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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.