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

Posted by timothy on from the because-public-utilities-are-always-awesome dept.

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?

48 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. US Post Office by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's your best case scenario.

    1. Re:US Post Office by unimacs · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The USPS example makes a pretty good case actually. A British study found that the U.S. postal service is the most efficient in the world.

      The problem is that snail mail is dated technology and our reliance on it is waning.

    2. Re:US Post Office by DexterIsADog · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'll take it. The Post Office provides incredibly good, reliable service, despite the way it is micro-managed by Congress, and expected to operate like a private corporation while providing universal service, which no corporation would do, and prefunding retirement benefits for workers, some of whom aren't even born yet.

      I (heart) U.S. Post Office.

    3. Re:US Post Office by Richy_T · · Score: 3, Funny

      and prefunding retirement benefits for workers, some of whom aren't even born yet.

      This is probably fair. The government has already spent the money they'll be earning.

    4. Re:US Post Office by DexterIsADog · · Score: 2

      The service it provides is only "good" and "reliable" when you have nothing to compare it to. So let me clue you in on a little history.

      (lots of rant, some more assumption that I know nothing about the post office, some resentful personal anecdote, blah, blah, blah...)

      But don't believe the propaganda. "Pre-funding" is what ALL private businesses do. At least, those that offer retirement at all. They pay into an investment fund, and that's all the money there is. They don't have the option (as the Post Office used to) of simply promising outrageous retirement benefits willy-nilly, without having to worry about where the money was going to come from. Which, of course, was the whole problem. So stop railing against a perfectly sensible regulation. They now have to pay for things the way other organizations do. That's all that "pre-funding" means. And if a government-mandated monopoly can't start doing their jobs again, while balancing their books, then let private industry (APART from government for a change) do it. Private companies can do, and have done, a better job for less. Anybody who says otherwise just isn't telling the truth. And other government-mandated monopolies in all other areas have all managed to not just get the job done, but make huge profits in the process. But that's another story.

      Fewer than half of businesses with retirement liabilities pre-fund, so thanks for the falsehood, though I admire the confidence with which you stated it. Also, calling the post office a monopoly is seriously myopic, especially when you go on to mention the private companies that directly compete with a so-called monopoly.

      Okay, you don't like the U.S. Post Office. Got it.

  2. My rating... by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is very slow because AT&T doesn't see any reason to invest. They're already getting money. Now, if Google came to town, they might see things differently. I'm only a couple blocks from the switch, but the wire is 1970s copper.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:My rating... by redmid17 · · Score: 2

      Very much so. The geographic monopolies (and probably collusion) are killing broadband internet competition in the US. More Google access the better in my opinion

    2. Re:My rating... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What a dumb article. It's the cable companies and telecoms that asked for the municipal monopolies. So we aren't supposed to blame them for the very monopolies they asked for?

    3. Re:My rating... by SerpentMage · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Sorry, but that is BS...

      "In return, Kansas City got a fiber network it couldn’t possibly afford to build on its own — or maintain. Municipalities like Provo, Utah that thought they could afford to build their own public fiber network found they couldn’t afford to run it. That’s why Provo, Utah sold their fiber network to Google for just $1."

      Ok, so the tax payer funds it, and then gives it to somebody else to run for one dollar! Yeah that is the problem! Wow, if we all just did that, fund the thing we want and then give it for free to some private enterprise! Sounds like a bargain to me!

      While local government has a role to play, no doubt there, having one company after another dig up the same piece of ground is actually quite silly! Here in Switzerland where we are ranked pretty high the solution has been to allow access to the underlying networks. Competition here is the ability of a competitor to have access to the fiber, or wire that another company has put into the ground. Force the AT&T's to allow anybody to use their pipes for a reasonable fee and very quickly you will get higher speeds and lower costs.

      --

      "You can't make a race horse of a pig"
      "No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
    4. Re:My rating... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 3, Informative

      So the local government forced them to lobby for the municipal monopolies? They only exist because of the actions of the cable companies and telecos basically demanding that they be created or else they weren't going to provide the city with service. To then act like they are entirely complicit in creation of such monopolies is to insult everyone's intelligence.

    5. Re:My rating... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No one has downmodded them. Go play the victim card elsewhere.

      Oh and the big cable companies being defended in that article basically demanded that the municipal monopolies be created or they wouldn't provide service. They are not saints or innocent. They are complicit in what happened.

    6. Re:My rating... by rudy_wayne · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Personally I think over regulation is the problem. Wired agrees:

      http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/

      Google (or somebody like them) would be more likely to come if it weren't so hard to.

      Completely wrong. Even if all the regulations were changed, even if they were completely eliminated, we would still be in the same situation we are today. The person who wrote that article demonstrates that they have no understanding of the issue when they say:

      Deploying broadband infrastructure isn’t as simple as merely laying wires underground: that’s the easy part.

      Running wire to every home in the country is difficult, expensive (even without all the regulations) and very time consuming. That's why Verizon abandoned their rollout of fiber and why Google will do the same after they connect a couple of cities.

      Running all new wiring is a waste of time and money when we already have the infrastructure in place to give people decent speed. If I wanted, I could get 50Mbps from my local cable company. It's not fiber speed but its fast enough for me - and most everyone else. But it's ridiculously expensive, and, it's rendered worthless by monthly bandwidth caps. We know what the problem is -- lack of competition. But having a dozen different companies all running their own wires all over the place is neither practical nor desirable.

      We've already wired the entire country. Twice. Running more wires is not the answer. Until we break the broadband monopoly and force the existing companies to open up their networks this problem will remain and everyone reading Slashdot today will be dead and gone long before Google or anyone else wires the entire country with fiber.

    7. Re:My rating... by countach74 · · Score: 2

      Of course the telco's want monopolies. The problem isn't that or even the threats of not doing business there, the problem is that the government grants monopolies. If that weren't true, there would be no reason for large corporations to lobby for them. You have to expect companies to do everything they can to stay in a position of market dominance: it would be foolish to expect them to not look after "their best interest." Blame the system, not those who operate in it.

    8. Re:My rating... by shentino · · Score: 4, Interesting

      We blame BOTH the companies AND the government.

      If the fox raids the henhouse because the dog was taking a nap, you skin the fox AND you send the dog to bed without supper.

    9. Re:My rating... by Sique · · Score: 2

      "In return, Kansas City got a fiber network it couldn’t possibly afford to build on its own — or maintain. Municipalities like Provo, Utah that thought they could afford to build their own public fiber network found they couldn’t afford to run it. That’s why Provo, Utah sold their fiber network to Google for just $1."

      I wonder why Provo UT couldn't afford to build their own public fiber network. The town of Innsbruck (Austria), which has about the same number of inhabitants (121,000 vs. 117,000) and covers the same area (~40 mi), could build it and maintain it, and now you can get 10 mbit/sec fiber to the home for €20 (currently about $26.50) unlimited bandwith.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
  3. It's about competition by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm in one of the areas that is served by both cable and FIOS, and my service is nothing like the average 8 or so.

    I'm on Cablevison, which recently bumped their Boost tier to 120 Mbps down and 37 up. This tier is only $5 a month more than the base tier.

    There are no caps either.

    The main thing you need is to get rid of the competitive restraints. No franchises please!

    1. Re:It's about competition by NJRoadfan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Meanwhile the same Verizon is abandoning copper lines and refuses to run fiber in its place. In many areas this is a ploy to get those folks onto cable internet, who Verizon recently made a deal with to get some wireless spectrum, but some areas don't even have the cable option. Talk about progress. Places in a country that once boasted the most reliable wireline network in the world now have zip outside of an overpriced wireless service.

    2. Re:It's about competition by Jon_S · · Score: 2

      This.

      I was in a VZW store and was surprised about a broken cell phone when a salesman came up to talk to me about home internet (surprised since I know VZW is only half owned by Verizon). He actually wanted to know if I was interested in FIOS, but I told him I knew it wasn't offered in my neighborhood.

      I then proceeded to tell them the tale about my Verizon DSL service. I am only two blocks from the CO (short copper loop), and have had it for several years (the nerd that I am, before that I had ISDN as it was fastest available at that time). Speed was great. I got letters in the mail asking if I wanted to bump my service up to 7 Mbs from the 3 I had subscribed to, but I didn't bite since I never seemed to be waiting on anything unless I was DL'ing a new Ubuntu distro or something (I don't watch much video or TV).

      Recently, even listening to 128 kbs internet radio streams started pausing to buffer. Sometimes I get 1 Mbs in verizon's speed test. I spent an hour with an Indian fellow on the phone for tech support and he said he at the end he would have to escalate it and nothing ever happened.

      After telling this tale of woe to the guy in the VZW store, I was floored when he then proceeded to try to sell me on either a mobile hotspot (!!! sure, I'll never need more than a gig or two a month, right....) or, get this, to sign up with a cable company.

      Friggin' unbelievable. Meanwhile, still stuck with a ~1 Mbs DSL connection that used to be very very fast. Something fishy is going on here.

  4. Speed? Access! by Pumpkin+Tuna · · Score: 2

    Speed? Screw speed! I live in a relatively populated area in North Carolina. AT&T won't give me high speed. The cable company won't run lines .2 miles into my subdivision. I have a 4G verizon antenna on the side of my house that I use to pay $70 a month for a 10 GB data cap.

    This is holding back growth on the net. If I had real access and real bandwidth, I would be creating and consuming a lot more Internet content, and spending money in the process.

  5. Government-run Utility by Krazy+Kanuck · · Score: 2

    "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?"

    I'm not sure there are too many in favor of that idea anymore (recent privacy issues, corp lobbying). There would need to be an unprecedented amount net neutrality and transparency involved; which we've been promised but received little of in other government projects.

  6. Re:Eff yeaahh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The United States of America: The greatest country in the world, the last superpower, born of divine providence.

    Unless you escaped from being indoctrinated with patriotism.

  7. NSA is the bottleneck by flyingfsck · · Score: 2

    The problem is that the user speeds need to be throttled to something that the NSA recording can keep up with.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  8. lt and cz are small; us is big by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 5, Insightful

    See subject. Of course compact nations are going to have better connectivity than sprawling ones.

    I don't often cheerlead the US, but it's impressive that they're in the top ten. Sweden only just pipped them, and it tries awesomely hard to provide its citizens with good 'net access.

    1. Re:lt and cz are small; us is big by Princeofcups · · Score: 2

      See subject. Of course compact nations are going to have better connectivity than sprawling ones.

      Then stop sprawling. Just stop supplying service to locations with too low density.

      Waiting for the "it's our god given right to live on 10 acres in the middle of no-where and still expect all the luxuries of civilization" flames.

      --
      The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
    2. Re:lt and cz are small; us is big by PortHaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

      1/2 Population density, but that is an average of population/territory. It's an irrelevant figure. Canada has the same thing, but 90% of Canadians live in a very small area of Canada's territory (surprisingly, almost all within a 100 miles of U.S. border).

      I wager, that Sweden, only has to wire a few major metropolis areas to cover 90% of it's population. So a better measure would be, in order to provide coverage to 90% of your population, how much land mass do you need to wire. And in this, no country on the planet comes close to America.

      If you graphed this out, we would likely appear an order of magnitude higher than any other nation.

  9. Government efficiency by Sarten-X · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a socialism-loving liberal, I have to say that I find the idea of an ISP utility ludicrous at best.

    Social services are appropriate where there is an absolute goal. We don't want houses on fire, we don't want criminals running around uncaught, and we don't want roads to decay, just because such services are unprofitable. Civilization has an absolute need for those civil services. However, we don't need fast Internet connectivity... Yes, maybe some cities will get government-built fiber downtown, but the rest of the state will be too busy fighting politics to actually improve any infrastructure. We'll mostly just be stuck with whatever minimum service the politicians find acceptable, and the infrastructure budget will go toward filling the requisite layers of bureaucrats.

    On the other hand, ISPs have a clear business incentive to improve their speed and capacity (not that they've been actually doing so). By being faster, they can claim an edge over their competitor in a market. Unfortunately, we seem to have hit an impasse where the only options in a region are "crappy cable" or "crappy DSL", thanks to government-granted monopolies in communities.

    So why not both? I say we void all community monopoly agreements, and require private ISPs to provide fixed-bandwidth service to a government ISP. The government ISP can be a fallback. If my community's ISP options are too slow or too expensive, I can instead pay some standard rate for government service, which would go over the ISP's lines anyway. The local ISP still has to carry my traffic, but they don't get my money. The downside is that I'm stuck with whatever basic service the government decides is suitable.

    --
    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    1. Re:Government efficiency by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 2

      too busy fighting politics to actually improve any infrastructure

      "misappropriation of tax dollars" would be a more accurate way of describing the measly end results of infrastructure improvements.

      --
      Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
    2. Re:Government efficiency by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Informative

      On the other hand, ISPs have a clear business incentive to improve their speed and capacity (not that they've been actually doing so).

      Clearly, they don't.

      They have incentive to keep the networks exactly as they are, gradually charge us more over time, oversubscribe their services, and do nothing until they're forced to and then directly charge us for network improvements -- because that's pretty much what they do now.

      If they were expanding capacity and bandwidth, we'd see the price of telecom services going down -- instead over time, it's been going up and hasn't really been improved.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  10. Re:What with all the news lately... by Sique · · Score: 2

    This reminds me of a phone call an Austrian comedian made to the U.S. embassy when the Snowden papers started to appear. He told them that the pictures he took from the brother's wedding two years ago got lost when the hard drive died, and he asked if the NSA can just provide him with their backup.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  11. Rights of way by MozeeToby · · Score: 2

    Don't make ISPs a utility, make conduit a utility and throw out all the local government granted monopolies. Conduit should be put down any time the road is torn up, anyone should be able to lease space in the conduit to run whatever they want through it. New cable company wants to move in? They lease spot in the conduit. Google wants to install fiber to the home? They lease a spot. Alternatively the same could be done directly with fiber, the city puts it in and leases bandwidth to 3rd parties, but that doesn't seem as flexible to me.

  12. How about MEDIAN rather than AVERAGE? by evilviper · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Much like fuel mileage ratings on vehicles, we get a lot more benefit by getting people with the lowest numbers up to more reasonable numbers (eg., dial-up to 1Mbps DSL) than we do by giving a select few a very high speed connection to bring up the "average" speed, while many people suffer with dial-up speeds...

    Perhaps it would be best to measure MEDIAN speeds, rather than AVERAGE. Or better yet, a percentage of people in the country with available speeds below XYZ.

    And where does the whole EU rank? I'm sure if we broke the US down into individual states, some would come out higher than average as well, putting them ahead of most EU member nations. And there are clearly a number of EU member nations falling well behind the US average, which would bring the EU average down. The other comparable countries, like Russia, China, India, etc., all are far behind the US average. So even with these numbers, it doesn't look all that bad for the US.

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  13. s/Government-run/Government-regulated/ by PoochieReds · · Score: 2

    I don't think a government run utility would be better than what we have today, and would likely be worse. What would be better? What should have been done in the original 1996 laws:

            Force the telcos and cable companies to break up.

    Really, it's as simple as that...

    The main problem with the current situation is that there is near-zero competition. At best you have "competition" between two ILECs (cable and telco). In some cases they will "lease" their lines to competitors, but who wants to be in a business where you're the customer of your main competitor? That's guaranteed not to go well.

    So in my "dream" solution...

    Last-mile providers would be a regulated monopoly (duopoly I guess in the case where there is both twisted-pair and coax) that would just be in charge of the cabling and infrastructure between actual customers and the "central office". They would then lease the lines to "dialtone" (bandwidth?) providers at rates set by the local public utility commission, but would be barred from providing any content on those lines.

    That would set up the situation such that multiple companies could compete based on the services that they could provide to customers and price.

    I'm not holding my breath for such an outbreak of sanity though... ;)

  14. TVA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Alternatively, best case could be TVA which is more or less self sufficient, well loved by most people it serves, and provided a nearly unimaginable prosperity boost to a region that was behind the times and lacked the resources to catch up.

    1. Re:TVA by Artifakt · · Score: 4, Informative

      When the last New York power grid failure caused a cascade effect that dragged down parts of 13 state's grids, the wave of failures stopped where TVA's grid starts. Stopped cold. There was a point where TVA systems were regulating the entire national grid, spinning up idle hydroelectric turbines as fast as possible to keep stable power flowing all the way to the west coast and down into Mexico. If your lights went out when New York went down, but came back on in a minute or two, that was TVA Hydro and your local grid was very probably being remotely controlled by TVA engineers. If you got power back in a day or two, that was probably TVA nuclear (it takes time to ramp nuke power up - sorry, but it just does). If you got power back faster than New York itself, ask your local sources if a bunch of TVA engineers were involved. If you live west of Chicago, and you didn't see an outage, most of the pros agree you would have if TVA hadn't been able to hold the line - an outage in all 48 contiguous states and probably affecting all of continental North America.
                    But it's a US Federal program, begun by Liberals such as FDR, so, you know, it's Eeevilll!!!

      --
      Who is John Cabal?
    2. Re:TVA by dkf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Last year at Christmas time I had to replace a string of lights cause one went out and rather than search for the one of 150 I just purchased a new set, can I thank TVA engineers for that?

      Unless someone who happens to work for the TVA was helping you out personally, no.

      That said, the grid isn't a string of christmas lights. It's much more complex than that because you've got long transmission lines arranged in a mesh and many sources of power. Oh, and you critically need to keep the phases of the power sources synchronized or you cause even more damage. That makes your analogy suck. Sorry.

      The principal reason the TVA has a better ability to respond to a cascading failure situation is precisely that they're not very efficient. The spare capacity meant that they had the capability to increase power output when the shit hit the fan when nobody else did. For the overall stability of the system, a public good that you clearly benefit from, not running everything as close to the edge as possible is required. But that in turn means that the short-term profit of the power producer is not maximized; if every producer is being forced to maximize short-term profit over everything else, that's most strongly enabled by pushing everything into the domain where nearly any unexpected problem causes total collapse. Think of it like cooling a liquid so that it becomes supercritical; the tiniest speck of dust can cause it to flash-freeze. You see similar effects in public transportation networks, road traffic, financial systems, etc. Focus too strongly on optimizing for the case where everything is doing fine and you'll get catastrophic failures more frequently as the system will have reduced ability to absorb random shocks (which happen all the time, even if most go unnoticed).

      Which isn't to say that power production has to be government-run. It clearly doesn't. What it does have to be is somewhat over-provisioned so that the extra load of a squirrel self-immolating in a backwoods substation doesn't cause total systemic failure, and that over-provisioning has to be paid for somehow. Oh, and the regulator has to force this on providers; letting the shit hit the fan just to get one more quarter of increasing profits is too damaging. (Alternatively, you could regulate by lawsuit, but that also sucks...) Welcome to complex systems; the real solutions aren't always the ones you want.

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
    3. Re:TVA by slimjim8094 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sorry, you don't know much about how power generation works. All your points are valid, but there are market incentives in the system to provide the redundancy you talk about.

      Basically a regional grid authority asks each power plant what their marginal cost is (there's separate consideration for fixed costs). This all gets put on a graph of capacity vs marginal cost - i.e., hydro and wind is lowest (negligible marginal costs), followed by nuclear, coal, gas, etc all the way to "peaker" plants. Everybody is paid the "clearing price" - the marginal price for providing the last megawatt of capacity requested (determined the night before, broadly)

        - There's tons of excess capacity. Some is a hot-spare and ready to take on load at a moment's notice in case a plant goes offline, or some other fault. Some just is sitting around because they don't think they'll need it that day (peakers are usually unused, gas plants are usually unused overnight, etc).
        - There are economic incentives involved to power plant operators, in the form of premiums for things like black start capability, that address exactly the sort of "redundant" excess capacity (over the unused capacity from above) that's sometimes necessary.

      The blackout in question was a transmission issue. A line failed, load was shifted to another one, that took on too much load and sagged and died, power couldn't go anywhere, grid goes kaboom. That's completely separate from generation - the problem was too much generation, not not enough.

      --
      I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
  15. Big Companies Oppressing America by SpaceManFlip · · Score: 5, Interesting
    AT&T and Verizon are both working to keep broadband out of people's hands, because they see more money in their shitty expensive "4G" wireless service.

    I have a perfect example: I live a half-mile from a major Internet fibre line, which AT&T owns the hardware to access, and I have a max available 3Mb DSL as the only choice for Internet. One of my neighbors would love to get on the same shitty "broadband" that I pay for, but AT&T told him "there are no more ports available" in our area, after multiple attempts to get through to someone with real answers. Same story about copper going away etc.

    Taxpayers actually paid for that Internet fibre run that runs nearby, and AT&T somehow keeps anyone from accessing it with their Congress-owning money powers. Fuck those evil bastards.

    1. Re:Big Companies Oppressing America by bonehead · · Score: 2

      This sounds much more reasonable.

      AT&T should be expected to EARN their revenue by offering a quality service at a competitive price. They should not be "guaranteed" revenue.

      If AT&T can't figure out a way to derive profit from ownership of a taxpayer-subsidized Internet backbone, then control of that backbone should be handed off to a company with competent management.

  16. Number 9 by jbolden · · Score: 2

    I'm sorry. We have a country with almost all major services well behind the western world. We have a lower practical population density than most other countries because of suburban living. We come in 9 and you are throwing a fit. That's better than our bridges, our roads, our schools, our hospitals... I'm thrilled we ranked that high.

  17. Re:Q&A by deanklear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    The fatal flaw of all of the libertarian nonsense is that the failure or corruption of certain governments can only be replaced with privatization. The correct answer to ineffective government is effective government. Let me provide you with a concrete example:

    In Washington State, in areas where fiber is provided by the state, I can get a 100x100 connection for $59 per month. No contract. From a private entity. How is that possible?

    Multiple private organizations, who have an incentive to screw each other over and no incentive to work together to cover different neighborhoods, cannot provide the best plan for modern infrastructure. Even in the face of overpriced (point given: has to be relatively non-corrupt) government costs, it's still cheaper because there is no marketing department, legal department, or endless stratification of middle managers doing fuck-all in a building somewhere. Rent-seeking necessary infrastructure services don't work well with privatization, because they have the upper hand on pricing and will stuff their organization with so much bloat it would make a bureaucrat blush. When it's a government entity, there is at least some chance of oversight and cost control. When it's privatized, the inefficiency and price hikes are all but inevitable, unless there is real competition.

    In modern societies the basic physical plants are installed and run by the government and funded through equitable taxation. A similar analogy is that of the road system: multiple private roads would never work, because you couldn't depend on the pricing or the availability, depending on whatever juvenile contract disputes the private corporations were engaged in at the moment. But when those costs are socialized and the infrastructure is available to all responsible parties at a low cost, you can have true competition on common infrastructure.

    Let's say I want to ship something: I have an address, provided by the state, a road provided by the state that will absolutely connect me to any other address also provided by the state. So I can choose between Fedex, DHL, UPS, or even a startup like uShip. Imagine if you had a fiber connection to your home, which would cost you less in taxes than you pay for coffee every month, which was available to Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, etc. They're going to listen to customer demands, because there's actually a chance you might switch. Right now I have no choice but to deal with Comcast's endless bullshit, because I don't have any other choices available. They happen to be the provider to my location.

    So, keep the libertarian fantasy going. Dog-ear that copy of Atlas Shrugged for the nth time. When you're ready to discuss solutions, consider reality.

    PS: Google, Microsoft, Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T have all gladly handed over your data to the government. Being held by private corporations didn't change a damn thing, did it?

  18. We're number 9! ? BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    There aren't even 362,880 countries on Earth. How can we be 9!?

    1. Re:We're number 9! ? BS. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 5, Informative

      Before somebody without much of a clue mods the parent down, please allow me to point out that 9! = 9 factorial = 362880.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  19. Re:We do have good Internet. by Pumpkin+Tuna · · Score: 2

    You have a really skewed vision of what metropolitan areas are. The area where I live is really pretty built up. I'm 30 minutes outside downtown Charlotte. I don't live "in the sticks." AT&T offers DSL a mile and a half away from me, but not at my place. Charter runs cable down the road outside my subdivison but they won't run it .2 miles into the subdivision into my house.

    The truth is that the telecoms don't want to extent out into the suburbs any further than they have. They want to wait and get us with craptastic home wireless.

  20. The Answer by deanklear · · Score: 2

    The French rail operator SNCF told the California High-Speed Rail Authority that it could cut $30 billion off the projectâ(TM)s $68 billion estimated price tag. San Francisco can barely build underground light rail for the price that Tokyo pays for high-capacity subways. Los Angeles's planned subway to the sea will be a bit cheaper, but is still very expensive considering the area's lack of density.

    The budgets for other types of urban public-works projects can be just as shocking. Who can forget Boston's Big Dig, the $24 billion highway boondoggle? But mass-transit networks stand to lose most from out-of-control infrastructure costs.
    A huge part of the problem is that agencies can't keep their private contractors in check. Starved of funds and expertise for in-house planning, officials contract out the project management and early design concepts to private companies that have little incentive to keep costs down and quality up. And even when they know better, agencies are often forced by legislation, courts and politicians to make decisions that they know aren't in the public interest.

    US Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs

    It's the same reason we pay 1 trillion per year for our military. The same millionaires who infest congress also infest massive corporations, and their goal is to make cash and get re-elected to keep the ponzi scheme going. The latest fad answer is privatization -- despite all the evidence to the contrary -- and privately held corporations love to continue furthering that myth because it's in their own interest. There's no reason for corporate owned media to report the truth either.

    The actual answer is a few millennia old:

    "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."

    -Plato

    But, per the norm, America prefers solutions that are cheap, easy, and completely inefficient if you consider anything beyond the next financial quarter. We are democratically lazy, and we pay dearly for our societal incompetence, in treasure as well as blood.

  21. Re:Q&A by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 2

    So, keep the libertarian fantasy going. Dog-ear that copy of Atlas Shrugged for the nth time. When you're ready to discuss solutions, consider reality.

    Fantastic!

    Years ago I read Atlas Shrugged to find out what all the hubub was about. I would read it everyday at work during lunch. I had the book at my cube and people I had never talked to before would stop by and talk about the book and how much they were influenced by it, etc; It was like I had joined some secret society...

    My analysis after reading it?
    Boring and annoying.
    Pretty much all the time when I was reading it I was thinking, "yeah, but that isn't how the real world works".
    To me the Libertarian Dream makes about as much sense and is about as likely to work as the Communist Dream.

    Human Nature trumps ideology every time.

    --
    We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
  22. What is the first step? by turkeyfish · · Score: 2

    "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?"

    The first place to start is by voting out all republicans and tea party types, as otherwise you are never going to pass laws that permit the internet to be run as a government run utility. The modern republican party simply doesn't believe in the concept of government. They would prefer to live in a state of nihilism that reverts to a feudal system, in which the 1% rule and everyone else is a serf. In their minds the only people that count are corporate people.

    As far a government utilities go, Jefferson County, WA recently took over the production of electricity, which resulted in a significant reduction in my bill. Presently, I pay Comcast about $75/month for internet, pay CableOne $50/month for my other residence in Mississippi. If both were run as public utilities, I suspect I would probably pay about half that amount for the roughly the same service, since the top management in a public utility doesn't need to pay 7 figure salaries to the CEO and other corporate officers nor to they need to waste money advertising, which would save me having to watch at least a few commercials on TV.

  23. Re:Q&A by deanklear · · Score: 2

    Here's how ignorant you are on the subject of economics:

    It doesn't take a four paragraph dissertation to realize that if the government creates a natural monopoly (land access rights), then you won't have competition.

    "A monopoly describes a situation where a majority of sales in a market are undertaken by a single firm. A natural monopoly by contrast is a condition on the cost-technology of an industry whereby it is most efficient (involving the lowest long-run average cost) for production to be concentrated in a single firm." (WikiPedia)

    If you don't understand the words, I cannot help you understand anything else. Governments do not create natural monopolies. Natural monopolies exist because of certain market conditions.

    But let's look at the result of the choices in reacting to the reality of natural monopolies, in this case, broadband access costs by PPP per median mbits/sec:

    21.13 Mexico
    18.72 Greece
    09.86 Poland
    09.73 Chile
    05.46 Turkey
    05.42 United States
    04.85 Luxembourg
    04.62 Israel
    04.39 Spain
    04.33 Slovenia
    04.08 Czech Republic
    03.88 Ireland
    03.82 Germany
    03.82 Switzerland
    03.73 Hungary
    03.56 Iceland
    03.29 Canada
    03.27 Italy
    03.24 Austria
    03.21 Finland
    02.92 Australia
    02.77 New Zealand
    02.69 Estonia
    02.51 Belgium
    02.05 Norway
    01.84 Netherlands
    01.69 Slovak Republic
    01.67 Denmark
    01.60 United Kingdom
    01.58 Sweden
    01.45 France
    01.41 Japan
    01.38 Portugal
    00.33 Korea

    Socialized or heavily regulated solutions beat our system hands down, and absolutely crush private attempts on maximum speeds (look at the data for yourself, I'm done baby sitting you.) It appears that you are flat wrong on this subject, if data and research are acceptable forms of information.

    Also, there is nothing prevent competition in the delivery and quality of internet access over government owned fiber. As I have demonstrated, there is in fact more competition when the negative effects of privatization are removed from rent-seeking infrastructure, which you already know because you use the socialized road system that has a good deal to do with America's success in the modern world, and a good deal to do with how far we are behind more advanced infrastructure programs that have already starting hurting us today.

    (And yes, sticking to the facts instead of my own wish thinking has served my quite well over the years. You should try it.)

  24. Re:Q&A by ebno-10db · · Score: 2

    Meanwhile "libertarian" thought is nicely summed up by The Cato institute's web site: "Promoting an American public policy based on individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peaceful international relations"

    They forgot motherhood and apple pie. Who doesn't claim to promote those things?