Slashdot Mirror
Why Is US Broadband So Slow?
phantomfive writes "Verizon has said they will not be digging new lines any time soon. Time-Warner's cash flow goes towards paying down debt, not laying down fiber. AT&T is doing everything they can to slow deployment of Google fiber. How can the situation be improved? Mainly by expediting right-of-way access, permits, and inspections, according to Andy Kessler. That is how Google was able to afford to lay down fiber in Austin, and how VTel was able to do it in Vermont (gigabit connections for $35 a month)."
Answer: corporate greed.
It's not competition, it's service. The government is meant to serve the people, and sometimes that means providing utilities for the public, with the public's input and desires accommodated.
As long as we keep private enterprise from buying up the regulations anyway.
Cut down the biggest branch of our government - the lobbying industry.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Yup, the government should step in when private industry is either unwilling or unable to provide essential services at a reasonable cost, the keywords being essential and reasonable. Case in point roads.
The macroeconomic costs of having all roads be private would be huge. There would be a lot of lost productivity(not to mention fuel wastage) just on the collection of tolls. And of course anyone who owns property anywhere could find themselves at the mercy of a private interest who can essentially blackmail them by cutting off access to their home or business. Another example of an essential service where the government should, and in most rich places in the world, has intervened is insurance. The fact that the US pays so much more for getting so much less than countries with private health care systems has shown that private industry is either unwilling or unable to provide insurance at reasonable cost, and thus it must be taken away from them. Same with broadband, if US providers don't prove they are capable of *gasp* actually providing a decent service at a decent price then the government should step in. Broadband is in the new economy an "essential service", essentially the "roads" of the internet.
The classic straw man argument is of course "well then why doesn't the government run food stores? Everyone needs food!". While this is true, food retailing(not really going to go into production, which is a separate story) is actually one of the most competitive industries in the US. Competition forces companies to provide decent service at very low margins(1-2% in some cases). If the broadband industry were more like the food distribution industry then we wouldn't even have to discuss a government take-over.
Monstar L
You've just noted that there is an existing infrastructure, and it is common to live off of existing infrastructure until forced to move off it. To that I will add that if I recall correctly, 10 years ago 90% of the optical fiber that existed was dark - there wasn't enough demand for it due to overbuilding in previous years. I wouldn't be surprised if that had something to do with the leisurely pace in adding both capacity and speed.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about Government.
I have issues with them, too; but I'd rather a non-corporate entity build out and even own our infrastructure than profitmongers!
roads, water, electricity, bridges: all were started by government and that was the major funder. we would not have postal system and roads 'to everywhere' if the decision was left to the profiteering ones.
infrastructure is one of the things goverments do best.
as for your bullshit distraction about how well congress works, that's neither here nor there nor part of any thread on this topic. sheesh.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
This has been covered 2-3 times in the last year already, and the answers aren't going to change.
Corporate greed is the overwhelming reason.
Lack of necessary infrastructure is the other. But then that's because there is no system upgrading being done because of -- corporate greed.
Instead of having the same discussions about the problem, a more productive discussion would be about how to solve the issue and steps people can take to actually realize those solutions.
It's not competition, it's service. The government is meant to serve the people, and sometimes that means providing utilities for the public, with the public's input and desires accommodated.
As long as we keep private enterprise from buying up the regulations anyway.
Arguably, 'internet access' can be broken down into two (broad) components, one a fairly natural 'utility' and one much easier to build a functional marketplace for.
The last-mile bit pipe between your house and whatever the local aggregation point is is, like most 'utilities' strongly inclined toward being a natural monopoly. Not as bad as something like roads(where running multiple competing roads simply wouldn't fit, in most cases); but between the cost and the disruption of laying additional runs, there is very, very strong pressure toward a sharply limited number of, typically incumbent, wireline players, with maybe a feeble wireless competitor that is compelling if you use under 5GB a month.
Once you hit the aggregation point, though, anything that flows over IP can, relatively easily, be offered for hookup to your pipe. Cheap residential ISPs, fancier offerings with loads of static IPs and symmetric bandwidth, assorted VOIP and video offerings, anything you can shove down a pipe.
Keeping the connection between me and the aggregation point installed, maintained, and lit seems like a perfectly sensible function for either the local municipality, or a suitably-tamed contract operator(It's a matter of pragmatism and local choice whether the work be done by municipal employees or an outside firm; but natural monopolies are to be kept on very short leashes). Once you hit the aggregation point, though, the more the merrier. Subscribing or unsubscribing is just a few ruleset changes, so can be fairly frictionless, and this avoids any...potentially unseemly....favor or disfavor by the municipal government toward specific content or services. They just keep the lights on, you buy what you want, or nothing at all(though, even if you buy nothing, it might well be cost-effective for the municipality itself to still offer access to its own site, emergency services contacts, etc. to residents, since traffic on the LAN costs near zero.
Yup, the government should step in when private industry is either unwilling or unable to provide essential services at a reasonable cost, the keywords being essential and reasonable.
The reverse sadly is true today. Local governments, likely under the influence of paid lobbyists working for existing corporate/telco interests, are actively writing laws to block the spread of broadband. Read for yourself the story of how the Kansas Legislature is trying to stop Google Fiber from expanding in Kansas.
Best part is: the Senate bill states that the goal is to
"encourage the development and widespread use of technological advances in providing video, telecommunications and broadband services at competitive rates; and ensure that video, telecommunications and broadband services are each provided within a consistent, comprehensive and nondiscriminatory federal, state and local government framework."
i'm 40 and have seen the internet grow up and settle for the cheaper plans. i'm at 20/2 now
why do i need to pay for super fast internet?
The point is that the super fast Internet is way too expensive. You're fine with 20/2 now, but if you could have 100/100 for the same price, would you stick with 20/2?
Not everything is publish-subscribe. I want to be able to set up storage boxes in friends' houses or the cloud or whatever, so I can have off-site backups of my data. I want to be able to play with various decentralized communications programs. Some people your age are starting to have grandkids. It would be nice to talk to them in HD, like those science fictions of the 21st Century were saying we would be able to do.
Don't worry about what you'd use the bandwidth for. If you have bandwidth, eventually you'll find a use for it.
Have a nice time.
Cute. Who the hell gets high speed Internet for $20/mo? Most of us are stuck with cable, which costs far more than that. Even though I don't live in the sticks, DSL is not an option available to me because I'm between two stations. And even where DSL is an option, it's speed is unreliable and not great to begin with. So I have two choices - Time Warner, or EarthLink - which just resells...Time Warner. The problem is the cable companies being in control of the majority of the broadband services in the country. They want to keep up the status quo and everyone in the dark ages as long as possible. The entire industry is anti-competitive to begin with, we should have a slew of cable providers to choose from, but we don't because they grease so many palms in Washington. They get to be anti-competitive like a utility (I can't change water or sewer companies, either) but don't have the same restrictions and other controls to keep them from overcharging for their services.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Do you pay to drive from one end of a WalMart parking lot to the other? It's private. Why aren't there any tolls?"
Two thoughts on that.
1. They don't charge tolls because they don't want to irritate potential customers.
2. The are charging a toll. It's built into the cost of their products.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
You guys aren't that bad, you just can't compete with Europe or Asia (how should you? the US is quite bigger and harder to lay down fiber)
That is a bit of strange myth. Apart from central US perhaps being a bit empty many states are comparable to European nations.
Take for example California, it is just marginally smaller than Sweden and approximately the same shape. With four times the population one would think that the internet should be faster, cheaper or at least comparable.
It is all just politics.
A property owner's association eh? If only there was some slightly larger public body that could provide broadband internet strictly for the benefit of it's members rather than for profit. Perhaps it could feature democratically elected managers. Of course it would have to collect dues from each resident in the area somehow.
You know, that's starting to sound a lot like local government.
Meanwhile horror and comedy stories about HOAs are legion.
Who the hell gets high speed Internet for $20/mo?
Japan. Korea. Eastern Europe. Even some western European countries give you pretty good speeds for $20/month, with no cap.
Apologists will point to differences in population density, geography, history and so forth, but the simple fact is that the US is being raped by ISPs. The UK is in the same situation, if it makes you feel any better.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC