't offer such packages for some unknown stupid reason.

    19. Re:What!? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The citizens already paid for the infrastructure. The telcos pocketed the cash for themselves instead.

      FTFY.

    20. Re:What!? by Shinobi · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The fact that Bennet relies on the Akamai report is proof that he's writing a propaganda piece with only a fleeting touch of reality. The reality is, Akamai's figures for the nordic countries are grossly misleading, since Akamai's infrastructure here is appallingly bad, while it's quite extensive in north america, which skews the numbers a lot in the favour of the USA.

      Compared to LLNW and other competitors, Akamai is a brake for us over here, with LLNW for example allowing transfers in excess of 90Mbit/s, even during prime time, while Akamai hosts chokes at 25Mbit/s(if you're lucky....)

    21. Re:What!? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 1

      Yeah, this guy is totally wrong because I pay $75/mo for 60/8 Mbbps !!!

    22. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There are far too many monopolies in Americas internet connections and THATS the problem

      Isn't he problem with monopolies that there are to few of them?

    23. Re:What!? by Junta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The whole article seems to be missing the fact that the developing countries are setting the pace these days.

      Which is stated with a degree of surprise, but if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

      In 'developed' countries, good enough reigns supreme. They may have state of the art infrastructure as defined by standards when the infrastructure was built. Getting tens of mbps to urban areas is 'good enough'. IPv4 is 'good enough'.

      In countries that have no acceptable infrastructure, they have the opportunity to start from the correct place as it is defined now.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    24. Re:What!? by sydsavage · · Score: 2

      I live less than 2.5 miles from my state capitol. My two choices for internet are $55/mo for 1.5/.75 DSL from CenturyLink, or $70/mo for "up to" 20/5 from Comcast. I don't want the gubmint to subsidize shit. But somebody needs to step in and break this duopoly. If tighter regulations on these two asshat companies is what it takes, so be it.

      Personally, I'd like to see the city turn the SCOTUS approved imminent domain laws on their head, and seize the infrastructure from these racketeers and then lease back wholesale access to any company that wants to provide service. Because unless Google decides to come to town, nothing is going to change, at least not for the better.

      The prices have continually crept up while bandwidth caps have been continually lowered along with the quality of service. At this moment, I'm waiting for the second day for a repairman to show up to fix a recurring issue of moisture in the ancient copper lines (so that's why they call it CenturyLink!) that causes no dialtone on the landline, and the DSL connection to flap from no connection to barely dial-up speeds.

    25. Re:What!? by gutnor · · Score: 1

      Yep, that's one of those points where the US is leading. Monetizing every single bit that travel through the network.

    26. Re:What!? by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      > Yeah, this guy is totally wrong because [insert my own personal anecdote here] !!!

      Argument by counterexample is a perfectly acceptable approach. It tends to be more effective when some clueless ass makes some really stupid general statement.

      The article was about one such ass.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    27. Re:What!? by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > most of the people complaining in the USA about broadband live out in the exuburbs or rural areas and want the gubment to pay for the infrastructure

      Sounds like the Rural Electrification Act.

      Are you really prepared to declare that we are no longer civilized enough to make sure that no one is left behind in this country?

      The infastructure you are using right now or even the city you are living in likely is the result of the sort of "gubment" handout you are trying to whine about.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    28. Re:What!? by kilfarsnar · · Score: 1

      I find the problem is, they keep increasing the speeds (and sometimes the cost) but what I want is half the speed I currently have at half my current monthly bill. The cable company would still be getting the same $4.66/1mbit that I'm paying now. They don't offer such packages for some unknown stupid reason.

      I'm in the same boat. I don't download a lot, so 10 Mb works fine for me. It's plenty for streaming Netflix, which is my most bandwidth intensive activity. But my provider recently upped the lowest tier to 25 Mb. So now I'm forced to pay more for service I don't really want, and which rarely runs at the advertised speed anyway.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    29. Re:What!? by poity · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You bring up a good point

      I wonder what internet speeds European food growers get? What is the quality of service for livestock breeders in rural Spain and the Baltics; wheat farmers in rural Central Europe? Also, how far outstretched are the suburbs of Europe? In my mind, European cities tend to be more densely occupied and with greater zoning overlap than in the US -- a fiber line serving many businesses also branch out easily to apartments, whereas in the US you have many more instances of distinctly separate commercial and residential zones.

      Something else that comes to mind is how do the speed and service deteriorate as one moves out of the city centers? What speeds and quality of service do Europeans who live 10km away from downtown get compared to Americans who live 10km away from downtown? 20km and 30km away?

      --
      your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
    30. Re:What!? by div_2n · · Score: 1

      They're the same thing, so you're being redundant. It's the first words of the Constitution -- "We the People". Choosing those words first was not an accident.

    31. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I like your questions, but your scale is off by quite a margin. Where I live I am considered to be just outside a minor city, yet I live 32km from downtown. It takes another 15km to get to the nearest farm. There are people that live 200km away from anything resembling a city in my state, yet in relative American terms it is considered densely populated. There are many places where there is a very gradual glide from urban metropolis superstructures all the way to rural land. Many companies have decided that if you don't live in the arbitrary 'city proper' then you don't deserve faster than 300k and pay $100 a month for the privilege. If you don't live in a town at all (again often an arbitrary line), internet speeds can feel like stepping back in time 20 years. So there it is, what side of a government created imaginary line you happen to live on will dramatically change how corporations treat you. That is my single data-point experience though.

    32. Re:What!? by Endo13 · · Score: 1

      That's great for you. But that's not very common in the US, even in many of the largest cities.

      --
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    33. Re:What!? by TemporalBeing · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Kinda funny how all of the free-market lovers refuse to break up these telecom monopolies, or at the very least regulate them into being dumb pipes.

      I love the free market; yet I also very much agree that the telecom industry needs a massive dose of breakup and regulation. For starters, Cable companies (and Fibre Optic services like FIOS and U-Verse) need to be forced to share their infrastructure.

      Personally, I'd move it all to a single owner model - perhaps (even likely) owned by the localities - where companies have to lease them from the owner. So AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc, won't have any ability to control the basic pricing or infrastructure - they'd all be forced to compete on the quality of their services instead of their infrastructure.

      It's time to realize that the internet Infrastructure really should belong to the people, and not be tied up in a wasteland of monopolies enforced by local governments - e.g. a small housing group should be able to get their own fibre optic line and split it among the group without having the county say "you can't do that because we signed this contract with company X and they have that sole right", that should all be illegal.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    34. Re:What!? by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'll just give you one example. My parents live out in a farmland area in Basque country in France. Their internet 5 years ago was better than what I had access to living in the middle of Silicon Valley. It was also cheaper. I can't talk much about quality, but their Skype video came over just fine and dandy. Anecdote and all that, but it really drove home how shitty the broadband system was and is in the US. Yes, you can pay for really, really awesome internet connections. But those are affordable only if you have a business that actually generates profit off of the Internet connection. Otherwise, you're completely at the mercy of a local monopoly or duopoly.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
    35. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ya gotta keep'em down on the farm somehow!

    36. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was a stupid post, and you should feel stupid. Anyone unfortunate enough to read it will almost certainly feel more stupid for having done so.

    37. Re:What!? by Existential+Wombat · · Score: 1

      Out in the 'burbs of SOCAL I get 12MB from Cox. It's good enough for what I use it for, I don't stream live video. I do a lot of web presentations with not many problems.

      What pisses me off is the general throttling for torrent and NZB/NNTP downloads. About 200k.

    38. Re:What!? by microbox · · Score: 2

      As soon as someone takes on a monopoly (say telecoms, phama, oil, coal), those industries dump a pile of money on the GOP who go around talking about big government getting in the road of small businesses. The GOP faithful like this because it makes them feel like they have political power. It is all rather ironic.

      --

      Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
    39. Re:What!? by microbox · · Score: 1

      How does this get modded insightful? Does anybody think that the government isn't paid for by tax dollars? Should be modded *face-palm* redundant.

      --

      Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
    40. Re:What!? by davester666 · · Score: 1

      No, it's obvious why they have more expensive packages than what you want to pay. Because they like getting more money (which worked on you, as you paid more instead of dropping it, or switching if that is possible where you live).

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    41. Re:What!? by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The really sad part, is that without the rural electrification act, the people growing food in the US in rural counties would likely *STILL* not have basic electrical and wired telephone services, and the very pundits complaining about the proposed broadband equivalent, would be the most vocal about the issue. (Specifically, spouting the same arrogant ass vapor about how if those people want electricity and telephone service, that they should just move to the city!)

      How do I know this? I grew up in such a county, where 90+% of the land allotments are farmland, and the "cities" are fewer than 10k residents. The state of the power distribution system? Apalling. (If one of those precious cities these people go on about had service that interrupted power 50+ times a day, and had deleterious line noise 100% of the time that requires a line conditioner like where I grew up, they would be demanding the government "do something.") Telephone service? Laughable, and NOT maintained. Last I checked, there were still wire boxes from the 1950s, which only went in because of said act, still in active service, rusting away underneath hedgerows.

      The ONLY reason that such places even *GET* such service at all, is because of that bill.

      The people who bitch about "subsidizing the 'rich' lifestyles of rural people" would spout the exact same claptrap had the rural electrification act not passed, and was being discussed now, even though the 'rich' people they try to demonize would be using kerosine lanterns for light, lack any kind of climate control in their homes other than open windows and a fireplace (it takes electricity to run a furnace. Something has to power the thermostat, and the house blower.), and would be just a few shakes above 2nd or 3rd world shithole in livability.

      But they would damned well expect to find produce and beef at their supermarets.

      The unpleasant reality that the "people who live out in the country are rich!" Fallacy fails to address? The average pay per year for rural residents is at or below 50k. With kids. Eg "at or below poverty line" if they lived in the city that they rail about so incessantly.

      Yes, I'm a bit bitter about the issue. Because it pisses me the fuck off whenever I hear "move to the city then!" As an excuse.

      The real reason those fucks say that?

      Because by forcing more people into the already overcrowded city, the stand to benefit by that newcomer's taxes. They may not give it the rational thought to completely arrive at that conclusion consciously, but that is basically the crux of it. "What do *I* get out of the deal?"

      You get an america that isn't divided into economic disparites like fucking china, where you have people with broadband internet and moder housing in the cities, and people living in fucking mud huts on the farmland that can't even write. That's what assholes.

      The reason why rural america isn't like rural china? Acts like the electrification act, and now, proposals like the broadband act. Straight up, 100%. There were people without running water or indoor toiletry in the rural US in the 1950s, when that bill passed! The forced buildout *greatly* improved america.

      "Move to the city!" Indeed, assholes. I suppose you would say that to poor chineese people too, wouldn't you?

    42. Re:What!? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      I was paying $150/m from Charter, talked to a manager to get my price reduced, they refused. I dropped their service, they sent me to collections without telling me how much I owed, and now they just sent me a personal mail asking me to come back to them for the no-contract price of $30/m for the same service I was paying $150 and they refused to lower.

      @#$% them. I'm sticking with my 50/50 fiber.

    43. Re: What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Around here, CenturyTel doesn't do fiber, and if you don't want Comcast, you're stuck with 7-12 mbps or less unless you live in some sort of new housing complex in the burbs. I live 3 blocks from a central office and can't get CenturyTel's top tiers because it's unavailable in my neighborhood.

    44. Re:What!? by dwpro · · Score: 1

      In Austin, Texas, I pay $40 (intro rate that goes to $52 after 6 months) for earthlink/twc cable internet for 15 Mbps down/1 Mbps up. They are the only provider that will offer unbundled internet that services my area of the city.

      --
      Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
    45. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what city and state are you in?

    46. Re:What!? by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1

      The reason why rural america isn't like rural china? Acts like the electrification act, and now, proposals like the broadband act. Straight up, 100%. There were people without running water or indoor toiletry in the rural US in the 1950s, when that bill passed!

      Actually, the first Rural Electrification Act was passed in the 1930's (1936).

    47. Re:What!? by reve_etrange · · Score: 1

      Where I live (Comcast monopoly zone) they charge more per Mb for higher tiers. That is, the opposite of a bulk discount. The lowest tier is a horrific 6 Mbps for $50, which I am on. When LTE gets rolled out here I'm going mobile-only with tethering.

      --
      .: Semper Absurda :.
    48. Re:What!? by wierd_w · · Score: 1

      The act passed in the 30s, but the buildout didn't happen overnight. Most of the infrastructure placed to comply with that law came in the 40s and 50s.

    49. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They're the same thing, so you're being redundant. It's the first words of the Constitution -- "We the People". Choosing those words first was not an accident.

      The people established the government back in 1788. They've diverged somewhat since then, though every couple of decades, the people submit a patchset.

    50. Re:What!? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 1

      You forget how slashdot moderation works.

      Insightful -> I agree with your opinion
      Flamebait -> How dare you disagree with my opinion

    51. Re:What!? by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      As soon as someone takes on a monopoly (say telecoms, phama, oil, coal), those industries dump a pile of money on the GOP who go around talking about big government getting in the road of small businesses. The GOP faithful like this because it makes them feel like they have political power. It is all rather ironic.

      And their unions dump a pile of money to the Dems as well.

      Please, don't act like the GOP is the only party at fault. The Dems share just as much of the blame.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    52. Re:What!? by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      Yeah well you sir are a very rare bird in the USA, at least from what I've seen. I've lived in several states across the south and if you can get double digit you are lucky, with the average being between 3 Mbps-8 Mbps. Also you find out quickly that not only are the ISPs simply bleeding existing customers for higher profits they sure as fuck ain't spending a dime on adding customers, much less adding capacity to those they already have. Hell when I was there several spots in Nashville couldn't get better than sub 1Mbps DSL if they were lucky, a few places could only get dial up.

      Like everything else in this country once you get to duopolies and monopolies development stagnates, all their money is spent on lobbyists to make sure nobody can compete with them, and the customers get to pay ever higher prices for ever worse and more capped service. Welcome to Amerika, where we pay lip service to free markets but in reality its as rigged as a game of three card monty.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    53. Re:What!? by dkleinsc · · Score: 1

      Because by forcing more people into the already overcrowded city, the stand to benefit by that newcomer's taxes. They may not give it the rational thought to completely arrive at that conclusion consciously, but that is basically the crux of it. "What do *I* get out of the deal?"

      In theory at least, the idea is that if you move to the city, you can get a better job and all the benefits that you mention of living in a better-served urban area. It's not just about your taxes, of course: Sure, you might be paying taxes (indirectly, if you're renting) but you're also now making use of whatever government services you get in your new home, and the rural area that you used to live in is no longer getting your tax money.

      Rural and urban depend on each other: Without rural America, urban America doesn't eat or drive or turn the lights on and becomes an impoverished wasteland. Without the wealthier urban America's support, rural America could very easily be, as you correctly point out, an impoverished wasteland. Both sides of that divide should take stock of those facts, and realize that it behooves both to push for improvements everywhere.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    54. Re:What!? by microbox · · Score: 1

      And their unions dump a pile of money to the Dems as well.

      Look up how much money unions donate compared to big corps. (face-palm.)

      --

      Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
    55. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll just give you one example. My parents live out in a farmland area in Basque country in France. Their internet 5 years ago was better than what I had access to living in the middle of Silicon Valley. It was also cheaper. I can't talk much about quality, but their Skype video came over just fine and dandy. Anecdote and all that, but it really drove home how shitty the broadband system was and is in the US.

      What you are asking for requires action that would be derided as 'socialism by the back-door' from many in your country.

      It could also theoretically be brought about by Telecom companies with a sense of ethics and fair-play - but I think we should stick within the boundaries of reality for the purpose of useful discussion.

    56. Re:What!? by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Someone who always lies is quite reliable.

      His statement is quite believable...because at least in the summary he didn't mention what measures he used. It's probably more profitable for the provider than anywhere else, for example.

      Believable doesn't mean intelligible. The statement as I read it could mean nearly anything. There are LOTS of different measures of quality that are possible. Many of them don't even refer to the level of service to the end user.

      One interesting point is that he said the problem was the number of subscriptions. This when at least MY internet connection often slows down to dial-up speed (as measured by rate of transmission). I've TODAY had connection speeds of 22.5 KB/S. Mixed with long periods when the was NO data transmission beyond handshaking.

      So while I believe what he said, I don't believe what he was trying to imply. I consider him a spin-doctor, at best.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    57. Re:What!? by MiG82au · · Score: 1

      In the central district of Seattle (2.5 mi from downtown), my ex is paying something like $70 per month for 7/5 with a Microsoft discount. I couldn't find anything better than that that was available to her house that didn't need to be bundled with expensive cable TV. Lucky you.

    58. Re:What!? by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      I'll throw in my own anecdote. I live in a college town that has grown by a good 35% in the past decade, how much has the cable and DSL expanded in that time? NONE, zero fricking feet! And before someone says I'm exaggerating nope, I know the subcontractor that does the cable and the manager of this area's DSL and neither have laid a single foot of new line, they ONLY replace broken line,why? Both the DSL and cable has cherry picked all the neighborhoods they want and in the case of DSL I was told they are purposely letting things go to shit so they can force more people on their crazy priced wireless phone and data plans.

      This fucked up situation has distorted the entire area, you'll have rows of nice buildings that stay empty while the price of an apt across the street in a shittier building reaches insane prices all because you can get Internet in the shitty building, all you can get across the street is dial up. Speeds are pathetic, most getting sub 6Mbps on cable and the dialup? If you hit 3Mbps you should probably make an offering to the gods for getting their blessing and as i said with the DSL their answer to every complaint is WILL NOT FIX, followed by an attempt to sell you a cellphone data plan.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    59. Re:What!? by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      And their unions dump a pile of money to the Dems as well.

      Look up how much money unions donate compared to big corps. (face-palm.)

      Yeah, it's not really that different; and they've been known to sway elections a lot more (though that's been waning in recent elections).

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    60. Re:What!? by jon3k · · Score: 0

      Can you provide a metric by which broadband isn't improving in the US? I'm certainly willing to listen.

      The US is a tough place because its geographically very large and it's very sparsely populated in some areas and very densely in others. We also have a very high per capita income, and don't subsidize broadband the way some other (mostly European) countries do. My only point in explaining this is to illustrate that it's extremely difficult to compare broadband between the US and other countries. In some areas of the US we do pretty well, in others, not so well. In rural america it's nearly impossible to deploy high speed broadband effectively because the cost per home passed is so large, because of the low population density.

    61. Re:What!? by The_Deacon · · Score: 1

      This.

      I grew up in similar circumstances, where the population of the *entire county* was under 2k people, with over 2600 square miles of land. Arid farmland with nary a tree in sight; people working said farmland making $35k/year on a good crop year in near-poverty levels, and crumbling telecom infrastructure 50-60 years old. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCone_County,_Montana)

      "Move to the city" is fine and all, until you actually think of the ramifications -- 90% of the population were either farming wheat or raising cattle. Corn didn't grow well there, so no subsidies for that. If those folks move to the city, we've just lost hundreds of square miles of domestic wheat production, and who knows how many 10's of thousands of cattle. The county is already bleeding people (it's steadily been shrinking since the 1920s) because of the lack of opportunities there. Give them some actual telecommuting capability and suddenly the entire equation changes. Right now you're lucky to get a modem to link at higher than 24kbps with all the line noise out there. If you're in "town" (800 people), you can get 256k DSL riding on one of the town's 3 T1s ... nope, no oversubscription there!

    62. Re:What!? by wierd_w · · Score: 1

      I agree! I just take exception to the "well, move to the city then! MEH!" Attitude.

      I have several reasons why the broadband plan (if done right, something I have low confidence of, given the quality of our government administration) should be supported, if nothing else, in principle:

      1) the current complaint by ISPs about infrastructure deployments, is that they are expensive. Their model of servicing ONLY large metro areas only einforces this cycle, because it undermines cost reductions from economy of scale.

      A massive nation wide buildout would create insane demand, followed by ramped up production to meet that demand, followed by radically reduced prices once the buildout is made. This will make infrastructure renovation in urban areas considerably less expensive after the plan, than they would have been without it. This is for things like optical fiber, MTUs, and other specialist backbone equipment, not to mention other components on the downtream end, that are still copper based.

      2) as stated, the direct benefit is a wealthier, more prosperous nation overall, with reduced barriers to entry in other aspects of american life. Improved educational opportunities for rural born residents to actually have skillsets that would be useful in urban environments should they decide to move, etc.

      The "what do *i* get, HUH!?" Mantra is short sighted, ignorant, and systemically destructive.

    63. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's time to realize that the internet Infrastructure really should belong to the people...

      Ever hear of a 401(k)?

    64. Re: What!? by pipatron · · Score: 1

      Yeah, at least a lot of my friends seem to have switched to 3G/4G for their at-home internet connection. Meanwhile, I switched to 100/100 fiber. Gotta keep the ratio up you know.

      --
      c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
    65. Re:What!? by dywolf · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Ok.
      Number of providers
      level of competition
      Cost per byte per month
      Accessibility (you yourself brought that one up)

      these metrics are going...slowly...and only when absolutely forced to.

      remember that conspiracy theory that intel was intentionally not advancing CPUs as fast as they could, in order to maximize profit every step of the way ? (or any industry really, they all have a similar conspiriacy theory)

      In the case of the telco's, it not a theory, it's completely 100% true.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    66. Re:What!? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      One of the conditions to granting Bell systems a monopoly was that they'd have to provide universal service. At the time, rural political power was higher than it is now and it was acknowledged that phone companies were doing a miserable job in providing rural service.

      Such a plan could work today, except that we have a government too scared to stand up to corporations and too wary to approach anything resembling regulation or interfering in the market.

      Personally, I think 3-6Mbps is great, most rural areas don't have anything resembling that fast. It's even rare in many cities unless you're on cable. For those not on cable, it's difficult to get better than basic ADSL. The reason people whine about 3-6Mbps being too slow is because they're trying to push the idea of video over internet, but that speed is more than adequate for the average person browsing the net. As far as the government's interest in providing access to all citizens, the ability to stay informed is the most imporant, and ability to stream video all day long is very low. So get that 3-6Mbps to all regions of the country as the first step, and a prerequisite before worrying about whether video startups will survive. Plus get an infrastructure that does not depend upon private media companies.

    67. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, it's not really that different

      Look up the NUMBERS. When they are STARING YOU IN THE FACE, write re-read what you JUST WROTE.

    68. Re:What!? by dywolf · · Score: 1

      and this is precisely the point. but people on slashdot like to say "fuck the rurals" and they dont really understand, or reemember, just how quikcly one can get out into the "rural" hinterlands where the speed drops to nothing. bigger metros have more service centers spread out that serve a bigger "spiderwerb" of area. smaller metros (such as i live in) you can be within sight of the downtown skyscrapers, only 5 minutes from downtown...but you're across the magic line that's like crossing the Berlin Wall from West to East. Super speed on one side, dont even bother on the other.

      Yet that isnt a builtin function of the system as we see in European rural net access, and a few of the posters below can show.
      So again, its a case of the telcos taking advantage of what they got, and screwing the people. This is one of those infrastructure things we keep talking about that requires investment.

      It took government intervention to get phone lines across the US, it will take gov intervention to get equal internet access across the US.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    69. Re:What!? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      And "move to the city" doesn't work out in practice. Even in the big cities there are huge areas with poor infrastructure, there are sometimes even unpaved roads near downtowns. Poor people in cities don't get these benefits, and they're worse off than many rural poor. Moving to the city often means moving into poverty. Meanwhile the rich kids going out to clubs every night and streaming video because they're too cool for TV are naive to think that the entire city lives as they do.

    70. Re:What!? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      You're lucky is all.

    71. Re:What!? by Muros · · Score: 1

      I can't be bothered registering with Akamai to read the full report, but from the link you posted, it would appear that they are only evaluating the performance of connections that are running at at least 10mbps. Is this true? If it is, it will give extremely skewed results. Most basic connections dsl here would be ~8mbps, and that is what most people will get. I'm hearing anecdotal horror stories of 1mbps or worse connections in other countries (*cough* America *cough*); are all of these being excluded? I'm not sure how meaningful it is to compare the best available in countries, rather than the median, when you are reporting what effectively is a survey of the level of service consumers are receiving.

    72. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's an example from the Baltics. In this case, Lithuania.
      In the major cities you can get 300Mbit for ~60eur/month. 100Mbit is enough for me and the price is right - 15eur/month, although I'm on a 2 year contract, so I only pay 5eur/month for the 1st year, then 15eur/month the next year. And in 2 years my ISP will offer me another contract for the same 100Mbit with a similar discount, they'll probably throw in IPv6 as a free bonus. Effectively I'm paying only 10eur/month for being a loyal customer.
      This is only possible because there are 6 ISPs in my area with 50+mbit speeds that I can choose from. 11 ISPs if you include mobile internet providers (3 3.5G+ providers and 2 4G).

      Now if we move to smaller cities, the number of available ISPs fall. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Lithuania ) The 3 first are "major" cities ) In a medium sized city ( population 10,000+) there's usually 1 to 3 ISPs that offer 100Mbit connections. The price is usually the same as in the major cities, so 100Mbit costs as little as 10eur/month.

      If we move to a more rural Lithuania were no fiber was laid yet, you can still get internet.
      Here you'll have a choice of 3 3G ISPs with speeds up to 14.4Mbit and 1 4G provider (is WiMax 4G?) up to 15Mbit for ~30Eur/month.

      ISPs (apart from 3G ones) will usually throw in cable TV for as little as 5eur/month.

      If you live in the middle of nowhere you can usually get a UMTS connection, but if there's a hill/forest between you and the tower, tough luck, you'll have to use EDGE.

      On the upside, almost no download/upload limits. Even on 3G/4G connections, there's usually an unlimited plan for as little as 20eur/month. (There's actually a 8GB limit on the "unlimited" 3G connection, after which all but one ISPs will limit your speed.

    73. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is that so long as you like vegetables and meat, somebody is going to have to live out there. Are you really saying that we should relegate our food growers to dial-up speeds?

      I pay those people for food and farm subsidies. They can use that money to pay for access or not. It's their choice. I've lived in the country much of my life. I didn't expect city people to pay me because I had clean air and endless miles of wilderness to roam in.

    74. Re:What!? by Muros · · Score: 1

      I don't want the gubmint to subsidize shit.

      Why not? The government builds roads. Network infrastructure is more useful than roads for the "information economy" all the talking heads keep banging on about, and if done properly will bring in a substantially larger return on investment for your local economy.

    75. Re: What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, WiMax counts as 4G.

    76. Re:What!? by Kvasio · · Score: 1

      hmm, I've got 60mbps for approximately 16 USD/mo. Oh, yes, I live in Europe.

    77. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The one useful response I can give to this is, look at the costs. Those cities of 10k people cost at least an order of magnitude (likely several) more per person than the giant metropolises like the Bay Area, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. The surrounding farms then cost several more orders of magnitude to provision, because they're far away from anyone else. The criticism of "rich" is more about the enormous cost of infrastructure for these small clusters of people, meanwhile tiny fractions of those amounts could produce gigantic bandwidth improvements for the people living in the large metropolitan areas of the country.

    78. Re:What!? by Muros · · Score: 1

      I agree! I just take exception to the "well, move to the city then! MEH!" Attitude.

      You sound like a prospective European :) I'm from Ireland, we have only 1 big(ish) city here, with a population of a mere 1.5 million but with a footprint of several thousand km. The rest of the country is made up of "rural" villages and farmland, but nothing like American wildernesses. It is a high population density rural landscape; much of Europe is the same. It helps that we have on average better land here, no big dust bowls, etc.

    79. Re:What!? by chuckugly · · Score: 1

      I moved into a mediocre neighborhood in LA, and for $60 a month I have 50mbps (promised and measured) service that includes the use of a Motorola SurfBoard modem/router/WAP/gigEswitch gizmo. Seems OK to me.

    80. Re:What!? by wierd_w · · Score: 1

      Forest: trees

      The reason it costs so much to provision those areas, is the simple fact that equipment is priced to match the local maxima of maximum profit from dense urban centers.

      That is to say, the supply is carefully match to suit ONLY the local maxima, so *ANY* deployment of a larger scale will exceed supply, and cause a spike in prices.

      Continuing to capitulate to this paradigm will only ensure that the bare minimum necessary buildout occurs, and only in dense, high profit areas. (Shock! Exactly what's happening right now!)

      An overwhelming, massive demand for infrastructure hardware with government teeth behind it, like a national broadband plan would produce, would drive down the cots of city deployments by orders of magnitude, because supply would then outstrip metro demand in the years following the buildout. This means better infrastructure in the cities for a radically reduced cost over what would have been needed if the plan had not gone forth.

      The real problem: the local maxima results in the highest benefit:cost ratio for the ISPs and wire providers. The reduced costs of buildout couple directly to increased maintenence costs, which harms their profit margins. This makes it "toxic". Not impossible, just less desirable than the BS cozy gig they currently enjoy.

      The fallacy you employ, is assuming status quo prices in the face of mandatory increases in production. Economics of scale dictates this is flat out false. (Assuming of course, that the fed grows a pair, and prevents the telcos from simply inhaling the money and doing nothing, like they did in the 90s.)

      The ideal solution to the problem, is to provide an ultimatum:

      Build out the network, at our timetable, or lose your local franchise rights in favor of startups that will.

      Do that, and shit will get done, and affordably.

    81. Re:What!? by Muros · · Score: 1

      Poor people in cities don't get these benefits, and they're worse off than many rural poor.

      Indeed. I'd rather be a poor man near a field of cabbages & potatoes than a poor man surrounded by concrete.

    82. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People don't grow food out of the goodness of their hearts. Food costs money. Whatever expenses are relevant for producing food, you pay for it when you pay for your food. Those expenses include internet access. If high-speed broadband is really necessary to food production, then the net effect of all this will be to increase food prices to pay for that broadband and to move food production into the least expensive areas when including internet access as a cost. There's an argument to be made that it's of fundamental importance that even people in remote areas have some sort of way to contact the rest of us, even if that becomes more costly than the return on whatever is going on out there. Perhaps some sort of internet connectivity can reasonable be included in that argument. It's much less clear that this argument makes sense for high-speed internet.

    83. Re:What!? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Rural and urban depend on each other: Without rural America, urban America doesn't eat or drive or turn the lights on and becomes an impoverished wasteland.

      The brain telling the liver and kidneys to stop wasting energy. I person would be so much smarter if they were only made of brain tissue.. then they'd die.

    84. Re:What!? by jon3k · · Score: 1

      So, you can't provide any metric where we aren't improving. Just wanted to clarify that point.

      Intel vs Broadband are completely different. There are lots of providers in the US as opposed to a single chip maker. When AMD came along we saw a massive innovation in x86 CPUs leading up to this point where AMD is beginning to fall behind again. In many places in the US we have several choices for broadband, basically any 1st through 3rd tier city (eg population say, 250k+). I wish our problem was that simple.

      I certainly think we have our share of problems, but I think trying to compare the US to other nations is pointless. Unless you can find another nation with similar population densities and total populations, then saying someone is #1 and someone else is #2 is silly. What we should be worried about is our progress.

      What I don't understand is, if it's so easy to deploy inexpensive [fiber] broadband then why aren't there tons of companies doing it? Do consumers just not care? Sure the slashdot crowd does, but does 99% of the nation need anything faster than broadband fast enough to stream netflix and youtube? How many people would pay more for a little more bandwidth? Would they even notice a difference in their daily computer use?

      Or is it (gasp) maybe not as inexpensive and easy to deploy high speed nation wide broadband networks than the average slashdot user thinks?

    85. Re:What!? by witherstaff · · Score: 1

      There are very few free market lovers in politics. There are maybe a half dozen on the federal level that have any sort of real free market / libertarian leaning beliefs and voting records. My local congressman was R and head of the house subcommittee on telecommunications. His largest donors were in the telco industry. He also was in favor of allowing the telcos to regain their monopoly position after the 1996 telco act forced them to allow competition. As various reliable studies show the US really is in the pits for broadband speed even in large metro areas compared to western countries.

      I agree with the single owner method. As the universal access fee was a tax the citizens paid to roll out telco infrastructure, and the "200 billion broadband scandal" showed we all overpaid for nothing, I'd be alright with that being spun off into a USPS style entity. At that point anyone could tie into the infrastructure. Won't happen but it'd be nice.

    86. Re:What!? by guevera · · Score: 1

      Unions represent, what, about 6% of American private sector workers? The American labor movement is if not dead than on life support. On their best day unions exert a tiny fraction of the political influence big business does. They have some impact on some Democratic primary campaigns, but they're a bit player in general elections in most of the country, and they've been so marginalized they don't have much impact on capital hill.

    87. Re:What!? by redneckmother · · Score: 1

      The problem is that so long as you like vegetables and meat, somebody is going to have to live out there. Are you really saying that we should relegate our food growers to dial-up speeds?

      I pay those people for food and farm subsidies. They can use that money to pay for access or not. It's their choice. I've lived in the country much of my life. I didn't expect city people to pay me because I had clean air and endless miles of wilderness to roam in.

      Some of us "rubes" don't get any subsidies, and there is no infrastructure for the "last mile" (okay, 15 to 50 miles for me). And please, don't say "satellite" - I'm talking about REAL connectivity, without high latencies, rain fade, jittery transponders, high prices, unreasonably low throughput and ridiculous data caps.

      I'm not asking for a handout, I'm just saying that the "providers" don't care unless they can milk a large customer base at a low cost.

      My hopes are on 802.22 rollouts.

      /soapbox

    88. Re:What!? by kharchenko · · Score: 1

      You get an america that isn't divided into economic disparites like fucking china, ... That's what assholes.

      Actually, China's doing pretty well right now, with a shitload of cheap labour coming from the rural communities ... ah just pulling you leg man - I know it sucks. Immediate infrastructure needs are clearly different for some freewheeling artist seeking 'inspiration' in an East Village studio in NYC and a rural farmer who needs to move a boatload of product in and out every day.

      But on a more serious note. One thing I've encountered is a resistance on a part of telcos to go into built-up old cities in US. They would circle all the suburbs with fiber, but wouldn't go into the inner areas that had large apartment blocks. The excuse was that it was much easier to run fiber to a house than wire a large building itself. To this day I don't know if this is true. It sort of makes sense, but on the other hand I've been to some very old cities in Europe where you have a choice of several fiber optic providers per each building.

    89. Re:What!? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Okay...WTF does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Multiple people already chimed in that those on the coasts DO NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM but you are paying for that in assrape prices for food and utilities, worse crime, and generally cramped living conditions. that doesn't change the fact that there is a hell of a lot more to the USA than the seaboards and we're all getting screwed by the duopolies.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    90. Re:What!? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      So, you can't provide any metric where we aren't improving.

      Cost per byte per month. He mentioned that or are you now cherry picking quotes too?
      You used to pay $x for unlimited internet. Now you play $x+y (because fuck the prices certainly haven't gone DOWN in the last 5 years) and the growing trend is download caps.

      Or are you viewing this from the telco's point of view in which case charging people more for less really is an improvement.

    91. Re:What!? by jon3k · · Score: 1

      My internet (and 99% of americans) aren't paying any more per byte. Some ISPs instituted caps, which the vaaaaaaaast majority of americans won't ever run in to.

      Prices for goods typically go up, so does income, it's called inflation, something we have to always adjust for when we compare prices year to year.

      With that said, I've been paying the same price for internet access for 8 years now. Bandwidth hasn't changed and prices haven't gone up. So, relative to cost of living, my cost has gone down.

      Meanwhile we have Google Fiber, Verizon FiOS and Municipal Broadband projects rolling out all over the country. I can counter anecdotal isolated examples with the same in the other direction. Just playing devil's advocate here. Do I want 1Gb/s FTTH for $30/mo? Of course I do. Do I think it's possible to provide that service all over the US? Of course not. If you think it is, feel free to start an ISP and make so much money you can swim in it like Scrooge McDuck.

    92. Re:What!? by jon3k · · Score: 1

      You're joking, right? Do you really want me to take these apart paragraph by paragraph or do you just want to find some actual study of substantive value, instead of click-bait editorial blogs?

    93. Re:What!? by sydsavage · · Score: 1

      Actually, I completely agree with that. My statement was intended to contrast with the parent's post that people who choose to live far outside the city center expect subsidized services to be provided to them, even though they pay a smaller portion of tax revenue due to lower property taxes. Which I also agree with, as this puts a higher burden on those that choose (or don't have a choice) to live in the city center, where the infrastructure costs are lower due to the shorter distances and higher density. But in this case, the infrastructure is already in place, and was likely already subsidized when it was first installed, at least in the case of phone lines.

      As for the roadway analogy, which I think is perfectly apt, it's as if we have multiple parallel private toll roads for every city street. (And the owners of these toll roads make every attempt to extract more tolls from every delivery truck that isn't owned by their subsidiary, besides the tolls they charge for each resident.) It makes far more sense to consolidate the ownership of these streets on the municipal level, as is typically the case, and pay for the maintenance from taxes and fees collected for that purpose.

      The update on my connection issue: Dial tone was restored this afternoon with no visit from a repairman. However, my internet speeds have been reduced by 50%, and I now enjoy 1024/640 kbps up/down, for the same $55/month. So tell me again how much the US is improving it's net speeds? Because mine just went down by a significant amount, and I'm stuck paying the same price. But Mr. ITIF Senior Fellow is in the clear, because these speeds don't qualify as broadband.

    94. Re:What!? by Forever+Wondering · · Score: 1

      You might want to read more arstechnica, which frequently gets cited on slashdot. They've done numerous articles (vs. blogs) on all aspects of this. They're a Conde Nast publication [as is Wired, IIRC] and are usually pretty credible. I tend to follow (and bookmark) articles on this. The two I posted were taken [quickly] from about 100 I've amassed and they all pretty much say the same thing.

      But, you wanted an actual "study".

      For example, this article is based on a study:
      http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/12/report-data-caps-just-a-cash-cow-for-internet-providers/

      The actual study [linked within the article] is:
      http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/capping_the_nation_s_broadband_future [*]

      [*] If you dispute the data/conclusions, take it up with the authors.

      There are other articles, from various publications, that talk about the disincentive for telcos to provide higher speeds.

      If you want to know how easy it is to roll out fiber, check out sonic.net. They're a regional telco and ISP based in Santa Rosa, CA. They provide ADSL2+ throughout California at 3x the speed of AT&T's elite service at half the price ($40/month) with no data caps.

      They're also rolling out fiber to the home as fast as they can and will provide their subscribers with that higher speed, at the same price, and, again, no data caps.

      --
      Like a good neighbor, fsck is there ...
    95. Re:What!? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Right so because it doesn't affect your use case it isn't worse overall? Got it.

      If this doesn't affect anyone why implement the limits.

    96. Re:What!? by OldHawk777 · · Score: 1

      If we could distribute police, fire, infrastructure ... fairly to the folks paying for everything via hidden fees, taxes, low pay, no benefits ... maybe we could get the wealthy-entitled few to move to Canada or Mexico. Also, it does explain why MyCleanPC got 1st post repeatedly.

      --
      Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
    97. Re:What!? by OldHawk777 · · Score: 1

      Obfuscation and excuses for the telecommunications, infrastructure, and economic situation perpetuates the abuse of US by them wealthy-entitled few masters who use US People like work-unit slaves. Did you get paid for your obfuscation and excuses, or is it just politics? You did spin-truth well.

      --
      Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
    98. Re:What!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And that leads other countries how exactly? I get 60Mbps (both ways, not only download) for about 18 bucks, in some eastern european country.

    99. Re:What!? by MiSaunaSnob · · Score: 1

      In line with what forever wondering was saying, look at www.paulbunyan.net a local coop Telco that is laying fiber and providing capless data up and down at twice the speed for half the cost as centrylink in several small cities in northern MN. why cant the big telcos match this?

    100. Re:What!? by MiSaunaSnob · · Score: 1

      I should add if you look at the speeds it is symmetric, so if you get the 10meg plan it is 10 up and 10 down. Also I never speed tested it below 11, and they had a policy were they were paying for there bandwidth anyway so after business hours and on weekends when they had less traffic they would increase your speed to utilize more the there total bandwidth, so at nights and weekends I would typically get speeds of 18 to 25.

  4. The Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Mr. Bennett also says that'"the most critical issue facing American broadband has nothing to do with the quality of our networks; it is our relatively low rates of subscribership." .. which would not be a problem if the service was as cheaper and more reliable.

    1. Re:The Point by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Fwiw, if you had read. TFA, you would see it is tied to PC ownership.

      Also, broadband subscriptions are "only" 70%.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    2. Re:The Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Translate it through the tinfoil hat, and you get:

      "Citizens, please sign on to the Internet so the NSA can track you better"

    3. Re:The Point by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 2

      which would not be a problem if the service was as cheaper and more reliable.

      No, it would not be a problem if America worked to create an economy where people aren't struggling just to get by. If you can't feed your kids much more than generic Cheerios, a computer and broadband ain't too high on your list of priorities.

    4. Re: The Point by Wovel · · Score: 2

      You think there are a lot of Americans struggling to get Cheerios?

    5. Re: The Point by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hail, time traveler! Welcome to the World of Tomorrow! I will give you a brief introduction on some important changes in society that have occurred since your time:

      • Michael Jackson died a white woman
      • New Coke turned out to be a flop
      • Berlin Wall has fallen

      Believe it or not, a black man is president of the United States now. We have computers so small that they fit in the palm of your hand. The top 14% of Americans own almost 75% of the wealth and have devastated the economy over the past half decade. The average income of a worker has remained about the same since your time, but the average CEO now makes 350 times the average worker. With so much wealth being sequestered among the super rich instead of being shared among the middle class where it would be used to keep the economy going, the US is on the verge of a complete financial collapse.

      Welcome!

      --
      Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
    6. Re: The Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you tried raising a family on close to the $7.25/hour minimum wage recently? Even with food stamp aid on top of that, your budget is pretty tight. Try getting all your nutrition on a $5/day budget, and the extra dollar for name-brand Cheerios is a pretty serious issue.

    7. Re: The Point by g0bshiTe · · Score: 1

      I've tried, when my wife and I first got married I was earning minimum wage back then I think it was around $5 or so an hour. We could barely feed ourselves, we got pregnant and I applied for financial aid, guess what supporting 2 people at the time with a 3rd on the way I was told I made too much money. Our grocery budget for a month $15.

      --
      I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
    8. Re: The Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      No, I made the far better choice of getting a job that pays more than minimum wage when I was 15 and still in highschool. I saved my money to pay for college and got a degree, then I married a woman who shared a similar mindset. We still live with a roommate which some people have too much pride for apparently but it has cut our mortgage in half.

      Maybe the reason people can't get name-brand Cheerios (I don't anyway, waste of money) is that they make really poor life choices?

    9. Re: The Point by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      > You think there are a lot of Americans struggling to get Cheerios?

      If you think otherwise you have lived a very sheltered existence for your entire life.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    10. Re: The Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      & just look at the price of cigarettes!!!

    11. Re: The Point by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      I've tried, when my wife and I first got married I was earning minimum wage back then I think it was around $5 or so an hour. We could barely feed ourselves, we got pregnant and I applied for financial aid, guess what supporting 2 people at the time with a 3rd on the way I was told I made too much money. Our grocery budget for a month $15.

      I agree, the restrictions are insane, and actually encourage couples to not get married - you'd have gotten more support if the two of had divorced! (And they wonder why younger generations see no reason to get married.)

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    12. Re: The Point by Kilo+Kilo · · Score: 0

      It probably would have worked out better if one or both of you didn't have a job and you had 4 other kids with 2 other women. The welfare programs are only interested in helping people who don't contribute to society at all. Until I can sign up for my company's health insurance at the end of the year, I've got no options. I make too much to qualify for any benefits, but I sure as hell can't afford private insurance. The words "middle class" are becoming more of a joke with each passing election. We're becoming the haves and the have-nots - and that goes for internet connection as well. As long as the rich and powerful have what they want, the rest of the country can go to hell.

    13. Re: The Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      guess what, when you're poor and can't afford Dysneyland or some generic equivalent, your only source for amusement is your partner. You might also be too poor to afford condoms if your food budget is $15. I bet you're a tea-partier and a conservative, I love how compassionate you all are. Very Christ-like.

    14. Re: The Point by butchersong · · Score: 1

      Is that why 'poverty' in the US correlates so strongly with obesity? Poor people can't get enough to eat? Were I come from most people lived in houses little better than shacks or trailers. They all had satellite dishes, at least 2 cars in various states of repair and chose to spend money on soft drinks instead of drinking water though. I'm sure there are people who through no fault of their own are struggling to get by. I doubt they represent the majority within their economic class in the states.

    15. Re: The Point by reve_etrange · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't have to think or believe that a lot of Americans are struggling to feed themselves and their families, because unfortunately I have the luxury of knowing it. 14.5% of US families suffer from food insecurity. SNAP (food stamps) only provides $4 / day.

      Page with summary statistics
      2011 USDA study

      --
      .: Semper Absurda :.
    16. Re: The Point by reve_etrange · · Score: 1

      14.5% of US families suffer from food insecurity. That's 17.2 million households. Your simplistic narrative may be comforting to you, but the truth is that hunger in the USA is dire.
      2013 US hunger facts

      --
      .: Semper Absurda :.
    17. Re: The Point by kilfarsnar · · Score: 3, Informative

      You think there are a lot of Americans struggling to get Cheerios?

      Yes, this is news? See here. The poverty rate has been going up for a bit now. And poverty is defined as $23,000 for a family of four. So yeah, there are a lot of Americans struggling to afford Cheerios.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    18. Re: The Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Also, why the fuck did you go and impregnate your wife if you were on minimum wage? Are you really that fucking stupid?

      Probably because conservacunts kept cutting off family planning services that could have helped them with this.

    19. Re: The Point by kilfarsnar · · Score: 2

      No, I made the far better choice of getting a job that pays more than minimum wage when I was 15 and still in highschool. I saved my money to pay for college and got a degree, then I married a woman who shared a similar mindset. We still live with a roommate which some people have too much pride for apparently but it has cut our mortgage in half.

      Maybe the reason people can't get name-brand Cheerios (I don't anyway, waste of money) is that they make really poor life choices?

      Maybe not. It's amazing to me that there are still people who blame the poor for their poverty by saying they made bad choices. To be fair, I'm sure some of them did. But to be blind to the massive advantage wealth gives a person, and conversely the disadvantage of poverty, takes a special kind of obtuseness.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    20. Re: The Point by dkleinsc · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, there are: 18% of all households in the US are in poverty, which is defined as being unable to afford food, water, or housing without government assistance. About 1.5 million households are in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $2 per person per day.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    21. Re: The Point by jon3k · · Score: 0

      Maybe you shouldn't have had children?

    22. Re: The Point by dkleinsc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, I made the far better choice of getting a job that pays more than minimum wage when I was 15 and still in high school. ... Maybe the reason people can't get name-brand Cheerios (I don't anyway, waste of money) is that they make really poor life choices?

      Sometimes they made bad decisions. Sometimes they weren't making decisions in the same circumstances as you did, like:
      1. It was legal to work at age 15 where you lived. In a lot of places in the US, it's now illegal to work before you're 16.

      2. Someone was looking to hire an employee somewhere near where you lived. That's not common right now.

      3. That someone was willing to employ a teenager.

      4. You could get to your place of work. Maybe you had a public transit system, maybe the job was close enough to walk to, maybe somebody drove you, but somehow you were able to do that.

      5. You didn't have to drop out of high school to do the work, which means about 10-15 hours a week maximum.

      6. You had the parenting, educational opportunities, and equipment needed to have marketable skills, or you got above-market wages for unskilled labor. Frequently, unskilled labor gets minimum wage or close to it.

      7. You could save all the money you earned for college, rather than supporting your family with it. Many teenage workers use their money to help pay the family rent or keep their siblings fed.

      8. You almost definitely went to college when it was far cheaper than it is now. For example, if you worked 15 hours a week at $10 an hour for 3 years (age 15-8), you would earn about $18,000 after taxes. That's about 25% of 4-year tuition at your nearby state university.

      9. You and your wife probably didn't have to deal with: (a) serious illness or accident, either of yourselves or of someone you consider yourself obligated to care for, (b) a layoff of either of you in the recent recession, (c) a serious natural disaster such as a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake, or (d) a house fire.

      I'm not saying you didn't do the right things because you clearly did. What I'm saying is that you did as well as you did in part because you made the right decisions, and in part because you were lucky - you had parents, teachers, bosses, siblings, future wife, etc making decisions that gave you the chance to make the right decision.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    23. Re:The Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank Dog Microsoft anticipated that. The XBox mandatory internet connection is actually a patriotic intiative to boost internet and broadband adoption.

    24. Re:The Point by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      The cost of broadband is too high even for many middle class. $50+ a month is stupid for internet. And in most places you get a choice of only cable if you want it to be fast, or else you're stuck with spotty DSL service. Dialup is still common because it's affordable.

    25. Re: The Point by MBGMorden · · Score: 1

      Probably not a wise idea to start a family while on minimum wage. Condoms are cheaper than kids.

      Realistically MINIMUM wage shouldn't be enough to support a family on. Its the federally mandated lowest wage possible. Its what high school kids are being payed to work the register at a fast food place or wave those stupid "Get you taxes done here!" signs. Those jobs aren't worth paying enough to support an entire family off of but the minimum wage structure has to accommodate those types of jobs.

      At one time I worked a minimum wage job myself (for 3 years in high school stocking the shelves and drink boxes at a gas station). It was a nice way to keep a couple dollars of spending money in my pocket. Then I went to college and got an education so I wouldn't be stuck there forever. Most of that education was paid for using loans which I actually just got finished paying back.

      The world doesn't OWE you anything. About all minimum wage should allow is for you - only you - to have a place to sleep and enough food to stay alive. If you want to support anyone else (spouse, children, etc) and provide a quality of life above eating, sleeping, and going to work, then get a better job.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    26. Re: The Point by Bengie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The world doesn't OWE you anything. About all minimum wage should allow is for you - only you - to have a place to sleep and enough food to stay alive. If you want to support anyone else (spouse, children, etc) and provide a quality of life above eating, sleeping, and going to work, then get a better job.

      The whole point of society is what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The irony is that higher paying jobs are typically easier, in the sense that one should be doing what they're good at and getting paid a premium for those services. To tell someone to get a "better job" is like telling someone "you should stop being sick".

      Why do you think we have all of these social programs like public education, infrastructure, welfare, firemen, police, judges, military? Because they benefit us all.


      Implementation details of social programs make a huge difference on their usefulness.

    27. Re: The Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Percentage of children living below the poverty line in 2010: 21.6%.
      Poverty line for a family of 3: $19,530.
      Growing up my mom bought oatmeal rather than cereal as it was cheaper and is made with water, so we didn't have to pay for electric and milk. I know people today who are living that same way.

  5. Out of touch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    We pay more for less bandwidth than any other country, we have bandwidth caps and we still pay outrageous "fees" for Universal Access that goes towards $20,000 routers being installed in rural library that serve a population of less than a few dozen. Your move, Mr. Bennett.

    1. Re:Out of touch by Holi · · Score: 1

      Actually Universal Access subsidizes low income phones. Your post is the first time I have heard someone say it was used for library equipment, care to cite any sources?

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    2. Re:Out of touch by Randle_Revar · · Score: 2

      He is talking about this: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/why-a-one-room-west-virginia-library-runs-a-20000-cisco-router/

      I never hear anything to indicate it came out that fee though.

    3. Re:Out of touch by sstamps · · Score: 4, Informative

      Where?

      I don't even have a library within 40 miles of where I live, let alone one with a $20,000 router in it.

      I pay the same universal service fees as everyone else, and I don't get anywhere NEAR the access as 99% of the rest of the country.

      My ISP is shit. SHIT. They WAY overcommit their crappy low-end ADSL lines (which constantly crash/go down), and have delayed any upgrade plans for YEARS. Then they have the unmitigated gall to go whining to the state legislature to block any attempts by our local municipality to seek out a better PAID-FOR solution for us.

      No, the problem with broadband in 'Murrica is all the goddamned crooks in the government-backed monopolies who pocket all the money we are forced to give them, both voluntarily, and at gunpoint, and then give us sweet-motherfuck-all in return.

      I couldn't be happier at this point if all the goddamned telcos died in a fire, painfully. I sure as hell wouldn't consider even pissing on them to put them out.

      --
      -SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
    4. Re:Out of touch by Somebody+Is+Using+My · · Score: 1

      Actually Universal Access subsidizes low income phones. Your post is the first time I have heard someone say it was used for library equipment, care to cite any sources?

      I believe he is referring to this story:

      West Virginia Library $2000 router

      However, this was not paid out of the "Universal Access" fund (which is a tax collected by the phone company that they pocket, nominally to better service in rural areas) but from "Federal funds" (which is monies collected and dispersed by the government, although in this case the goal was similar)

    5. Re:Out of touch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That would be the E-Rate program that draws money from the Universal Service Fund.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Rate

    6. Re:Out of touch by Reverand+Dave · · Score: 1

      Are cable companies included in that? My company recently revised their AUP so that all of the non-capped grandfathered plans like mine, all of a sudden have a cap. Albeit higher caps than the new "ultra high speed" plans but still I hate having a cap when all they are really trying to do it make me subscribe to their shitty cable TV service instead of streaming all of my entertainment.

      They don't have a good reason for not upgrading their infrastructure which is really what the core of the data cap argument. You can trot out that "people abusing or using more than their fair share" argument all you want, but everyone knows it is complete and total bullshit. There would be more than enough bandwidth if the crooked bastards would just reinvest their monthly service fees into some hardware upgrades instead of executive bonuses and bullshit programming like any of that reality TV garbage.

      --
      I got here through a series of tubes
    7. Re:Out of touch by 0racle · · Score: 1

      Where? I don't even have a library within 40 miles of where I live, let alone one with a $20,000 router in it.

      West Virginia

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    8. Re:Out of touch by travbrad · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't say ANY other country, but we are certainly nowhere near the top.

    9. Re:Out of touch by oddaddresstrap · · Score: 1

      Universal Service is administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) http://www.usac.org/about/.

      "To implement the 1996 Telecom Act, the FCC established four programs:
        - High Cost, for rural areas (transitioning into the Connect America Fund)
        - Lifeline (for low-income consumers), including initiatives to expand phone service for Native Americans
        - Rural Health Care
        - Schools and Libraries (commonly referred to as "E-rate")

      Money to pay for universal service programs comes from the universal service fund (USF). The USF is paid for by contributions from telecommunications carriers, including wireline and wireless companies, and interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol providers, including cable companies that provide voice service, based on an assessment of their interstate and international end-user revenues".
      ----------------
      Kind of interesting how they don't explicitly state that "money to pay for universal service programs" comes from customers (it's a line item on phone bills). Actually, it used to be two line items, one for universal access (phones for the poor) and one for E-rate (Internet for schools, libraries and rural healthcare).

    10. Re:Out of touch by sstamps · · Score: 1

      Sure, there is plenty of room to add more dead wood to the bonfire.

      and yes, I consider the same for cable companies, because they are involved in the same scams and behave with the same antics. More and more, the cable companies are becoming telcos anyway (and vice-versa), with their "universal service" offerings, so there's less need to consider them as a separate category.

      --
      -SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
    11. Re:Out of touch by sstamps · · Score: 1

      That doesn't surprise me one bit.

      I am sure Cisco did everything they could to convince the idiots there that they needed to spend all the project money on THEIR equipment, and not on, you know, actual connections for citizens. I have no doubt that the decision to mis-spend the money was by some government manager asshat who was wined and dined by Cisco.

      So the taxpayers get shafted again. Personally, I think Cisco should be made to eat that equipment and pay back the money. They should have known better.

      --
      -SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
    12. Re:Out of touch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you live 40 miles from a library the chances are that far more government money is being used to subsidize your life style than you contribute.

      Think roads, subsidized power lines, etc, or if your a farmer then pretty much everything is subsidized with tax dollars... Far flung rural areas are usually leaches of government dollars. Its even worse when you factor in the percentage of the remote rural population that is unemployed, on food stamps, disability, or other types or welfare.

      Quit your bitching, or move.

    13. Re:Out of touch by afidel · · Score: 1

      Universal access fees DO NOT go to the collecting company, they go the the universal service fund which then distributes them. The major programs the fund supports are lifeline service for the poor, rural telecom subsidies, rural telemedicine, and library and school internet access.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    14. Re:Out of touch by Bengie · · Score: 1

      What about farmers? Recent research showed getting Farmers fast reliable Internet increased their productivity enough to offset its cost. The farmer didn't directly see a lot of benefit, but the area as a whole did. The value added the local area by the Fiber Internet to the farm, exceeded the cost and increased income to the farmer.

      Society is complex and value cannot be easily measured just by looking at increased income. "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts"

  6. They do at one important metric by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

    He is right for one very important metric, cost!

    Otherwise I say boo hiss go away shill.

  7. In other news... by quonsar · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength!

    1. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IN other news: the mod who modded the parent post flaimbait must live in the same world as Richard Bennett.

      Also tehy have never read Orwell.

  8. Uh no by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Informative

    America's broadband networks led the world in one respect; this is where we got widespread broadband first. We lag in every other regard. Miles of shitty copper used for services it can't really handle is not a metric to brag about.

    We get less for our money than almost anyone else, we have poorer penetration than almost anyone else... the former is because of corporate malfeasance, the latter is both because of that and because the USA is big. Nothing to be proud of either way.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Uh no by operagost · · Score: 1

      Your comment is strange because we're deploying fiber far faster than in Europe. xDSL seems to be receding.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    2. Re:Uh no by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Your comment is strange because we're deploying fiber far faster than in Europe. xDSL seems to be receding.

      The last mile is still as fucked as it has been for the last five years or so. Only in a few major cities are we actually deploying any fiber. I still can't get anything as fast as a decent DSL connection at my home without paying massive fees for something carrier-grade; I would probably have to pay AT&T to run a new strand of fiber into my neighborhood. The copper in my neighborhood has been spliced and respliced, because it was inherited from Pacific Bell, and it is shit.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Uh no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      _Your comment is strange because we're deploying fiber far faster than in Europe._

      No shit Sherlock, here in Europe we have fiber all over the place already, nothing to deploy anymore. And you probably don't want to know how little i pay for my 100/100 connection

    4. Re:Uh no by ducomputergeek · · Score: 1

      We may have missed the boat on having fibre owned by local city/county governments and leased to whatever ISP gives you the best deal, but we what we have is a massive legacy network in POTS. We all had home phones when many places in the world did not thanks to copper. That was a huge advantage for a number of years and took a massive amount of infrastructure and time to build.

      The other problem is that we get compared as the entire USA vs say Sweden. It's not really a fair comparison given geographic population distributions. Generally I'm going to have more options and faster internet in say in Boston or San Francisco than St. Louis or Little Rock. Now if you start comparing Internet service throughout the entire EU and the United States I wonder how it would start to look. I know that internet options in Poland are very similar in terms of speeds and price as say St. Louis with St. Louis actually a little cheaper.

      --
      "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
    5. Re:Uh no by satsuke · · Score: 1

      err, the US has no shortage of backhaul capacity .. we have dark fiber going every which way that has not needed to be utilized due to DWDM advances of the last decade or two.

      The problem has been in getting that capacity to the consumer, the "last mile".

      At least, our phone companies have generally been spending the absolute minimum on infrastructure that they can get away with for the last 15 years .. our cable companies doing likewise, and our wireless ISPs of last resort (aka Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mo) charge such a premium so as to make true broadband "living" economically impossible.

      There are other efforts of course, such as Google Fiber, Verizon FIOS and regional FTTH services like SureWest .. but those tend to cherry pick neighborhoods and municipalities that are likely to be very profitable, rather than the near-utility requirements broadband has become for many americans .. and again, mainly in urban / dense areas.

      e.g. not everyone can pick from 4 different broadband providers as I can (Google Fiber, Surewest, AT&T, Time Warner).

    6. Re:Uh no by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 1

      e.g. not everyone can pick from 4 different broadband providers as I can (Google Fiber, Surewest, AT&T, Time Warner).

      Technically I guess that's a choice...but most geeks I know would give up their girlfriend in Canada to have Google Fiber.

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    7. Re:Uh no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Silly, did you read his comment?

      'America's broadband networks lead the world by many measures [price], ... the most critical issue facing American broadband has nothing to do with the quality of our networks; it is our relatively low rates of subscribership.

      Obviously, private businesses are extracting plenty of money per-subscriber here, the problem is that there are still people not forking over all of their possible cash to the private businesses. I don't see how there can be any confusion here~ <---- That's the sarcasm punctuation mark.

    8. Re:Uh no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm guessing you live In Sweden, which has lovely network access but apparently doesn't teach geography for shit. Call me when you can find Bulgaria on the map and tell me what continent it's on.

    9. Re:Uh no by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1

      I'm guessing you live In Sweden, which has lovely network access but apparently doesn't teach geography for shit. Call me when you can find Bulgaria on the map and tell me what continent it's on.

      Call me when you can find Bulgaria on this chart and tell me where it is relative to the US on that chart. :-)

      (Or indicate why the chart is unrealistic. If it is realistic, perhaps Italy, for example, would have been a better choice.)

      (And, no, that chart isn't a chart of fiber deployment, but if the countries below the US have more fiber deployed, one is tempted to ask what good it's doing.)

    10. Re:Uh no by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      The other problem is that we get compared as the entire USA vs say Sweden. It's not really a fair comparison given geographic population distributions.

      Not just that, but land-mass differences, etc.
      Sweden is probably more comparable to say New Hampshire in some respects, California in others, and perhaps Oregon in others. Yet it's compared to the entirety of the US.

      A more fair comparison would be US vs. Russia vs Europe vs Africa vs Mexico vs South America.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    11. Re:Uh no by Bengie · · Score: 1

      But the people deploying the fiber are the small ISPs that the incumbents are fairly effectively blocking via legislation.

      Incumbents that own 80% of the USA's broadband: We have no reason to go to fiber.
      Some guy: USA is doing fine because we have great fiber rollouts.

      Something seem wrong here?

    12. Re:Uh no by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Your comment is strange because we're deploying fiber far faster than in Europe. xDSL seems to be receding.

      His reasons were good. Europe probably has less corporate malfeasance, and they CERTAINLY have a higher population density. You can get around in Europe just fine with a train pass and a bicycle (or even on foot). There is no way you can do that in the US. The same things that make trains hard in the US make broadband hard.

      However, in fairly dense areas like the US Northeast corporate malfeasance is the big barrier.

    13. Re:Uh no by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      e.g. not everyone can pick from 4 different broadband providers as I can (Google Fiber, Surewest, AT&T, Time Warner).

      In fact I can choose between two WISPs. Neither is cellular, there's no 3G etc at my house. EDGE GPRS works here. Used to be a choice between one local WISP (which has been bought out by a lame larger WISP) and satellite, which I won't even consider for various obvious reasons, none of which have to do with latency. If I want to change WISPs it will cost me $250 in installation fees. The WISP I am with now literally does not offer "broadband" speeds by the definition of the FCC; I can not buy a 4Mbps connection from them, the old definition, let alone the 6Mbps of today. I have a 1Mbps connection which bursts to 1.5Mbps, and I pay $50/mo for it. There are regular (though usually short) outages, possibly in part due to the shack where the hardware is housed atop Mt. Konocti's Howard Peak, which I helped to insulate from the outside with some janky paper wrap and glue product when I was younger.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  9. U S A! U S A! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We're number 1! We're number 1!

    I suppose Mr. Bennett just disregards the 32 countries that have recently developed faster more modern networks (http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/). Make up some random metric, don't compare to all nations, disregard contradicting evidence, declare champion. Sounds like a good plan to me!

  10. So what does it cost in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    OK. I pay about 30 EUR for 100/100.

    1. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OK. I pay about 30 EUR for 100/100.

      Lucky you. I pay 40 € for a shitty 12/1 connection.

    2. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Scan in thy bill, please, and do so for 1000 other people ar random.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    3. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Lucky you. I pay 40$CAD for a shitty 2.5/0.5 connection.

    4. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Ark42 · · Score: 1

      $72 USD (54 EUR) for I guess 30/5 from Comcast (who doesn't really advertise what their speeds are).
      It is probably faster than is available in a lot of other areas, with other cable providers or people stuck with just DSL as their only option.

    5. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I pay $80/month for a Comcast connection, which is around 20/10Mbp (they don't even bother specifying the speed on their site; it's hardly relevant since they are the only provider here).

    6. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Silpher · · Score: 2

      I live in the Netherlands and pay 40 euro's for 100/100

    7. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      £32.50 for 80/20 & all phone calls in the UK (This is a FTTC connection with about 100yds of copper).

    8. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by KillDaBOB · · Score: 1

      Oh yeah? Last mile customer here. ~60 USD/month for 1.5/256k. CenturyLink can suck my balls.

    9. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by apcullen · · Score: 1

      I pay about US $50 -- but it's hard to say exactly because I get it bundled with cable and phone service for US $100 a month.

      Speedtest.net claims I have 20Mbps down and 2Mbps up. CNET says I get just shy of 18Mbps download speed. So the AC pays $10 less a month for 5x my download bandwidth and 20x my upload. Admittedly anecdotal, but the whole "US leads the world" story doesn't match my experience.

    10. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      40$ US. 1.5/0.5 here, and that's the "bundled" price.

    11. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Cigamit · · Score: 1

      Last 15 mile customer here. $150/m for a 3Mb combined (3Mb up OR down).

      I live in a rural area in central Texas where there is only 1 option, a local WISP. I have to have the highest plan since I work from home. Luckily the latency isn't bad at all, less than 15ms most of the time. I can't even get a hard phone line without paying $1 per foot to run it the 1200 feet to my house from the road.

    12. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by poity · · Score: 1

      Jeez is that the tv/phone bundle or the standalone? I'm getting $30 for 20/5 standalone same company, but I'm just under 10 miles from downtown (mid size city in the south). We still have a cable monopoly in the metro area, but Charter's been encroaching from all sides in the neighboring counties, which likely why there's been these price drops.

      --
      your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
    13. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One of the other 1000 random peeps here. About $30 for 100/100, basic TV (which I don't much care for) and fixed line phone plan. I used to have a better deal on a different provider (about $20 for much of the same bundle, minor TV/phone differences) but they don't serve this part of the city yet. Should change soon though, as the fibre infrastructure has been laid in already. 'Tis one of the brighter spots about living in a former commie country.

    14. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by nomaddamon · · Score: 1

      Estonia here

      35 euro for 150/10 (146/10 on speedtest.net) uncapped, including cable (basic, 70 channels) and landline

      40 euro for 100/50 4G LTE (91/44 on speedtest.net) uncapped, including unlimited calls and texts

      3 euro for 5/1 3G (5/1 on speedtest.net), uncapped, no calls/texts included

    15. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Ark42 · · Score: 1

      Just Internet. No TV, no phone. That's the normal price you pay (after the initial year). Each Comcast market is priced differently, and as far as I know, that's just the normal West Michigan pricing. Charter exists here too, in rural areas, but is mostly on par with dialup as far as I know, has has no overlap with Comcast's territory. Lots of places can get 18 or 24 Mbit from AT&T U-Verse here too, but the pricing isn't going to be much cheaper.

    16. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      $100 for 70Mb/s. I also paid a 13% federal tax rate last year and make six figures. I prefer my option, thanks :)

    17. Re:So what does it cost in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well lets see.. Here smack in the middle of the USA, just 9 miles outside a massive city.

      I can have broadband from... Comcast. Or. Comcast. Or hey... Comcast.

      The BEST speeds i can actually buy are 14/3. (thats real world speeds. not what i was sold. that # is much much higher.. but i was sold 'upto' that number.. in reality 14/3 is the absolute best i've ever seen)

      And that costs about $80 a month.

      There is ZERO way for me to improve anything about my internet situation until you get into the hundreds of thousands of dollars area. IE... by moving somewhere less crappy.

      But moving somewhere less crappy is how i ended up here... I moved from midwest comcast land. And moved here to adelphia isp land... And they were awesome. Fast. Cheap. Support... Service...

      And then comcast bought them. prices went way up. speeds went way down. service and support does not exist really.

      SO... even moving 700 miles isn't an option to get better broadband. comcast will get you in the end.

  11. True for some measures, but not others. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was trying to share some music I created with a friend in South Korea. He has a 1 Gbit Internet connection. He couldn't connect to my IP in Canada at my house. Americans would never have this problem.

    I'd rather have modest/slow speeds that connect to everything than blazing fast speeds which serve only approved government propoganda and vanilla pop culture.

    1. Re:True for some measures, but not others. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was trying to share some music I created with a friend in South Korea. He has a 1 Gbit Internet connection. He couldn't connect to my IP in Canada at my house. Americans would never have this problem.

      I'd rather have modest/slow speeds that connect to everything than blazing fast speeds which serve only approved government propoganda and vanilla pop culture.

      What? You make no sense. You seem to be saying that the South Korean can't connect to you, but could if you were in America, and it's the fault of the South Koreans, which you seem to confuse with North Korea's propaganda.

      I'm in Canada, and I currently have 21 users connected to my machine, UK, US, Canada, Mexico, France, Aus, NZ, Philippines, India, Slovakia. Daily.

      So, the problem isn't Canada unless you've got a crappy ISP or can't set up a router.

      And South Korea has issues with requiring IE6 for banking, etc., but filtering your machine because it's not approved by the government? That's retarded.

  12. By "Lead" do they mean "Control"? by erroneus · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I get that already... Thanks NSA. I have ceased using a backup service for all my stuff -- I'll start subscribing to your services for data recovery.

    1. Re:By "Lead" do they mean "Control"? by c0lo · · Score: 1

      By "Lead" do they mean "Control"?

      Nope, by lead they mean Pb

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
  13. huh? by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 1

    Why in the US are we so caught up in listening to idiots? We're listening to WAY to many "senior fellows" at thinktanks that are all promoting their own agenda and world view. There is nothing credible here... it's just an advertisement written by someone who is scared of the dreaded SOZIALSSM!!

    1. Re:huh? by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 1

      to too* yeah

    2. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I live in a rural area and get to pay $180/mo for a symmetric 3 megabits.

    3. Re:huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why in the US are we so caught up in listening to idiots?

      Because /. is an American site, with American owners/stakeholders/sponsors/advertisers which need to be kept happy. Otherwise, nobody keeps you on /.: if you don't like reading/listening to idiots you can, at any time, start doing something useful (like, going back to work).

    4. Re:huh? by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 1

      I am an American, genius.

    5. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yap, right now i get 120/8mbps for 35€/month with 4 phone lines attached (two with unlimited calls)

  14. ...and? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who is this moron, and why are we talking about him?

    1. Re:...and? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who knows. The article is behind a paywall.

  15. Re:U S A! U S A! by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 2

    but but but but.. SOCIALISM!!!

  16. Many measures but.. by cjjjer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The cost per MB maybe...

    1. Re:Many measures but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is 'spin'.

      When you can not win a perception battle change the argument. That is all they are trying to do. Intel used to do the same thing to AMD. Apple used to do the same thing to MS. It is just market spin.

      If it is so much better how come I can NOT buy 100MB symmetrical for a reasonable price to my house? They can in other countries and for a decent price. And no 300 bucks a month is not reasonable (and still not symmetrical). Only 1%ers and people who 'must' have it would buy that at that price.

      Why can I not buy fiber to the house at this point except in 'some' areas? Its 1970s tech...

    2. Re:Many measures but.. by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      but why the fuck is he trying to argue that usa is winning the broadband race? he was already paid with some cash he squandered?

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    3. Re:Many measures but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it is spin...

      When you can not win a race change the terms of the race...

    4. Re:Many measures but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As in why is it so important to him that we win the race?

  17. Of course it's reliable and cheap. by intermodal · · Score: 1

    What better way to ensure the NSA a constant flow of information?

    --
    In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
  18. Belgium is a great negative role model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This opinion piece holds up Belgium as an example other European countries are trying to emulate, but Internet service there is incredibly expensive and has tiny monthly bandwidth caps, worse even than Australia. Almost any European country is doing better.

    The opinion piece also omits France and the story of Iliad / free.fr, and UK, which every other thing I've read says are the best examples of good policy nurturing successful infrastructure investment and cheap, fast Internet.

    The actual global story is that countries practicing "structural separation"---meaning the company that maintains the wires is not allowed to provide service over them---have really cheap and fast Internet. Iliad made so much money selling DSL and TV-over-DSL in a structurally-separated competition-fostering market that they started digging trenches and laying their own fiber (..which is, well, not structurally separated any more, but meh, at least it's there). Meanwhile after winning concessions that further destroyed the already broken DSL competition in the US on the basis it would "incent" them to invest in fiber, vz halted FiOS rollout in 2010 because they can squeeze more money out of people on vzw.

    BTW, if you actually used the Internet at LTE speed, you'd use $240/hr of bandwidth. Pieces like this only quote the speed but ignore that the network doesn't actually enable any "broadband applications" like cloud disk or TV-over-IP.

    US is a great example of policy derp. The pollies can't keep up with the jackmoves of these sophisticatedly-skeezy US companies.

    1. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      expensive is a positive thing when you're a pro-corporate douche.

    2. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >This opinion piece holds up Belgium as an example other European countries are trying to emulate

      As citizen of Belgium I concur.

    3. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The pollies ARE the sophisticatedly skeezy companies.

    4. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by Princeofcups · · Score: 1

      US is a great example of policy derp. The pollies can't keep up with the jackmoves of these sophisticatedly-skeezy US companies.

      Just the opposite. The policies are doing exactly what the lobbyists intended, feed the corporate coiffures at the expense of the people. Remember, the government no longer represents the voters, only those who buy pay their way to get elected.

      --
      The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
    5. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by MrNemesis · · Score: 1

      As a UK citizen, I wouldn't exactly call our internet access options stellar; although there are a great many ISPs, the vast majority of them all use the old BT network for both last mile and backbone routing. These are built out by BT OpenReach that then sells them on to resellers. Good news is that the wholesale price is set low (and with a lot of government oversight) so that OpenReach can't sell to BT's ISP businesses at a different cost than they sell to everyone else. However, the bad news is that the OpenReach infrastructure is quite outdated in a lot of ways (e.g. the new "21st Century Network" dubbed 21CN doesn't even have a provision for IPv6) and much of the copper is old and crappy; many places outside of major metropolitan centres are so far from their exchange/DSLAM that they're basically limited by the laws of physics to ADSL at http://www.xilo.net/adsl_broadband/#pro ...but even here you're still restricted to mostly the BT and a couple of other networks. My favourite ISP, Zen, for example only have an LLU network available in Rochdale.

      I don't even follow the ISP game that closely, just closely enough to get good-enough internet without having to give BT any money. It's possible I might just be moaning about first-world problems, blah blah. The US might look at some european ISPs with envy (your prices *do* seem high and I'll never understand the preponderance of cable internet bundled with TV, but then I'm Onion guy who doesn't watch TV), but then everyone else I know just looks at places like Stockholm with eyes greener than that grass on the other side of the fence :)

      Anyone from Sweden or similar Awesomepipesville care to comment? Is your telecoms infrastructure still mostly built/owned by a (state-overseen?) incumbent and rented out to your different ISPs as per the UK or do the different ISP lay all their own stuff?

      --
      Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
    6. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by MrNemesis · · Score: 1

      Bad form to reply again, sorry; I have no idea what happened to my post above, half of it went missing. Thanks heavens for browser cache, here it is again:

      As a UK citizen, I wouldn't exactly call our internet access options stellar; although there are a great many ISPs, the vast majority of them all use the old BT network for both last mile and backbone routing. These are built out by BT OpenReach that then sells them on to resellers. Good news is that the wholesale price is set low (and with a lot of government oversight) so that OpenReach can't sell to BT's ISP businesses at a different cost than they sell to everyone else. However, the bad news is that the OpenReach infrastructure is quite outdated in a lot of ways (e.g. the new "21st Century Network" dubbed 21CN doesn't even have a provision for IPv6) and much of the copper is old and crappy; many places outside of major metropolitan centres are so far from their exchange/DSLAM that they're basically limited by the laws of physics to ADSL at less than 5Mb. Co-ax/fibre from Virgin (previously NTL/TeleWest/BlueYonder) has mitigated this but again it's not available in all areas.

      Cue FTTH and FTTC which are finally seeing some limited rollouts, although because the only two major players in this regard are BT and Virgin, adoption has been slow... and slowed further by BT starting out only lighting up streets that were already lit up by Virgin (I've had a number of friends who were literally 20yards from a fibre cabinet whom were told FTTC/VDSL wasn't an option).

      In both cases, bandwidth caps, throttling and "fair usage" policies are the rule rather than the exception, and it's not unusual for youtube/iPlayer to be restricted to "crap" during peak times. Bandwidth caps don't tend to be high either, last time I looked the BT FTTC 40Mb/s service had a cap of 40GB/mo. If you're not on FTTC or FTTH then "up to" 24Mb/s is typically the highest you'll see.

      However, the best service by far tends to be on the little providers that provide some or all of their own equipment. For years I've been using LLU ISPs; LLU means Local Loop Unbundling and typically means the ISP has hired some space in a (BT) exchange and hooks the subscriber up over the (BT) copper, but it meant you usually get a better backbone and don't have to pay BT for copper rental. BeThere, one of the first large-scale LLU providers, have had ADSL2 running for donkeys years, way in advance of BT... but have just been bought by Sky, another ISP that is mostly just a BT reseller.

      There are a fair few "niche" ISPs like this that provide a very good range of services - you can see from this page that this provider has a nice up-front approach to all the different options you can get:

      http://www.xilo.net/adsl_broadband/#pro ...but even here you're still restricted to mostly the BT and a couple of other networks. My favourite ISP, Zen, for example only have an LLU network available in Rochdale.

      I don't even follow the ISP game that closely, just closely enough to get good-enough internet without having to give BT any money. It's possible I might just be moaning about first-world problems, blah blah. The US might look at some european ISPs with envy (your prices *do* seem high and I'll never understand the preponderance of cable internet bundled with TV, but then I'm Onion guy who doesn't watch TV), but then everyone else I know just looks at places like Stockholm with eyes greener than that grass on the other side of the fence :)

      Anyone from Sweden or similar Awesomepipesville care to comment? Is your telecoms infrastructure still mostly built/owned by a (state-overseen?) incumbent and rented out to your different ISPs as per the UK or do the different ISP lay all their own stuff?

      --
      Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
    7. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1

      Just the opposite. The policies are doing exactly what the lobbyists intended, feed the corporate coiffures at the expense of the people. Remember, the government no longer represents the voters, only those who buy pay their way to get elected.

      I agree with your intended point, but you presumably meant "coffers"; feeding corporate coiffures would be amusing to watch....

    8. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nationalize infrastructure. Privatize services.

    9. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As someone who has travelled extensively and used internet for work purposes in France, I will tell you that you can find cheaper and faster connections in the US when comparing similarly sized metro area markets.

    10. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh I see. It only represents voters if it's a socialist government.

      This is something I despise about socialists: they are incapable of understanding that a democracy involves more than one party and more than one idealogy. Part of living in a democracy (and a free country as well) is that one must accept that others have the freedom to have ideas that are not yours.

    11. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by SilenceBE · · Score: 3, Informative

      This opinion piece holds up Belgium as an example other European countries are trying to emulate, but Internet service there is incredibly expensive and has tiny monthly bandwidth caps, worse even than Australia. Almost any European country is doing better.

      I must be living in a parallel Belgium it seems. I have 60Mbit/s down with no bandwidth cap (FUP) for 55 euro. That also includes cable/decoder + telephone with free calls within Belgium and free calls to mobile/European countries for certain hours. If I would bump that to 24/24 then it will set you back another 5 euro. My mobile internet costs me 15 euro and that includes 2Gb of traffic.

      The cheapest internet on cable (which is available everywhere) will set you back for 25 euro and that includes 30Mbit/s and a limit of 100Gb. VDSL2 that is available in most places : 35Mbit/s including unlimited bandwidth and that for the price of 35 euro.

      It is what you call incredible expensive and tiny bandwidth...

    12. Re:Belgium is a great negative role model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >feed the corporate coiffures at the expense of the people

      http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coiffure

      I didn't know the megacorps were so haircare obsessed.

  19. Huh? by fullback · · Score: 2

    I don't live in the U.S. and I've had 100Mbps fiber for less than USD 50/month for so long that I have to stop to count... Let's see. It's been over 12 years, now.

    The U.S. does lead the world in cognitive dissonance, though.

  20. Senior or Senile Fellow? by Nyder · · Score: 1

    Apparently it doesn't mean what you think. It doesn't mean senile old person who needs to die and leave the thinking to the younger people. Obvious, by his statement, that is what you think, but apparently dude is supposed to be popular with the rest of the people in his academy and won some important votes by other "senior" follows to become one himself.

    Does he know what he is talking about? No. I at first thought it said Senator because when it comes to tech, they know nothing, but apparently it's a dude who should know. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe in the last year they improved the internet in the USA to where I had a choice and I could use fiber optic if I wanted, after all, I'm in a big tech city, Seattle. Pretty much living in the downtown of that city, less then a mile from the city center. Still hardly any choices.

    --
    Be seeing you...
  21. Re:Filthy sows need to become clean! by DeathToBill · · Score: 3, Funny

    The internet has become sentient and has taken the only sane course; it hawks crap PC cleanup tools. It sounds insane, but just think: How would you know? We all expect sentient AI to diagnose cancer and drive cars safely and run governments fairly and do all our work for us. Because that's what the run-of-the-mill sentient intelligence is like, right?

    --
    Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
  22. Fiber? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Last time I checked Verizon's anemic fiber expansion is still on hold - it has been for the past several years when they openly admitted that there's no business case for improving the network. But, hey, lobbying is a great investment.
    Hopefully Google fiber will upset the balance a bit.

    1. Re:Fiber? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Last time I checked Verizon's anemic fiber expansion is still on hold - it has been for the past several years when they openly admitted that there's no business case for improving the network. But, hey, lobbying is a great investment.
      Hopefully Google fiber will upset the balance a bit.

      ROFLMAO at that one.

      Anything cheap from Google is just a way for them to get more data from and about you that they can sell to their real customers - giant corporations like, oh, Verizon.

  23. Re:Troll-bait by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 1

    I'm not anti-US. I think our government is screwed up being overrun with morans that do nothing but cowtow to corporate interests but that's different than hating the country.

  24. This guy needs a vacation by Azure+Flash · · Score: 2

    I say rent him a small apartment in Tokyo with a paid 2 Gbps connection. Then we'll see what he thinks of America's great broadband.

    1. Re:This guy needs a vacation by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2

      Betcha that the cost of the small apartment in Tokyo + the broadband >>>> my house and broadband.

    2. Re:This guy needs a vacation by Bengie · · Score: 1

      There was a massive miss-reporting on that info from all sites. It turns out the "2Gb/s" Internet offering from Sony was just GPON, which has a 2.5Gb/s shared TDM with your neighbors. Nothing special.

      My ISP is going the Google Fiber route and doing dedicated fiber to each house with 1Gb infrastructure. They just aren't offering Gb speeds yet.

      One way to tell the difference between Active Ethernet and GPON is that I get a 0.2ms ping to my ISP, not my node, not my router, but my ISP, and 0 jitter. GPON will typically have around 4-10ms latency and will jitter around that range.

  25. low rate of subscibership? by WillgasM · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I, too, find it very difficult to sell inferior products at a huge mark-up.
    It sounds like all our country's Internet woes could be easily solved if ISPs just spent more money on marketing.

    1. Re:low rate of subscibership? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just figured out a way for the claim of "low rate of subscribership" to sort of make sense... Richard Bennett is noticing relatively few people subscribe to both cable and DSL systems. Therefore few people have access to both television and Internet. This could almost work as a justification for his claim. This is of course absolute pure ****, but it does almost sort of make sense. He might even have counted how many people don't subscribe to satellite TV and Internet service as well.

  26. Re:U S A! U S A! by Reverand+Dave · · Score: 1

    Oh god no! Think of the children! Nana and Papa are going in front of the death panel! We must deregulate!

    --
    I got here through a series of tubes
  27. Re:U S A! U S A! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And he says that EU regulators are considering the American model. Are they fuck! He's basing this on one report! Aside from that the only people claiming this are American cheerleaders for the U.S. model.

    The notion of competition for infrastructure is bullshit. Roads can be be dug up only so many times, and the costs of entry are pretty high. There's not much competition out there. The only disruptive technology I can see is wireless, which remains expensive and has way too much latency for gaming.

    Bennet, you halfwitted whore.

  28. What the US really leads the world in by JustNiz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yet another article proving that the only things the US really leads the world in is massively overrating their own country while maintaining total blind ignorance of anything outside it.

    1. Re:What the US really leads the world in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Propaganda.

    2. Re:What the US really leads the world in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have heard the borders surrounding America are what they call "the great nothing". They believe it is a black void of unpatriotic energy fields, and that you cease to exist should you cross those borders.

  29. Improving by doconnor · · Score: 1

    "improving at a more rapid rate than networks in most developed countries"

    I guess that's because the US has the most room for improvement.

  30. "our relatively low rates of subscribership" by RLU486983 · · Score: 1

    Since the pricing is ridiculously high for service, it's a no-brainer! Broadband is priced too high for a lot of households to justify getting it. Food, mortgage/rent, fuel, clothes, utilities... a lot of people are doing well to just survive.

  31. I just ordered 70/10Mbit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    .. for 499 NOK a month. That's roughly 87 USD.
    It amounts to 1.7% of my monthly salary AFTER taxes.

    Up on the hills in Norway (e.g one house every 3 km along a rocky road) you will for the most part still get 4/0.5 Mbit for 300-ish NOK.

  32. In other news... by cangrejoinmortal · · Score: 1

    We have always been at war with Eurasia. Is this for real? what's up with all this kind of articles lately? First is US still leading manufacturing (if you twist the metrics to suit your taste), now this. It's like someone is trying to anti-FUD (Hope Certainty and Confidence maybe?) US citizens.

  33. Can the NSA re-route US internet traffic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The telcos gave the NSA a direct tap into the internet fiber in 2003 (2002?), and telcos got immunity from prosecution in return in 2007, have they given the NSA the ability to divert internet traffic for man in the middle attacks? For snooping they need a connection, but for snooping on https, they need to do a man-in-the-middle certificate substitution.

    i.e. they generate a certificate with fake details duplicating a real one. Provide that fake one to the mark trying to use https, his browser accepts it because its a real certificate for the real company, they can then decrypt traffic sitting between him and the server.

    For that they'd need an interface to generate certificates (that already exists, they'd just need the cert company to let them make fake ones, US companies I can believe would do that if forced to by secret FISA warrant). Then they'd need to be able to route traffic to a computer to do the man in the middle attack.
    A simple utility to force a route for the traffic would be quite trivial technically to do, if you have an interface to the US Internet backbone company routers, it's just another routing entry. These are the same telcos that gave them the snooping ability, so I can believe they gave them man-in-the-middle intercept capability.

    If you read up on DCSNet, the phone intercept they have. They got all the telcos to let them configure the telephone switches from anywhere in the country on the fly, so agent Wayne types in a number, clicks 'intercept' and the phone is tapped directly sending the voice over to the NSA/FBI/Whoever. I bet they got the telcos to do the same with the internet backbone.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCSNET

    It would mean we can't trust https if it transits over US networks. Just as http is now spied on, https probably is too.

    1. Re:Can the NSA re-route US internet traffic? by PPH · · Score: 1

      You can examine your browser's certificate fingerprints and compare them to those published by the CAs through some side channel*. Its possible that the NSA/CIA/FBI have strong-armed US based CAs into turning over their private keys. But they'd have to do that for foreign CAs as well and I suspect that some of these CAs can't be threatened, or would leak that fact to the public.

      *It would be a good idea if the CAs would take out a print ad in a major newspaper occasionally and publish their fingerprint. Lets see the NSA try to round up every copy of Mad Magazine.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    2. Re:Can the NSA re-route US internet traffic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you... getting your news from Mad Magazine?

    3. Re:Can the NSA re-route US internet traffic? by PPH · · Score: 1

      Are you... getting your news from Mad Magazine?

      No. Slashdot.

      [Funny mods in 3...2...1...]

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  34. Re:Troll-bait by apcullen · · Score: 1

    It's really not "anti-US" to point out that it's hard to find decent internet or cell phone service for a reasonable price in this country.

  35. Punch Him in the Face by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nobody wants to subscribe because you get 1/10th the speed for double the price of everywhere else. Cut the prices in half and watch what happens. It's amazing how many people still don't understand supply and demand.

  36. Oh Statistics! LOL by DarthVain · · Score: 3, Informative

    "they are improving at a more rapid rate than networks in most developed countries."

    Analysis: Most developed countries already have better networks, thus less room to improve. The USA having backwater level networks, are able to improve to a much greater degree as the current "Can with String Attached" technology is much slower than your typical 2400 baud modem.

    Joking of course, and exaggerating (is there anything else on Slashdot), but I always get a kick out of these PR type statements which are "technically" valid, but only because of careful wording. Also known as, statistics, is there anything you can't solve?

    Another way to look at this, you just won the "Most Improved Player" on your little league baseball team, Congratulations! Your kid is fat and untalented, and we all felt sorry for them, have a trophy for participation... (I say this as someone with a closet full of them!)

    1. Re:Oh Statistics! LOL by David_Hart · · Score: 1

      No, there is nothing that Statistics can't be used to prove as long as you ask the right question....

      Lies... Dam Lies... and Statistics....

    2. Re:Oh Statistics! LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Congratulations! Your kid is fat and untalented, and we all felt sorry for them, have a trophy for participation... (I say this as someone with a closet full of them!)

      Should... should we call the police? Are they still in one piece? You haven't eaten any of them, have you!? Answer you monster!

  37. He Could be Correct! by Jahava · · Score: 1

    Almost none of this is true: America’s broadband networks lead the world by many measures, and they are improving at a more rapid rate than networks in most developed countries.

    Perhaps he intended for "lead" to be in the past tense? It's that silly English language...

    1. Re:He Could be Correct! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well-spotted.

    2. Re:He Could be Correct! by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1

      Perhaps he intended for "lead" to be in the past tense? It's that silly English language...

      If so, he should have left the "a" out - it should have been "America's Broadband Networks Led the World". At least in that case, English is not so silly as to have the past and present tenses spelled the same.

  38. I agree if.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If one of the measures is slow performance and downtime per dollar spent, than I agree.

  39. Leads in some ways... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Folks, he doesn't mean speeds, he means capability for the government to intercept communications transparently!

  40. Why is an op-ed piece considered news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not sure why an opinion article is considered news.

  41. Some other's have to say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/

    Just look some.... US is in 33th. place. Lithuania second :)

  42. Honest Cable Company by domatic · · Score: 1

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilMx7k7mso

    These Really Decent japes got it right with a lot less dancing around the point.

    1. Re:Honest Cable Company by aestrivex · · Score: 1

      I live in rural Boston, where there are three options at my house for service -- comcast, verizon, or RCN. Much of the state has access only to comcast or verizon. In the relatively small, heavily populated areas where RCN exists, the connection speed is faster, the price is cheaper, the service people if you call their number are considerably better.

      All things considered, I am *extremely* happy to have found such an ISP. There is no way I could have possibly done better. They are not "out-pricing" the market more than they have to, because the market is still essentially an oligopoly. But I would sure as hell rather do business with RCN than verizon, and with verizon than comcast.

  43. USA Number One!!!! 111 1 1!!!! by tekrat · · Score: 1

    Sorry; this was written by another slashdotter; not sure who, but I clipped and saved for re-use someday and now here it is.

    We may not be the "best" at network speed and access; but here's what we are truly "number one" at:

    #1 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on earth.

    #2 The United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.

    #3 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.

    #4 The United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week.

    #5 The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.

    #6 There are more car thefts in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world by far.

    #7 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

    #8 There are more reported murders in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

    #9 There are more total crimes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

    #10 The United States also has more police officers than anywhere else in the world.

    #11 The United States spends much more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other nation on the face of the earth.

    #12 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet.

    #13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.

    #14 Americans have more student loan debt than anyone else in the world.

    #15 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. Eighty nine percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.

    #16 The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.

    #17 The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.

    #18 The United States has far more foreign military bases than any other country does.

    #19 The United States has the most complicated tax system in the entire world.

    #20 The U.S. has accumulated the biggest national debt that the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.

    --
    If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
    1. Re:USA Number One!!!! 111 1 1!!!! by Zapotek · · Score: 1

      A lot of those seem to imply absolute numbers rather than per capita, which is excusable seeing as the USA is quite large. Point taken though.

    2. Re:USA Number One!!!! 111 1 1!!!! by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1

      Sorry; this was written by another slashdotter; not sure who, but I clipped and saved for re-use someday and now here it is.

      We may not be the "best" at network speed and access; but here's what we are truly "number one" at:

      To be fair, some of those items appear to be absolute counts rather than percentages; for example, number of $CRIMEs is less interesting than number of $CRIMEs per 1,000 people.

      Others, however, are rates/percentages, and, yes, a higher rate/percentage of $BAD_THING does make you interestingly #1 in $BAD_THING.

    3. Re:USA Number One!!!! 111 1 1!!!! by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1

      Sorry; this was written by another slashdotter; not sure who

      fullback, in this comment. He also commented on this story, noting that we lead the world in cognitive dissonance....

  44. Look no further... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Than the address of the "think-tank" where his thoughts reside - Information Technology and Innovation Foundation | 1101 K Street N.W. Suite 610, Washington, DC 20005

    He is one of thousands of smart guys whose bread is buttered by the oligarchs, the wealthiest .01%. The think tank/lobbying/congressional machine exists so the he rich can tell the middle class that all their problems are the fault of the poor, and institute policies that make more of the money flow up.

  45. Interesting.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    US Broadband being so wonderful must be WHY I STILL CAN'T GET an IPv6 address or a consistently reliable 100mb plus speed evene though I pay a LOT for the fastest connection speed available in my area.

    That guy is so full of shit his eyes are brown.

  46. Yep by neminem · · Score: 1

    We lead the world by many measures:
    * cost
    * crappiness of service
    * downtime
    * annoyance

  47. Re:U S A! U S A! by Clsid · · Score: 1

    After living for quite a bit in some of the places listed, I can totally confirm that France, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao have a better deal. But with the clear exception of France, which I consider the true socialist countries from the list along with Scandinavian countries, All the "Chinese" places are hardly related to socialism. Hell, the internet connection in mainland is a joke, based in no small part because of the draconian firewall that makes all the traffic go to Beijing (At least that's what a traceroute returns with ChinaNet in Shanghai). Crap maybe I should move to Hong Kong myself :)

  48. Cognitive dissonance by Meeni · · Score: 1

    I live in regular suburban space in a fairly large US city.

    I relocated from Europe (France) 7 years ago.

    Service in a typical suburban neighborhood is still low quality (24/5, but 200ms latency,...... $75, capped) and more expensive than what I had in rural country France 7 years ago (30/7, 15ms latency, 29euros, ~40$, uncapped, includes TV, ondemand, landline phone).

    So this is BS. Value is low in the US. This guy is paid to stir BS in the media.

  49. America has the best broadband in the world. by Jason+Levine · · Score: 2

    I agree, America has the best broadband in the world.*

    [fine print]* Where "The World" is defined as American and any country with worse broadband than America has.[/fine print]

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  50. Real Reason by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 1

    Guess which area in the US that has seen the greatest increase in broadband speeds over the last year. Northeast Kansas. As in: the same area that now features Google Fiber as a real competitor.

    Pure coindence, I'm sure.

  51. Check your ISP contract by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 1

    My ISP is shit. SHIT. They WAY overcommit their crappy low-end ADSL lines (which constantly crash/go down), and have delayed any upgrade plans for YEARS. Then they have the unmitigated gall to go whining to the state legislature to block any attempts by our local municipality to seek out a better PAID-FOR solution for us.

    If you're very lucky, they've not added a No Class Action clause yet. You and the rest of the victims (subscribers) have more than enough cause for judicial redress.

  52. Re:'unwitting' self contradiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They are not contradictions. They are talking about two different groups of people

    The first blob is talking about the rich productive people who have savings and affordable debt. They are investing and building businesses and competing with each other. They're recovering/have recovered by selling to other productive people (each other)

    The second blob is about all the unproductive poor people with debt beyond their means. The 47%. They don't have savings so they cannot afford Internet or other nice things.

  53. He's right. by JustAnotherIdiot · · Score: 2

    America's "Broadband" networks are far more profitable than anywhere else in the world.
    And in the land of the corporations and the home of the greedy scumbags, isn't that all that matters?

    --
    What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
  54. The actual report from ITIF by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1

    If you have the time to read a ~70-page report, here's the report mentioned at the end of the op-ed.

  55. Hahahahaha... by Sydin · · Score: 1

    Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder.

  56. Google Loon! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google just announced their project of providing internet by balloon. The balloons fly at 20km and you simply need a special antenna to talk to them.
    That's much better than satellite as they could provide latency in the millisecond range.
    They don't say how long the balloons can stay in the air. Last time I researched that topic I had found many people saying that balloons are damage by sunlight after a couple days.
    Still this looks like a way to completely fix many problems:
    - offer internet in underpopulated areas
    - offer internet that's not easy to stop for bad governments
    - offer internet in well populated areas without having to dig trenches and fight local monopolies.

  57. Re:U S A! U S A! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I get 70Mb/s for $100/mo (Cable One). I paid a 13% effective federal tax rate last year. I'm perfectly happy. If you want to subsidize federal funding for broadband deployments, be my guest, but don't take it out on me.

  58. Reason for low subscribership? by rnturn · · Score: 1

    Cost. Decent bandwidth is crazy expensive. Hell, in some areas, crappy bandwidth is expensive.

    --
    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  59. Re: "improving at a more rapid rate" by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2

    "Only possible because they had further to go in the first place."

    Yep. And here's another good one:

    '... the most critical issue facing American broadband has nothing to do with the quality of our networks; it is our relatively low rates of subscribership.'

    Absolute BS. Sure, it may be the low rates of subscribership, but the first part is wrong. The low rates of subscribership are due to low quality of service combined with outrageous prices.

    The fact is: other "developed countries" have better service for less money. If there is any one halfway good excuse the US has for that, it might be the cost of infrastructure in areas of low population. But some other countries (like Canada) have that problem too.

  60. broadband getting redefined as greater than 30 Mb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    EU is looking at redefining broadband as having to be in excess of 30 Mbps, says he using his 150 Mbps in Dublin, with UPC fibre, owned by an American company, worry what UI shall get once I am back in good old US of A

  61. Re: The Point ...hold on there little buckaroo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The world doesn't OWE you anything... then what -if anything- do I owe the 'world'?

    A.C. CAPTCHA= 'investor'

    Discuss.

  62. Re:U S A! U S A! We're number 1! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A lot of people seem to be knee deep in 'number 2'; not necessarily due to anything over which they have controlling influence.

  63. That Akamai report sure smells funny. by zooblethorpe · · Score: 1

    I can't be bothered registering with Akamai to read the full report, but from the link you posted, it would appear that they are only evaluating the performance of connections that are running at at least 10mbps. Is this true? If it is, it will give extremely skewed results. Most basic connections dsl here would be ~8mbps, and that is what most people will get. I'm hearing anecdotal horror stories of 1mbps or worse connections in other countries (*cough* America *cough*); are all of these being excluded? I'm not sure how meaningful it is to compare the best available in countries, rather than the median, when you are reporting what effectively is a survey of the level of service consumers are receiving.

    I'm in Seattle. Within the city limits. And the best I can get without spending gobs of cash, for a small-business line, is 1.5mbps. I keep hearing from my telco that we'll have 10mbps Real Soon Now (TM), and I keep hearing rumors of other telcos lighting up the fiber that's already been run throughout my part of town (but inexplicably kept dark). FWIW, I don't think I've ever seen download speeds in excess of around 170kb/sec. Netflix often stalls out buffering, with grotty picture quality; never mind getting HD. All for the "low" *cough* price of around $110 / month.

    When I moved to Japan in 2002, the cheapest plan I could get in my neighborhood was $30 / month for 12mbps. Upgraded, at no cost to me, to 18mbps, and then to 24mbps by the time I left in 2005.

    So where are these lying shitheads pulling these numbers from? And have they been properly disinfected^Wsanitized?

    Judging from the smell, I think not.

    --
    "What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
    "A four-foot prune."
  64. The ITIF is an Industry sock puppet by rabbin · · Score: 1
    The ITIF is an industry sock puppet. It should be no surprise that they do not disclose all of their funding and that almost every stance taken by the organization aligns with the interests of the telecom industry.

    Here is a good rundown of why you shouldn't trust anything the ITIF says: http://stopthecap.com/2013/02/13/telecom-sock-puppets-attack-industry-critics-facts-dont-matter-only-how-you-interpret-them/

    The kind of research produced by the ITIF is tainted as long as they don’t reveal who is paying for these research reports. As Stop the Cap! readers have learned well, following corporate money usually helps expose the real agenda of these so-called “think tanks,” which are created to distort reality and quietly echo the agenda of their paymasters with a veneer of independence and credibility.

    What is scary is that congressmen actually take the ITIF's word seriously (should be no surprise why).

  65. Actual Competition by speedlaw · · Score: 1

    I live in one of the few places the media cartel has messed it up. We have both Docsis 3.0 cable AND FiOS on my street. They actually compete, so I get mid level CATV, three phone lines, and 20/5 Internet (observed) for $150 per month. I had FiOS up until two years ago but it was almost twice the price, and they don't bring TV into my system. (When the collusive deal was made between FiOS and Cable providers, we ended up with internet and phone by fiber. A few blocks over, the same system carries TV too, but not in our Village. We've asked Verizon but they aren't interested...even though the system is fully installed and TV is a few keystrokes away.) The FiOs connection was 30/5, but I think you can get 50 now. My Fios bill (with three landlines at full price plus taxes) was in the $220 range...and then I had to use satellite for TV (plus $65). Compare this to my inlaws, in a small city with only one provider. They get the same DOCSIS package but it is about $30 per month more...no competition and too far for OTA TV. FiOs isn't a possibility, nor will it ever be for them. My parents in NYC have FiOs, and a near $300 per month bill. The last mile there is a few feet. Verizon, meanwhile is putting up cell towers, but as VZ wireless is not the same as VZ FiOs, we can't locally squeeze them to turn on TV. I'm not complaining. We have competition, which means both systems keep things working and our pricing is limited. Exactly what the big guys don't want.

  66. The Factual Background by iPolicy · · Score: 1

    It's interesting to see a discussion of my op-ed on Slashdot, it's been a while since I've had my work critiqued here. The last thread I remember on one of my pieces was the text of a speech I gave on net neutrality in 2008 that ended up being the second most read piece on CircleID for the year, http://www.circleid.com/posts/86147_net_neutrality_innovation_081/ Slashdot effect. . Many of the claims in the op-ed are controversial because they're contrary to conventional wisdom, but they're all based on empirical data. You can see the research here: http://www.itif.org/publications/whole-picture-where-america-s-broadband-networks-really-stand and view a panel discussion with members of the FCC's National Broadband Plan team. . The op-ed doesn't address the specific problems with rural broadband, of course. The approach that most policy analysts support is to re-purpose the Universal Service Fund that presently supports telephone service in rural areas for broadband, but the costs need to be brought under control. Subsidies can be as high as $50,000 per line per year, and that's obviously neither sustainable nor fair to the urban telephone users who pay for the subsidies. If it's any comfort, rural broadband is better in the US than it is in most countries, even if it's not as good as it is in the suburbs and cities where the market works. In general, 94% of Americans have some sort of wireline broadband option, 4G/LTE will be available to 98% by 2015, and satellite is available to the rest at ever-improving speeds; currently two carriers provide speeds > 10 Mbps by satellite, and it's much better than most people think. . Publicly financed broadband isn't really an option for competitive markets because the higher speed networks are not shareable in the same way that ADSL networks are. Cable, xPON, and even Vectored DSL require exclusive use of the wires at layer one, so the days of attaching your own DSLAM in a CO are in the past. . The US is installing more fiber every year than Europe, despite having less population, land mass, and population density, and more Americans use broadband per capita than Europeans, so the complaints about the U. S. market system don't seem to reflect any legitimate issues. . I notice that the usual critics have denounced ITIF here, as they usually do. So let me point out that the University of Pennsylvania's Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program ranks ITIF as the fifth most important science and technology think tank in the world: http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=think_tanks . Carry on.

    1. Re:The Factual Background by dave420 · · Score: 1

      So you are cherry-picking the metrics by which you reach your result. Gotcha. Wonderfully illuminating, and a benefit to all society. It doesn't matter how much fiber the US is rolling out compared to anywhere else - the benefits are not being passed on to the customers, which is what really matters. Infrastructure means squat when it's not being utilized. Prices in the US are high, and the service is terrible. Some geographic areas are improving, but some are getting worse. No legitimate issues? Get a grip.

    2. Re:The Factual Background by iPolicy · · Score: 1

      If by "cherry-picking the metrics" you mean "citing actual research data instead of just spewing lame anecdotes," I'm guilty as charged, your honor. There are 144 footnotes in the Whole Picture report, so that's a lot of cherries.

  67. I've experienced broadband in Asia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This claim is 100% BS.

    I paid US$ 10 per month for 30 Mbps in Taipei

    I pay US$ 70 per month for 10 Mbps in the Silicon Valley!

    If the claim was: "We are total dregs compared to anyone else so any improvement must be a large % increase", yeah, maybe that's mathematically correct but on any other metric, US broadband is a piece of shit.

  68. Re: You have a virus by OldHawk777 · · Score: 1

    Notice the regurgitive repetitiveness of your comment. You have a DOS bot on YourCleanPC.

    --
    Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
  69. More competition would be nice by riondluz · · Score: 1

    I have Fairpoint as my provider and pay 49.99 per month for 15Mb pipe (less a discount for annual commit). I spoke w/them yesterday inquiring about getting a biz account; thinking i might save myself the $60/mo i pay to my colo for server hosting.

    They informed me that at biz account at same speed would cost me $109/mo plus monthly charges for any extra IP addresses ($24 for 6).
    What explains the difference in cost? A fixed IP address. That's it. WTF?

    --
    resist propaganda
  70. Hence, USA QoS problems continue ad nauseam .... by OldHawk777 · · Score: 1

    ITIF Senior Fellow Richard Bennett (I think) could be a TelCo, CableCo, a/o SatCo lobbyist. This is more Republican/Democrat comical relief, a real fecal attempt to distract US from the actual shit and cost of "America's (US, CA, MX ...?) broadband networks and services. Well it was the NYTimes, maybe he just meant US, but that would make Bennett wrong, unless he was talking about the BigBiz, Financial sector or PRISM, Echelon .... Well okay USA homes and small business do maybe, probably, indirectly ... pay for the broadband backbone networks/infrastructure that provides BigBiz-entitlements of far better QoS. Yep, that would explain that simple misunderstanding of actuality by M. Ricky Bennett. Then again maybe he was correct for CA and MX? US infrastructure decays, because the wealthy-entitled few insist "The People" pay for problems and everything that the wealthy and BigBiz use for free (airports, seaports, roads, bridges ... networks, military ...).

    If we could distribute police, fire, infrastructure ... fairly to the folks paying for everything via hidden fees, taxes, low pay, no benefits ... maybe we could get the assholes to move to Canada or Mexico.

    --
    Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
  71. Re:What!? Dang, you are a good and funny fool! by OldHawk777 · · Score: 1

    I had to say this again.

    Obfuscation and excuses for the telecommunications, infrastructure, and economic situation perpetuates the abuse of US by them wealthy-entitled few masters who use US People like work-unit slaves. Did you get paid for your obfuscation and excuses, or is it just politics? You did spin-truth well.

    --
    Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
  72. Re:What!? You should be paid for spin-truths %~P by OldHawk777 · · Score: 1

    I am +60yo. I have worked telecommunication for decades (from the One MaBell ... Present). I made money off Cisco, Lucent ... stock and sold before the .com crash. You know what you are talking about, but you are intentionally trolling all US on /.. Why are you insisting on bullshit being true? Do you work for Comcast, Verizon ...?

    --
    Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
  73. Re:What!? Jon3K is just a troll. by OldHawk777 · · Score: 1

    The questions are: Is he a fool? or Is he paid? Why look up anything for either type of troll.

    --
    Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?