i live in the middle of the boondocks, with a mom and pop telephone company, and i STILL have fiber to my house...
Posted on 07/02/2011 2:55:34 PM PDT by LibWhacker
What could possibly be the reason why the US has such (loading article, please wait…)
There’s a fascinating piece on Engadget that discusses at length why many Europeans are paying less for faster internet connections than US citizens on average. The reason why this is the case, says the report, is one simple word: government.
As a case in point, the article discusses the situation in the UK because it was, at one point, like the US – little competition, high costs and poorer quality services. It wasn’t until the government forced the incumbent industries to participate in “local loop unbundling” and pushing competition in to the market that allowed internet speeds to rise and costs to fall. While not easy, the government took to embarrassing the company into submission before competition could be allowed in to the market place.
What I like in particular about the article is that it tackles on of the biggest reasons big telecom companies won’t allow people to have faster and better connection speeds – the land mass excuse:
AT&T takes a different tack: The firm says it supports competition, but notes that, “There is no ‘one-size fits all’ regulatory regime” that will work worldwide. AT&T cites two main differences between the UK and U.S. markets: First, more U.S. homes have the option of buying broadband service from cable companies. Second, the U.S. is more spread out — the technical term is that those “loops” are longer.
But again, the facts in the UK suggest otherwise. Many homes in Britain’s largest city — London — have cable access, but cable prices have fallen alongside that of DSL service.
Meanwhile, the size of the U.S. may be a red herring. Most of the region between Boston and Washington is as densely populated as most of Europe and the UK. So is the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego. And so is the region of the Midwest centered on Chicago. Those areas are home to about a quarter of all Americans. In other words, we live in a big country, but a lot of it is relatively empty space.
The argument that the U.S. is too spread out is nonsense, according to Herman Wagter, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent evangelists for next-generation broadband. He thinks there’s something else going on in Verizon’s and AT&T’s opposition to competition at home: They’re afraid of it.
What I find really depressing about al of this is that it’s the same situation in Canada and even people in the US can feel the effects of no competition and high prices just by the horror stories of roaming charges on cellphone bills alone. I’ve personally seen 130kbps down, 60kbps up for over $70 Canadian be considered the norm in some places. By European standards in many cases, that’s probably considered bordeline farcical.
Government will does make sense both in the US and in Canada. In the US, there is no shortage of people who think that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is a sad joke when it comes to ensuring competition in the US. Meanwhile in Canada, there is growing calls to have the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) disbanded for numerous reasons including favouring the big players in the market over smaller competitors and having former big telecom bosses be part of the board. While the Engadget article is long, it’s certainly well worth the read.
I was grumbling about this very thing the other day: My cable connection, which used to seem so fast, reminds me more and more of a dial-up connection. It's as slow as molasses. And for that connection, television, telephone and a couple of OnDemand movies a month, we're paying upwards of $225/mo! Big government sucks. Thank you, democraps.
We could have the fastest Internet in the world but when the major ISPs put in bandwidth caps to prevent competition from streaming video services all it means is that we hit the limit faster.
I see Time Warner and FiOS advertising their service for $40 a month or so for broadband around here.
If people choose a slower service, that is nothing for the government to worry about.
To expand a bit on the logic:
There’s a reason why everyone everywhere is paying more for everything and sometimes paying for things they don’t even need or want.
One simple word: government.
To err is human. To really foul things up takes government.
Yes indeed. And to really, permanently foul things up takes Democrats.
A simple solution to this?
Google, Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Facebook, and any other interested players can pool together their billions and create a new ISP that can offer services and speeds at the level that most people want at a fair price. No Caps, no speed bumps.
The other crap ISPs will either step up or go under.
Yeah, but this article maintains that the government didn't do enough. You're not really saying you want more government involvement in the Internet . . . are you?
ATT Dittos! I work for the giant. If there is anything out there that’s better I’m all for it. You critics have to be more specific. I like my uverse and you just can’t get it everywhere. One reason is distance. The other is government. The city of San Francisco is the most wired city in the U.S.-maybe the world. The liberals on the city council don’t like to looks of the ugly interfaces on the street corners. There really won’t be that many of them. So does it seem likely that some communities will be happier with their service than others? I’d go where the money is-to hell with the others. My internet speed could be better but I’m not complaining. How much do u need?
There is much more to talk about too. Getting internet service into remote low-population areas is quite expensive, but under pre-breakup law, at&t had to service all areas, no matter what the cost of cable or fiber was to get to these areas.
After the breakup of at&t, and the multiple reorganizations of the pieces of that company, huge areas of the US were 'left in the cold' - meaning the old cables going to all but the largest cities wound up in the hands of hundreds of new telco companies that were literally 'here today and gone tomorrow.'
My old home town has had four different phone companies over the last 10 years - none of which improved access to high-speed internet. However, it was from at&t that I was able to get help. They ran a microwave system across the desert and provided what we needed at an amazingly low, low price.
I've been quite intimately involved in both the politics and the 'rubber on the road' of internet connections ever since the breakup... including working with what was once called the NGI (new generation internet) - i.e., speeds up to 4 terabits per second for all. But, that died when government dictated that at&t had to service any and all competitors - which ate up that dream virtually overnight.
So yeah - people got what they wanted - competition. But, that very competition has screwed most people out of having what England supposedly has - and yes, because of the vastness of this nation, and the cost of stringing fiber to every-city USA... simply because of government meddling that goes on, and changes, almost every day.
the absolute LAST thing the DC RinoCrat oligarchy wants is for We the People to have fast reliable access to information and data.
The fiber laid in by the local cable company makes entry through a setup that allows me to hook up several TVs throughout the house.
The fiber laid by the phone company makes entry only through a box that allows a single TV, but you can hook in a wifi for your internet connectivity.
The other three were laid down by Global Crossing under three different corporate names. They are now owned by three different companies who only offer top end commercial connectivity ~ even though this is a residential neighborhood.
The local phone company has yet to answer my decades long question to them about "Hey, how can i get better service".
San Francisco? And they’re worried about “ugly” transmitters on a few street corners? Hey, those boxes might just come in handy to detract from the aggressive panhandlers, the street people, the schizophrenics, the drug-pushers, the leather-clad men kissing, the lesbians pushing baby carriages (”breeder” is passe now that they’ve gone into the parenting business themselves), the trash overflowing onto the streets, and other charms and fascinations of a once-beautiful city that are causing tourism to plummet. I can imagine Berkeley or Palo Alto objecting to the boxes, but San Francisco? In 30 years I have seen that city ruined.
United kingdom density per square mile= 650
United States density per square mile= 84
A missionary to a Baltic country that my church supports visited recently, and commented a number of times that the internet connexion over here was super slow compared to back on the field.
Oh crap, my +2 year running soapbox.
I’m just 30 miles west of Ann Arbor, MI...and I don’t have broadband access. I was with Wildblue for two years (satellite is NOT. Repeat, NOT broadband) before jumping on an Alltel true unlimited aircard account. Alltel was a fantastic company — consistently over 2.2-2.5Mb down, great customer service — and then Verizon Wireless took over. Now I’m lucky to get 40KB down and it’s been that way for over a year. Their idea of a solution is “you’re stuck with it, but we may let you out of your contract.” Geez.
I’ve been using every back door, phone number, email address and loudspeaker available, trying to get something here. The township did a survey and the overwhelming majority (+75%) want better broadband options. We’re stuck in the same boat as a lot of not-really-last mile Americans who are getting ignored by the major ISPs or getting screwed by satellite providers. For all of you with cable internet...how happy would YOU be paying +$70 a month for less than 2Mb down, latency that cripples Flash and SSD sites, and a limit of 7.5 gig a month? Most of us who have used satellite and have teens in the house really really HATE the service. Monitoring the *(@&#$^ cap everyday is a stupid, thankless and hair-pulling job.
There is a silver lining — a local guy is bringing wimax through and promises no cap. It’s a little expensive but my sanity is at an end. Frontier is also pulling DSL up here and expects to deploy by September. The problem with Frontier is it sounds like I won’t be able to have dry loop DSL and I’m always leery of a cap.
The ISPs keep pushing faster and faster plans in the major metro areas for bragging rights, but they’re ignoring millions of customers who are resorting to crazy tactics. Get with it, guys, you’re neglect is really pi$$ing a lot of us off.
(PS: I have a Nortel USB760 aircard plugged into a Cradlepoint router, plugged into my desktop ethernet card, plugged into a brand new Cisco router. The install is necessarily screwy because of Windows 7/64 issues and the fact it’s a USB router).
The U.S. once boasted the best telephone service in the world. Now a lot of that copper is over 100 years old, and that’s what most of att UVerse runs over.
i live in the middle of the boondocks, with a mom and pop telephone company, and i STILL have fiber to my house...
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