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

[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

[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]

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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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!

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.