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Ask Slashdot: When and How Did Europe Leapfrog the US For Internet Access?
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?
Uh, no. The bigger the country and its GDP the greater the economies of scale. The density issue is stupid as well since we don't have FTTH in all the cities.
Then why don't we have fiber in all our cities? And your use of "economies of scale" is literally the opposite of what it actually means. The larger the entity the greater the economies of scale. While we spend $1 trillion+/year on our military, it would take $200 billion to cover the country in fiber. Or $20 billion/year over 10 years- probably less as subscriber revenue would pay for it as the network expanded. That's pocket change for our government.
I don't have a lot of facts to cite that I can back this up with, but my general sense is that Europe (and a fair bit of Asia too) have the belief that it's worthwhile to have the government invest in infrastructure. They spend money to improve roads, bridges, railways, airports, telecommunications, electrical generation, and whatever else. In the US, we assume that infrastructure will take care of itself, somehow, mysteriously.
For a lot of stuff, we just get angry if the government spends money to build/repair a bridge. Railways are considered a massive boondoggle. The Internet is considered an entertainment service. To the extent that we consider the Internet "telecommunications infrastructure", we've decided to improve it by giving massive amounts of money to private monopolies, while not having any actual requirements on those companies to actually build anything with that money. There's a belief, somehow, that Verizon is a good and virtuous company that would love to provide fast internet, if only it could afford to do so, so we just keep giving them money and exclusive deals, and they keep refusing to actually roll out fiber.
Meanwhile, European countries just rolled out fiber. No outrage from the Tea Party to deal with, no big payouts to Verizon to stifle the project. They were able to do it because they simply had the government pay for it.
No one in the world has subsidized telco profits as much as we have.
Fixed that for you.
Well ... nobody has been scammed by the telcos as much as you have.
If you gave them hundreds of billions and got nothing in return, blame your politicians, and shoot their lobbyists.
Subsidized and conned aren't the same thing.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
We subsidized something, it turns out it certainly wasn't broadband.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
the economies of scale due to the US population density distribution and having to lay new mediums to connect made it not economical.
This is just total ignorant BS. I have pointed out before that Tokyo has a way smaller population density that NYC, yet Tokyo shits all over NYC for access speed. The market in NYC has a need that is not being fulfilled and lack of population density is not the reason why.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Disclaimer: I'm Canadian but have lived in a border town most of my life and watched and followed mostly US media.
Unfortunately the sad truth in the last 20 years is the US is no longer at the forefront of anything except corporate greed and government corruptness. I'm not saying other countries are any different but the big difference between the US (and Canada to some extent) vs Europe is the citizens. In Europe it seems the citizens don't roll over take it like we do in North America. Someone once told me that in most of the EU, the governments are afraid of the people, while in NA, it's the opposite. Simply put, Europeans won't stand for all the crap that happens over here. This has lasting effects on how services and corporations grow and are governed. When not controlled correctly (aka when lobbying rules) by the government, corporations have a proven track record of screwing the people!
Any Europeans care to chime in and agree/disagree with me?
Somewhere between de-regulating telecomms, declaring corporations are people, and that whole economic collapse that nearly destroyed the country. Its on our list of things to fix though, right after crippling wealth inequality, stagnant wages, cops that can beat and kill indiscriminately, figuring out how the NSA turned into the KGB, and fixing our crumbling highway system. Assuming we dont shut the government down for the third time I think we might be able to get to 100 megabit in the next century...assuming global warming is still a hoax. That is still a hoax in Europe too, right?
Good people go to bed earlier.
The US government has given the telcos hundreds of billions of dollars in USF fees over the last 15+ years. No one in the world has subsidized broadband as much as we have.
And, apparently, no one in the world has as little to show for the investment...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
A market where utilities have government-mandated monopolies is not free.
Unfortunately, the US does not have free market capitalism on broadband communications. In most areas it is either monopoly or duopoly, with local government regulating it. So it is really like having the worst of both systems and the best of neither.
A market where utilities have government-mandated monopolies is not free.
Google is demonstrating that there isn't a mandated communications monopoly per se, but just an extremely high barrier to entry and some incumbent legislation that moves out of the way as soon as enough people are teased with hyperfast internet hookups.
Actually, Google has shown that you need to have deep pockets to get over incumbant efforts to keep you out. Many municipal broadband efforts have fizzled because the incumbents muscled them out (sometimes without even serving the area that the municipal broadband network would have covered).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
No telecoms have a government-mandated monopoly. The FCC preempted exclusive franchise agreements in 2007.
The only barriers now are that it is a huge initial capital expense and large incumbents who will try every dirty trick to block new entrants.
This is exactly the reason why Internet access in the U.S. is so expensive and so crappy relative to other first-world nations.
I'm sorry, but to my mind any definition of "crappy" must include the freedom to access any website, which many other first world nations (like the UK) do not enjoy.
To label it a slower is fine, but just to say "crappy" is ignoring the tradeoff from one kind of crap to another.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So explain to me why internet access in LA and Manhattan is so bad compared to comparable European cities. Besides, with a comparable density, a larger area should result in better overall efficiencies, not worse.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
The natural outcome of any limited "free market" given enough time is a monopoly. This is a case where regulation, while not perfect, greatly improves the overall situation.
Playing the "last mile" game is remarkably difficult and expensive. Without regulation there'd be very little preventing Comcast from just buying everyone out and making it up over time with high rates and crappy service.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I think there's more going on here than just European "socialism" vs. American "capitalism". Demographics, for instance, are wildly different for the US.
Average population and population density for countries 1-15: 34 million and 193/km^2
United States population and population density: 316 million and 34/km^2
Well, that explains why all of our large cities are so well-connected with gigabit fiber for $50/mo, at least.
Oh, wait, they're not are they? The simple fact that Montana exists shouldn't be used to excuse terrible service and pricing in NYC, Houston, Seattle, or any other major US city.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Nor did I limit myself to thinking that the only dirty tricks competitors play require government involvement.
And yet it's happening. Municipal fiber efforts are being stymied by bureaucratic referees handing the game over to the telecoms. That's real, honest-to-god corruption, and it's being ignored so we can have a contrived pissing contest over free market capitalism.
it's not government mandated, it's a *natural* monopoly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
things like fire, police, healthcare, powerplants: there is no market for such things. for a number of reasons. with broadband it's because of high barrier to entry: no one has the billions to gamble on entering the market with uncertain payout
oh google does. so go ahead and wait 40 years until they get to your city
but if you make believe (like the usa does) that things like broadband and healthcare are free markets, you just wind up with grossly expensive, inefficient jokes
what we need is universal healthcare, and government owned fiber
i hear it already: "oh you evil socialist statist..." *drool, snort*
i don't like the government. but unlike some people, i recognize that on the topic of *natural* monopolies, government control is the least horrible situation, and certainly better than the usa's joke of healthcare system or approach to broadband
capitalism is a wonderful tool. i love capitalism
for example: governments should own all fiber, and then lease it to private companies to deliver services. any private company can lease to provide any service. that's wonderful capitalism, embraced in a manner of fair competition. without the bullshit notion they own the fiber too, and there's "competition". no there isn't. and there never will be. and no government policy is to blame. it's the simple nature of the sector fo the economy: too high of a cost to enter. no one else can afford to roll out the fiber
capitalism is not a fucking religion, and it has its limits
natural monopolies represent those limits
if you don't understand what a natural monopoly is, stop talking about economics, you don't understand the topic
government is not your enemy, rent seeking parasites CORRUPTING your government are. you want to remove the corruption and have your government work for you. not weaken and remove government, thereby allowing the monopolists to rape you even more
there's just a certain kind of person in the world that think government is the problem no matter what. and on topics where the real problem is something else: natural monopolies, they simply enable the monopolists by misdirecting their anger at the wrong target (government). propaganda funded by the plutocrats are happy to feed this error, because indeed, with a weakened government, they get to rape you even more without even the pesky need to buy off congresscritters and pass warped regulations at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sweden is about the same size as California, but has only 10 million people vs. 40 million in California.
So how come broadband access is better and cheaper in both the cities and rural areas in Sweden compared to California?
Um, Sweden is only 170K square miles. The US is 3.8M square miles. So, while Sweden's population density is less than the US, the coverage area, and thus cost, is MUCH higher. Granted, a good portion of the US would not need full coverage as there is nothing in some places but wilderness and loggers... (grin)
The "population density" argument is a red herring. Americans managed to build roads.
Is fiber really that much harder?
I lost my sig.
Yes, the U.S. has more densely populated cities than Sweden or Portugal (San Francisco and Manhattan), and 1/3 more population density than Sweden. So....what's the excuse again?
The threat of competition prevents long term monopolies from persisting.
explain how that works. you've just made a statement of unsupported belief
i've explained to you reality, straightforward: a high cost of entry into the market prevents competition. high cost alone
you have opposed my description of reality. that's fine, you don't have to agrere with me
but you have to be able to explain how or why i am wrong. you have not done that
"go read my religious literature" is not an argument
if you can't make your case in plain language, that says something doesn't it?
an unsupported faith in an unsupported statement is trendy nonsense
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it