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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