ITIF Senior Fellow Claims "America's Broadband Networks Lead the World" 298
McGruber writes "In an Op-Ed published in The NY Times, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF.org) Senior Fellow Richard Bennett claims that 'America's broadband networks lead the world by many measures, and they are improving at a more rapid rate than networks in most developed countries.' Mr. Bennett also says, 'the most critical issue facing American broadband has nothing to do with the quality of our networks; it is our relatively low rates of subscribership.'"
Re: "improving at a more rapid rate" (Score:4, Interesting)
Only possible because they had further to go in the first place.
Out of touch (Score:1, Interesting)
We pay more for less bandwidth than any other country, we have bandwidth caps and we still pay outrageous "fees" for Universal Access that goes towards $20,000 routers being installed in rural library that serve a population of less than a few dozen. Your move, Mr. Bennett.
Re:What!? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yup, I'm on the same 1.5 Mbps, I've been on for years. It just costs more now. This guy needs a lashing.
True for some measures, but not others. (Score:3, Interesting)
I was trying to share some music I created with a friend in South Korea. He has a 1 Gbit Internet connection. He couldn't connect to my IP in Canada at my house. Americans would never have this problem.
I'd rather have modest/slow speeds that connect to everything than blazing fast speeds which serve only approved government propoganda and vanilla pop culture.
Belgium is a great negative role model (Score:3, Interesting)
This opinion piece holds up Belgium as an example other European countries are trying to emulate, but Internet service there is incredibly expensive and has tiny monthly bandwidth caps, worse even than Australia. Almost any European country is doing better.
The opinion piece also omits France and the story of Iliad / free.fr, and UK, which every other thing I've read says are the best examples of good policy nurturing successful infrastructure investment and cheap, fast Internet.
The actual global story is that countries practicing "structural separation"---meaning the company that maintains the wires is not allowed to provide service over them---have really cheap and fast Internet. Iliad made so much money selling DSL and TV-over-DSL in a structurally-separated competition-fostering market that they started digging trenches and laying their own fiber (..which is, well, not structurally separated any more, but meh, at least it's there). Meanwhile after winning concessions that further destroyed the already broken DSL competition in the US on the basis it would "incent" them to invest in fiber, vz halted FiOS rollout in 2010 because they can squeeze more money out of people on vzw.
BTW, if you actually used the Internet at LTE speed, you'd use $240/hr of bandwidth. Pieces like this only quote the speed but ignore that the network doesn't actually enable any "broadband applications" like cloud disk or TV-over-IP.
US is a great example of policy derp. The pollies can't keep up with the jackmoves of these sophisticatedly-skeezy US companies.
Re:What!? (Score:4, Interesting)
The author only compares America to other "developed" countries, but if I wanted the best Internet access, I would go so somewhere like South Korea, or anywhere in the Middle or Far East where the uptake of IPv6 and build-out of high speed access leaves Europe and America looking a bit last century.
The whole article seems to be missing the fact that the developing countries are setting the pace these days.
Re:What!? (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that Bennet relies on the Akamai report is proof that he's writing a propaganda piece with only a fleeting touch of reality. The reality is, Akamai's figures for the nordic countries are grossly misleading, since Akamai's infrastructure here is appallingly bad, while it's quite extensive in north america, which skews the numbers a lot in the favour of the USA.
Compared to LLNW and other competitors, Akamai is a brake for us over here, with LLNW for example allowing transfers in excess of 90Mbit/s, even during prime time, while Akamai hosts chokes at 25Mbit/s(if you're lucky....)
Re:What!? (Score:4, Interesting)
You bring up a good point
I wonder what internet speeds European food growers get? What is the quality of service for livestock breeders in rural Spain and the Baltics; wheat farmers in rural Central Europe? Also, how far outstretched are the suburbs of Europe? In my mind, European cities tend to be more densely occupied and with greater zoning overlap than in the US -- a fiber line serving many businesses also branch out easily to apartments, whereas in the US you have many more instances of distinctly separate commercial and residential zones.
Something else that comes to mind is how do the speed and service deteriorate as one moves out of the city centers? What speeds and quality of service do Europeans who live 10km away from downtown get compared to Americans who live 10km away from downtown? 20km and 30km away?
Re:What!? (Score:4, Interesting)
Kinda funny how all of the free-market lovers refuse to break up these telecom monopolies, or at the very least regulate them into being dumb pipes.
I love the free market; yet I also very much agree that the telecom industry needs a massive dose of breakup and regulation. For starters, Cable companies (and Fibre Optic services like FIOS and U-Verse) need to be forced to share their infrastructure.
Personally, I'd move it all to a single owner model - perhaps (even likely) owned by the localities - where companies have to lease them from the owner. So AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc, won't have any ability to control the basic pricing or infrastructure - they'd all be forced to compete on the quality of their services instead of their infrastructure.
It's time to realize that the internet Infrastructure really should belong to the people, and not be tied up in a wasteland of monopolies enforced by local governments - e.g. a small housing group should be able to get their own fibre optic line and split it among the group without having the county say "you can't do that because we signed this contract with company X and they have that sole right", that should all be illegal.
Re:What!? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll just give you one example. My parents live out in a farmland area in Basque country in France. Their internet 5 years ago was better than what I had access to living in the middle of Silicon Valley. It was also cheaper. I can't talk much about quality, but their Skype video came over just fine and dandy. Anecdote and all that, but it really drove home how shitty the broadband system was and is in the US. Yes, you can pay for really, really awesome internet connections. But those are affordable only if you have a business that actually generates profit off of the Internet connection. Otherwise, you're completely at the mercy of a local monopoly or duopoly.
Re:What!? (Score:5, Interesting)
The really sad part, is that without the rural electrification act, the people growing food in the US in rural counties would likely *STILL* not have basic electrical and wired telephone services, and the very pundits complaining about the proposed broadband equivalent, would be the most vocal about the issue. (Specifically, spouting the same arrogant ass vapor about how if those people want electricity and telephone service, that they should just move to the city!)
How do I know this? I grew up in such a county, where 90+% of the land allotments are farmland, and the "cities" are fewer than 10k residents. The state of the power distribution system? Apalling. (If one of those precious cities these people go on about had service that interrupted power 50+ times a day, and had deleterious line noise 100% of the time that requires a line conditioner like where I grew up, they would be demanding the government "do something.") Telephone service? Laughable, and NOT maintained. Last I checked, there were still wire boxes from the 1950s, which only went in because of said act, still in active service, rusting away underneath hedgerows.
The ONLY reason that such places even *GET* such service at all, is because of that bill.
The people who bitch about "subsidizing the 'rich' lifestyles of rural people" would spout the exact same claptrap had the rural electrification act not passed, and was being discussed now, even though the 'rich' people they try to demonize would be using kerosine lanterns for light, lack any kind of climate control in their homes other than open windows and a fireplace (it takes electricity to run a furnace. Something has to power the thermostat, and the house blower.), and would be just a few shakes above 2nd or 3rd world shithole in livability.
But they would damned well expect to find produce and beef at their supermarets.
The unpleasant reality that the "people who live out in the country are rich!" Fallacy fails to address? The average pay per year for rural residents is at or below 50k. With kids. Eg "at or below poverty line" if they lived in the city that they rail about so incessantly.
Yes, I'm a bit bitter about the issue. Because it pisses me the fuck off whenever I hear "move to the city then!" As an excuse.
The real reason those fucks say that?
Because by forcing more people into the already overcrowded city, the stand to benefit by that newcomer's taxes. They may not give it the rational thought to completely arrive at that conclusion consciously, but that is basically the crux of it. "What do *I* get out of the deal?"
You get an america that isn't divided into economic disparites like fucking china, where you have people with broadband internet and moder housing in the cities, and people living in fucking mud huts on the farmland that can't even write. That's what assholes.
The reason why rural america isn't like rural china? Acts like the electrification act, and now, proposals like the broadband act. Straight up, 100%. There were people without running water or indoor toiletry in the rural US in the 1950s, when that bill passed! The forced buildout *greatly* improved america.
"Move to the city!" Indeed, assholes. I suppose you would say that to poor chineese people too, wouldn't you?
Re:What!? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok.
Number of providers
level of competition
Cost per byte per month
Accessibility (you yourself brought that one up)
these metrics are going...slowly...and only when absolutely forced to.
remember that conspiracy theory that intel was intentionally not advancing CPUs as fast as they could, in order to maximize profit every step of the way ? (or any industry really, they all have a similar conspiriacy theory)
In the case of the telco's, it not a theory, it's completely 100% true.