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79 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5We are slaves to the goverment, statistics to the army, and consumers to the major corporations.
- Abduladu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3First off, let me make my position clear: I want the US to have great cheap very high speed broadband.
With that said, here is one big reason we don't: What is the size difference between oh say Japan and the US? Yeah, the US is a little bigger...by like a hundred times. That translates to hundreds of times more optics to accomplish what these smaller countries have.
But of course that is but one excuse, and still doesn't explain why we haven't yet even got those types of speeds even in our cities.
Here is the biggest reason in my mind: Politics. These smaller countries have all accomplished these great networks by funneling lots of tax money towards the projects. You throw enough money at something, and of course it will be great! But at what expense? It would be great if all of our phone, tv, health care, travel, and university schooling was paid for by the government too wouldn't it?? But these fun projects that we can just have the 'government' pay for, are really being paid for by us, the taxpayers. Less taxes means you get more money to spend how YOU want to spend it.
So I think it comes down to this. Private businesses could do exactly what is being done in these countries. They could provide us super fast high speed connections. But the companies are regulated out the wazoo by 'the government' which limits what they can do, and especially limits smaller startup companies that could bring us newer, faster, and less expensive technologies. Our over-regulated communications here in the US are stifling innovation, new business, better products, and ultimately real high speed broadband.
The real problem is a political one. Our country is deeply divided. Those that side more toward democrat thinking would say that we ought to just subsidize our communications--or better yet, just let the government take over in providing high speed internet. Then funnel lots of money towards it and we could have great broadband throughout the whole country! The republican type thinking is that we ought to loosen restrictions communications and let competition do the work for us. It wouldn't cost the tax payers and then only the people that are using the broadband would have to pay for it.
Whatever your political thinking is--internet in the US is going to continue to suck until we choose one way or the other. Just sitting here not subsidizing the internet is going no where and just regulating the crap out of it isn't doing anything either.
If I haven't made my allegiance clear, I side with promoting and deregulating communications in the US and letting businesses innovate and take care of the problem. It's the most fair solution. And as a final thought in the words of the great Ronald Reagan: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it, and if it stops moving, subsidize it."
Pardon the politics which have not place on Digg--but it really is a political issue at heart. - opera, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2nonokiaboy wrote "USA Still pwns most of the world with broadband.Minus Asia."
You have no idea what you're talknig about. USA's broadband may own that in Africa and Southern America, but it's crap compared to both East Asia, and Europe as a whole.
Whatever interest this is (it's not precisely new) is another question... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Give it a few more years and America will be back in the Stone Age thanks to the government's 'support' for technology.
- carlosglz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm tired of big companies thinking they can jack American consumers without any repercussions... these companies will suck this country dry until there's nothing left.
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hong Kong deployed 1 Gigabit symmetric broadband in 2005 for about $140 month. They also have a 10Mb symmetric DSL service for $16 a month. Note that it is symmetric, not just fast. You can't even get asymmetric broadband in the US at 10Mb at that price!
The FCC needs to step in and do something about the broadband monopolies in the US, otherwise America will no longer be an internet leader. What then? Little by little, America's advantages continue to disappear one by one, thanks to these greedy crooks in our government. - w3b4ddict, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, John Kerry promised cheap broadband access to every home in America during his campaign.
Also, he had a great vision for wireless technologies such as Ambulances having on-board cameras and monitors transmitting information back into Emergency room so that the staff there can prepare in advance for receiving the patient and the physicians can make quick diagnosis.
hmm... only 50,000 votes the difference. Guess, some people viewed the isssue of two guys french kissing each other the most important over all others. - agreen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1greed!? greed is wanting more even though you have more than enough, just because others have more. man, i am so tired of socialist hypocrites complaining that they want more, but never want to innovate or work to get it. maybe big brother government will just hand it to you if you whine long enough. ...thats enough digg for one night...
- queef, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My god. Quit your complaining.. try living in New Zealand. Competition is non existent. In most areas of NZ 2mbps/128kbps is the maximum you can get with a 10gb cap that gets reduced to 64kbps when you go over it. Only in Wellington and Christchurch where you can get cable 10mbps/1mbps is the maximum you can get with a 10gb cap.
- Abduladu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@graybot
Free market can work just as well with Internet as it can with anything else. Yeah, if we turn our internet over the the government it will improve after we pour millions or even billions into it if it were a federal project. So then you have the entire nation paying for it without a choice. It could work if we lessen the regulations and let private entities fight it out. As it is now, the regulations are keeping the big lazy corporations in the mainstream without the competition they need to actually start innovating and competing. - inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1> "Al Gore created it :)"
>
> Sure he did. Did you also know that unicorns frolic freely in nature reserves?
Did you also know that Al Gore was one of very few politicians invited to the 25th anniversary reunion of the original ARPAnet team? Go look into it. It's the truth. The gathering wasn't a free-for-all. Invitations went only to those deemed to have contributed in some way. Gore didn't invent it, but he never claimed he did. He supported its development and those in-the-know realize it. He knew what the Internet was going to be well before it was a household term, and long before his peers in government had a clue. This constant mockery of the man for pointing that out is a shame. - kalphegor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1why don't they use existing power lines for faster broadband connections?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_47/b3909130_mz018.htm - drewts, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Since when is America better by having second class internet access/speed? We're Americans for crying out loud! I say we 'kick it up a notch' and leave the rest of the world staring in awe of our awesome internet prowess. We need to far exceed other nations access and speed. (The quick and the dead didn't come from nowhere.) Through massive connectivity we all can contribute (i.e. compete read: KICK ASS!) Let's just call up our congressmen and senators and tell them "Naughty bastard! Bits are for kids! I want my terrabyte bandwith last year - and no - I won't contribute to your campaign till I get my competitive advantage bitch!"
- drawkbox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1the internet was essentially funded due to early 90's democratic efforts, Al Gore created it :)
- Maverick83, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Al Gore created it :)"
Sure he did. Did you also know that unicorns frolic freely in nature reserves? - Maverick83, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hmmmm, companies denying other companies the use of lines that are THEIRS is bad? Maybe for us, but THEY laid the lines, the lines are THEIRS. They can do what they want with THEIR lines.
And the last thing I want is for more government intervention. I trust the government about as far as I can hurl a truck.
The government isn't your friend, and you shouldn't be asking it to solve your problems. - motorbikematt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0In my former home in Alachua County, Florida (home of the UF Gators) Broadband is a joke and the monopoly powers are alive and well. I had lived in an older neighborhood with not too many young people around. Asked all the time when Bellsouth would bring DSL to our neck of the woods, always got a check back later.
One day, I bumped into a telephone repair man and asked him what the deal was...when are we getting DSL, and he laughed and said: "Your neighborhood's demographic doesn't support the demand to make the investment profitable". Bellsouth figures that old people don't surf, so why bother offering it?
So, Cox Cable, the only other provider of Broadband...what do they do? Whatever they want! For instance, for the college students (supported by Mommy and Daddy and FedStudentLoans), they have their own pricing site:
http://cox.com/gainesvilleocala/highspeedinternet/pricing.asp
For 9Mbps Down and 1Mbps Up, for the premium charge of $63.05 for Alachua county for Gainesville, a few bucks less to the south for Marion County (Ocala), then a 10 dollar discount for any other market outside of Marion or Alachua county.
http://cox.com/gulfcoast/highspeedinternet/pricing.asp
This is a total scam and I wish the Govt gave a damn to do something about it! - inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0> With that said, here is one big reason we don't: What is the size difference
> between oh say Japan and the US? Yeah, the US is a little bigger...by like
> a hundred times. That translates to hundreds of times more optics to
> accomplish what these smaller countries have.
That makes sense until you consider how wealthy the U.S. is and we're still getting beat by smaller countries with considerably less money and resources. We have the means to do this. The size of the country is hardly the problem. - sparty1969, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Japan has it right. Broadband (10-30 megs) should only cost $15-20 a month, Not $50.00 for 6 megs (Dam you Comcast).
I just hope BPL (Broadband Over Power Lines) + WiFi technology will catch on and take a huge chuck from Comcast. - sanzy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+01st people saying its a monopoly market errrm no its a oligoperlist market ... i thought you people ment to be smart ... UK has buldog = 8mb , NTL = 10mb and in london there is 24mb
- nogami, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Korea and Japan do have an advantage over North America in that their population density is much higher than ours, which leads technology rollouts that require infrastructure upgrades to be somewhat more efficient in urban environments.
But the whole problem here is that while Japanese and Korean companies are fighting eachother to roll-out faster and faster service to their customers to provide more and better access, companies in North America are fighting eachother in the opposite direction - to provide the least service for the highest profit. Believe me, if they could charge you $50/month for 28.8k modem speeds, or even better, charge you for providing absolutely no service at all, you can bet they'd be on it.
Just look at the ***** coming out now with providers wanting to provide tiered access to backbones so that companies who pay them have sites that load faster.
If they want to completely stifle and kill internet innovation, they're doing a hell of a job of it. Local providers here are pondering rolling-out high-speed (fibre?) lines (in the 10-25Mbps range?), but all they have planned for it it is some lameass internet television service (not even high-def). And why? Because they can charge for the programming! But you can be damn sure that even if you have a 25Mbps fibre to your house, they'll only allow a tiny fraction of that to be used for general internet use. - NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@Tweidle
The cost of a nationwide interstate highway system was of comparable cost, and yet it's almost certainly paid for itself dozens of times over. You can make excuses for these companies if you like, I suppose it might make some feel better. But they're little more than parasites at this point. - Hoogie7Dowser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Verizon was digging in my backyard laying down fios last week. Supposedly will be available in a 6 weeks. 15MB bandwidth here I come.
I'm a little curious on how they chose my small neighborhood in suburbia, as one of the few neighborhoods in the area to install fios, but I'm not complaining. - Hoogie7Dowser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/31/AR2006013101670.html
...related article - geeke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0o you people that are bitching that you're 1.5mb connection is slow.
Try surfing on a 56k modem that only gets 17k you ***** crybabies! You think Bellsouth gives 2 ***** about this place with 3,000 living here and houses all around NOPE cause it will make them $$ and not $$$$! Greedy Bastards. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1the country where the first internet began is falling behind... debts out of control, their at war, the economies broke, way too dependant on oil.... whats next?
- jason.pelletier, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0check out Burlington, VT, USA's municipal broadband...offering fiber internet, phone and cable...who says we're just tree-huggers...
http://burlingtontelecom.com/
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GTalk Profile:
http://www.gtalkprofile.com/profile/1.html - SuperSunny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Broadband Companies need to start working together, and Dial-up needs to be upgraded. That is all. You can get cheap DSL for 14 bucks a month. You can get fast dial-up (haha oxymoron) for 14 bucks a month. Dial-up companies upgrade, people get chances. BUT NO, no one wants to take a frickin chance. They want to drain the life out of us.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Trust me when I tell you that Japan hasn't reformed significantly...
While NTT has done a good job presenting the appearance of open "access to infrastructure" with their FLETS program, the reality is they still have a strangle hold on "right of way". If you want to put your DSLAM in a central office, you still need to know somebody (actually, you probably need to know quite a few people).
The right of way issue is usually the show stopper in almost every instance where someone has the money and is willing to roll out new infrastructure to challenge an incumbant. This is why the future is wireless (...and not that FCC mediated "you must pay to use this spectrum" type of wireless). - Observer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I could careless about my Download speed. I just want my upload speed to be near or close to my download. Right now I have a 8Mb down with 512kb up
- modularsky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The US imperial hegemony that now exists is not, at the moment, threatened by a lack of broadband. Broadband is almost universally accessible at college campuses nationwide, so the whole argument that we 'wont be getting an education' if we don't have universal broadband access is bunk. The US military, however, is, and will remain, light years ahead of any upstart East-Asian countries. The current accounts deficit notwithstanding (any astute reader of the Foreign Affairs magazine will concur) - the world will remain under a "Pax Americana" for the considerable future.
- slamm6, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think this can be summed up with one word: greed.
"Avarice is always poor." Samuel Johnson
“Avarice, the spur of industry”. David Hume - terrix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The US being bigger had not been proven obsolete,
I do think the FCC has allowed themselves to be swayed into letting telephone/cable companies be non-competative and not allow third-party carriers.
Broadband over powerline standards have yet to be agreed upon and are still in testing in small markets, its not here yet. It'll take a while to get here just like people were talking about DSL and cable Internet for 3 years before places started seeing it. While yes, companies in the US could do more, population density also has a major role to play in making things easier or harder. There is no reason why both can't be factors in why broadband is seemingly slow compared to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Seoul. - opera, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0peazley, interesting comment... I don't know anyone suffering from not being able to download things fast from the states, as if the states were some kind of universal access point everyone depends on. The internet doesn't work like that.
Also, the backbones doesn't suck, you have no idea what you're talking about. The backbone is great in most of East Asia and Europe, AS WELL AS in the states. It's just that your ISP's don't want you to surf faster. They decide, not you. That's the freedom your leader is usually talking about, the freedom of major corporations to exploit what's exploitable, to get as much paid as possible for as little as possible. No try to make yourself heard in your mainstream democratic media.
Oh, wait. Maybe that's just not possible. Maybe that's why the blogging have become so big in the states, because people can't get their voice heard otherwise. Maybe That's the problem. Or whatever.. - tsupersonic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0We NEED faster internet.
- peazley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Do you also realize that in Japan, Korea and Sweden, their backbones suck, they cannot surf US backbones at that speed, just locally, also its like be "in" with verizon wireless, you get those speeds when you p2p with your buddy who is on the same company, it doesnt cross providers and certainly not backbones at that speed, its a giant network, like router that has one port to the rest of the world and everyone can use each others systems while connected but not when connected to the main lines. So yeah if you like viewing p2p, websites, ect. in Japanese, Korean, or Swedish then great. But You will never connect to a US computer (even when that one is on a t3 oc3 or whatever that can match your speed) and get the speed you think you have.
- boohiss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0And the relative population density has nothing to do with anything at all!
(Calm the hell down, no digg) - Tweidle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What a lot of you seem to be forgetting is that the US IS A HELL OF A LOT BIGGER than most countries in Asia (except China). FTTP and ADSL2 have range limitations, typical measured in kilo feet. It is much easier (technical not logistic) to get fast Internet to a densely populated area than to rural communities. Hell most of the pieces of FTTP puzzle cost upwards of $50k. If you want to do the math on that, how long would it take, serving say 50 people at $16 a month + the cost of bandwidth, not to mention paying the people to install, manage, maintain, and help you when your p0rn won't download fast enough.
The company I work for does consulting work for Small Teleco that are interested in putting in FTTP. If where you live isn't controlled by Verizon / Quest / any other of the RBOCs maybe your phone company has plans in the works.
FYI rural Indiana has some really fast Internet, as does rural Iowa. - opera, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0No Tweidle, it's you who doesn't seem to be able read up a few comments. The "US is a hell lot bigger" ***** is mentioned, and proved obsolete.
- bbqribs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1What's sad is that these greedy corporate ***** will try to strangle the ***** out of it. FIOS? Great. Can't run servers. It's an "entertainment package." And the RIAA wants to be everywhere too.
If I ran the place: We'd have fiber to each house. The RIAA would go ***** itself. Same with the MPAA. No more corporate pissing matches.
The rest of the world is leaving us behind, thanks to greedy overpaid CEO *****. - Brak710101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0As a gamer and proffesinal internet surfer/downloader, I agree that we need to change and get some high-end bandwith providers here. Heck, if I could afford a backbone to my house I'd use it.
The gamer side of me is worried about ping times. He wants bandwith caps abolished, but cares also about how fast the network routeing is. Having a 100MBit line is nice, but when I get a 20+ higher ms ping, I'll stick with what I have, thank you.
;) - agreen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0as with most things on the internet, there is a lot of conjecture and facts, but almost no context. so what if hong kong has 16$ super high speed internet. as one who knows, price comparisons between the west and china are absurd, half the things cost an outraegous amount and the other half are subsidized so cheap it's rediculous. if you want to have a variety of things at high quality, stick with the U.S. If you want very few things at really high quality while everything else is abysmal, then hong kong or beijing is for you.
- skellener, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0George Bush doesn't care about geeks.
- mortalfunk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0> Yeah, canadian broadband sucks.. The only good provide over here is videotron.. we don't have the > > choice. No choice = no price war, no price war= Expensive access.
I'm from western Canada and I've actually been very impressed by Canadian broadband. Alberta recently finished their "Supernet project" (http://www.albertasupernet.ca/) that runs fibre all across the province and Cable Internet is being offered at 7Mbps regularly across the country.
I hate it when Americans use the per capita argument as to why they don't have good broadband. That's *****. The broadband service would be so much better if the government supported it and the companies are serious about providing excellent service instead of maximizing profits (yes... it's capitalism i know).
The Internet2 project in the states sounds very promising and I challenge Americans to take it a step further to use all that fibre to compete against the other ISPs and give them a run for their money. - camfrye, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0we (taxpayers) paid 200 billion to the top 4 phone companies (Verizon, SBC, QWest, Bell) for broadband...which breaks down to $2000 per taxpayer, and I cant get dsl from across the street..because the lines are maxed out.
its bull***t!! Makes my blood boil. - interiot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Satellite internet is not remotely a panacea. Satellites in GEO aren't TOO expensive to launch, but they add 240ms to your ping, which rules out VoIP, and rules out some games. Satellites in LEO have much less delay, but require companies to launch a whole constellation of satellites, since LEO satellites don't stay in one spot, and most companies who have invested in a LEO satellite constellation have gone bankrupt so far.
- bogdon6, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Let's face it guys, a major problem for high speed internet is a lack of demand. We hard core internet users want it, but we surf the internet for hours a day, we download videos, we use bit torrent, and we play games on the Internet. For most people, there is no killer internet app that requires real broadband. Why would my mom need real broadband when she hardly uses email. Email works fine on 56k modems. Email, IMing, and general surfing are all the vast majority of people ask for out of the internet, and none of those things require real broadband.
- Linuxrocks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Face it, obesety and ignorance is successfully tearing the states apart. Literally.
How is obesity tearing the states apart? Yes people are fat.. That's not what is preventing us from getting faster internet... - peazley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Opera - As if this is a political move, america layed copper first, it takes a while to revamp every inch of a county as large as ours, not trying to say that everyone needs to connect to our backbone, I was just stating that those high speeds providers are for local backbones within their county, do some research first off when you start to talk, $16 for a gigabit line is *****, it doesnt exist, sure if I connect to my buddy down the street or across the city, but worldwide no, I get my speeds constant worldwide, I would like to see proof of these cheap broadband providers giving these speeds to worldwide backbones. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and classifying an half a country based on their political opinion is stupid. I swear people against the bush admin, end up doing more harm than good, instead of trying to rationally work things out, they just tend to bash the other side.
- saleens281, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0electricity, broadband, oil, they can all be grouped together as necessities to the US economy. Corporations have shown time and time again, they will not do what is in the best interests of the people when the utility is a necessity, they will rape the market for as much profit as is possible. As with every other utility that has been "successful" in this country, the government needs to intervene and regulate.
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