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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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)
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