US Ranks 32nd Worldwide On Broadband Affordability, Study Finds (techdirt.com) 57
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: One recent study found that the U.S. was currently ranked somewhere around 32nd globally, behind countries like Russia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria [on broadband affordability] (you can find the full breakdown here): "The United States and Canada both have one of the highest internet costs," Alex Tofts, the Broadband Expert for Broadband Genie, said in a summary. "It's driven by a lack of competition and bigger distances to connect, with lower population density than other developed countries. However, both have average wages in the top fifteen in the world, compensating for the high cost of internet."
For decades, people (mostly the industry) tried to suggest the problem was because America was just so gosh darn big. But you'll notice that China and Russia, (ranked 25th and 17th, respectively) still perform better. Data routinely shows that affordability is the key obstacle to access, yet it's only been in the last few years that you've started to see this reality reflected in U.S. policymaking. [...] But again, the cause of this problem is very clear: monopolization and consolidation, protected by corruption. Few U.S. markets have the choice of more than one broadband provider at next-generation speeds. And that's because federal and state lawmakers are so comically corrupt, they routinely let AT&T, Comcast, Charter, or Verizon lobbyists endlessly merge, crush all competition, then literally write state or federal legislation and policy over several decades.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Decades of federal policy corruption and dysfunction have created an extremely strong, local, bipartisan grassroots movement for better broadband access. In countless towns and cities, municipalities, cooperatives, city-owned utilities, and creative new partnerships are building new, open access fiber networks with an eye on competition and cost. [...] Still, it's comical and grotesque that it's 2023 and a country that fancies itself a technology giant still can't meaningfully tackle equitable broadband access and affordability. And that telecom and media policy has basically become a boring afterthought in the era of "Big Tech." Ensuring equitable access to an essential utility is just too boring for most 2023 policy circles, much less the modern attention economy.
For decades, people (mostly the industry) tried to suggest the problem was because America was just so gosh darn big. But you'll notice that China and Russia, (ranked 25th and 17th, respectively) still perform better. Data routinely shows that affordability is the key obstacle to access, yet it's only been in the last few years that you've started to see this reality reflected in U.S. policymaking. [...] But again, the cause of this problem is very clear: monopolization and consolidation, protected by corruption. Few U.S. markets have the choice of more than one broadband provider at next-generation speeds. And that's because federal and state lawmakers are so comically corrupt, they routinely let AT&T, Comcast, Charter, or Verizon lobbyists endlessly merge, crush all competition, then literally write state or federal legislation and policy over several decades.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Decades of federal policy corruption and dysfunction have created an extremely strong, local, bipartisan grassroots movement for better broadband access. In countless towns and cities, municipalities, cooperatives, city-owned utilities, and creative new partnerships are building new, open access fiber networks with an eye on competition and cost. [...] Still, it's comical and grotesque that it's 2023 and a country that fancies itself a technology giant still can't meaningfully tackle equitable broadband access and affordability. And that telecom and media policy has basically become a boring afterthought in the era of "Big Tech." Ensuring equitable access to an essential utility is just too boring for most 2023 policy circles, much less the modern attention economy.
Much is monopolies and consumer apathy (Score:5, Informative)
In some areas, the local government gave cable companies monopolies.
But in many areas now, you can bypass cable internet with 5g internet for a fraction of the price. I pay $50 (with tax) per month and you can get it as low as $30. Then, if you are poor and don't have a lot of assets, you can get $30 off those prices with government assistance.
Re:Much is monopolies and consumer apathy (Score:4, Interesting)
AND also in law, any proposed municipal system has to provide evidence it will be profitable in YEAR ONE.
Just insane the preventions they have thrown up
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Any law benefiting the local telecommunication companies (which took them a decade to pass) can be revoked in just one session if the lawmakers listen to their constituents. Stupid and lopsided laws don't have to stay on the books forever.
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Yes we need to vote. But that's not something supported by historical evidence as likely to happen.
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if the lawmakers listen to their constituents.
LOL. If they were interested in that, they wouldn't have done it in the first place.
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" the local government gave cable companies monopolies"
Local franchising authority has been preempted since the Telecommunications Act of 1996
Eat Fiber, Poop Data (Score:2)
Eat Fiber every morning.
You'll poop data.
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I guess that's why the USA is 32nd out of 38 OECD countries.
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I've had "5G" internet and it is absolute trash. I'm sure it's "fine" for cell phones, but for normal internet access on your PC it is incredibly slow, not a real competitor to cable, fiber, or even DSL.
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I've had "5G" internet and it is absolute trash. I'm sure it's "fine" for cell phones, but for normal internet access on your PC it is incredibly slow, not a real competitor to cable, fiber, or even DSL.
It doesn't have to be if implemented well by mobile provider. I'm not in the US but I have seen 1.5 Gbps actual speed (measured download from remote site) over 5G internet, beating that my home broadband is only 750 Mbps. Sure, the cable broadband speed is likely more stable and a bit faster ping (though the 5G ping is surpisingly good), but I'm basically unable to notice any diference on my laptop with built in SIM card whether I'm running on 5G or 750mbps cable even for bandwith heavy loads.
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You already mentioned the issue of ping, but also the problem with virtually ALL wireless is connection stability.
Even on WIFI when the transceiver is 10 feet from my device you can get a random bit of interference that takes a connection down for a second and then it recovers. That is insignificant when web browsing, but a minor annoyance for streaming video, a decently larger annoyance for working remotely during a video meeting or remote desktop session, and pretty much a show stopper for online gaming.
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Well, we have 3 computers gaming and a phone using wifi and have no problem.
So I guess you test for your area.
Or pay $180 for better service instead of $50 (or $35).
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We have 5g for home internet and I've seen zero negative impact on network speed compared to cable. Actually, in some cases, some mild improvements. I wonder if we're just lucky enough to be in a well saturated 5g area?
I mean... (Score:5, Informative)
I live in a third world country in fucking Africa, of all places, and I have uncapped internet. Hell, the internet is more reliable than the water supply, somehow.
32 seems high (Score:2)
That means there are 150 countries where broadband is less affordable? I don't believe it.
In India you can buy a phone for $12 and then pay just $1.25 for 14GB of transfer and unlimited voice calling. In the US $1.25 won't even cover paying for the watts needed to transmit 14GB of data and unlimited calls. Reference: https://techcrunch.com/2023/07... [techcrunch.com]
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FTFY
The US oligarchy is beyond borked in cost to service regardless of whether incomes are higher.
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But in India can they get NFL Red Zone or any other sports or entertainment package included with their phone subscription?
Or is it just a simple phone and wireless data package with no extra goodies ?
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Sure they can, although Cricket is generally the most popular sport in India so that's what they'd be promoting.
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NFL ? in India ?
Why ?
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...pay just $1.25 for 14GB of transfer....
I routinely use 2TB of data a month. So 2048G / 14G is 147 units of Indian Internet service (you have to round up to be realistic).
147 units * $1.25 = $183.75.
$183.75 / $65.00 (what I pay for symmetrical gig fiber Internet where I live in the U.S., after all taxes and fees) = 2.83 fiber lines.
While I agree that U.S. Internet is usually among the worst in cost/performance, it's changing in some places. I've had my fiber service for a couple years now, and fiber rollouts are slowly increasing. In the end ana
This is news? (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't some great secret which has suddenly been revealed through diligent research. This has been known for the past decade, at a minimum. I, and many others, have said the main culprit is lack of competiition. In most areas you are lucky if you get two choices, and usually those two choices still charge the same amount for the same service so there's not benefit choosing one over the other.
In fact, the CEO of Charter has said they deliberately don't compete with other companies because they might want to later buy them [arstechnica.com]. Something which would be blocked by the FCC.
And let's not get into the $1 trillion dollars of taxpayer money these companies have received since the Clinton administration to build out broadband networks and have failed to do so.
It might be time for these welfare queens to get off the public dole and engage in capitalism. Then again, they're probably pretty happy with the socialism going on.
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This isn't some great secret which has suddenly been revealed through diligent research. This has been known for the past decade, at a minimum.
This isn't a secret, but this study may be slap in the face to hopefully wake up some people who are still living in the "America is always the best so no matter how bad things are it is worse elsewhere" dream.
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Heh, you're on point except for attributing our current scenario to socialism. Socialism would be municipal broadband or something else run by some level of US government. I don't know what the current practice of our government shovelling large amounts of money at private companies would fall under but it sure ain't socialism.
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you disingenuous little twit, there is absolutely nothing free about the broadband market in the US.
Re: How is that (Score:1)
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Yeah, Russia is doing better than the US on this study. Clearly, we should aspire to be more like Russia.
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It's working great. Meanwhile in Europe, the telecoms are trying to get the government to force large media companies to pay for the telecom infrastructure because the subscription costs the government allows them to charge consumers does not cover their costs. Just because it's cheaper in some countries with similar economies, does not mean what people are paying is the true cost to provide the service to them. Government subsidies and price caps make direct dollar to dollar comparisons difficult.
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Sure but are the telecoms advocating for this because they can't continue to function under current pricing restrictions or because they just want more money like any major corporation? I'd be curious for some in depth analysis on how Europe's telecoms are doing rather than just taking their word for it as major corporations will make all sorts of outrageous claims if they think it will get them more money.
Same old story .. same old song and dance (Score:4, Informative)
Every time we see some proposal for Federal government to spend X number of millions on "helping provide broadband to more rural areas" or to "make broadband more accessible", the money vanishes down a hole and nothing substantial really changes. Just more taxpayers on the hook for the poorly spent money.
Really, I have little faith in the major carriers taking any interest in doing these projects. I remember over 10 years ago living in the Northeast (outer ring Metro DC area) and Verizon was just finishing up their project to deploy FiOS in more cities. The tiny (but wealthy) town of Poolesville, Maryland was one of the last ones on the list to get FiOS. And rumor had it, some big-wig from Verizon lived in Poolesville, or else it would never have happened there at all. At that time, people in a number of nearby communities were really eager to get FiOS but couldn't, and Verizon had no interest in serving them either. Turns out, they only rolled it out to the minimum number of communities negotiated in a deal made something like 5 years earlier, to meet minimum standards required to collect a big chunk of government broadband improvement funding. And Verizon was already actively working to SELL the entire thing to some other "bag holder", because it was really much more interested in expanding and upgrading its cellular data network instead.
AT&T seems to have a very similar attitude. As far back as when they first launched "U-Verse" service (glorified high-speed DSL, really) -- AT&T would almost surgically pick and choose which neighborhoods to put it in, in the St. Louis, Missouri area, when I lived there. You'd try to order it because you found out a neighbor had it, and they'd tell you sorry... you live too far from one of their outside boxes for it to work for you. (The service had a limitation of something like 12,000 to 14,000 feet your property could be from one of their green phone boxes with the U-Verse routing equipment inside it.) If they didn't think a given street would have enough customers who could afford to pay for it, they'd just skip it. Now, I see them treating their fiber Internet the same way. I live across the river from St. Louis these days, on the Illinois side. And they made a big to-do, a couple years ago, that "AT&T fiber was coming to town!" Well, it turns out, all they did was strike a lucrative deal with local government and emergency services so fiber was put in for the E911 system's benefit. But nothing was ever done to sell it to consumers in the city.
I have decent broadband via Charter (cable provider for my area). But you can *clearly* tell they, too, don't care much about selling broadband. It's more of something they can't really avoid selling at this point. But everything they do is about getting you to take "bundles". Maybe you'll pay extra for their home security system, or maybe you'll pay for your family to get several cellphones on Charter's cellular offering (basically puts your calls on whichever carrier/tower they've contracted with for the area you're in)? Of course, they keep pushing you to pay for one of their television packages and if nothing else? Well, they'll price it so it's cheaper to take a bundle with VoIP telephone service + broadband vs just broadband by itself. Anything to keep you from ONLY buying your Internet data from them, it seems.
I think the bottom line must be that it's just not that profitable to provide high speed Internet? The major players all have their fingers in OTHER services they can sell and all of those (like cellular service) are far bigger money-makers for them. They already have a lot of infrastructure in place that makes broadband feasible/possible -- but prospects like investing in broadband GROWTH? Nah, they'd rather not.
Affordability isn't the biggest problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Availability is
Some areas have NO good options
Some local companies try to bring fiber to areas like the one I live in. The telecom monopolists sue them and use every dirty trick in the book to prevent them from doing the project. The telcos seem to have the attitude, we won't serve your area but we will do anything we can to prevent others from serving it
Telcos lie in government docs, saying that an area is "served" if wireless phone service is available. This is NOT an acceptable solution
We need fiber
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I currently have fiber, and I am using the smallest available plan, at $30/month for 50 mbit/sec including phone services. If I upgrade to 1 Gbit/sec, the price would be $110/month.
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Affordability isn't the biggest problem
Well aren't we privileged. I guess you're not one of the 38million people in the USA living in poverty making decisions on which daily necessities to cut. Internet is very much becoming an essential service like electricity and water. Heck I don't think I could function in the country I live in without internet. I couldn't even get referred form the doctor to the hospital without having to use a QR code and an online system tied to a government issued digital ID.
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Thankfully in the US, we don't have to have or show some sort of "National ID" to get regular daily services in life (at least so far, although they are trying).
Just curious...how do the poor people in your country get by if they can't afford a smart phone to read QR codes or h
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Thankfully in the US, we don't have to have or show some sort of "National ID" to get regular daily services in life (at least so far, although they are trying).
I do not know where you live, but here in Texas, where the government insists they hate and resist government getting in our business, I have to show my state issued, federally compliant, Real ID for any service I can think of.
This includes medical, utilities, any state or local government interaction - and for banking or insurance I have to provide SSN as well.
Feds or States? Red or Blue?
Texas is as bad as any of them and all their talk is designed to fool the fools.
Flawed report (Score:4, Informative)
The report is flawed, because it doesn't take into account bandwidth and data caps.
There are countries where Internet is high-bandwidth, cheap and unlimited. In my country's capital, we pay less than 7 bucks a month for unlimited Gigabit fiber, and my ISP already pilots 10g bandwidth in a different neighborhood.
Furthermore, the report considers "60Mb or more, unlimited data, cable/ADSL" as "high speed broadband". If I had that bandwidth, I would have gone mad.
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...Which should be taken into consideration.
Also, some ISPs limit speeds, quite drastically.
The most awesomest country in the universe (Score:2)
except when it comes to broadband internet.
Then it's only awesome if your the ISP. =/
US & Canada? They Aren't the Same (Score:2)
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When it comes to telecommunications and also the power grid, separating the US and Canada is more problematic than most people realize. The networks have always been interdependent.
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yuck (Score:2)
That moment when USA is #32 and Russia is #17...
PUC's are to blame (Score:2)
Treat Internet like roads (Score:1)
My idea, which I've long held, is that the local municipality should be build out the local infrastructure and bring the infrastructure back to a COLO facility where the PROVIDERS compete for access to the local infrastructure and local customers.
This would open up the access to competition instead of the local monopoly franchise agreements to the BIGCABLECO INC that stifles and prevents all other local competition.
Each provider can customize their offerings. I just want to pay for data, and not cableTV, I
Plutocrat/Corporate socialism (Score:1)
Anyone that thinks the US is a free market doesn't understand how the world works.