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- inyearstocome, on 03/10/2009, -1/+88It also has to do with the fact that the major telcoms were given huge sums of money to build a fiber infrastructure which they were supposed to finish in the mid 90's... and still havent gotten close to finishing.
http://www.newnetworks.com/BroadbandScandalIntro.h ... - kingmanic, on 03/10/2009, -3/+67Q:Why Is Theirs Faster?
A:Telecommunication Monopolies are a helluva drug. - Akairenn, on 03/10/2009, -4/+35*****.
I live in a very decently populated area of the northeast. My broadband options are ***** DSL which may not even be available, or ***** cable Internet from a single provider.
We've the population to have better connectivity and more options; government-mandated monopolies and contracts forbid it. Nothing else. That 31/km number is thrown around a great deal - it's also ridiculous. Only a fool expects Assville, Montana - population 3, to have decent Internet connectivity.
What's the excuse for our major cities and sprawling urban/suburban wastelands? Nothing but greed. - akatsuki, on 03/10/2009, -2/+30I'd believe that if cities in the US actually had fast broadband available.
- damack, on 03/10/2009, -0/+26Thats a good point I'm glad somebody pointed it out.
Wiring up the entire of America with fiber optic cable is not such an outrageous idea when you consider in China they plan to have the entire nation wired up with fiber optic cable within 15 years and already have 1Gb(yes thats 1 GIGABIT) internet in places like Hong Kong.
All it requires is a push on the part of the telecoms monpolisers and a lot of money.
The telecoms refused to put money into the system for so long and now that the economic crisis has hit upgrading the broadband in the US isnt first priority anymore.
Travelling between Hong Kong and the States I hate going from 1Gb internet to a painfully slow connection in the US. - lendrick, on 03/10/2009, -1/+25Here's how I'd remedy that:
Fine them 1/5 of the total money they were given every year until the infrastructure is complete. Don't stop at 5 years. - basshunter5353, on 03/10/2009, -2/+25***** you, signed Australia
- inactive, on 03/10/2009, -2/+21Congratulations, now GTFO.
- Grazzit, on 03/11/2009, -0/+15My father works for AT&T and what he's been doing since the early 90's is fiber work. How it is laid is a tedious slow process involving massive pipes laid horizontaly. Due to regulations they can't simply pull up a trencher and rip a hole 1/4 mile at a time so they're having to shoot these pipes thru the ground with very little margin for error. The pipes are required to provide some degree of protection for the fiber runs. It's a slow process especially when they have no power of imminent domain to determine how it is laid out.
I'm not attempting to make an excuse for the slow deployment, I'm just trying to let you know at least one of the reasons for it according to an employee. - etx313, on 03/10/2009, -1/+14I was always curious about this. Dugg.
- trollick, on 03/10/2009, -0/+13I think population density in New York is a little higher than 31/km^2
- Schmich, on 03/10/2009, -2/+14Sweden: 20/km2
- SilverBlade2k, on 03/10/2009, -2/+14Monopolies is the reason. Not technology, not the spread of the population, but monopolies who feel they have a god-given right to over-charge customers for ***** service.
After all, they're AMERICAN ISP's, they don't NEED to compete - SammyJr, on 03/10/2009, -3/+14Lets see:
U.S. Investments: WAR, Jesus
the rest of the world: Internet, health care, education, public transportation, etc. - reddikilowatt, on 03/11/2009, -0/+10Sure, but you didn't take any campaign contributions from them. That tends to make things a little more complicated.
- Sainthax, on 03/10/2009, -7/+17As the owner of a colocation data center and ISP I'll give you the simple answer...because everyone wants 50Mbits up and down for $20/mo and as the ISP pays their way through the list of upstreams and equipment providers they themselves would be losing money to deliver service to someone who wants 50Mbits worth of bandwidth for torrents and will peg the connection 24/7.
People can get 20Mbits of WiMAX in metro Atlanta RIGHT NOW, but are they willing to pay a reasonable price for it considering the bandwidth and equipment costs, not greedy CEO's? no...and so 95% of that client base continues to be corporations. Getting WiMAX to a customer is also a lot cheaper than digging up neighborhoods to bury fiber, and still it's got a significant build-out cost attached to it.
It's going to be a few more years before backbones grow enough to provide cheaper bulk transit. The US market went the wrong direction, now it has to grow it's way out of it. - akatsuki, on 03/10/2009, -0/+10Yep... read that. don't really believe it. I lived in the heart of NYC and now live in SF. Neither matched my suburban Japanese broadband connection.
The affluent customer they mention definitely was living in Manhattan, so no reason why I couldn't get 50mbps there... - kingmanic, on 03/10/2009, -1/+10we need more Vespene Gas
- daPhoenix, on 03/10/2009, -1/+10Finland, population density 17/km2 - I have 100Mbps straight home and I live in the woods (proverbial since I can look outside and see the forest on all sides)
- inactive, on 03/10/2009, -0/+8we need more fiber optic cabling
- uninspireded, on 03/10/2009, -1/+9Wrong.
- inactive, on 03/10/2009, -0/+8Profit is their goal, not your demands.
- 4DFX, on 03/10/2009, -0/+8I hope you're joking, because if you aren't, then you clearly have no idea how this stuff works.
- suinmind, on 03/10/2009, -3/+11U.S. # 1!.
we can solve any problem by redefinition, like renaming "slow" as "fast", "overpriced" as "cheap". - kingmanic, on 03/10/2009, -0/+8Linux Distros; Game Demo's; iTunes; PSN Downloadable games and movies; Live Downloadable games and movies; Youtube; Porn; Game Patches; movies trailers; Video on demand services; Video Conferencing; Network computing; Porn; High Res Photography; Online Data storage Services; Porn; etc . . .
- Kahnza, on 03/10/2009, -0/+7I hate paying $75/month for 20Mb. We NEED cheaper, faster connections.
- deathandtaverns, on 03/10/2009, -0/+7I'm sure that's part of it, but if I were my cable company and I saw what VOIP did for land telephone lines, I don't think I'd be in too big of hurry to make internet fast enough for IPTV to work well enough to compete with cable television.
- Sainthax, on 03/10/2009, -0/+7Last quote I was involved in to run fiber from a street to a building, required a rather simple 400' trench through a parking lot which we had ownership of and required no special permission to dig it up.
Trench, bury, run into building service box, terminate in building, and splice at street... it was a little over $180k. $180k to lay one cable and we already had three other large cables going into the building.
When everyone stops trying to rape everyone else on costs, fiber will probably show up all over most small cites. - largobargo, on 03/11/2009, -0/+7It has nothing to do with density, it's competition. The USA government has given special privileges to a handful of corporations, which has allowed the limited number of broadband providers to collude together and keep prices artificially higher.
If the US government wasn't so corrupt, we would have many companies competing, which would lead to lower prices, better service and net neutrality wouldn't be an issue. - mustang460, on 03/10/2009, -0/+7united states has many very densely populated areas, and many places such as japan has 100 mbps in rural areas as well
they have better speeds due to competition, many areas(especially rural) in the US have a single broadband ISP, they lobbied a government years ago to get a subsidy, and are now in a position were no other company can compete. - kingmanic, on 03/10/2009, -0/+7For DSL Density plays a role in some areas but on average Canada (Similar urban/Suburban densities) have better DSL/Cable speeds for less money. In dense urban areas you could have a lot better speeds but the telco's have not provided that. Cable should be faster as well here in my extremely spread out City in Canada you can get a 25 mbps connection for around $93 CND ($101 non bundled). The average DSL price is 1.5 mbps for $15 CND or 3.0 mbps for $20 CND bundles add $5-$10 unbundled.
My town is Edmonton which has roughly the same population density as Jacksonville Florida. - depro9, on 03/10/2009, -1/+7CONTROL is the reason.
- maz2331, on 03/10/2009, -2/+8Also, they have a bit of the "last mover advantage" going for them. The first to build out any technology is the first to reap the benefits, but the installed base becomes a major drag on future upgrades. The later-adopters tend to use the very newest technology at the time, and thus leapfrog the earlier ones.
- muzikoverdose, on 03/11/2009, -0/+6As an aussie, I utterly agree. No one is getting a wallet raping quite as we are. Will someone please break Telstra?
- groo68, on 03/10/2009, -0/+6don't gloat about how your internet is fast enough for such simple luxuries as first post.
- dusanmal, on 03/11/2009, -2/+8Sorry Sir, but Japanese customers have 50-80 Mbits up and down for the price equivalent to the 1 lb of apples. Their ISPs are very profitable. Obviously YOU are doing something wrong if you can't match that in a similarly dense urban center. I haven't seen apples at 20$ per pound in Atlanta....
"to deliver service to someone who wants 50Mbits worth of bandwidth for torrents and will peg the connection 24/7." - and there is your problem. You see your Customer as a problem. If you were to work for Japanese ISP and say that, you'll be promptly fired. - TranceNW, on 03/10/2009, -1/+7So how does that explain why Chinese telcos manage to get a considerably faster connection out to rural areas?
- kingmanic, on 03/10/2009, -0/+6Canada's proximity to the US doesn't automatically change it's urban/suburban population density which is about the same as the US average.
- cybrguy, on 03/10/2009, -0/+6I wish I could pay $75/mo for 20Mbit!
- jasdf, on 03/10/2009, -1/+6Grammar correction FAIL!
Their's does not even exist so no matter how you read it you are wrong.. - khyberkitsune, on 03/11/2009, -0/+5I must say you are wrong. We gave telcoms 200+ billion bucks back in like 1996 to deliver bidirectional 45mbps fiber to the premises by 2006 PLUS 500 channels.
All we have received is sparse FiOS crap service and sub-rate DSL.
WE PAID FOR EVERYBODY TO HAVE THAT HIGH SPEED LINK BOTH WAYS. NOW GIVE IT TO US YOU GREEDY BASTARDS! - w3ber, on 03/11/2009, -0/+5http://www.speedtest.net/result/413296373.png
Rds, Romania 15$ - billricardi, on 03/10/2009, -1/+6They sort of downplay Korea's 'fiber to the neighborhood' as not being real fiber to the home.
Yeah, it is copper for the last X number of feet, but until they feel like offering over 100 Mb to individual clients, who cares? 100baseT is proven technology that dwarfs what most of us have coming into our home. The switches are cheap. Win!
Do we really need fiber or gigabit Ethernet piped directly into our home? If so, be prepared to pay the crazy costs associated with fiber splicing or gigabit copper switches and the networking hardware for your end of the circuit. - AlienMushroom, on 03/10/2009, -4/+9America is always a few years behind on everything.
- computershack, on 03/11/2009, -1/+5Its got sod all to do with population density. My parents live in a small 20 house village 3 miles from the nearest town which itself only has 11,000 residents. They still get 2MB and in the town, you can get 24Mbit ADSL 2+ or even 7.2Mbit HDSPA. The nearest city is 28 miles from the town and in the entire county, there's only 330,000 people spread over 930 square miles giving a population density of 354 people per square mile. This county is in the north of England so it's hardly the affluent south east of the country where you'd expect decent broadband.
- tyrulz, on 03/10/2009, -1/+5irrelevant, but true
- primeq, on 03/10/2009, -1/+5of course market-forces (population density) drive bandwidth; the "market-forces" argument has worked so well this far hasn't it . . ..
Funny how they cherry-pick the stats. We're less densely populated here ON AVERAGE, but that means that in downtown NYC megabroadband should $20/month. It's not. At another time they would trot out the vast size of the US population as a reason why something else is (insert greedy capitalist issue here). But when it doesn't suit these people, they're silent on the numbers that don't support. Why did they fall over themselves to kill municipal wireless when people were trying? For the good of the market?
Please. Even Thomas Friedman - the ultimate GOP apologist is pissed at the crappy internet infrastructure here compared to elsewhere. - smacksaw, on 03/10/2009, -0/+4I really wish/hope we can make a national investment in infrastructure and then hire anyone who wants to resell it to do so. They can pay back the cost of the infrastructure by running a good, profitable business and we can have some real competition.
- mbtria, on 03/11/2009, -0/+4The technology gap is not just Broadband, but cell phones, audio, tv and many other gadgets and fields of endevour. Corporations that have a vested interest in the status quo are able to buy laws that allow them to inhibit and even outlaw new technologies. The RIAA is just one example of a buggywhip organization that has been fighting what is technologically available and that consumers want. It is ostensibly protecting an industry, but is really aiding and abetting a suicide.
- Sabin, on 03/11/2009, -0/+4Canada has a density of 3/km2 but Toronto has a population density of 3972/km2. This is the biggest ***** excuse going. It's like saying that we can't have 3G cellular access in a large urban centre because there aren't enough people in the whole country.
Buried as inaccurate -
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