Other nations zip by USA in high-speed Net race

http://www.usatoday.com/ ^ | 1/18/2004 | Jim Hopkins Contributing: Michelle Kessler

[fatso]

Other nations zip by USA in high-speed Net race By Jim Hopkins, USA TODAY LaBelle Management fights a poky dial-up Internet connection every morning to see how 13 restaurants did the day before. The company in Mount Pleasant, Mich., can't get high-speed Internet to all its 46 restaurants and hotels in Michigan and Indiana because it is either unavailable or too expensive. "I dread dial-up," says tech chief Michael Reed.

[fatso]

Government get out of the way

[old-ager]

> poky dial-up Internet connection every morning to see how 13 restaurants did the day before

The 13 restaurants could be equipped with dial-on-demand routers, connect to HQ via the Internet, and dump their statistics in a minute or two. This article is just another slanted p.o.s. to make Americans feel bad. I bet dedicated links (commercial grade, expensive, not DSL) are available where those 13 restaurants are, and management has correctly decided that dialup is good enough for now.

Also, if they were a bit more on their toes, they could deploy two-way satellite Internet access about anywhere much cheaper than in the past. (Admittedly with high latency and weather related reliability problems).

Again I say: this company has decided that dialup is the right solution for those 13 places.

[Pukin Dog]

I date a woman who is part of a fiber-optic network experiment in her neighborhood. She gets more than 10meg per second speeds in both directions.

Ever since I tried it out, I've been wondering if I were to marry then dump the girl, would she be forced to give me half of it? LOL.

[NTegraT]

"The USA ranks 11th worldwide in broadband use, according to a recent United Nations report, behind such places as South Korea, Hong Kong "

No surprise here. That's where all my spam comes from.

[old-ager]

> forced to give me half of it?

no, that only works for women.

[old-ager]

> That's where all my spam comes from.

We need to firewall the entire US against Asia. And other places.

[Pukin Dog]

Sorry, I forgot.

[Lessismore]

Ever since I tried it out, I've been wondering if I were to marry then dump the girl, would she be forced to give me half of it? LOL.

Do you want SEND or RECEIVE?

[meyer]

It is intended to also help attract more tech start-ups, supporter say, and create 497,000 jobs over 10 years — about 10% more than the state has now, economic development officials say.

I always wonder how a reporter can recite, as gosphel, such statistics that appear as if they were drawn out of a hat. Create 497,000 jobs. How was that number derived?

[ShadowAce]

Tech Ping

[RayChuang88]

Actually, the issue of broadband access comes down to the so-called Last Mile issue: how to get the high-speed connection going into your household. This is a major problem in rural areas, which are too far for DSL signals over standard telephone lines and definitely not in the range for cable modems.

At least in metropolitan areas, the cable TV companies are offering high-speed access with around 1.5 megabit/second download speeds using the same cable connection as your cable TV signal. If you're lucky, many areas are close enough to their telephone central switching centers to get DSL service.

Because of that very issue of Last Mile access (and the sheer size of the USA), the ultimate solution will most likely be a form of wireless access. A new form of wireless networking called WiMax has a range up to 30 miles and could support thousands of users per WiMax tranceiver antenna setup; also, WiMax can operate on moving vehicles and trains up to 250 km/h (155 mph). With WiMax rolling out en masse over the next few years, by 2010 most of the USA will be within range of a WiMax transceiver antenna, and that could mean people sitting in cars on the major highways or on commuter/Amtrak trains could get broadband Internet access as fast as today's cable modems with a small antenna connection. It also means that rural areas can finally be served by broadband Internet, since it's far easier to set up WiMax antenna arrays instead of hardwiring broadband connections to every rural home.

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!

Got root?

[Zechariah11]

But other nations are speeding ahead, too, with even more ambitious broadband strategies.

[stainlessbanner]

"I dread dial-up," says tech chief Michael Reed.

Remember when the sound of a modem connecting meant "high-tech"? < grin >

[Porterville]

Um, we have more land mass, and a much larger population....

[Pukin Dog]

Well, RECIEVE of course!

[Wright is right!]

Part of the problemo in the US has been the telcos, who didn't want to roll out DSL because it would undermine their pricey T-1 service. They held out and held out and held out - until cable had sewn up most of the broadband bidness. Here in Nashville, Bell South is still dumping gazillions into DSL neighborhood repeaters to try to catch up.

It could have happened a lot sooner if the Bells had seen the light of getting EVERYONE on broadbando.

Michael

[rdb3]

Remember when the sound of a modem connecting meant "high-tech"? < grin >

Oh, yeah. And then they came out with the v.90 standard for the 56K modem. We were smokin' then, I tell ya!

[CanadianLibertarian]

Yes, the USA has a much larger land mass, but here in Canada we have an even larger one. And yet, we have broadband connectivity rates something like twice that of the States. What's going on, why is the hi-tech superpower falling behind in this area?

[CasearianDaoist]

This is so bogus. Shall we take the Bay Area, an area size size of Hong Kong and compare it with Hong Kong? Maybe California with Korea? Internet 2 will roll out testbeds of 10gig this years; Verizon is rolling out wireless connections of 400 to 600kb kb, burstable to 2 meg this year - 2meg plus wireless will be common in another year. Should we really go fiber out in the Arizona outback?

It is really silly to imagine that anyone in the world can beat the US in INTERNET technology over all. The rest of the world has evidently never heard of upgrade cycles. They will presently and it will be mostly US technology.