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.
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"Only possible because they had further to go in the first place."
Yep. And here's another good one:
'... 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.'
Absolute BS. Sure, it may be the low rates of subscribership, but the first part is wrong. The low rates of subscribership are due to low quality of service combined with outrageous prices.
The fact is: other "developed countries" have better service for less money. If there is any one halfway good excuse the US has for that, it might be the cost of infrastructure in areas of low population. But some other countries (like Canada) have that problem too.
Re:Filthy sows need to become clean! (Score:4, Funny)
What!? (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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.
Yeah, this guy is totally wrong because [insert my own personal anecdote here] !!!
Re:What!? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, this guy is totally wrong because [insert my own personal anecdote here] !!!
Yeah, this guy is totally right because [insert cherry picked data points here] !!!
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.
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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.
Yeah, this guy is totally wrong because [insert my own personal anecdote here] !!!
The issue is that all of these personal anecdotes add up to a disturbing picture. I consider myself extremely lucky to be on 50Mbps for $60/mo with Charter on the West Coast. I've already come to terms with the fact that when I move next, it will likely be to a much worse service provider. 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.
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.
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Yeah, this guy is totally wrong because I pay $75/mo for 60/8 Mbbps !!!
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> Yeah, this guy is totally wrong because [insert my own personal anecdote here] !!!
Argument by counterexample is a perfectly acceptable approach. It tends to be more effective when some clueless ass makes some really stupid general statement.
The article was about one such ass.
Re:What!? (Score:4, Insightful)
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: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.
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I find the problem is, they keep increasing the speeds (and sometimes the cost) but what I want is half the speed I currently have at half my current monthly bill. The cable company would still be getting the same $4.66/1mbit that I'm paying now. They don't offer such packages for some unknown stupid reason.
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I find the problem is, they keep increasing the speeds (and sometimes the cost) but what I want is half the speed I currently have at half my current monthly bill. The cable company would still be getting the same $4.66/1mbit that I'm paying now. They don't offer such packages for some unknown stupid reason.
I'm in the same boat. I don't download a lot, so 10 Mb works fine for me. It's plenty for streaming Netflix, which is my most bandwidth intensive activity. But my provider recently upped the lowest tier to 25 Mb. So now I'm forced to pay more for service I don't really want, and which rarely runs at the advertised speed anyway.
Re:What!? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.hightechforum.org/u-s-broadband-speed-slightly-better-in-latest-akamai-report/ [hightechforum.org]
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:3)
Many of the countries you believe are better have state run networks with no competition. The best have state owned infrastructure where providers compete with equal access.
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I'm in the US and get 55mbps for $30/month. Really if you can get very fast internet for $30/month I just don't see a cause for complaint. And then I get 4G/LTE with my $50/month contract-free phone.
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There are far too many monopolies in Americas internet connections and THATS the problem, no competition means they can do whatever the hell they want!
Which may be his point when he said we're "leading."
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, Insightful)
The whole article seems to be missing the fact that the developing countries are setting the pace these days.
Which is stated with a degree of surprise, but if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
In 'developed' countries, good enough reigns supreme. They may have state of the art infrastructure as defined by standards when the infrastructure was built. Getting tens of mbps to urban areas is 'good enough'. IPv4 is 'good enough'.
In countries that have no acceptable infrastructure, they have the opportunity to start from the correct place as it is defined now.
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Re:What!? (Score:5, Insightful)
yep, and if you read the details most of these cases are you get this speed only if you live in the center of the nation's largest city. and its not available in the entire city either
most of the people complaining in the USA about broadband live out in the exuburbs or rural areas and want the gubment to pay for the infrastructure
The gubetment already paid for the infrastructure. The telcos pocketed the cash for themselves instead.
Re:What!? (Score:5, Insightful)
The citizens already paid for the infrastructure. The telcos pocketed the cash for themselves instead.
FTFY.
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They're the same thing, so you're being redundant. It's the first words of the Constitution -- "We the People". Choosing those words first was not an accident.
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I live less than 2.5 miles from my state capitol. My two choices for internet are $55/mo for 1.5/.75 DSL from CenturyLink, or $70/mo for "up to" 20/5 from Comcast. I don't want the gubmint to subsidize shit. But somebody needs to step in and break this duopoly. If tighter regulations on these two asshat companies is what it takes, so be it.
Personally, I'd like to see the city turn the SCOTUS approved imminent domain laws on their head, and seize the infrastructure from these racketeers and then lease back w
Re:What!? (Score:5, Insightful)
> most of the people complaining in the USA about broadband live out in the exuburbs or rural areas and want the gubment to pay for the infrastructure
Sounds like the Rural Electrification Act.
Are you really prepared to declare that we are no longer civilized enough to make sure that no one is left behind in this country?
The infastructure you are using right now or even the city you are living in likely is the result of the sort of "gubment" handout you are trying to whine about.
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?
The Point (Score:5, Insightful)
"Mr. Bennett also says that'"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." .. which would not be a problem if the service was as cheaper and more reliable.
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which would not be a problem if the service was as cheaper and more reliable.
No, it would not be a problem if America worked to create an economy where people aren't struggling just to get by. If you can't feed your kids much more than generic Cheerios, a computer and broadband ain't too high on your list of priorities.
Re: The Point (Score:3)
You think there are a lot of Americans struggling to get Cheerios?
Re: The Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Hail, time traveler! Welcome to the World of Tomorrow! I will give you a brief introduction on some important changes in society that have occurred since your time:
Believe it or not, a black man is president of the United States now. We have computers so small that they fit in the palm of your hand. The top 14% of Americans own almost 75% of the wealth and have devastated the economy over the past half decade. The average income of a worker has remained about the same since your time, but the average CEO now makes 350 times the average worker. With so much wealth being sequestered among the super rich instead of being shared among the middle class where it would be used to keep the economy going, the US is on the verge of a complete financial collapse.
Welcome!
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> You think there are a lot of Americans struggling to get Cheerios?
If you think otherwise you have lived a very sheltered existence for your entire life.
Re: The Point (Score:5, Informative)
I don't have to think or believe that a lot of Americans are struggling to feed themselves and their families, because unfortunately I have the luxury of knowing it. 14.5% of US families suffer from food insecurity. SNAP (food stamps) only provides $4 / day.
Page with summary statistics [worldhunger.org]
2011 USDA study [usda.gov]
Re: The Point (Score:4, Informative)
You think there are a lot of Americans struggling to get Cheerios?
Yes, this is news? See here [cbslocal.com]. The poverty rate has been going up for a bit now. And poverty is defined as $23,000 for a family of four. So yeah, there are a lot of Americans struggling to afford Cheerios.
Re: The Point (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, there are: 18% of all households in the US [umich.edu] are in poverty, which is defined as being unable to afford food, water, or housing without government assistance. About 1.5 million households are in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $2 per person per day.
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Re: The Point (Score:4, Insightful)
The world doesn't OWE you anything. About all minimum wage should allow is for you - only you - to have a place to sleep and enough food to stay alive. If you want to support anyone else (spouse, children, etc) and provide a quality of life above eating, sleeping, and going to work, then get a better job.
The whole point of society is what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The irony is that higher paying jobs are typically easier, in the sense that one should be doing what they're good at and getting paid a premium for those services. To tell someone to get a "better job" is like telling someone "you should stop being sick".
Why do you think we have all of these social programs like public education, infrastructure, welfare, firemen, police, judges, military? Because they benefit us all.
Implementation details of social programs make a huge difference on their usefulness.
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No, I made the far better choice of getting a job that pays more than minimum wage when I was 15 and still in highschool. I saved my money to pay for college and got a degree, then I married a woman who shared a similar mindset. We still live with a roommate which some people have too much pride for apparently but it has cut our mortgage in half.
Maybe the reason people can't get name-brand Cheerios (I don't anyway, waste of money) is that they make really poor life choices?
Maybe not. It's amazing to me that there are still people who blame the poor for their poverty by saying they made bad choices. To be fair, I'm sure some of them did. But to be blind to the massive advantage wealth gives a person, and conversely the disadvantage of poverty, takes a special kind of obtuseness.
Re: The Point (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I made the far better choice of getting a job that pays more than minimum wage when I was 15 and still in high school. ... Maybe the reason people can't get name-brand Cheerios (I don't anyway, waste of money) is that they make really poor life choices?
Sometimes they made bad decisions. Sometimes they weren't making decisions in the same circumstances as you did, like:
1. It was legal to work at age 15 where you lived. In a lot of places in the US, it's now illegal to work before you're 16.
2. Someone was looking to hire an employee somewhere near where you lived. That's not common right now.
3. That someone was willing to employ a teenager.
4. You could get to your place of work. Maybe you had a public transit system, maybe the job was close enough to walk to, maybe somebody drove you, but somehow you were able to do that.
5. You didn't have to drop out of high school to do the work, which means about 10-15 hours a week maximum.
6. You had the parenting, educational opportunities, and equipment needed to have marketable skills, or you got above-market wages for unskilled labor. Frequently, unskilled labor gets minimum wage or close to it.
7. You could save all the money you earned for college, rather than supporting your family with it. Many teenage workers use their money to help pay the family rent or keep their siblings fed.
8. You almost definitely went to college when it was far cheaper than it is now. For example, if you worked 15 hours a week at $10 an hour for 3 years (age 15-8), you would earn about $18,000 after taxes. That's about 25% of 4-year tuition at your nearby state university.
9. You and your wife probably didn't have to deal with: (a) serious illness or accident, either of yourselves or of someone you consider yourself obligated to care for, (b) a layoff of either of you in the recent recession, (c) a serious natural disaster such as a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake, or (d) a house fire.
I'm not saying you didn't do the right things because you clearly did. What I'm saying is that you did as well as you did in part because you made the right decisions, and in part because you were lucky - you had parents, teachers, bosses, siblings, future wife, etc making decisions that gave you the chance to make the right decision.
They do at one important metric (Score:2)
He is right for one very important metric, cost!
Otherwise I say boo hiss go away shill.
Uh no (Score:4, Informative)
America's broadband networks led the world in one respect; this is where we got widespread broadband first. We lag in every other regard. Miles of shitty copper used for services it can't really handle is not a metric to brag about.
We get less for our money than almost anyone else, we have poorer penetration than almost anyone else... the former is because of corporate malfeasance, the latter is both because of that and because the USA is big. Nothing to be proud of either way.
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We may have missed the boat on having fibre owned by local city/county governments and leased to whatever ISP gives you the best deal, but we what we have is a massive legacy network in POTS. We all had home phones when many places in the world did not thanks to copper. That was a huge advantage for a number of years and took a massive amount of infrastructure and time to build.
The other problem is that we get compared as the entire USA vs say Sweden. It's not really a fair comparison given geographic po
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Your comment is strange because we're deploying fiber far faster than in Europe. xDSL seems to be receding.
The last mile is still as fucked as it has been for the last five years or so. Only in a few major cities are we actually deploying any fiber. I still can't get anything as fast as a decent DSL connection at my home without paying massive fees for something carrier-grade; I would probably have to pay AT&T to run a new strand of fiber into my neighborhood. The copper in my neighborhood has been spliced and respliced, because it was inherited from Pacific Bell, and it is shit.
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err, the US has no shortage of backhaul capacity .. we have dark fiber going every which way that has not needed to be utilized due to DWDM advances of the last decade or two.
The problem has been in getting that capacity to the consumer, the "last mile".
At least, our phone companies have generally been spending the absolute minimum on infrastructure that they can get away with for the last 15 years .. our cable companies doing likewise, and our wireless ISPs of last resort (aka Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-
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e.g. not everyone can pick from 4 different broadband providers as I can (Google Fiber, Surewest, AT&T, Time Warner).
Technically I guess that's a choice...but most geeks I know would give up their girlfriend in Canada to have Google Fiber.
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I'm guessing you live In Sweden, which has lovely network access but apparently doesn't teach geography for shit. Call me when you can find Bulgaria on the map and tell me what continent it's on.
Call me when you can find Bulgaria on this chart [netindex.com] and tell me where it is relative to the US on that chart. :-)
(Or indicate why the chart is unrealistic. If it is realistic, perhaps Italy, for example, would have been a better choice.)
(And, no, that chart isn't a chart of fiber deployment, but if the countries below the US have more fiber deployed, one is tempted to ask what good it's doing.)
U S A! U S A! (Score:5, Insightful)
We're number 1! We're number 1!
I suppose Mr. Bennett just disregards the 32 countries that have recently developed faster more modern networks (http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/). Make up some random metric, don't compare to all nations, disregard contradicting evidence, declare champion. Sounds like a good plan to me!
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but but but but.. SOCIALISM!!!
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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.
By "Lead" do they mean "Control"? (Score:2)
Yeah, I get that already... Thanks NSA. I have ceased using a backup service for all my stuff -- I'll start subscribing to your services for data recovery.
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By "Lead" do they mean "Control"?
Nope, by lead they mean Pb [wikipedia.org]
huh? (Score:2)
Why in the US are we so caught up in listening to idiots? We're listening to WAY to many "senior fellows" at thinktanks that are all promoting their own agenda and world view. There is nothing credible here... it's just an advertisement written by someone who is scared of the dreaded SOZIALSSM!!
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to too* yeah
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I am an American, genius.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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but why the fuck is he trying to argue that usa is winning the broadband race? he was already paid with some cash he squandered?
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.
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US is a great example of policy derp. The pollies can't keep up with the jackmoves of these sophisticatedly-skeezy US companies.
Just the opposite. The policies are doing exactly what the lobbyists intended, feed the corporate coiffures at the expense of the people. Remember, the government no longer represents the voters, only those who buy pay their way to get elected.
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As a UK citizen, I wouldn't exactly call our internet access options stellar; although there are a great many ISPs, the vast majority of them all use the old BT network for both last mile and backbone routing. These are built out by BT OpenReach that then sells them on to resellers. Good news is that the wholesale price is set low (and with a lot of government oversight) so that OpenReach can't sell to BT's ISP businesses at a different cost than they sell to everyone else. However, the bad news is that the
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Bad form to reply again, sorry; I have no idea what happened to my post above, half of it went missing. Thanks heavens for browser cache, here it is again:
As a UK citizen, I wouldn't exactly call our internet access options stellar; although there are a great many ISPs, the vast majority of them all use the old BT network for both last mile and backbone routing. These are built out by BT OpenReach that then sells them on to resellers. Good news is that the wholesale price is set low (and with a lot of gover
Re:Belgium is a great negative role model (Score:4, Informative)
I must be living in a parallel Belgium it seems. I have 60Mbit/s down with no bandwidth cap (FUP) for 55 euro. That also includes cable/decoder + telephone with free calls within Belgium and free calls to mobile/European countries for certain hours. If I would bump that to 24/24 then it will set you back another 5 euro. My mobile internet costs me 15 euro and that includes 2Gb of traffic.
The cheapest internet on cable (which is available everywhere) will set you back for 25 euro and that includes 30Mbit/s and a limit of 100Gb. VDSL2 that is available in most places : 35Mbit/s including unlimited bandwidth and that for the price of 35 euro.
It is what you call incredible expensive and tiny bandwidth...
Huh? (Score:3)
I don't live in the U.S. and I've had 100Mbps fiber for less than USD 50/month for so long that I have to stop to count... Let's see. It's been over 12 years, now.
The U.S. does lead the world in cognitive dissonance, though.
Senior or Senile Fellow? (Score:2)
Apparently it doesn't mean what you think. It doesn't mean senile old person who needs to die and leave the thinking to the younger people. Obvious, by his statement, that is what you think, but apparently dude is supposed to be popular with the rest of the people in his academy and won some important votes by other "senior" follows to become one himself.
Does he know what he is talking about? No. I at first thought it said Senator because when it comes to tech, they know nothing, but apparently it's
This guy needs a vacation (Score:2)
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Betcha that the cost of the small apartment in Tokyo + the broadband >>>> my house and broadband.
low rate of subscibership? (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like all our country's Internet woes could be easily solved if ISPs just spent more money on marketing.
What the US really leads the world in (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet another article proving that the only things the US really leads the world in is massively overrating their own country while maintaining total blind ignorance of anything outside it.
Improving (Score:2)
"improving at a more rapid rate than networks in most developed countries"
I guess that's because the US has the most room for improvement.
Oh Statistics! LOL (Score:4, Informative)
"they are improving at a more rapid rate than networks in most developed countries."
Analysis: Most developed countries already have better networks, thus less room to improve. The USA having backwater level networks, are able to improve to a much greater degree as the current "Can with String Attached" technology is much slower than your typical 2400 baud modem.
Joking of course, and exaggerating (is there anything else on Slashdot), but I always get a kick out of these PR type statements which are "technically" valid, but only because of careful wording. Also known as, statistics, is there anything you can't solve?
Another way to look at this, you just won the "Most Improved Player" on your little league baseball team, Congratulations! Your kid is fat and untalented, and we all felt sorry for them, have a trophy for participation... (I say this as someone with a closet full of them!)
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No, there is nothing that Statistics can't be used to prove as long as you ask the right question....
Lies... Dam Lies... and Statistics....
He Could be Correct! (Score:2)
Almost none of this is true: 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.
Perhaps he intended for "lead" to be in the past tense? It's that silly English language...
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Perhaps he intended for "lead" to be in the past tense? It's that silly English language...
If so, he should have left the "a" out - it should have been "America's Broadband Networks Led the World". At least in that case, English is not so silly as to have the past and present tenses spelled the same.
USA Number One!!!! 111 1 1!!!! (Score:2)
Sorry; this was written by another slashdotter; not sure who, but I clipped and saved for re-use someday and now here it is.
We may not be the "best" at network speed and access; but here's what we are truly "number one" at:
#1 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on earth.
#2 The United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.
#3 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.
#4 The United
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Sorry; this was written by another slashdotter; not sure who, but I clipped and saved for re-use someday and now here it is.
We may not be the "best" at network speed and access; but here's what we are truly "number one" at:
To be fair, some of those items appear to be absolute counts rather than percentages; for example, number of $CRIMEs is less interesting than number of $CRIMEs per 1,000 people.
Others, however, are rates/percentages, and, yes, a higher rate/percentage of $BAD_THING does make you interestingly #1 in $BAD_THING.
America has the best broadband in the world. (Score:3)
I agree, America has the best broadband in the world.*
[fine print]* Where "The World" is defined as American and any country with worse broadband than America has.[/fine print]
He's right. (Score:3)
And in the land of the corporations and the home of the greedy scumbags, isn't that all that matters?
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Actually Universal Access subsidizes low income phones. Your post is the first time I have heard someone say it was used for library equipment, care to cite any sources?
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He is talking about this: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/why-a-one-room-west-virginia-library-runs-a-20000-cisco-router/ [arstechnica.com]
I never hear anything to indicate it came out that fee though.
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Actually Universal Access subsidizes low income phones. Your post is the first time I have heard someone say it was used for library equipment, care to cite any sources?
I believe he is referring to this story:
West Virginia Library $2000 router [arstechnica.com]
However, this was not paid out of the "Universal Access" fund (which is a tax collected by the phone company that they pocket, nominally to better service in rural areas) but from "Federal funds" (which is monies collected and dispersed by the government, although in t
Re:Out of touch (Score:5, Informative)
Where?
I don't even have a library within 40 miles of where I live, let alone one with a $20,000 router in it.
I pay the same universal service fees as everyone else, and I don't get anywhere NEAR the access as 99% of the rest of the country.
My ISP is shit. SHIT. They WAY overcommit their crappy low-end ADSL lines (which constantly crash/go down), and have delayed any upgrade plans for YEARS. Then they have the unmitigated gall to go whining to the state legislature to block any attempts by our local municipality to seek out a better PAID-FOR solution for us.
No, the problem with broadband in 'Murrica is all the goddamned crooks in the government-backed monopolies who pocket all the money we are forced to give them, both voluntarily, and at gunpoint, and then give us sweet-motherfuck-all in return.
I couldn't be happier at this point if all the goddamned telcos died in a fire, painfully. I sure as hell wouldn't consider even pissing on them to put them out.
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They don't have a good reason for not upgrading their infrastructure which is really what the core of the data cap ar
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West Virginia [arstechnica.com]
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I wouldn't say ANY other country, but we are certainly nowhere near the top.
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$72 USD (54 EUR) for I guess 30/5 from Comcast (who doesn't really advertise what their speeds are).
It is probably faster than is available in a lot of other areas, with other cable providers or people stuck with just DSL as their only option.
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Jeez is that the tv/phone bundle or the standalone? I'm getting $30 for 20/5 standalone same company, but I'm just under 10 miles from downtown (mid size city in the south). We still have a cable monopoly in the metro area, but Charter's been encroaching from all sides in the neighboring counties, which likely why there's been these price drops.
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I live in the Netherlands and pay 40 euro's for 100/100
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Speedtest.net claims I have 20Mbps down and 2Mbps up. CNET says I get just shy of 18Mbps download speed. So the AC pays $10 less a month for 5x my download bandwidth and 20x my upload. Admittedly anecdotal, but the whole "US leads the world" story doesn't match my experience.
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Lucky you. I pay 40$CAD for a shitty 2.5/0.5 connection.
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I'm not anti-US. I think our government is screwed up being overrun with morans that do nothing but cowtow to corporate interests but that's different than hating the country.
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You can examine your browser's certificate fingerprints and compare them to those published by the CAs through some side channel*. Its possible that the NSA/CIA/FBI have strong-armed US based CAs into turning over their private keys. But they'd have to do that for foreign CAs as well and I suspect that some of these CAs can't be threatened, or would leak that fact to the public.
*It would be a good idea if the CAs would take out a print ad in a major newspaper occasionally and publish their fingerprint. Let