U.S. is 15 years behind South Korea in Internet speed [says a Union]

Biz Journals ^ | Steven Brown

[libh8er]

How in He!! did they come up with the 15 years figure ?? Why not 13, or 16 ? Here's the money quote and it's from the last paragraph : The report calls for more investment in the nation’s Internet infrastructure.

The source of the 'investigation': http://www.cwa-union.org/

[pnh102]

Considering most of the USA’s phone network was built with union labor, that says quite about about the CWA being responsible for holding us back.

[org.whodat]

Most of the smaller advanced countries do have better service and better phone systems. That is a fact, the reason. The size of the United States.

[alancarp]

"The report said U.S. speeds aren’t sufficient for the needs of in-home medical monitoring, distance learning programs, or to run a modern business from home.

Balderdash. 99% of ALL companies are running just fine, thank you, on what we've got. Would we like it faster? Sure, but it isn't exactly stalling commerce. The repot writers need to check their bias at the door.

[BGHater]

[gwilhelm56]

15 is probably when their next CONTRACT is up...

The REASON, my friends a CWA.. We can’t AFFORD MORE SPEED,, we’re Paying your effing contracts.

/cynic

[Crazieman]

In Japan, you can get gigabit residential internet for just over a hundred bucks.

Meanwhile, here, Verizon has the best residential internet at 50/20 megabits for over 150 dollars. And thats only for very select locations.

I can get 25/2 megabits from Cox for $70

[martin_fierro]

But they're working hard on improving it.

[libh8er]

And now they want their share of the stimulus pie.

[Smogger]

Uh Korea isn’t even the size of California. Japan? Please. Yeah who would have thought wiring up a country with 20 times the landmass and population would take longer then wiring up the Netherlands. LOL.

BTW: My Internet speed is 25 Mbsp Down and 15 Mbps Up. And yes. That makes me a better person than you. ;-)

[RayChuang88]

People forget in South Korea and Japan, because of the very high urban population density, the local telcos can afford to spend the exorbitant cost to wire everyone for ultra-fast broadband, since there are enough potential users per square area of urban land to justify the installation costs involved. Here in the USA, only a relatively small number of cities have the type of potential user density to make such ultra-fast broadband connections economically viable.

Because of the lower urban density and the fact a large fraction of the US population lives in rural areas, the result is that the US telcos like AT&T, Verizon, etc. have to deliberately limit their speeds to make longer-distance connections possible. Right now, I'm running EarthLink ADSL at 6 megabits/second download/1 megabits per second upload, mostly limited by the DSL capacity on the AT&T lines.

[flash2368]

I now live in Moldova (find that one) part of the ex-soviet union. Average wage less than $200 a month. I am here in the states for my annual visit... Now Moldova is known as the poorest most densely populated country in Eastern Europe, however I have MUCH better internet connection and speed there than here in the U.S. Also much cheaper!! by 50%
We are talking a country where horse and wagon is a common mode of transportation.

[C210N]

Judging by the nearby thread this morning, showing a clueless Federal Reserve Inspector General not-answer and obfuscate serious trillion-dollar oversite questions, I'd say we are headed to be 15 years behind the internet speed of north Korea.

[norraad]

..golfclap

[LibFreeOrDie]

When Obama takes over the Internet, he’ll fix it... /s

[Chode]

i'm getting fiber right to my house october 1st, DSL-11Meg max.

[chuck_the_tv_out]

There are way too many people in the US on modems though.

It could be argued that it’s allowing other countries to build Internet dominance in some areas.

[Terpfen]

I’m tired of hearing how the US lags in broadband compared to geographically small countries like SK. The US spans multiple time zones and has every form of geography in the world. It is not as easy to provide broadband to someone in the desert 200 miles from the nearest town as it is to provide broadband to what is basically a city-state in South Korea.

[AmericanInTokyo]

You are entirely correct.

By the way, not to brag, but I have really killer speed here with the rigs I am running in Tokyo. But I have also seen some snazzy stuff next door in Korea, too. (Not North Korea, of course, they are using carrier pigeons up there, outside of the limited guys who are in DPRK cyberwarfare offices)...

[AmericanInTokyo]

that is, the carrier pigeons they have managed not to eat yet