We're Number 9! US Broadband Speeds Rise, But Slower Than Many Other Countries'

curtwoodward writes "The United States of America: The greatest country in the world, the last superpower, born of divine providence. Unless you're trying to connect to the Internet. The latest State of the Internet Report from network optimization company Akamai shows that the US has slipped in the global rankings of average connection speed, despite nearly 30 percent of yearly growth. That puts ol' Uncle Sam behind such economic powerhouses as Latvia and the Czech Republic. Oh, and we pay more, too. Is it finally time to shake up the ISP market and make Internet connections a public utility, on par with electricity and water? Or will edge projects like Google Fiber make a dent soon?" For those who favor the idea of Internet service as a government-run utility, what do you see as the best-case scenario for such a system?

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Q&A

[girlintraining]

For those who favor the idea of Internet service as a government-run utility, what do you see as the best-case scenario for such a system?

Pretty much what we have now. The NSA spending billions to monitor every aspect of it, something we can be quite sure doesn't slow down or impair internet traffic in any way... while funding to improve it is delayed, debated in committee, or rejected because "there's not sufficient demand for it." Plus the national security argument that upgrading our internet would make us vulnerable to cyber attack because it would require more resources to monitor it. *cough* Oh, and everything would be criminalized. Wait... it already is. And who supplied all that tech to Iran, China, etc., for their censorship programs?

That's the government for you; An epic cluster fuck you wind up paying through the nose for. I prefer to stick with private ownership, thank you very much... it's an epic cluster fuck I wind up paying through the nose for but I have my choice on how to be screwed.