What is Digg?150 Comments
- Mejogid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+46@turgor
As the article states, many countries with a lower population desnity than the US have more broadband access. Its not that population desnity has no effect on broadband access, but its certainly not the only problem. - ryllharu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+32Mejogid beat me to it.
@turgor: You didn't read the article clearly. "But the experience of countries like Iceland, and Norway and Sweden, which have even lower population densities than the U.S., indicates that low density isn't an insurmountable obstacle to wider broadband access."
It's not a matter of how long the lines are except with DSL. With cable and eventually fiberoptic, distance is not as much of an issue. That is the reason where I live we have been able to get cable high speed and will probably never have the option of DSL.
It has been, and remains the issue of lazy, greedy cable and telephone companies who were ordered (and given tax payer money) to rebuild the infrastructure to allow for more high speed customers. Instead, they did nothing, but provided stunted versions of high speed access, charging signifigantly more for patheticly little extra speed, and enforcing any number of restrictions on bandwidth. - SniperGX1, on 10/12/2007, -12/+39Kinda obvious. USA blows when it comes to Internet speed. I blame Comcast. Comcastic is another word for downtime.
- djruden, on 10/12/2007, -3/+27There's more to it than that. I have a co-worker whose NEW house has no choice but dialup internet. This just shouldn't be acceptable. We work in a large datacenter and there are times where he needs to connect from home using his company laptop...His work could be seriously hindered by lack of bandwidth. This not only hurts the company, but the US as a whole. When we start falling behind in advancements like this, US industries and companies will fall behind to other companies as well who are better connected.
- xedeon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23Umm NO that logic is FLAWED the U.S. may be bigger but we have THE RESOURCES! I mean, come on do you seriously think we are not capable of deploying faster networks? the people to blame are the monopolistic cable & telco companies and most of all the MPAA/RIAA lobbyist in Washington heck they are even trying to block Internet 2 the MPAA said it will increase movie piracy by providing fatter pipes to consumers!
- djruden, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17You must not have read the entire article- it comments on population density:
Mr. Martin argued that the low population density of the U.S. made comparisons with high-density countries like South Korea unfair. He added that with 42.9 million lines, the U.S. still had more people connected to broadband than any other country.
But the experience of countries like Iceland, and Norway and Sweden, which have even lower population densities than the U.S., indicates that low density isn’t an insurmountable obstacle to wider broadband access." - bertboerland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12in the Netherlands half the population has adsl or cable, 2+ Mb. newer cable infrastructure supports up to 20Mb
- bash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Direct link to OECD's numbers: http://www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband
I'm sort of surprised Iceland is leading the way. - quasipalm, on 10/12/2007, -3/+123 times bigger than S. Korea? Try 100 times.
9,631,418 km² US
0,098,480 km² S Korea
Needless to say, this big ass country can take a bit of time to wire. But that's a lousey excuse, we could knock out the top 10 urban areas and make huge gains with wireless. - hotpepper, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Geography might actually be a justification except for the fact that Canada is in eighth place and is nearly twice as big as the USA. I mean Canada beat Belgium and Japan for pete's sake, two of the smallest countries in the world.
- Midnightbrewer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7"It has more to do with real estate. It's far cheaper to run cable on a country the size of Korea than to do it 3x.
Look at the land mass vs population density for USA over other countries."
It has nothing to do with land area, and a lot to do with business-as-usual in the US. The government gave the telcos as much money as they said they would need in order to make the high-speed internet roll-out, and the companies then turned around and pocketed the money without so much as a thank-you. The government's response to this despicable behavior has been to say, "Oh, well then, we'll just relax the regulations to conform to your actions," which is a rather backwards way of being a government. Think of it another way: sure, it may be more cost-prohibitive to give, say, Montana high-speed internet access, but what's stopping the phone and cable companies from saturating LA and New York? - Cmain, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Amen to that. I only have dialup available at my house too. It can be frustrating at times.
- allarise, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Japan is the size of California with half the population of the United States. That's nowhere near small.
- thegsa, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10They Promised Us Fiber By 2006, This Is Just Unacceptable.
- hasbeen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8At first the US was far ahead, but then other countries caught up and surpassed the US. Now the US lags behind considerably. It's just sad that a friend from sweden can send my neighbor files faster than I can, and he only pays a fraction of my cable bill. Ugh.
- MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5A quick googling revealed that you can get 100 megabit Fiber for about $27 a month in Japan. Something tells me that that kicks the crap out of your connection price wise. You pay $8.63 per megabit. They pay $0.27 per megabit. Obviously the fiber doesn't always reach 100 megabit/sec....but the point is that they have MUCH better price ratios.
- moridin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6While Canada is large and spread out, the population centers are huge pockets of people where broadband penetration is easier.
That being said, we seem to be doing the right things when it comes to broadband (WiMAX is already available!). God Bless Competition. :) - meefman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I am locked into using Verizon (due to the fact the apartment management has a propriatary cable network) while across the fence my neighbors have access to Cox which is several times faster. What kills me though is that just a few miles away Verizon is rolling out their FiOS service, but they have no plans to bring it to my apartment complex. Bastards.
- immrlizard, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6one word.
Greed.
The government of the US has been more concerned about everything that doesn't matter rather than to concentrate on the future. I don't but the whole population density argument. This country is running on a 1950s grid where you have other countries like afganastan and Iraq running on an up to date one. Why worry about infrastructure when we can keep the gays from getting married. This government is broken in every way and needs to be fixed. I just turned 40 this year and remember when they were talking about solar cars and other technology when was in second grade. What happened to the metric system? The US is one of the only countries not to switch to it. Everything that this government has done since the late 50s has been for their own personal gain without regard to the country. We keep voting these idiots in so I guess we get what we deserve. Now I am Just waiting for the comet to hit and end it all. - repi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I also live in Sweden but get unlimited 100/100 mbit for about 50€ a month. Absolutely wonderful
- nordberg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Seen somebody say that othe countries don't have a midwest... like the midwest is some sort of impossible place to wire.
Canada has a midwest, it's called the Prairie Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Here in Manitoba, I have the choice of DSL or Cable in my city (pop. 45,000) and outside of the city, many farmers have high speed wireless over microwave. It's not the midwest that's the problem, it's the lack of the companies willing to service it.
We may be a backwater, but we have awesome internet choices - dasch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I remember when DSL was first rolled out here in Denmark; the company that won the bid was obligated to cover 98% of the country or something, and the cables had to be accessible to other companies. It just comes to show that sometimes the government needs to play an active role in order to secure a competitive environment.
- speel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7That's because most of the old farts in congress don't use technology.
- lollerskates, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I think it's government apathy towards the internet. They pay billions to upgrade TV, which is essentially one way information, while the internet gets no attention aside from the negative, despite being a global network.
Or maybe they're doing that on purpose? (Tinfoil Hat Sentence) - brianmost, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The article doesn't give due mention to the fact that in most of Europe, they never stopped charging by the minute for local phone calls. Of course people are going to adopt broadband more quickly -- you'd go broke using dialup for more than casual use!
For a lot of people dialup is still a viable option, and it's dirt cheap in the States. - MissionSix, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7this needs to be fixed, i want 30mb/s uploads!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5 We've got a bunch of inbred backwoods retarded hillbillies running our country and you find this news as a suprise?
- 3Den, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10I've noticed lately any time some other country has some kind of infrastructure that is somehow better than the US (or percieved in the public eye to be better, anyway), the response form Americans is typicall to make excuses, valid or not, about why they lag behind.
Broadband is a good example.
Another recent one was some thread somewhere about supertall buildings going up in Dubai, and how the US isn't really doing anything by comparison. The response was "Well labour is cheap in Dubai!".
Guys, if you want to appear as the world's superpower, and the most eceonmically successfull, progressive nation, denouncing people who do larger projects than you doesn't really make you look successful.
And for all those that argue canada is so rural... let's pretend we ignore the top 9/10ths of canada, and focus on the east/west strip along the US border. This strip has the same population density and geographic variations as the US does, and we have higher broadband penetration, okay? - johndi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yes, but what does "Network Readiness Index" mean. That they have it, but don't feel like using it yet?
- EndofEternity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3While Moscow isn't really Europe (only on paper it is), I can tell you that when using dialup you don't get charged by the minute. For $20 you get unlimited dialup.....
- kolop1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3 Well... we only lag behind because people dont know better. I know a lot of people who use AOL for 25$ a month. When I tell them they can get dsl for 14.99 in our area they still wont switch. People here still think aol is cool and fast. I dont know why.
- johndi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I just talked to a guy who spent 6 years in Korea. He laughed, and said China != Korea. No time limit, very fast, low lag. You're comparing an oppressive nanny state to the free world. In case you hadn't heard the lease on Hong Kong ran out. It is part of China.
"When the United States dropped the Internet leadership baton, Japan picked it up. In 2001, Japan was well behind the United States in the broadband race. But thanks to top-level political leadership and ambitious goals, it soon began to move ahead. By May 2003, a higher percentage of homes in Japan than in the United States had broadband, and Japan had moved well beyond the basic connections still in use in the United States. Today, nearly all Japanese have access to "high-speed" broadband, with an average connection speed 16 times faster than in the United States -- for only about $22 a month. Even faster "ultra-high-speed" broadband, which runs through fiber-optic cable, is scheduled to be available throughout the country for $30 to $40 a month by the end of 2005. And that is to say nothing of Internet access through mobile phones, an area in which Japan is even further ahead of the United States."
How did Japan do it? They got out of the way deregulated, and offered incentives for companies that did the work. What did we try? We taxed our citizens and gave the phone companies the tax money as a gift. Money lost to the pockets of telecom execs that are now threatening to choke the internet pipes for more money. - allarise, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6this is what happens when your government gets involved with ***** wars and would rather spend all their time and energy propogating F.U.D. instead of actually doing anything to modernize our nation's infrastructure. not to mention our pathetic healthcare system or funding for education.
- rylin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I live in Sweden, and there's indeed a cap on how much I can use.
That limit is 100/10 Mbps.. it makes me a sad panda :(
( that little for $38/month.. ugh ) - Darksev, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"It's far cheaper to run cable on a country the size of Korea than to do it 3x.
Look at the land mass vs population density for USA over other countries."
Yes, it is, but this was the argument the Telco's made that led to congress and the FCC approving BILLIONS of dollars worth of tax cuts and special considerations for them, specifically to aid them in running "fibre to ever household" (see http://www.newnetworks.com/scandalquotes.htm) - molecool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Love your comment - couldn't have put it any better. I also turned 40 this year and am apalled at the U.S. constantly misses any opportunity to improve its infrastructure and to build a country its children will be proud to inherit. Instead we get ugly de-humanized cities, ghettos, more prisons than schools, slow internet access and a concentration of some of the richest people in the world. You do the math, but I must say it really sucks living here - nothing to be proud of. The country is run by mobsters in suits willing to sell its last asset for yet another million.... don't get me started. Having antiquated Internet access is only one aspect of this debacle - watch out once Japan gets 100Mbs for a few bucks while we're still paying $49.95 for 1Mb/sec. It's pure greed and we all know it.
- Rajio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/int_bro_acc_percap
Broadband access per capita:
Canada = #6 @1.93 per 10 people
USA = #16 @1.382 per 10 people - gregmo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003290.shtml
he talks all about comparisons in price. Yes people can do better - hchaudh1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I noticed someone modded down this comment. For the life of me, I don't know why? Because, its true.
- teh_toaster, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5My only option for the longest time was also dial-up. At my home there is no cable, dsl, or other amenities. only recently was I able to get 'Broadband' access by finding a wireless internet provider. Strapping a small dish and antenna on my roof was the only way to go, and it was a struggle to find this company. The cost is about $50 per month for what would cost about $15 through a 'normal' provider, but at that price its still a small fraction of the cost of a satellite hookup.
However now that Verizon and Nextel are more seriously pursuing wireless access for laptops with EVDO cards, I may make a switch if they can compete with similar speeds in my area. - killa62, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2yeah, but this article says per person, wikipedia says per household
see a difference?
many people per household - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2To order Freshdirect.
- ShrimpCrackers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Pause. All the Koreans, I know, and I know a lot, use Fiber. Heck in Japan we use fiber a lot too. In America I'm stuck with this slow-as-hell-frozen-over Time Warner Cable trash. In Japan I could download a CD or DVD image in a matter of minutes. It takes me an hour here. Even the P2P networks are slowed down. We have bittorrent here in America that takes a day and a half to hand me a DVD. Gosh.
Blame the Telco companies. Even in highly populated areas like New York City, San Francisco, and LA, the "High Speed Broadband" is slow as heck. I heard that the FCC now considers "broadband" to be around 400kbps, not fiber anymore. You couldn't even get speeds as slow as 400kbps in Korea for free anymore! Is low standards the new internet standard for America?
When will we step up and do something? When Zimbabwe or Vanuatu beats us as well? How long will the Telco companies here be allowed to mess around? - deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -1/+312th really isnt' so bad with all the other problems this country has right now. We're in the 4th year of a very expensive war. Our health care system is on the verge of collapse. Social security is going bankrupt. A hurricane took out an entire city. Our own government is conducting massive spying operations on its own people and the vice president shot a guy last month.
We really need to fix some of those serious problems before we worry about getting broadband to every Billy Bob living in the backwoods. - Agent0100, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I love how often Scandinavia is mentioned as being so connected or "wired" and Finland is hardly ever mentioned. I wonder how many people have actually looked at the "Network Readiness Index" list.
1. Singapore
2. Iceland
3. Finland
...
6. Sweden
...
13. Norway
Interesting how Norway, Iceland, and Sweden are the first countries mentioned.
Just something to think about when reading these articles about foreign countries and where they fall on various lists. Popularity and current public awareness affects how the facts are retold. - dnder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4You dote, he means that sweden gets FASTER internet upload so his freind in sweden can send the files to his neighbors faster. No where did he mention that he didn't also have broadband.
- jakethecake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Iceland has a population of 300 000 and two fiber connections to the mainland..
Icelandic companies are moving their hosting to sweden, the reliability is bad, but the speeds good though.. - muyuu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's a very good point. In most Europe we have CRAP dial-up, thus the need for broadband is a lot higher, more even so with IP phone just surging.
The US is way better for traditional phone calls than most of Europe. That justifies some, but not all.
It justifies there are countries with higher adoption than the US even with expensive rates similar to the US (or adjusting for the purchasing power parity). It doesn't justify the existence of way better deals in unpopulated barren, frozen rocks than in the US. The US should be in the top-5 at worst, and urban areas should be competing for the top, which they aren't. - dnder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4hmm, china is NOT the lead!! Infact, nowhere near the lead! Read the freaking article. This is subscribers per 100 inhabitant, not overall subscribers. And what agenda what these people be pushing by pointing out that our internet suks?
- Rajio, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3YOU dolt. hasbeen said that his friend from sweeden can send his (hasbeen's) neighbour faster than he (hasbeen) can.
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