Only One US City Makes "Top Ten Internet Cities Worldwide" List

An anonymous reader writes "A new report today has ranked the Top 10 'Internet Cities' around the globe, based on a set of five criteria: connection speed, availability of citywide WiFi, openness to innovation, support of public data, and security/data privacy. One might expect high-tech cities like San Francisco and Tel Aviv to appear on a list of 'Internet Cities,' but they don't. Indeed, no Middle Eastern cities appear here at all, and — due, largely, to the United States' poor Internet speeds — the only US city to make this ranking is Seattle."

Comments

American priorities

[MetalliQaZ]

Okay, that may be so, but can we get list of highest telco/cableco profit cities? I bet USA totally rocks that list.

Re:American priorities

[rwa2]

Don't worry if your city wasn't included, I'm sure it's on this "Top 100" list:
http://www.symantec.com/about/news/release/article.jsp?prid=20120215_01

Heh, marketing.

Re:American priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Suprised even one made it. THeres a whole lotta places in the world that are so far ahead of the U.S. in many ways...

Re:American priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

'merica, back to back World War champions!

Re:American priorities

[Seumas]

Actually, the really important metrics are less "how fast and how easily available", but how controlled, censored, and monitored?

I'll take my 30mbps, home-bound-connection-only service without censorship or monitoring (if it existed) over 200mbps or free city-wide-wifi anywhere that content is heavily filtered or monitored any day.

Re:American priorities

[ArcadeMan]

If you make the list about profit per user, Canada will be number one, far ahead everyone else including the USA.

Re:American priorities

[buddyglass]

Well, for one, the U.S. has a higher HDI score than any of the countries whose cities made the Internet Top 10. Then again, I put about as much stock in the U.N. HDI data as I do the Internet Top 10.

Re:American priorities

[aliquis]

https://bahnhof.se/priv/bredband
https://ipredator.se/page/payment#payment_pricing

Maybe?

And we've got our own intelligence gathering service (http://www.fra.se/)

May be better than some others at least.

Best would of course be if it wasn't necessary and the governments just let us be.

Re:American priorities

[1s44c]

Maybe so but it helps to only consider one thing at a time.

I was amazed that Prague made the list. It's a lovely place to visit but it is the capital of an ex-communist country, and the last I heard the government telephone company still owned all the infrastructure.

It's amusing to see Amsterdam making the list. I've dealt with their ex-state phone company, KPN, and it's always a world of pain to get them to do anything.

Re:American priorities

[1s44c]

Good point, and yet again I have no mod points.

Re:American priorities

[angel'o'sphere]

Because the base level of the USA is so low that growth is necessary/obvious?
Why would a country being decades of the US need/habe a high HDI score?

Re:American priorities

[number11]

Actually, the really important metrics are less "how fast and how easily available", but how controlled, censored, and monitored?

Well, the US scores pretty bad on the "control" metric (DMCA, TOS against servers, throttling, etc.). Not too bad on censorship, unless maybe you try to put up a website for some organization on the government's current (and arbitrary) list of enemies. As home of the NSA and its kindred organizations (who sometimes lie in court about where their data came from), probably the most "monitored" of any country, though places like China and Saudi Arabia try pretty hard, too.

And I'd say the "data privacy" is just as important as "controlled, censored, and monitored". The US scores terrible on that metric.

Re:American priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Da, komrade! Capitalist swine.

Re:American priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, about these World Wars where America claims to be the conquering hero. The first one (1914 - 1918) ended in a stalemate. The well dressed and well fed U.S. arrival in 1917 demoralized the Europeans into realizing it was in everyone's best interest to have an armistice: a situation where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. The hostilities remained, it was just a cessation while attempting to negotiate a permanent peace.

Then the U.S. convinced everyone to agree Germany was at fault, requiring them to pay everyone for damages and create only industrial factories limited to non war like production. With this huge debt hanging over their heads making them feel like suckers for agreeing to the Armistice, the U.S. compounded Germany's weak economic problems by subsequently causing a world wide financial crisis 10 years later when its stock market crashed due to U.S. banks making investments with little or no assets. People in Germany, especially the warring factions of unemployed veterans, that were becoming bitter psychopaths decided the war wasn't over. This time they were going to do it right.

The second one (1939 - 1945) was lost due to bad timing on a gamble that stretched thin the German resources, either sticking with the original plan to invade and conquer the British Isles, ignoring Russia and eliminate a U.S. foothold or go into Russia a couple weeks sooner as originally planned. The U.S arrival in 1944 was enough to keep the Germans from regaining their resources while fighting the Russians. The European scientists working for the U.S. made the Japanese defeat to easy. There is a theory, like the Germans, they wanted to surrender to the Americans to avoid losing to the Russians with or without the use of the two bombs.

Re:American priorities

[buddyglass]

That's not how the HDI works. For instance, the top two are Norway and Australia. Or do maintain those two are even less highly developed than the US?

Re:American priorities

[jnmontario]

Not if Verison comes to Canada. I'm sure profit will completely fall away and they'll all just break even..... (inside Canadian joke, wait no - our telecom industry is the horrendously oligarchic joke).

Re:American priorities

[ygtai]

To some extent, I would say. Filtered/censored info is better than nothing at all -- unbearable speed is a filtering itself...

Re: American priorities

[Dog135]

Of course Seattle made the top 10. We have more coffee shop hot spots per capita then anywhere else on Earth.

Re:American priorities

[Ash Vince]

Maybe so but it helps to only consider one thing at a time.

I was amazed that Prague made the list. It's a lovely place to visit but it is the capital of an ex-communist country, and the last I heard the government telephone company still owned all the infrastructure.

You seem to automatically associate government owning the telco with it being crap whereas the truth is exactly the opposite. When these are government owned they throw money at stuff since nobody is looking for a profit.

Re:American priorities

[div_2n]

Any sufficiently large list of cities remotely dealing with "Internet" that don't include Chattanooga, TN, with it's 1Gig FTTH option for pretty much the entire city is a load of crap.

Re:American priorities

[thaylin]

well, when you start attacking people because you are afraid they MAY help another country you are at war with, escalating it to a larger, global, scale, why would you not be at fault for the start of a world war? Second no matter what may have been happening, all that matters was those 2 bombs.

Re:American priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Am surprised Singapore didn't make the cut, with GB Fibre to homes available here.

Am on 100 mbps Fibre for about USD 30 a month. Probably will upgrade to 200 mbps when my contract ends next year March. Multiple ISPs here, so we got ample competition.

We also have free wifi at alot of places (Mcdonalds / Starbucks / Shopping Malls / etc), with widespread 3G / 4G deployed.

Online payment is possible for many things, including various government services.

How the hell is Singapore not in that list?????

Re: American priorities

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

That's right you sit down at a coffee shop and can connect to five free "max bars" connections.

Re: American priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

The wifi Internet connection in the Seattle airport to be the best I have seen by far.

Fast, no hassles, it just works.

Re: American priorities

[fuzzytv]

That's bullshit, especially in this case. State-owned monopoly has no reason to compete with anyone. There might be some exceptions, but I live in Prague and the services used to be absolutely terrible until other companies started to offer these services around 2000 - cable, ADSL, wifi etc. It's much better now and most people have multiple choices. Btw the telco is not owned by state anymore, it was sold to Telefonica a few years ago.

Re:American priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

lol but the cities on the list are -important- cities around the world. If Chattanooga disappeared tomorrow, no one would notice.

Re:American priorities

[Zontar The Mindless]

It's not just about speed. It's also about security and privacy. Given the proclivity of Singapore to micro-manage its citizens' lives, I doubt your data is very private. Remember, this is a place where chewing gum is illegal.

Re:American priorities

[macson_g]

I both Praga and Amsterdam, the state-owned telco is only one of the available providers.

Re: American priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Chewing gum is legal, the sale of it is not. Its a subtle difference to some but its a law for shopkeeping.

Re:American priorities

[1s44c]

Yes I associate state owned with badly run because that's exactly my experience. I know from experience that the state run telecom monopoly in the Netherlands treated customers like filth, yes filth. They were split off as an independent company and they have improved a lot but they still mistreat customers to this day. The situation really improved when they were forced to provide their last-mile capacity to commercial companies to run their services over.

The same happed in the UK until the state telecom monopoly was spun out as BT and things very slowly improved. In practically all cases you are better off dealing with a different company who buys their capacity from BT for your Internet connection.

I'm deliberately avoiding drawing conclusions as to why this is the case, just telling you my experience.

Re:American priorities

[1s44c]

I both Praga and Amsterdam, the state-owned telco is only one of the available providers.

I didn't know that was the case in Prague. It's been some years since I've worked there.

Re:American priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true at least about Prague. There is plethora of providers and the former state telco is now operated by Telefonica.

Re:American priorities

[auximage77]

This. I guess it's because Chattanooga doesn't have a million people or maybe because people just can't pronounce it. Whatever it is, Chattanooga has met ALL of the bullet points on that list. Hell, we PAY start-ups to come here.

Re:American priorities

[mcvos]

It's amusing to see Amsterdam making the list. I've dealt with their ex-state phone company, KPN, and it's always a world of pain to get them to do anything.

KPN isn't the only telco. Although I'm mystified why the article explicitly mentions T-Mobile's 4G rollout this fall, when KPN and Vodafone already have 4G coverage in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam's inclusion on this list isn't inappropriate at all. There are several glass fiber networks in the city (though not every neighbourhood has been connected yet), one of the most important internet exchanges in Europe, there are a lot of internet companies, and a lot of projects to create a good environment for startups, like Appsterdam, which tries to make Amsterdam a central hub for mobile app development, by holding free lectures every week and organizing lots of other events to bring people together.

And you want to disqualify it because of a single bad experience with a single company?

Re:American priorities

[nine-times]

On the other hand, I'd rather have a 200 mbps connection that's lightly filtered rather than a 384 kbps connection that's completely unfiltered. Arguably providing slow speeds can be a stronger form of control and censorship than filtering.

Re:American priorities

[angel'o'sphere]

HDI is a growth index.

Only stuff that is small can have a high value on such an index. Stuff that is already big grows slower.

Re:American priorities

[buddyglass]

HDI is a growth index.

No it's not.

From wikipedia:

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income indices used to rank countries into four tiers of human development.

From the U.N.:

The Human Development Index (HDI) measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.

There is no component that reflects current growth rate or expected future growth. HDI is a snapshot of a country's current situation in terms of income, health and education.

Re:American priorities

[1s44c]

I said _amusing_ not _inappropriate_. If you change my words you get a different meaning.

Multinationals are actually scared to operate in the Netherlands because of the local employment laws. Apparently it's nearly impossible to fire someone without giving that person a huge payout, even if that person is grossly incompetent or actively malicious. Don't try and tell me it's a good place for startups when staff can get paid for years without actually having to put the effort in. From my other comments you can see I'm not at all pro-american but I'll admit that no-one does start-up culture like the US.

Re:American priorities

[mcvos]

No, you can fire people right away when they're actively malicious. You can fire them for being grossly incompetent if you've got that incompetence well documented. You can fire them for practically any reason (as long as you dress it up nicely) if you pay them a month's salary for every year they worked for you. And as long as they don't have a permanent contract, you can always decide not to renew the contract.

And I've been in a startup where people got fired, not even for gross incompetence, but simply for having a job that turned out to not really be necessary.

But I think the most important thing for startups is not just the laws, but also the culture. The US definitely has a more entrepreneurial culture. Netherland less so, but it's slowly turning around.

And I'm sorry for misunderstanding what you meant. You're absolutely right that amusing is not the same thing as inappropriate. I admit I was pleasantly surprised to see Amsterdam up there. I want it to be up there. But I'm also very likely biased.

Re:American priorities

[palion]

Actually, it would be a better sign if THEY paid YOU to be allowed to come there...

Seriously?

[Jethro]

There are close to 200 countries in the world. The US is mentioned one time in a list of Top Ten and somehow that's not enough? Please. There are at least 190 countries that don't even have ONE city mentioned.

Re:Seriously?

[MetalliQaZ]

Those countries aren't the worlds biggest economy. Those countries didn't pioneer the Internet.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes but most of them don;t do the chest pounding of we r #1 USA USAUSA hurrdurr

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those countries aren't the worlds biggest economy. Those countries didn't pioneer the Internet.

Surely Nashville should be on that list.

Re:Seriously?

[rwa2]

There are close to 200 countries in the world. The US is mentioned one time in a list of Top Ten and somehow that's not enough? Please. There are at least 190 countries that don't even have ONE city mentioned.

OK, here's another "Top 10 Internet Countries" from earlier this year made just for you:
http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2013-01-23/top-10-countries-with-the-fastest-internet.html#slide1

Spoiler: US is not on the list; Israel is.

But I've kinda learned from all the BuzzFeed lists spam not to pay attention to any of these lists.

Re:Seriously?

[Jethro]

Be a pretty boring list if the top ten cities were in two countries.

Just cause something started at one place doesn't mean other places can't make it better. ESPECIALLY smaller places. The infrastructure in the US sucks, and we all know it. I don't see why we're at all surprised.

Re:Seriously?

[Jethro]

I'm just saying we shouldn't be all surprised by this list.

Funny thing, when I lived in Israel the fastest "internet" you could get was a 33.6k modem, and even that couldn't stay online for more than a couple of hours, and the absolutely BEST ISP had ONE T1 line to the actual internet...

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those countries aren't the worlds biggest economy. Those countries didn't pioneer the Internet.

Surely Nashville should be on that list.

Except he grew up in DC.

Re:Seriously?

[jedidiah]

Interestingly enough this list reads like a list of the biggest capitols on the planet. That makes the entire list far less interesting. The fact that you can get good internet in Stockholm is not nearly as interesting as how that compares to what you might see up in the fiords.

NO country has more than one city on the list, that includes countries that are elevated above the US in these metrics.

Re:Seriously?

[kruach aum]

Good thing it's not a list of either of those things then. Maybe include them on the next "what do I tell myself to make me feel better about watching the decline and fall of the American empire?" list

Re:Seriously?

[Jethro]

Here's my thing. I live in Minneapolis (more or less) and I can get consistent download speeds of 3 megs per second. Is it the fastest in the world? No. Is it MORE than enough? Yes, it is. So I don't have gigabit fiber to my house. So what? Sure, it'd be nice, and one day it'll get here and be considered slow. I can live with that.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Africa pioneered humans. How come African cities aren't up there on the list?

Re:Seriously?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

One could argue omniprovident, and hus omni-interfering and taxing, government is the driver in the US's declin, like Europe's before t, and reduction in same in China's rise.

The kind of omniprovidence built on memes that weight highly things like government-provided Internet, on top of, let's make something up, 92,475 other products and services. Anyone think that is an overestimate?

The more you step on its throat, the more help it needs, so the harder you step, and people flee with their money.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes but most of them don;t do the chest pounding of we r #1 USA USAUSA hurrdurr

I'm pretty sure no American feels like we deserve to be on that list. The post's main traffic generating mechanism works by exploiting the American's desire for another guilt trip about his country's waning relevance. We've been on the decline for so long that it's practically become a part of our culture to be in decline.

Re:Seriously?

[metrix007]

The US is no longer the worlds biggest economy. The US hasn't done anything to improve the internet in quiet some time.

Unless you count surveillance and censorship.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except he grew up in DC.

Now if only everyone else there would just grow up, too...

Re:Seriously?

[ArsonSmith]

Hmm who has the fastest average bandwidth across the entire country:

US 2013 Broadband average 6.6 x 300M = 181800000000
Israel: 2013 Broadband average 30.9 x 8.5M = 262650000

That's several orders of magnitude less.

Re:Seriously?

[1s44c]

Those countries aren't the worlds biggest economy. Those countries didn't pioneer the Internet.

Those countries don't have the belief that they are better than everyone else. For example Sweden would not be offended by finding out it didn't rate highest in some arbitrary test.

Re:Seriously?

[1s44c]

Just cause something started at one place doesn't mean other places can't make it better. ESPECIALLY smaller places. The infrastructure in the US sucks, and we all know it. I don't see why we're at all surprised.

Why does it suck? What's going wrong there?

Re:Seriously?

[1s44c]

Because they have no justification or any reason to. The USA is the richest, mightiest, most powerful and influential nation in the world. Nobody else comes close.

You be Trollin' Trollin' Trollin'

Richest - The US is so deep in debt it can't hope to ever pay it off.
Mightiest - Temporary. That will wane just like it waned for every other empire that has ever existed. Many of those previous empires controlled a far greater amount of the civilized world.
Most powerful - See above.
Influential - The US's world influence is already waning. The US moral high ground is shot to hell. The spying and warmongering have destroyed trust from the US's closest allies.

Re:Seriously?

[mcl630]

Short answer: lack of competition in service providers

Re:Seriously?

[Nyh]

But those nice guys in Geneva invented the WWW.

Re:Seriously?

[similar_name]

I think that's because infrastructure doesn't lend itself to competition. With competition we might get 4 - 30mbps connections to each home instead of just 1 100 mbps connection. I know it's sacrilege in the U.S. to suggest that some things really should be handled by the government but infrastructure really should be. I don't need competing water mains or roads brought to my house. In the same vein, even an incompetent government can put up infrastructure cheaper than the private industry simply because a truly competitive market would require multiple infrastructures.

Consider, 4 providers, each putting up their own infrastructure. Not only are efforts duplicated, but the users are split. So each provider will only get about 1/4 of the subscribers in an area. Which means costs will be about 4 times higher. Not a very good system at all. Now, because infrastructure naturally monopolizes anyway, we wind up with a private company having a monopoly on infrastructure and we have what we have.

At least that's my humble view.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Long answer: Lack of competition in service providers, compounded by the expense of building infrastructure covering all that "flyover" territory where you've got 0.2 people per square mile, if you're lucky.

Europe and Asia are much more densely populated than the US, and your major population belts (east coast, west coast) are separated by 2800 miles of sparsely populated territory. So what costs more: 100,000 miles of fiber? or 10,000 miles of fiber?

Re:Seriously?

[Sique]

You don't exactly know what "average" means? Just a hint: It does not mean "add all values".

Re:Seriously?

[petermgreen]

The US also isn't your typical country. It's far more comparable to the EU as a whole than to any one EU country. We have

5 cities in europe (four of which are in the EU).
2 cities in north america
3 cities in east asia

Having said that i'm always very dubious of this sort of thing. I don't see anything in the article about how the critera were assessed and weighted. Nor any information on what citiees were assesed and didn't make the cut. I don't think this should be regarded as anything more than one reporter's opinion.

Re:Seriously?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

With a little help from Bush's republican administration and his policies in support of freedom and democracy, such as patriot act and guantanamo bay, the terrorists won. The U.S. has wasted uncountable billions in useless wars, money which could have been spent in infrastructure, education and social programs, and it has lost all credibility as the leader of the free world. For the last 12 years, the U.S. has been busy dismantling its foundations in the name of the war against terror. 12 years not simply wasted, but actively self-destructive, especially on moral authority.
Well, not completely self-destructive. Some corporations and contractors in the business of war and 'security' have been making very happy profits lately, I suppose.

Terrorists are trolls. The U.S. has allowed itself to be trolled to epic proportions. They could never have caused so much damage, cost so many billions, if left to their own devices.

Re:Seriously?

[OnlineAlias]

Well, its really more about segments and last mile count than how much the fiber costs. I'll let it pass.

Re:Seriously?

[Score Whore]

What is your basis for stating that the US is not the world's biggest economy? What divisions constitute an economy in your list? I know on wikipedia, for example, that the only thing bigger than the United States' GDP is the European Union. Comparing the United States to the EU seems a bit apples and oranges. If you are comparing supranational economies, then a more valid comparison would be the EU and the NAFTA countries. Which when combining the GDP of Canada, United States and Mexico, the total is several trillion dollars ahead of the EU.

Re:Seriously?

[xevioso]

So you are saying that the government of the US, the same government that authorized the NSA to spy on it's own citizens, should be responsible for setting up our internet infrastructure? Am I reading you correctly?

Re:Seriously?

[Anubis IV]

Really, when I look at the list, the thing that strikes me is that a good chunk of the cities are from countries that have a small geographic footprint. For instance, to pull their rankings from the list of countries ordered by their geographic area:

Stockholm - Sweden - #57 in terms of countries ranked by geographic area
Tokyo - Japan - #62
Seoul - South Korea - #109
Vienna - Austria - #115
Prague - Czech Republic - #116
Geneva - Switzerland - #133
Amsterdam - Netherlands - #135

In every single one of those, a single backbone line running roughly the length of the country could be within 100km of the majority of the population. Of course, that leaves behind China's Hong Kong and Canada's Montreal, which are in the #3 and #2 largest countries by area (funny note: apparently there's a dispute about whether the US or China is #3, depending on whether you include territorial waters or not). But both China and Canada have the majority of their urban centers along a single line: China's biggest cities are along the Pacific coast (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau), while essentially all of Canada's (with the notable exception of Edmonton) are a short drive from their southern border.

In contrast, the US has urban centers along the Atlantic seaboard (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C.), Pacific seaboard (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle), Great Lakes region (Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee), Gulf Coast (Houston, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Tampa Bay), and then it still has some of its biggest ones scattered throughout the interior (San Antonio, Dallas, St. Louis, Las Vegas, Denver, Phoenix, Indianapolis). As such, the problem of servicing them is significantly more difficult, since there's no simple route that can provide coverage for them. That, in turn, pushes the per capita cost way up, and if the country as a whole has hurdles like that to overcome, it's no surprise that individual cities in the country aren't showing up on the list very much.

If anything, I'm actually surprised that any US cities showed up on the list, given the scale of the problem that the US faces in providing decent Internet.

Re:Seriously?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

God knows I'm not usually one to cite Jesus, but whatever happened to "turn the other cheek"? After 9/11, the World Trade Center should have been rebuilt and the muslim community in the U.S. should have been embraced and integrated. The message to terrorists and the world should have been; while extremists celebrate fear and death, we celebrate our freedom, pluralism and life.
It's amazingly hypocritical that the religious conservatives in the U.S. are often the first to favor a heavy handed, military approach to resolving conflict.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

For example Sweden would not be offended by finding out it didn't rate highest in some arbitrary test.

Did you know that Sweden recently ranked a disappointing 8th in self-righteousness?

Re:Seriously?

[similar_name]

Sadly, the NSA will tap it, regardless of who builds it. Much of the internet infrastructure was initially setup by the government. It was developed by DARPA after all.

Re:Seriously?

[vasilevich]

military-power wise, Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. economically wise, though USA is the best!

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S's 'International War On Terror' (tm) was financed by the People's Republic of China. If you want to destroy a country, I can think of no better way to do it than to have them fight an endless war on a paticular military tactic, while you build up your country. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if I were I guess I could think of half a dozen reasons not to believe the official story or pretty much anything else that is reported to me by the media. The media says that Muslim Terrorist took over the plane. Don't know maybe they did, however I find it doubtfull that our media industrial complex would have enough 'investigative skills' to make this determination. I mean that would require the kind of journalistic integrity and competance that hasn't existed in my country in 30 years. You would have to actually sort through the wreckage find passports, look on flight rosters. I can't see my media doing this. I can see them being fooled and mislaid by easy answers though. I have a great deal of faith and trust in my media when it is discussing things like Justin Beiber, or Selema Gomez, but to actually go out and investigate a story, and not just rereport whatever tidbit of news comes over the wire from whatever source happens to have the most influence? Now that I find hard to believe.

The only country that really benifited from 9-11 was China. The proud nations of Iraq and Afganastan (two countries that even by the official accounts had nothing to do with it) were bombed to hell while The USA is bankrupt.

Yea we were trolled pretty bad. I'm not sure by who, but ultimately it is our own dam fault.

-Believe nothing of what you see and only half of what you hear.
-Ernest in 'Ernest Goes to Camp'

Re:Seriously?

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

To be somewhat fair, they did base it on HyperCard or a compatible program, which is American (and at the time seemed genuinely amazing).

Re:Seriously?

[AHuxley]

The NSA likes the US copper and and hybrid fiber-coaxial last gen slow. Too fast and they have to upgrade their local backhaul too.
Everybody is happy, the shareholders get to keep generational wealth flowing from 'rent' rather than a wasting their profits on constant upgrades (just looking after and expand existing networks).
The cities and local govs have deals with existing providers. The NSA has its "legal" ways in with existing infrastructure. Marketing can sell you on how lucky you are to have hybrid fiber-coaxial/copper/optical areas while keeping business plans safe from their consumer grade offerings. The only hard part is to keep the US public in the past about existing telco infrastructure. The words magic words distance and socialism still seem to have their hold on the minds of many.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank goodness Obama and the Democrats stopped all that and set things straight!

Re:Seriously?

[metrix007]

How is it apples and oranges to compare the EU to the US? Both the US and EU are unions consisting of states. That the states in the EU are also separate countries doesn't seem to have as much a bearing on the comparison as you think it ought to.

Certainly all the lists of ranked economies, e.g. those put out by the IMF and World Bank don't have a problem comparing the EU to the US, China and the like.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

I gotta say, this is the lamest attempt at a retort I've seen. You basically attempted to refute each point and fail at each by admitting it but claim its temporary.

Re:Seriously?

[dgatwood]

I know it's sacrilege in the U.S. to suggest that some things really should be handled by the government but infrastructure really should be.

You're half right. Infrastructure should be initially built by the government, but immediately spun off as a nonprofit corporation, a la TVA. This has the advantage of taking the profit motive out of the equation, while at least reducing the specter of government control, censorship, spying, etc.

Re:Seriously?

[dgatwood]

Long answer: Lack of competition in service providers, compounded by the expense of building infrastructure covering all that "flyover" territory where you've got 0.2 people per square mile, if you're lucky.

So why do we still not have anything faster than 6 Mbps DSL in lots of places right smack in the middle of the Silicon Valley? It has nothing to do with density and everything to do with for-profit companies having no real incentive to improve their infrastructure while they can keep milking the existing infrastructure for all it's worth.

Re:Seriously?

[tompaulco]

God knows I'm not usually one to cite Jesus, but whatever happened to "turn the other cheek"? After 9/11, the World Trade Center should have been rebuilt and the muslim community in the U.S. should have been embraced and integrated. The message to terrorists and the world should have been; while extremists celebrate fear and death, we celebrate our freedom, pluralism and life.

Unfortunately, you've only got one more cheek. What do you do after they slap that one too?
It's not like embracing freedom, pluralism and life would make the terrorists stop hating us.

Re:Seriously?

[jon3k]

Two reasons:
1) It's not subsidized by the government via taxes.
2) The US is large and has a low population density, which makes it more expensive to deliver service.


The other thing I've wondered is, what is our cost relative income? We may pay more, but we make more -- but do we normalize based on per capita income?

Re:Seriously?

[Stiletto]

"Population Density" always gets blamed, but it's not the reason for USA's poor service. If it was, New York City would have awesome Internet service.

Re:Seriously?

[1s44c]

The U.S's 'International War On Terror' (tm) was financed by the People's Republic of China. If you want to destroy a country, I can think of no better way to do it than to have them fight an endless war on a paticular military tactic, while you build up your country. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if I were I guess I could think of half a dozen reasons not to believe the official story or pretty much anything else that is reported to me by the media. The media says that Muslim Terrorist took over the plane. Don't know maybe they did, however I find it doubtfull that our media industrial complex would have enough 'investigative skills' to make this determination. I mean that would require the kind of journalistic integrity and competance that hasn't existed in my country in 30 years. You would have to actually sort through the wreckage find passports, look on flight rosters. I can't see my media doing this. I can see them being fooled and mislaid by easy answers though. I have a great deal of faith and trust in my media when it is discussing things like Justin Beiber, or Selema Gomez, but to actually go out and investigate a story, and not just rereport whatever tidbit of news comes over the wire from whatever source happens to have the most influence? Now that I find hard to believe.

The only country that really benifited from 9-11 was China. The proud nations of Iraq and Afganastan (two countries that even by the official accounts had nothing to do with it) were bombed to hell while The USA is bankrupt.

Yea we were trolled pretty bad. I'm not sure by who, but ultimately it is our own dam fault.

-Believe nothing of what you see and only half of what you hear.
-Ernest in 'Ernest Goes to Camp'

The anti-bush tirade is at +4 and this is at -1? Come on mods, you might well think the above is wrong but at least someone is thinking here.

Re:Seriously?

[1s44c]

Obama clearly didn't.

This Republican v Democrat two party system is the problem. Both sides know that no matter what they do they won't lose power for more than 2 election cycles as a significant block of voters vote to keep the most hated party out.

The US needs to vote for third parties or it will never have a credible democratic system.

Re:Seriously?

[1s44c]

Haters gonna hate. It's sad, the inferiority complexes Yuropeans and Canuckleheads have.

That's backwards. My point was that the rest of the world doesn't have a superiority complex. The absence of a superiority complex isn't the same as having an inferiority complex.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

And this country isn't orders of magnitude larger. It's easy for, say, Singapore to roll out new broadband infrastructure to a large swath of their population every 3-5 years. I mean it's like, one state-run telco on a 30-mile-wide island. Even given a large lead in internet technology, the US will always struggle to deploy emerging technology broadly and quickly. We face much larger problems of scale (in multiple dimensions).

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

what part of "lack of competition, compounded with the problem of densely populated areas having to subsidize lines & coverage in very sparsely populated (unprofitable) areas" fails to account for this, again?

Silicon Valley isn't very densely populated to begin with. And there's an awful lot of sparsely populated farming communities within 100 miles.

Re:Seriously?

[dgatwood]

Because none of that farming country has fast Internet service, either.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting that there's something magical about ISP's in Europe and Asia that allows them to deliver service without ever having to consider costs or profits?

Believe it or not, if 9 million people in NYC are subsidizing thousands of miles of barely-used lines outside the city, it makes it a lot harder to deliver amazing service INSIDE the city, too.

Re:Seriously?

[ArsonSmith]

Yea, kinda ruined my point, meant just the fastest bandwidth, drop the average.

Re:Seriously?

[Zontar The Mindless]

No member state has ever left the EU, although each state has the right to do so.

The remainder of your assertions are also highly suspect.

Re:Seriously?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Is that really the best you can come up with?

Re:Seriously?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Hong Kong is pretty small, and remains quite distinct from the Chinese mainland as regards political system, economy (including banking and currency), infrastructure, language, personal freedoms, educational system, border control, etc., etc. It is essentially a separate entity over which Beijing gets to exercise bragging rights.

Re:Seriously?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Except that the points originally being touted as positives were the ones that were identified in the response as being temporary.

Re:Seriously?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Interestingly enough this list reads like a list of the biggest capitols [sic] on the planet.

According to Wikipedia, the 10 largest national capitals by population are:
Beijing
Tokyo
Moscow
Seoul
Djakarta
Tehran
Ciudad de México
Lima
Bangkok
London

So, no, it doesn't.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that Sweden recently ranked a disappointing 8th in self-righteousness?

I read that study.
America ranked 4th, but I doubt its legitimacy, since the first three places are "United," "States," and "of," which aren't even real countries.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like embracing freedom, pluralism and life would make the terrorists stop hating us.

No, but it would make the rest of the world stop hating you.

Re:Seriously?

[dave420]

It takes a bit more than hugging Muslims. The US would still have a history of screwing over governments in the middle east, and propping up Israel, which no amount of hugging would tempered. Until the US owns up to that - and seriously starts to put things right - people will still find fault. Shock. Horror.

But yes - I agree that should have been the domestic approach. Unfortunately the US government would have screwed it up.

Re:Seriously?

[bickerdyke]

It's not like embracing freedom, pluralism and life would make the terrorists stop hating us.

But it would have stopped turning thousends other people into terrorists, too.

Re:Seriously?

[bickerdyke]

According to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita the US economy is somewhere between #6 and #9

Re:Seriously?

[YttriumOxide]

The other thing I've wondered is, what is our cost relative income? We may pay more, but we make more -- but do we normalize based on per capita income?

Those kinds of things are very difficult to judge, because you're only looking at the comparative cost of one metric.

I live and work in Hannover, Germany. According to various "how much should I earn" websites, my income (as a senior software developer) is in direct exchange rates similar to the average income for a senior software developer in the US. The US is a big country with quite a lot of variance, so I suspect the average for a software developer in New York City or San Francisco is probably somewhat higher than the national average, whereas a developer in a smaller lesser known city probably is a little below the national average.

My internet is significantly cheaper than most of the US. My standard groceries are similar to small town USA. My power and petrol are significantly more expensive than almost everywhere in the US. My apartment rent is similar in price to most metro areas of the US excluding the outlier "expensive" and "cheap" places. Were I to buy/rent a house however, it would be significantly higher than most places in the US.

Per capita income in also not a good normalisation in many cases. Some countries have quite a flat distribution where the "rich" vs the "poor" is much closer; whereas others have huge discrepancies. When talking about internet speed/quality/cost and trying to judge the real picture, this is important as in countries with a flatter distribution will have a much higher percentage of people that can easily afford it than those with a wider range of incomes.

Re:Seriously?

[jon3k]

That's a great point and something I don't think a lot of Europeans appreciate, the geographical size and income variance across the US. Using a cost of living calculator, living in NYC is 2x the price of living where I am now. Not 10% more, or even 50% -- it costs TWICE as much.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

So then what is the gist of the story?

Given that the US is home to almost ALL of the tech giants, how relevant is having a city thats "tops" in internet?

You look at the Top 10 Tech companies, 8 are in the US. Look at Top 10 software companies and 8 are in the US. Look at Top 20 semi-conductor companies and 9 are in the US.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah..?

http://www.npr.org/2013/07/28/206231873/who-spies-more-the-united-states-or-europe

Re:Seriously?

[mcvos]

How is the size of the country relevant? This isn't a list of the most connected countries, but cities. And since we're talking cities, shouldn't it be the population size of the conglomeration be the most important factor? Stockholm is tiny compared to most US conglomerations. Why is New York not on the list? Or LA? Surely you should be able to connect people fairly cheaply in metropoles like that?

The problem the US has with connecting its population has nothing to do with its geography. Well, maybe if you live in South Dakota or something, but the large cities in the US are more concentrated than in Europe. The problem is political and economic. Competition doesn't really work the way it should. Too many telcos have effective monopolies, and there's not enough drive to innovate.

Re:Seriously?

[nine-times]

Having the government build out the infrastructure will not significantly increase their ability to monitor your internet usage. The fact that it's currently controlled by private companies hasn't slowed them down.

In fact, I'd find it less unsettling if the government just had access to some of the information by virtue of the fact that I use their infrastructure, rather than knowing that they have access to the same information by strong-arming private companies who provide the illusion of privacy.

Re:Seriously?

[YttriumOxide]

That's a great point and something I don't think a lot of Europeans appreciate, the geographical size and income variance across the US. Using a cost of living calculator, living in NYC is 2x the price of living where I am now. Not 10% more, or even 50% -- it costs TWICE as much.

Absolutely... however it's worth noting that this kind of discrepancy also exists in Europe and even within a single country such as Germany. The cost of living in Munich is at least 1.5x the cost of living here in Hannover, which itself isn't the cheapest place to live. I can easily imagine a 2x increase between locations.

It is worth factoring in certain other things though. I've visited the US on several occasions, although sadly never had a chance to spend a longer time there. From what I saw though, if I lived (and worked) in Manhattan, I probably wouldn't want/need a car; whereas if I lived in Los Angeles, I wouldn't want to be without it. That makes a significant different from a cost of living perspective as well - even if my apartment costs a lot more in Manhattan, not having the running costs of a car MIGHT make up for that.

Same thing goes here in Germany. Here in Hannover, a car is 'nice to have' but not totally required. If I lived in Burgdorf, I'd HAVE to have a car. If I lived (and worked) in Berlin, I probably wouldn't have the desire to have one at all.

Re:Seriously?

[interkin3tic]

The NSA likes the US copper and and hybrid fiber-coaxial last gen slow. Too fast and they have to upgrade their local backhaul too.

But it's tax dollars, so that isn't really much of a negative for them. I'm guessing the NSA isn't facing much threat of a budget cut. The attempts by the few good legislators to cut their budget isn't going to go anywhere, and even if it did, they'd receive any "emergency funds" they needed to keep spying on us.

It's only unimportant programs like biomedical research, education, and making sure poor kids get enough to eat that have problems like "limited budgets."

Re:Seriously?

[paazin]

Uh, what?

The US is the biggest economy and will still be for a few years to come. The expectation for Chinese GDP to overtake the US is somewhere around 2018 or 2019.

Re:Seriously?

[T.E.D.]

Richest - The US is so deep in debt it can't hope to ever pay it off.

Don't know many actual rich people, I see. The difference between poor people and rich people isn't net worth. The difference is that a poor person is just broke, while rich person owes money. Often eye-popping amounts of it.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the real reason is regulatory market capture by established service providers that have no interest in improving anything, provided they can reap high profits from the existing infrastructure. A couple of congress critters and various local government officials have been bought and paid for by these companies. So you get things like laws that make stealing service a worse crime than rape in terms of penalties, and various degrees of red-tape that prevent competition when newcomers would like to bring additonal service to a given market.

But if you want to blame lack of government interest or population density, sure go ahead. Be my guest.

Re:Seriously?

[dkf]

The US also isn't your typical country. It's far more comparable to the EU as a whole than to any one EU country.

People in the EU underestimate how different the US states are from each other; the US is not homogenous at all. People in the US underestimate how different the EU member countries are from each other; the EU members are far more different from each other than any US states are.

Re:Seriously?

[dywolf]

It's like Albert Einstein being the least knowledgable person about Relativity.

Re:Seriously?

[dywolf]

because the way to deal with psycopaths is to ignore them ...

Re:Seriously?

[Anubis IV]

Sorry, I actually had an explanation to your first question in my comment, but apparently I edited it out.

The gist of my thinking was that while the country as a whole does not excuse having individual cities fail to appear on the list, how easy it is to provide Internet within a country can have an overall effect of raising or lowering its cities on a list of this sort. Basically, as backbone infrastructure is more difficult to provide at a country level, it drives the cost of service up which pushes adoption down. That's why I was surprised that any US cities appeared on the list, since, frankly, the country-level infrastructure is far below the standard enjoyed in other parts of the developed world.

That's also why I was looking at things at more of a country level than at a city level. I think the city-level comparisons only make sense if the country is small enough that they really only have one or two urban clusters, or is developing certain cities to the exclusion of much of the rest of their country. If a country is attempting to provide a decent level of service to everyone within its borders, however, and has a massive amount of terrain to cover, it should come as no surprise that individual cities lag behind cities in other countries where they don't have to contend with those issues and can concentrate their efforts in fewer locations.

But as far as the claim that the large cities in the US are more concentrated than Europe? Perhaps, but only if you ignore everything outside of the Northeast region of the US. To put it in perspective, it's a 40-hour drive from Los Angeles to New York. In comparison, you could go from London to Moscow in 30 hours. Or, in terms of area, the US is 9.8M km^2, while the whole of the European continent is 10.2M km^2. If you're going to be comparing the US against Europe as a whole, as you just did, then make sure you actually consider ALL of Europe. Not only is most of the population of Europe concentrated in Western Europe, but so is most of the development. Because Europe is made up of numerous nations that are independent of each other, they've been able to concentrate the wealth and development in ways that the US cannot, and when you look across the whole of Europe, there are plenty of countries that are lagging behind the standard enjoyed by the wealthier nations in the western side of the continent.

Anyway, again, the point isn't to suggest that individual cities couldn't excel in the US, just that because it's harder to provide excellent service across the US as a whole that it will naturally drive up costs to individual cities, making it harder for them to excel. Conversely, because many European and Asian nations on this list are smaller, they're able to concentrate their efforts in fewer locations, making it easier to provide excellent service to the few urban centers that they have.

As an aside, I entirely agree that there are other political and economic factors at play in the US, and I don't want to seem as if I'm dismissing them, because I'm not. I was simply limiting the scope of my comments to the differences in the nature of providing service at the sort of scale the US sees as compared to that in most other countries.

Re:Seriously?

[metrix007]

The EU is ahead of the US in every published list ranking world economies.

Take it up with them if you have an issue.

Re:Seriously?

[mcvos]

The gist of my thinking was that while the country as a whole does not excuse having individual cities fail to appear on the list, how easy it is to provide Internet within a country can have an overall effect of raising or lowering its cities on a list of this sort. Basically, as backbone infrastructure is more difficult to provide at a country level, it drives the cost of service up which pushes adoption down. That's why I was surprised that any US cities appeared on the list, since, frankly, the country-level infrastructure is far below the standard enjoyed in other parts of the developed world.

Is it? Everybody always claims that the most important internet backbones are in the US. My impression is that the problem in the US is not so much the backbones, but the unwillingness of internet providers to give people a good yet affordable connection to them.

That's also why I was looking at things at more of a country level than at a city level. I think the city-level comparisons only make sense if the country is small enough that they really only have one or two urban clusters, or is developing certain cities to the exclusion of much of the rest of their country. If a country is attempting to provide a decent level of service to everyone within its borders, however, and has a massive amount of terrain to cover, it should come as no surprise that individual cities lag behind cities in other countries where they don't have to contend with those issues and can concentrate their efforts in fewer locations.

Somehow it sounds more like the US to let Nebraska fall behind in connectivity while LA gets the good stuff, than like Sweden to give Stockholm precedence over all the (massive!) rural parts of that country. Really, Sweden is not a densely populated country. It's big, but has a fairly low population. But it's also very egalitarian and equal opportunities for everybody, while the US is much more "corporations can do what they like". Are US corporations held back from connection LA and New York because they also need to connect Nebraska?

But as far as the claim that the large cities in the US are more concentrated than Europe? Perhaps, but only if you ignore everything outside of the Northeast region of the US. To put it in perspective, it's a 40-hour drive from Los Angeles to New York. In comparison, you could go from London to Moscow in 30 hours. Or, in terms of area, the US is 9.8M km^2, while the whole of the European continent is 10.2M km^2. If you're going to be comparing the US against Europe as a whole, as you just did, then make sure you actually consider ALL of Europe.

I didn't do anything like that. I'm comparing US cities to European cities. Because that's where people actually live. A dense concentration of people is cheaper to connect than a thinly spread out population. The distance between LA and New York is irrelevant. It's the connectivity within LA that's relevant.

Compare just LA to the entire country of Sweden. The conglomeration of LA has twice as many people as all of Sweden, but within a much, much smaller area. LA proper has 4 times the population as Stockholm. Why would a small capital of a mostly rural country be easier to connect than one of the biggest conglomerations in the world? And on top of that LA is a lot closer to Silicon Valley, where a lot of internet companies are based.

Not only is most of the population of Europe concentrated in Western Europe, but so is most of the development. Because Europe is made up of numerous nations that are independent of each other, they've been able to concentrate the wealth and development in ways that the US cannot, and when you look across the whole of Europe, there are plenty of countries that are lagging behind the standard enjoyed by the wealthier nations in the western side of the continent.

Is the problem that the richest parts of the US are poorer than the richest parts of Europe? Are we

Re:Seriously?

[Score Whore]

You're mixing the definitions of the word state. There are major differences between the individual states within the United States and the nations that make up the European Union. EU members have their own foreign policy, they have their own embassies, they have their own currencies (though most of them have adopted the Euro), they have their own militaries and can declare war, they can enter into treaties with other nations, they are recognized as distinct sovereigns by other nations, and they can leave the EU if they so desire. When was the last time you visited the Utah Embassy? Held a Colorado dollar? Signed a treaty with Louisiana? Fought a conflict against the Delaware army? When was the last time France, England and Spain went to war against Germany, Portugal, Greece and Italy in order to sever political bonds?

Re:Seriously?

[SerpentMage]

Actually... Infrastructure should be built by a private non-profit entity comprised of various private corporations. For example GSM was managed that way and it proved to be a huge success. This approach ensures that there is a profit motive but a minimal monopoly motive. An example of where this did not work out worth a darn is 3G. That was a complete clusterf**k. They overpaid, created incompatible standards and the rollout was delayed for years.

IMO the way it would work is that there would be only a single cell tower in a region, a single cable line in a region, etc. However, those towers and cables would be owned by the non-profit entity and it would be leased out to each user. The terms would be non-discriminatory, and reflect a usage charge. That way each can provide their own service.

Re:Seriously?

[SerpentMage]

*cough* BS!

I have a house in the pre-alps at 1,000 meters. There are about 10 houses, with most being vacation and it is a steep mountain area. YET I have 10 Mbps Internet, and 3G telephone. So tell me, how is this population density thing?

Re:Seriously?

[SerpentMage]

Oh come on. I live in Switzerland and we have great Internet and 3G. Sure we have a small population, but we have OODLES of mountains. And mountains are a royal pain in the arse for Internet and cell phone reception. Actually mountains make everything very very expensive. Yet our subscriptions and costs are much lower than in the states...

Re:Seriously?

[dgatwood]

GSM is not infrastructure. GSM is architecture. Whenever companies create shell organizations to do the actual buildout, it is almost invariably a colossal failure because:

• None of the companies want to pay the money to maintain the infrastructure.
• All of the companies find ways to oversell the infrastructure.
• The shell company is never structured in a way that allows them to charge those companies for the services.
• The extra hassle of that additional company means that the companies then try to find ways to avoid working with that company when they build out their next generation infrastructure to replace it.

The result is a tragedy of the commons, and the infrastructure ends up being no better than when individual private companies build it themselves, and often worse because those private companies now have an external entity to blame when people complain.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because *cough* some poor fucker in a village somewhere *cough* had the money taken from them in order for you to be supplied with your *cough* 10 Mbps Internet, and 3G telephone in a vacation spot in the Alps when you probably very well could afford to pay the real cost yourself.

Not only are you a fucking freeloader, youre obviously very proud of it.

Re:Seriously?

[houghi]

As long as the US keeps showing up in the top 10 of the World Series, all is well.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell this to Amtrak...

Re:Seriously?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

What you perceive as an anti-Bush tirade is just simple facts. I'm not inherently anti-Bush. In fact, I have defended ex-president Bush on occasion when people started making personal attacks on his looks or character, something which I find in very bad taste. Also, I am certain the main drivers in the Bush administration were Rumsfeld and Cheney, backed by the "Project for the New American Century", while Bush was just the guy putting his signature on papers.

Fact is that the Republican administration during Bush started two wars, in a happy go lucky style, without a detailed plan or exit strategy, without considering repercussions, despite big reservations among key allies, and in at least one case, under false, if not deliberately faked, assumptions. Along the way they created a lawless concentration camp where human rights have no meaning and torture is standard procedure.

The cost in lives and money, the damage created to the U.S. in terms of lost investments and moral authority, is enormous. Perhaps the biggest damage a country has caused itself since Germany in WW2.

But yeah, if you like being in denial you can just call all of this an "anti-Bush tirade" and feel good about yourself, maybe.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Urm, no "they" didn't. He (Tim Berners Lee), based the WWW on his earlier work called ENQUIRE. ENQUIRE was written in 1980, Hypercard in 1985.

Re:Seriously?

[Rakarra]

You're half right. Infrastructure should be initially built by the government, but immediately spun off as a nonprofit corporation, a la TVA

I've no problems with how we deliver water and electricity in the US (for the most part..) but communications infrastructure is a disaster in the US. Far too often the infrastructure is tied to the end providers. I'll state that flat-out, Comcast could not own the cable lines. They should lease them like other cable providers. AT&T should not own phone lines. They should lease them from the government who maintains infrastructure. We had a half-assed solution which was that Comcast/AT&T could lay out lines but then had to lease them to third parties for a reasonable fee, but that was struck down and now you have extremely anti-competitive legal monopolies in the US communications markets.

Re:Seriously?

[Rakarra]

Amtrak is underfunded (overpriced and underfunded, heh). It's biggest problem is they have to share a limited resource (rail lines) with others... others who will always get usage priorities over them. So Amtrak is slow and unreliable.

Re:Seriously?

[Rakarra]

And that's somehow different from how the US works as well? Everyone subsidizes everyone else's network, we just all get shit service.

Re:Seriously?

[Rakarra]

Come on, in no way are Germany and Great Britain the same country in the same way that Washington and Florida are.

Maybe back in the 1700s you could have made that argument, but during the 20th century in the United States, Federalism won, completely.

Re:Seriously?

[Rakarra]

The anti-bush tirade is at +4 and this is at -1? Come on mods, you might well think the above is wrong but at least someone is thinking here.

The "I doubt Muslims took over those planes, stupid media" conspiracy bullshit should be enough to put it at -1. I would consider that definite Flamebait, if not outright trolling.

Re:Seriously?

[Rakarra]

It's true, having a megabit connection to your backbone would be pointless if that backbone has a T1 line to the rest of the Internet.
Australia has had that problem as well -- terrible service to other countries because their remoteness made ping times untenable, and bandwidth difficult.
What do the Internet connection speeds of these lists really measure?

Re:Seriously?

[1s44c]

The anti-bush tirade is at +4 and this is at -1? Come on mods, you might well think the above is wrong but at least someone is thinking here.

The "I doubt Muslims took over those planes, stupid media" conspiracy bullshit should be enough to put it at -1. I would consider that definite Flamebait, if not outright trolling.

He never said that though. He said he didn't know and didn't trust the media.

Re:Seriously?

[1s44c]

What's going on here? I never said the anti-Bush tirade was wrong or that it didn't deserve a +4. When I said 'tirade' I didn't mean lies. What I was doing was complaining that the post above mine was at -1.

I'm no fan of Bush, never have been. But then I'm no fan of Obama since he started with the Bush style warmongering.

not a surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

the USA is headed back to the dark ages.

Arrogance

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it news that America isn't the best at something?

Based on what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked at the list and the description for a couple of the cities: as far as I can tell, this report comes from the Department of Pulling Things Out of Your Ass.

Re:Based on what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having been to 7 of those cities, I'd say the list is somewhat more reliable than that.

Re:Based on what?

[mcvos]

There are definitely a few issues. For example, the Amsterdam entry touts T-Mobile's upcoming 4G rollout as a plus for Amsterdam, but neglects to mention that KPN and Vodafone have already rolled out their 4G networks here. T-Mobile is notorious for having the crappiest network.

I'm in a hotel in Seattle right now...

[gbkersey]

And I can tell you the Internet connection here sucks..... :) My 4G hotspot is slow and the hotel's connection is slow... Less than 1/4 of what they advertise... Argh!

Re:I'm in a hotel in Seattle right now...

[Cidtek]

And I can tell you the Internet connection here sucks..... :) My 4G hotspot is slow and the hotel's connection is slow... Less than 1/4 of what they advertise...

Argh!

But how's the turndown service?

Re:I'm in a hotel in Seattle right now...

[Anonymous Coward]

> My 4G hotspot is slow

I'm stuck with AT&T 3G, and in the Seattle area it just keeps getting slower and slower. Currently, it's 0.04 Mbps up:

http://upstate.net/jen/att.png

Sprint has the fastest service I've seen around here, but the coverage is spotty. I can't get Verizon coverage at work or Sprint at home, so I'm stuck with AT&T.

Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seoul: No. I have several acquaintances there and none of them can connect to my server in Canada. USA residents and Europeans seem to have no problem. It's clearly filtered/censored, so shouldn't be on this list.

Montreal: Again, no. It's just a bit better than the rest of Canada, but is by no means ahead of the crowd on a global scale. Just like everywhere else in Canada, typical home connections are 5.1Mbit up and 1 down. It DOES have more wireless deployment though, both through Wi-Max (I think) modems and free Wi-Fi hot spots.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

But you do have lots of hot french canadian girls to look at in Montreal, so that kinda makes up for the wifi being less than "best in the world."

The US Isn't Trying

[Anonymous Coward]

The only group in the US actually trying to improve internet usage is Google. Everyone else is intent to let telcom monopolies get more and more bloated.

Seattle represent :)

[AbominousSalad]

All hail the Seattle-Tacoma metroplex!

(Oh wait... I'm in the Native American Nations way out here in Fall City...)

weird list

[Tumbleweed]

Seattle's connectivity is pretty abysmal, unless you live in the tiny areas of downtown Seattle serviced by CondoInternet.net. Other than that, you're lucky if you can get Comcast (trust me, there are FAR worse ISPs than Comcast).

Re:weird list

[BrookHarty]

Seattle's connectivity is pretty abysmal, unless you live in the tiny areas of downtown Seattle serviced by CondoInternet.net. Other than that, you're lucky if you can get Comcast (trust me, there are FAR worse ISPs than Comcast).

Agreed, lived here for almost 20 years, and I've had ISDN/IDSL and DSL on Qwest or Frontier (sucks) living in major suburbs of Seattle. I'm on comcast now and I dont want to ever go back. Plus the digital cable is better than Frontier anyday.

Re:weird list

[Tumbleweed]

Agreed, lived here for almost 20 years, and I've had ISDN/IDSL and DSL on Qwest or Frontier (sucks) living in major suburbs of Seattle. I'm on comcast now and I dont want to ever go back. Plus the digital cable is better than Frontier anyday.

I never tried Frontier, but Qwest's speeds are pathetic. DSL speeds worse than cellphone connections! The worst one I've ever used was Broadstripe. Criminally incompetent. *shudder*

Re:weird list

[Anonymous Coward]

> Other than that, you're lucky if you can get Comcast

I live in Seattle, and you're right that you're lucky if you can get Comcast. They've been at capacity in my neighborhood for years. I've been on the waiting list for over six years.

I would really love to have access to cable TV for ESPN. I don't really cable about their Internet access even though it's faster than my CenturyLink (formerly Qwest) DSL because my DSL line, while slow, is rock solid. I've only noticed that it's been down once in over six years. Also, they don't block any ports even port 80 incoming or appear to throttle any traffic. Also, it doesn't get slower between 6pm and 9pm like my friend's Comcast connections.

Tacoma WA is the "#1 most wired city"

[themushroom]

...which is no longer such an awesome claim to make, especially since now Spokane (2nd largest city nowadays) is bragging about its 100 square block public hotspot.

Re:Tacoma WA is the "#1 most wired city"

[Khith]

Spokane hasn't really bragged about their wifi "HotZone" for a while. In fact, they're shutting it down. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/jun/15/hotzones-free-wi-fi-to-fold/

Oh, the irony

[Anonymous Coward]

The server belonging to the organization ranking the top Internet Cities has been slashdotted. 503 Service Unavailable

No Middle Eastern city makes the list?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a SURPRISE? For a region stuck in the Middle Ages?

Re:No Middle Eastern city makes the list?

[jedidiah]

Between the bling capital of the planet (Dubai) and the ubergeek capital of the planet (Israel), there should have been at least one middle eastern city on that list.

Re:No Middle Eastern city makes the list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Between the bling capital of the planet (Dubai) and the ubergeek capital of the planet (Israel), there should have been at least one middle eastern city on that list.

The bling in Dubai is for the 0.00001%, and there are less people in all of Israel than there are in quite a few cities - and probably close to half of those are economically-disadvantaged Arabs.

Re:No Middle Eastern city makes the list?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say -- as somebody who has travelled the middle east -- I don't think the list is fair. I have way better connectivity in Israel and Jordan than I do in my home state of Florida where I get around 768Kbps down on my DSL.

Re:No Middle Eastern city makes the list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you talking about the Middle East, or the United States?

Re:No Middle Eastern city makes the list?

[mcvos]

Being better than something not on the list doesn't automatically make it belong on the list.

Seattle? Seriously?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I work in Seattle. Here (at UW) our internet is pretty good, as you might expect - but the city as a whole is nothing to write home about. Of course there's a Starbucks on every corner, so perhaps the city scored well based on the availability of that AT&T free wi-fi...

Reading the article, it appears Seattle scored highly based, at least in part, on things they say they plan to do. And I must admit our local guys are very adept at talking a good game. But come on... they just killed the almost stillborn city-wide wifi network! Talking is basically all they're good at!

Re:Seattle? Seriously?

[DaveAtFraud]

I work in Seattle. Here (at UW) our internet is pretty good, as you might expect - but the city as a whole is nothing to write home about. Of course there's a Starbucks on every corner, so perhaps the city scored well based on the availability of that AT&T free wi-fi...

I assumed when I saw Seattle as the only U.S. city on the top ten list that the survey was a proxy for Starbucks density.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Seattle? Seriously?

[Wamoc]

Reading the article, it appears Seattle scored highly based, at least in part, on things they say they plan to do.

If Obama saying he is going to do stuff (and not actually doing them) is enough to get him a Nobel prize, then why can't Seattle win this for saying they will improve things?

Re:Seattle? Seriously?

[Rakarra]

If Obama saying he is going to do stuff (and not actually doing them) is enough to get him a Nobel prize, then why can't Seattle win this for saying they will improve things?

I think our standards (and everyone's standards really) should be a weeeee bit higher than the Nobel committee's.

Is internet an indicator of 'good' ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Some Cities have more to do than to stay on the Internet all day long.....

Re:Is internet an indicator of 'good' ???

[PPH]

Checks outside. Still raining. Screw it, back to Slashdot.

I don't get the rating system

[hashish]

For example why would LTE be in a criteria for free and fast? Tokyo for example has great mobile coverage and speed, but not a lot of free wifi. Being a tourist having free wifi is better than no access because your phone cannot be used on the network or the cost is prohibitive. Maybe a better breakdown than what is in the article is required, because getting internet access in London is easier than Toyko; although the speed is not as fast.

Re:I don't get the rating system

[aristotle-dude]

For example why would LTE be in a criteria for free and fast? Tokyo for example has great mobile coverage and speed, but not a lot of free wifi. Being a tourist having free wifi is better than no access because your phone cannot be used on the network or the cost is prohibitive. Maybe a better breakdown than what is in the article is required, because getting internet access in London is easier than Toyko; although the speed is not as fast.

The ratings are for speeds available to local residents. They were not concerned about accessibility for tourists.

I also noticed the lack of wifi hotspots accessible by non-Japanese in Tokyo regardless of whether they were free or not.

At least you could go to McDonald's or the Apple Store for free wifi.

Re:I don't get the rating system

[Zontar The Mindless]

That's one thing that truly sucks about Mainland China. In order to use most free wifi hotspots there, you must register with a Chinese mobile number.

Or talk the girl at the counter into letting you have her passcode and phone number. (It helps if she thinks you're exotic and cute.)

Montreal? MONTREAL!?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding, right? We have an oligopoly composed of Bell and Videotron. Most other ISPs just resell bandwidth from the two main monkeys. Choices are poor, speeds are slow, caps are low, prices are high. WiFi? Nothing special, when it works.

Re:Montreal? MONTREAL!?

[Mathieu Lu]

We do have a duopoly (3 if, for businesses, you include FibreNoire), but to be fair, it competes pretty well to other north-american cities. Bell now supports fiber-to-the-home in most central borroughs, and Videotron keeps upgrading their network. (although, of course, you should deal with a reseller for a better deal and less dysfunctional tech support) If only Bell operated as a normal company, and not a marketing dystopia...

I have a 30/10 mbps VDSL/fttn connection using Teksavvy, with IPv6 enabled, for around 60$/month including dry-loop, 300 GB/month cap (unlimited during the night).

However, for hosting, while there may be OVH for cloud stuff, we really lack quality alternatives for traditional hosting. There is some offering, but lots of room for improvement.

I also participate in http://www.reseaulibre.ca/ to 1- create our own decentralised user-operated backbone, 2- fun with networking, 3- have an alternative to bell/videotron.

A joke of a list

[Guspaz]

They list Montreal, and their primary reasons are laughable.

They say Montreal does very well in speedtests because of... OVH. Wait, what? That's a dedicated server and cloud services provider, they have nothing at all to do with consumer broadband in Montreal. Maybe this is a positive for businesses, but it has zero bearing on your average Montrealer. The second reason is the Ile Sans Fil people, who install free wifi access points... except their coverage is non-existent. They've got 260 access points. There are at least that many access points in my apartment building alone; 260 access points in a metro area of nearly 4 million people means that you can wander the city and will probably never see an Ile Sans Fil access point. I've seen them on rare occasions, but never successfully connected to one (I've tried).

Including Montreal in a list of "top internet cities" pretty much invalidates your entire list...

Re:A joke of a list

[Anonymous Coward]

have a look at the smaller isp. velcom, vif, electroniquebox ...

Re:A joke of a list

[aristotle-dude]

Uh, yeah... this is a story about internet connectivity and not which cities are the best for people to leech off from free wifi. A lot of people have houses with wired internet service from an ISP that they "PAY" for.

Re:A joke of a list

[Anonymous Coward]

Montreal is a joke of a city. Can't wait to leave. Marie Plourde wants to be in politics? I'm done with this place.

Re:A joke of a list

[Guspaz]

All of whom are limited to offering the same services offered by Bell and Videotron. Sometimes they can't even match the incumbent pricing due to the ridiculous CBB rates approved by the CRTC.

Re:A joke of a list

[Guspaz]

What's your point? Their definition of "internet connectivity" counts a datacenter as a broadband ISP... I've already got 50 megabit VDSL2 service that I "PAY" for.

Free, or Just Lazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep on hearing from folks in San Francisco that the city should have free WiFi so that they can have an internet connection anywhere, rather than have to hunt for hotspots at cafes, etc. The odd thing is that these are the so-called media elites and startup whizkids, yet they apparently haven't heard of MiFi (from Verizon) or smartphones that creat WiFi hotspots. I figure they just want something for free.

Re:Free, or Just Lazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, people want something for free. Or at least don't want to pay the 100s of dollars per month that Verizon would charge for the services you list. Lots of people here believe that if everyone pitches in a little bit, we can offer service to everyone everywhere in the city. There's already a plan in the works to offer free WiFi in all city parks.

If we can provide free WiFi for everyone in the city for a couple of dollars per person per month, why would we want to all pay Verizon 50 times that for something similar?

Re:Free, or Just Lazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

If we can provide free WiFi for everyone in the city for a couple of dollars per person per month, why would we want to all pay Verizon 50 times that for something similar?

So it's not free after all?

Re:Free, or Just Lazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you wouldn't "all pay" to Verizon, but you're forcing everybody to "all pay" for something they might not ever use, or not value, and something which is of no legitimate "need."

Telling people, "if you want wifi, buy it yourself," would make the lousy hipsters have to stop being "artisanal boba tea baristas," and get a real fucking job.

"B-b-b-b-but wait! My dream has always been to blog about local craft organic goat cheeses while knitting cute jumpsuits for cats to sell on etsy. I can't possibly do that unless the city forces everybody to pay for my wifi, so screw you, my dream trumps your right to dispose of your own income as you see fit. I can't be expected to pay for something I use!"

Re:Free, or Just Lazy?

[Zontar The Mindless]

"Altruism is TEH EVIL!" --Motto of neocons everywhere. Or maybe it's Al-Qaeda. I confuse them sometimes.

Re:Free, or Just Lazy?

[mcvos]

Whenever I hear about free Wifi, the first thing I think of is Cabo Verde. It's a bunch of islands off the coast of Africa, not remotely rich or anything, but every main square in every town has free Wifi that just works, with no fuss whatsoever. It's great. It's brilliant. It makes me wonder why we can't have free Wifi in the city parks in Amsterdam. We do have free wifi in a number of places, but you usually first have to check a checkbox on a webpage before you can actually use it.

Because US love and US hate

[Sycraft-fu]

There are more than a few people out there who seem to think that there are two positions one can be in: #1 and utter crap, at least when it comes to the US. So if the US isn't #1 in something, then it is utter crap, a third world shithole, a loser, etc.

In come cases it is the overly zealous "We're #1" America lovers who really do think the US is the best EVAR at everything. They just can't handle second best at anything, ever.

In more cases it is people who like to hate on the US, for whatever various reasons, and thus see it as a way to say "See! Look at how bad the US is! It isn't the best! It sucks!"

It is very silly, but you see it on Slashdot plenty given that the site has a large number of users with poor world awareness and a dislike for the US (most of them being US citizens).

The same shit went on when there was a story about China having the #1 super computer on the Top 500 list, for the moment. Somehow the fact that the US has the the #2, 3, 5, 6, and 8 (half the top 10, in other words) didn't seem to matter. The US wasn't #1, so clearly they fail.

Re:Because US love and US hate

[Jethro]

That's a much more eloquent way of saying what I was trying to say, yes (:

I think it'd be nice if Americans in general were more OK with NOT being #1, and look at it as an opportunity for improvement.

Re:Because US love and US hate

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a General, but as an American I am okay with not being #1. Hurumph.

Re:Because US love and US hate

[KingMotley]

I'm an American, and I'm fine with not being #1. I'm even fine with not being #1 overall. Personally, I think we currently have the best overall country in the world, but I'd like to see a better one or two. Nothing brings out the best in the US than competition, or at least it did. Looking around at people here, I'm not so sure anymore, but I'd love to see it. Perhaps it's time for someone else to step up to the plate. There is nothing that says the US has be #1 forever, nor should it. The world is a cyclical place, as it should be. I just don't want to see the US drop below "good".

Re:Because US love and US hate

[Taibhsear]

If you're not first you're last.

U.S. has poor internet speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I can watch TV shows on Hulu while downloading a Linux distro with Bittorrent. Am I missing something?

Re:U.S. has poor internet speeds?

[IANAAC]

But I can watch TV shows on Hulu while downloading a Linux distro with Bittorrent. Am I missing something?

I can't. Not even close (unless I limit bittorrent to next to nothing for download speed). It depends on where in the US you're located.

Re:U.S. has poor internet speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people in the listed cities can watch newer TV shows on Hulu and get more recent Linux distros with Bittorrent than you. You are missing a lot and I feel sorry for you.

This is why we rule

[WillAffleckUW]

We also have cheap power that's green.

Adapt. The only other choice is fall by the wayside.

of course..

[epyT-R]

Socialist countries heavily subsidize infrastructure at taxpayer expense, but either way, the bills have to be paid. I like my freedom and control over my income, so I don't mind paying going market rates. I realize it's not comparable to $10/mo for gigabit like it might be in stockholm because the other $60 is publically funded.

Tat said, I do believe the infrastructure could be improved, but that other things like rollbacks on data monitoring are more important.

Re:of course..

[Sique]

For some reason I don't believe the $60 figure you are pulling out of your ass. For some reason I rather believe the $10 covering the whole cost. In my country, a telco based in a foreign country offers €10/mo. data plans for their UMTS based internet access. I don't believe this telco is somehow subsidized by my taxes.

Re:of course..

[Sique]

Just to prove my point: 9 GBytes/month. for €9 via UMTS. And no, I am not a customer there. I have a 30 mps / 4 mps fibre connection for 30 €/month.

Re:of course..

[jon3k]

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say, but the best I can tell is you're confusing 1Gb/s service that epyT-R is referring to with 9GB total monthly bandwidth cap service you linked. These are two totally different measurements. The one you linked is 7Mb/s with a 9GB cap.

Re:of course..

[Zontar The Mindless]

I live in Stockholm, and you've obviously no idea what you're talking about.

Re:of course..

[Sique]

I know. It was just an offer I knew (because it was heavily advertised), and I guess the infrastructure here is in place to offer much higher bandwidths for about the same price. The town's municipal utility has fiber in many parts of the town and offers fiber connections, and there is no technical reason to cap the bandwidth at 10 or 20 or 100 mps.

Article divided up into 11 segments

[bmo]

Really?

>hit print button hoping it gives the whole article
>only first page

tmp;dr

Even Cracked only divides up their "top 10" lists into two pages.

--
BMO

Weekly "Time to blow the broadband lobby" Piece

[Anonymous Coward]

Just that time of the week again, eh?

Another top 10 list

[MobyDisk]

Yet another "top 10" list. Can I get a list of the top 10 top 10 lists? Seriously, I'm tired of articles that amount to "someone's list of top 10 X will shock you!"

Re:Another top 10 list

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another "top 10" list. Can I get a list of the top 10 top 10 lists? Seriously, I'm tired of articles that amount to "someone's list of top 10 X will shock you!"

Ask and you shall receive:
    http://www.alternet.org/story/30157/the_ten_best_top-ten_lists

Re:Another top 10 list

[Kozz]

Yet another "top 10" list. Can I get a list of the top 10 top 10 lists? Seriously, I'm tired of articles that amount to "someone's list of top 10 X will shock you!"

Slashdot readers in Baltimore are shocked to learn this one weird trick that will get you to read top 10 lists!

Re:Another top 10 list

[tompaulco]

Wow, that was the worst top ten list I have seen in a long time.

I live in Seattle.

[khasim]

I'm on Beacon Hill. Our Internet services vary from street to street. It's ludicrous! I'm stuck with a slow provider right now, but a "gigabit" provider is trying to get access one block away.

Why do you think we legalized pot? Your connection might be slow but you cool with it.

Woohoo

[Anonymous Coward]

USA USA USA!

There's a lot of that

[Sycraft-fu]

You find that many places post these amazing Speedtest scores. There was some ISP in Riga (Latvia) that was showing extremely high results... However when you do some more extensive testing it doesn't seem to bear out. So why is that? Well because they run their own Speedtest server and operate their stuff like a big WAN.

It is not so hard to provide a big link internal to your network. It is a lot harder (meaning more expensive) to provide enough backhaul to make it fast to the majority of the world.

I mean I can truthfully say I have a gig here at work. I can do a Speedtest to show it... to the Speedtest server in our datacenter down the hall. Off campus I still see good connection speeds, but nowhere near a gig, as we have only about a gig of bandwidth for the whole campus.

Most US ISPs don't offer big links to customer houses, but they do tend to keep oversubscription manageable so you usually get around your rated bandwidth. What you find is that places that offer off the charts Internet speeds for cheap prices are doing WAN like setups and there isn't the backhaul to support it.

Re:There's a lot of that

[Guspaz]

Right, except OVH in Montreal is a datacenter. They really do have an obscene amount of bandwidth to the rest of the internet. The problem is that the "list" is counting a datacenter as a broadband ISP. They're not, they're a datacenter.

Plunking an enormous datacenter down next to a city doesn't suddenly make it a futuristic super internet city...

Criteria?

[jklovanc]

I find it interesting that support of public data.and security and data privacy are supposed to be part of the criteria they are never mentioned in the ratings.

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No more than one city from any country made the list. Whether they admit it or not, that was likely intentional when compiling the list.

Seattle makes this list?

[ibgumby]

I work in the Pioneer Square neighborhood (with the dark fiber in the street that I can't get access to) and live in a suburb just north of town. The telco's and cable companies have divided up Seattle's internet access map until it looks like like your viewing a kaleidoscope. It's horrible. That said, I do have a fairly stable 50/10 cable connection at work and a very stable 35/35 fiber connection at home. But those should be a 1g/100m connection at work and a 100m/100m at home for starters. Sure, we have a mayor who pays lip service to connectivity, and we have some fairly robust interconnects here with all of our high tech, manufacturing and universities but lots of other cities have those as well. What we lack is a cohesive plan to provide high speed wired (and I am talking gigabit here) and wireless connectivity to the entire city. We're still all about the public/private partnerships that lack any real impact (tiny pockets of zoom surrounded by slow pockets of doom). If Seattle is the only US city that made this list, then either this report is cracked or more likely, internet access in the USA is indeed in one sad, sad state of affairs.

Re:Seattle makes this list?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the details about why Seattle was added to the list, the city's thriving startup community and the forthcoming Gigabit Seattle project were taken into consideration. Still, it sounds like they added Seattle to the list begrudgingly, more for its near-future potential than its present state. I am hopelessly biased, since I live in Seattle and love the tech culture here, much more than Silicon Valley. If I can get gigabit to the home next year I am going to take advantage of it.

Re:Seattle makes this list?

[hey!]

That said, I do have a fairly stable 50/10 cable connection at work and a very stable 35/35 fiber connection at home.

Luxury. We have to start downoadng our movies at six o'clock in the morning, uudecode them by hand, eat a handful of 'o computer punch dots, work a twenty hour day at the call center for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a token ring cable, if we were lucky!

Only One US City Makes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not Kansas City?

The only US city to make this ranking is....

[dohzer]

...listed right at the end of this sentence, and is the final word of the entire article so that you have to wait until the very end before you will know that the very city that was listed on the list is almost about to be written in a few more words and it is Seattle.

The Results are RIGGED!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in INNOVATION where I live should max out in all the criteria listed in the article.

Average Internet Speed - I have 25 Mbs and up to 150Mbs is available at every home or business in the city because there is fiber in the street.

City Wide WiFi - We have 4G service from multiple carriers, plus WiFi service from two carriers available city wide.

Innovation - No huge technology businesses, but if you have one to move here, we will be glad to support you with a ready pool of technical workers from nearby cities in the Dallas area.

Data Availability - At the county level, there is a wealth of public data available. Land records, legal records, court records, voting results, budgets and the like are all available online.

Security - The records clerk is very good at keeping people's identities safe in all public records. We don't just have scans of documents, but actual electronic copies where records can be sanitized, searched for text and a whole host of cool things.

I think the survey was RIGGED. It was at least slanted towards the views of UBS and the corporate supporters of theirs...

Not in top 10..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm quite happy with my, ranked 30, french connection .. http://www.ariase.com/fr/vitesse/partage-76566.html ;)

"only one" isn't bad really.

[shadowrat]

The summary makes it sound like we have somehow fallen behind. I notice the following countries also only have 1 city in this list:

• South Korea
• China
• Japan
• Czech Republic
• Netherlands
• Canada
• Switzerland
• Sweden
• Austria

So no country on the list had more than one city. There's lots of other countries that aren't even on here.

Re:"only one" isn't bad really.

[Anonymous Coward]

America is easy to spot on a top-10 list because if they are nr1 you will be hearing them go on and on about it (usually degrading everyone else on the list in the process). If they are anything but nr1 they will start rationalizing/excusing it (usually degrading everyone else on the list in the process). Most other people find it funny since we do realise that you are ok even though you arent always the best at everything.

zomg u mean there's other places in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

besides the good ol' u. s. of a? unca george? i know you got fired and all, but say it ain't so!

We spend our money elsewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait until we find an excuse to bomb a few of them. Then we'll see about that infrastructure.

it's OK, really

[stenvar]

I really don't care what kind of world-wide lists we're first on. We should stop obsessing about what people in Europe or Asia do or think.

One might expect San Francisco to make the list...

[drinkypoo]

One might expect San Francisco to make the list only if one has never lived there. As a tech Mecca its communication infrastructure has been filled to bursting and expanded by any means necessary time and again...

"Only"? So?

[wonkey_monkey]

You don't have to be "number one!" at everything.

Considering most of those countries are the size..

[nhat11]

of a single state in the US, it's definitely a factor on why we're not #1 in some categories besides internet speeds.

I am shocked!, SHOCKED!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am shocked!, SHOCKED!

that any U.S. city is on that list.

Several cultural reasons

[chris.bannan]

Many of these comments do not take into account that the US does not seem to want to spend anything on infrastructure, Our roads and bridges are deteriorating, there is no real national railroad spending, our iconic national parks are struggling for funds and so on, Also, historically, we have never spent money on telecommunications. Ma Bell build much of the telecom infrastructure we use today, the baby bells have built on top of that and so have the cable ISPs. We (businesses) build when there is a profit incentive. There is too much complacency on the part of consumers to demand better internet capabilities. Until there is and the corresponding demand appears, Verizon, Comcast and their ilk will not spend on this

Yes, the cat got my tongue.

[Meski]

Having 1 of them (privacy) automatically set to zero because of the NSA should mean that you don't have any of the top ten, or indeed the top one hundred. The only reason you do is that the NSA spread its tendrils internationally.