Posted on 08/04/2007 11:53:48 PM PDT by HAL9000
Excerpt -
~ snip ~It is very doubtful, almost impossible, that we'll catch up to those countries ahead of us in broadband penetration. They are too far ahead and our native demand is simply less because our Internet economies are developing more slowly. Absent some miracle, the game is already over.
As I wrote two weeks ago, the situation is likely to improve somewhat over the next year or two as the telephone companies sacrifice a little to lock us in before we switch to DOCSIS 3 cable modems and the cable companies, in turn, offer incentives to jump to their voice products. But these companies don't think at all in international terms and they simply don't care about international competitiveness or the growth of our economy. They should, but they don't. And they don't because they have never had to. Though they are required to operate in the public interest and to provide public services, these monopolies have never been forced to consider our place in the world.
~ snip ~
(Excerpt) Read more at pbs.org ...
For all the free trade sell outs that have been going on, it’s almost unfathomable that this could be true. If it is, it’s an amazing commentary on our corporate positioning.
I do not understand, what is the problem here?
The US is a huge country and its citizens are spread out all over not just in large urban centers. Much of Europe, Japan and South Korea are the opposite. It is much easier to upgrade Internet infrastructures in densly populated areas than open country and small towns.
Game over? liberals... Can’t live with them and they won’t move to france
While that will be nice, I don’t see it as a major economic issue in terms of the economy.
"The company was literally throwing money away, which a regulated monopoly could never do but SoftBank could...It was simply luck that SoftBank's broadband ISP turned to profitability before the company was completely broke."
Who's going to be throwing away BIG MONEY to risk on "simple luck" to gain competition with the big players?
” Much of Europe, Japan and South Korea are the opposite “
Japan is “ high tech “ , until you leave the big cities ; then it’s back to 1960’s era-America . My internet cable connection is so slow between 8-10 at night I give up . The town is too “ kechi “ ( cheap ) to upgrade . There is no competition ( NTT won’t come in because most folks already have cable and won’t switch over because they know it’ll cost as little more ) , so we are screwed .
I don’t foresee the kind of hardware capable of dishing out that much bandwidth to everybody possible for quite a few years. Right now most servers can barely keep my 6Mbps cable fed. This 100mbit stuff in Europe and Korea is completely useless until hard drive and disc access speed catches up. Not everyone has a RAID array.
How many times have we heard that America has “fallen behind” in something and will never catch up? Hmmm? Remember in the 80’s, all the fretting about Japan “owning” the semiconductor industry? Now Intel alone eats their lunch, and thats not even including AMD and the PowerPC consortium.
The authors counter argument: "To those who say this is BS and that we're actually ahead of the world if you control for rural populations, family size, the effect of Wi-Fi hotspots, etc., I say that is simply wrong: we are behind and losing ground."
He says...
For millions of Americans, the only Internet service available is dial-up telephone service - often at speeds of 15-to-20 kilobits-per-second.
Internet via wireless and satellite is not a practical alternative. It is too slow and expensive and has inadequate capacity.
Is downloading pirated movies and music faster really that necessary to the economy?
No, but digital communications is becoming an essential requirement for business. A modern telecommunications infrastructure would also reduce our energy demands, and reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.
Unfortunately, AT&T doesn't really care about our position in the global economy or our national security.
Thanks for the comments.
Wondering the same thing. Why is this a bid deal?
Our telecommunications infrastructure is too slow and unreliable compared to many of the nations we are competing with.
Osama bin Laden has better Internet service in his cave that many Americans can get today.
Can get?
You can get satellite service with 1 Mbps rates for $70 a month virtually anywhere in the country. Yes, there’s definite issues with satellite service but it does work.
Areas of the country that are relatively flat often have terrestrial based wireless Internet services and are significantly less expensive than satellite and perform better. When spectrum currently used for TV is freed up those services are likely to expand.
Wireless should be good enough for mobile platforms, but even with the upcoming auction, there isn't enough spectrum available to compete against countries that are going with fibre.
Prior to getting wireless, I had 128-kbps ISDN. It cost thousands of dollars per year. The average consumer cannot afford that kind of money for such pitiful data rates.
I suspect that most of the folks who say our infrastructure is good enough already have reasonably good service. They suggest that anyone who wants a decent connection should move to the big city, or should commute 100-miles-per-day to a town with good connectivity for their jobs. I disagree with them.
do you really think our corporations really care what is best for America?
that ain’t the name of the game on wall street. National interest might as well be a two words of a foreign language nowadays.
Muslim humor?
I dint know you were muslim!
Just saying.
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