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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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]

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?

[Sique]

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

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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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).

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

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.

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

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!"

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.

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

[PPH]

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

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...

Re:of course..

[Zontar The Mindless]

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