Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: When and How Did Europe Leapfrog the US For Internet Access?

Posted by timothy on from the granpa-tell-us-a-story dept.

New submitter rsanford, apropos of today's FCC announcement about what is officially consided "broadband" speed by that agency, asks In the early and middle 90's I recall spending countless hours on IRC 'Trout-slapping' people in #hottub and engaging in channel wars. The people from Europe were always complaining about how slow their internet was and there was no choice. This was odd to me, who at the time had 3 local ISPs to choose from, all offering the fastest modem connections at the time, while living in rural America 60 miles away from the nearest city with 1,000 or more people. Was that the reality back then? If so, what changed, and when?

5 of 495 comments (clear)

  1. Government Intervention by jaseuk · · Score: 5, Informative

    EU wide publically funded projects to bring high speed broadband across Europe?

    We had plenty of choices for dial-up too, what we lacked particularly in the UK was free local calls, that made modem calls expensive compared to the US. Since then everything has been going our way.

    Jason.

    1. Re:Government Intervention by Qzukk · · Score: 5, Informative

      publically funded projects to bring high speed broadband

      In the US we gave our telcos massive tax cuts in the 90s in exchange for fiber rollout. The telcos took the money and ran.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    2. Re:Government Intervention by Pentium100 · · Score: 5, Informative

      There is another reason (at least in my country).

      Instead of giving money to ISPs and asking them politely to connect rural areas to a fiber network (like I understand happened in the US resulting in the ISPs taking the money and doing nothing) the government in my country is laying the fiber cables itself and then leases it to anyone who wants to use it at a set price. Which means that if ISP A does not want it, ISP B will get it.

    3. Re:Government Intervention by theVarangian · · Score: 5, Informative

      EU wide publically funded projects to bring high speed broadband across Europe?

      We had plenty of choices for dial-up too, what we lacked particularly in the UK was free local calls, that made modem calls expensive compared to the US. Since then everything has been going our way.

      Jason.

      Yeah, who would have thought that European 'socialism' would be more effective at bringing the internet to the masses than American private enterprise? But sarcasm aside, here are the world's 16 most connected countries according to a study done by Harvard University for the FCC:

      1 Sweden
      2 Denmark
      3 Japan
      4 South Korea
      5 Switzerland
      6 Netherlands
      7 Finland
      8 France
      9 Belgium
      10 Norway
      11 United Kingdom
      12 Germany
      13 Iceland
      14 Italy
      15 Portugal
      16 United States

  2. March 11, 2000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    After that, things started tanking and telcos took their government hand-outs from the 90s and paid their CEOs' bonuses - and a few of them walked away with billions personally.

    In some cases there was outright fraud.

    It's kind of like living in a Third World country where the billionaire class rigs the system for their benefit, bitches about government interference (all the while lobbying for it to boost their profits) and John .Q. Public falling for the BS and thinking that one day, if he works hard enough, he'll be one of those billionaires with a private jet.

    Or let's put it this way: we have a corrupt economic system in the States and no one wants to change because they have been brainwashed into thinking we have free market capitalism and anything other than our crony capitalistic system is Communism.

    Yes, most Americans are that stupid.