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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?
2002. They saw what we preached and acted on it. They did it with fiber because of the nature of their governments rather than the utilities.
10-100Mb wasn't uncommon in Sweden then in the cities, although rural may have taken longer.
If I were going to guess, I would assume the reason the US has lower speeds in most areas compared to Europe, is probably about competition.
I work for a large telecoms company in the UK, so this is what I can see is happening here:
The incumbent telephone provider, BT Openreach, is forced, by regulator policy, to offer access to their network for a fixed cost to the other telecoms resellers, including the other company within BT, BT Retail. On top of this, BT Openreach covers almost all of the UK, so resellers can also offer services all over the UK too, with not much investment needed.
If I contrast this to what I see in the US: A few cable and telephone providers serve only specific areas, with hardly any competition. No incentive to improve service or reduce cost to consumer, plus regulators seem too scared to act. Also, corporate corruption in the form of lobbying means that people who work in government are just as inclined to help maintain the status quo.
Europe: Lots of competition and regulation
US: Lack of competition, basically no regulation
But the others subsidized the build. We subsidized the service. There's a difference.
Also, unbundling caused 1000s of CLECs to pop up. But that was too much competition for the bells, so CLECs were shut out, restoring the monopoly/duopoly (depending on location). Had the unbundling continued, locking out bells from their own network, then we'd be much better off than Europe. But the government is bought and paid for (both sides), so we got the government we deserve by voting them in.
Transforming the copper/fiber network to a distribution-only model is what works best. Anything else fails.
Learn to love Alaska
In the Netherlands, the incumbent telco PTT (now KPN) was first forced to co-locate equipment from other ISPs (they actually sabotaged that equipment from time to time), then forced to share the local loop for a reasonable fee.
Yeah, we had the same thing here, complete with sabotage, but then we got rid of it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Here in the US, there was a sea change that happened in 2000-2002. When consumer-level broadband happened, the old school "boutique" ISPs went extinct just because they couldn't offer the bandwidth of DSL or DOCSIS.
Europe didn't have that entire cottage industry be swept away in the span of 9-12 months as was done in the US.
It would have been nice if the small, mom-and-pop ISPs could have continued existing and making money. There was some odd pride in having an E-mail address at a place like io.com, eden.com, or even panix or STD. Mainly because ISPs were more proactive in kicking off abusers (as in maintaining a reputation), and there were no free accounts, so the customer was the subscriber... not as it is now where the subscriber is the product.
Plus, Europe also isn't one large nation. Internet access has to be just as good a deal for Sweden as it is for France or it won't be accepted. Here in the US, the will of NYC, the Bay Area, or LA trumps everywhere else in the nation.
From an economics viewpoint, I'd agree with the wacko talk show host. I don't think the national government shouldn't be in the Telco business.
State and local governments should have that option. First states need to stop taking lobbyist money and preventing local municipalities from rolling their own FTTH initiatives. Let the local areas fund and deploy FTTH and lease it to ISPs at cost. Your local tax dollars at work, based on local approval.
I'd love to do a local city FTTH initiative. I think we could pull it off in my semi-rural area. We'd put Comcast and Charter into the ground because they won't compete for service. They charge as much as possible for as little as possible.