Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

US Does Surprisingly Well in Internet Survey

Posted by Zonk on Wed Apr 09, 2008 05:17 PM
from the oh-man-we're-good-at-something-awesome dept.
The Internet Networking United States IT
Herman's hermit writes "A new report from the World Economic Forum ranks the US number four when it comes to 'network readiness,' despite the fact that the same report has the US 17th broadband subscribers and 19th in bandwidth. 'While good news overall for the US, which is poised to take full advantage of information technology gains, the report probably won't change many minds when it comes to talking specifically about US broadband deployment.'"
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: US #4 in "network readiness," #19 in bandw by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

US Does Surprisingly Well in Internet Survey 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Large (Score:3, Insightful)

    by webmaster404 (1148909) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @05:21PM (#23018276)
    I think the main point in broadband that people just don't get is that the US is huge while many smaller countries are the size of one of the US's states, its is expensive to get broadband.

    • Re:Large (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2008, @05:29PM (#23018364)
      But we've got 50 of them. Maybe it's tougher to wire up the more rural states, but doesn't the lack of clusters of high-quality inexpensive broadband in our urban areas (comparable to, say, the level of service you might find in the Netherlands) suggest more issues than geography comprise the bandwidth problem?
      • Well, to that we can blame the government-funded monopolies that control 75% of all major broadband, but still, geography comes into play when there are just some places that so far can't even get broadband even if someone was willing.
      • > but doesn't the lack of clusters of high-quality
        > inexpensive broadband in our urban areas

        Lack of clusters? What does that mean?

        Typically US neighborhoods have either coax or fiber or adsl, and only rarely are there more than one choice in any given area.

        Someone has a franchise on any given cable plant. If you are in a comcast neighborhood thats what you use.

        This again goes back to size.

        You simply can not afford to wire entire cities with multiple independent cable plants.

        The only why this works is
    • I live in New Zealand. Total population 4 million or so. Cities have good broadband at very good rates. I live rurally where there is no wired broadband option and get a terrestrial wireless service instead. This costs a lot more and is a lot slower.

      If you lived in the woods in USA you'd probably also only get limited broadband.

    • Re:Large (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tindur (658483) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @05:46PM (#23018546)
      Does this count as a Slashdot meme already? Every time there is a story on Slashdot about how the net is somehow better somewhere else than in the US the result is "But the US is so big" and then we get "There is a country that is even less densely populated than the US that has better net connections.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You forgot "but service in densely populated parts of the US sucks too!" followed by "but cities like New York are old and hard to rewire!" followed by "City X in Europe has been there for a thousand years, still has the original roads, and has great broadband!"

        Or "Nobody needs that kind of bandwidth" followed by "Well, if comcast had that kind of bandwidth, they wouldn't have to compress the hell out of their HD channels, and they could (yeah right) quit complaining about people downloading a file interfer
        • Which "densely populated regions" have slow internet? Every major city I have examined in my area (Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, D.C.) is getting wired with 20 megabit cable or FiOs. I wouldn't call that slow.

          Living in rural Greece with only 56k... that's slow (comparable to living in Wyoming).

          Which if the point: When you compare ALL of europe, to ALL of the states, they are essentially equal (on average). Which is what you would expect for two closely-tied 1st world economies.

    • Re:Large (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ecuador (740021) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @05:57PM (#23018658) Homepage
      I don't understand your point. A country that is huge, but has few people or a very low GDP per capita would logically have a problem getting everyone on broadband connections.
      The US does not have a low population density and most certainly its population is not poor.
      And I did not say it is easy to give broadband to every rural area. We can start from cities.
      I live in NYC. In the middle of Manhattan the best you can do is 3/768 or 5/384 connections. I mean, really.
      The same at my previous house in Queens (Long Island City) and Brooklyn. I was excited when I heard speakeasy was finally installing ADSL2+ connections (up to 10Mb/s in my area), only to find out they wanted $180/month without voice (yes, it is static, but I don't need it, and they don't have a dynamic option). At the same time I hear of much poorer countries where 24Mbit ADSL2+ connections are $50 or less.
      So, who is not getting what? I guess the reason for having nothing done for years is that a lot of people share your mentality. Hey, we are a big country, it is expensive... Like ONE FRIGGIN CITIZEN has to pay for the whole thing???
      • Yep, I have a pretty common 100 Mbit down/10 Mbit up for about $50 per month. In a medium Swedish city with a population of 150 000. :p

      • Re:Large (Score:4, Insightful)

        by EaglemanBSA (950534) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:22PM (#23018878)

        The US does not have a low population density

        The U.S. has roughly one tenth the population density of many western European countries at 80 people per square mile.

        and most certainly its population is not poor.

        Clearly you've never been to Appalachia. Or southern Louisiana. Or rural Mississippi...the list goes on. Some people along the Ohio River live in tar-paper homes.

        • Re:Large (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:33PM (#23018972)
          That might be a believable argument if the denser parts of the U.S. had internet access on par with that of Europe.
        • The AVERAGE US citizen is not poor (that is why I mentioned GDP per capita, which is in the world's Top-10). Most countries have very poor citizens, what is your point? We can start by giving broadband access to the AVERAGE citizen.
          Also, I didn't phrase the "low population density" correctly. There are vast sparsely populated areas, however those only account for a small percentage of the overall population. Deploy fiber (or just faster DSL if you want to go cheap) to the 90% of the population (didn't look

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by xaxa (988988)
          Granted, there are regions of the USA that have very few people.

          But the parent poster said the best he can get in New York is 768kbits/second broadband. The best sensible price broadband in most cities in the UK is 24Mbits/s, and it's higher in many other countries (I doubt the UK is that high on the list of good broadband countries). New York City has a comparable density to London. What's wrong?
          • Well maybe he only wants DSL? Or maybe his apartment building has a deal with one provider.
            I live in a smallish city in Florida and I have better than 3 MBs from my cable modem in tests.
            I really doubt his options in NYC are as limited as he says.
            In fact here is a map of FIOS availability. http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios [dslreports.com]
            Looks to me that it is all over NY. Maybe not in his area but there seems like there is a lot of it.

            The US doesn't have regions that have a low population density. We have VAST areas wit
            • I am not sure what part of my post was not clear. In most parts of NYC you can have 5Mbit Cable, which is almost unusable with just 384kbps upstream, or Verizon DSL up to 3Mbit/768. Fios is available at A FEW BUILDINGS in Manhattan, great for those lucky few. You will not find an area based Fios availability map. The best you can do is some data points, which for NYC are very sparse. I know that they have started digging in parts of Brooklyn and Queens, but - come on - this is 2008 and there are still WAY f

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by jiushao (898575)
          Millionth time this little fact gets brought up in this type of discussion but:

          The second-place winner is Sweden, which has a population density of 52 people per mile square, as compared to the US' 80 people per mile square.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by xaxa (988988)
        24Mb/s ADSL2+ is £18-£24 in the UK (not available outside large settlements yet AFAIK). I'm really surprised you don't have that in New York yet (I'm sure it's been available in London for at least three years now, maybe more). What stops it? In the UK, it was the ex-state-monopoly (BT) that had to be told to allow competition over the last-mile of copper and the equipment in the exchange: the competition installed the required equipment in the exchange to support ADSL2+.

        I thought

      • Re:Large (Score:5, Interesting)

        by electrictroy (912290) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @07:29PM (#23019380)
        >>>"The US does not have a low population density"

        Oh really? I challenge you to drive from NYC to California on I-80, and then repeat that statement. You won't be able to, because then you'll come to realize what I have realized from my cross-country journeys:

        - The U.S. is one large cornfield, sprinkled with a few cities here and there.
        • :)
          The nickname is a long story, has nothing to do with the actual country and a lot to do with Sambuca (plus a song called "Ecuador").
          I don't even speak Spanish... which is a shame since I always use the nick and get a lot of emails/pms in Spanish...

          The 5Mbit cable that we have in NYC has a 384 upload so it is basically useless. And, again, my example is NYC. I am sure you don't have less people per wire mile than the Scandinavian countries!
    • Except that US deployment typically works on the state level, not the national level, they certainly have the population and consumer demand to cover the price, and the government has paid them once already to take care of it. It is the telcos' fault that the US doesn't have broadband, not geography.

      I live in Japan, which suffers from way too much geography (the vertical kind), not to mention earthquakes, volcanic activity, and a much higher cost of living in general. And yet I have a 100MB/s fiber connec
      • US telecom policy (along with other utilities) has long been to subsidize rural areas at the expense of urban areas.

        You are indeed right that government regulation is responsible. Whether it is a good or bad thing is up for debate.
        • >>>"fiber connection to my apartment for less than half of what a US subscriber pays"

          Yep and the Japanese government charges you $10,000 more taxes per year for the privilege! Personally I'd rather pay $10 per month to my ISP, than 10 thousand more in taxes.

          • You replied to the wrong guy I think?

            I pretty much agree - though there is a pretty strong argument on the other side. That is, leaving your rural areas to the free market may not be the greatest idea.
    • Canada has a huge lead on the US in those categories despite being even larger and more sparsely populated. (And yes, broadband has been available in rural [about.com] areas for over a decade.) Unfortunately, under the Conservatives [slashdot.org], the companies here have been evading the regulations that are supposed to control them.
      • Canada is 2 megabit/sec and 2.5 megabit/sec slower than the U.S. and E.U. averages.

        I don't define that as a "Canadian lead".

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MichaelSmith (789609)

      I think the main point in broadband that people just don't get is that the US is huge while many smaller countries are the size of one of the US's states, its is expensive to get broadband.

      Here in Australia with one tenth the population density the situation is almost exactly the same as in the USA. That doesn't sound right to me. I think the service should be better in the US.

    • Size does matter, but not here.

      Some people just don't get how huge Europe is, about the size of the US. In some parts most people have broadband in others not. Just like in the US.

      Richer, more densely populated parts tend to have more broadband. No matter the size, or the name space.

    • Yes, it's expensive. It turns out that the US absolutely DWARFS those *smaller countries* in GDP as well. It might be more expensive... but we have the money.
      • Some DSL providers in the early years have done this as well in the US. I'm not sure if it still goes on, but there's a reason why routers still offer the ability to "clone" a mac address.

        It's also worth mentioning that most cable modem arn't pre-programmed to accept only one mac address. Very often, they will read and cache that mac address in the modem itself. The only way to flush it out is to disconnect from it for a minute or less. Then, just power it on, and apply power to your router (in that order).

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by electrictroy (912290)
          I don't understand:

          Why do these surveys keep comparing a 2500-mile wide continental nation to tiny little states? There's a huge difference between wiring metropolitan France and the cornfields of America. Apples and oranges.

          A proper comparison would do one Federation versus another federation:
          - U.S. v. E.U. v. Canadian Confederation v. Australia v. China.
          Those are comparable territories with similar challenges to overcome (lots of empty space).

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by menace3society (768451)
            There's a problem with that, though. In Australia and Canada, the vast sections of empty space really are empty. If you look at population density maps, you see that Canada is densely populated around the borders to the US, and the rest is COMPLETELY empty. And Australia is basically a big desert island with some settlements along the coasts. I'm exaggerating, but only a little bit.

            The US, on the other hand, has its two largest distributions of population on the two coasts, which sound good. But, you h

          • Pretty much dead wrong there. (Score:5, Interesting)

            by ZombieRoboNinja (905329) on Thursday April 10 2008, @12:25AM (#23021196)
            Here's a global population density map: http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/popden.html [usda.gov]

            Notice how the EU is all dark orange, except for parts of central Spain. Lots of people, more financial incentive to wire everything.

            Notice how 80% of Canada is completely deserted, because it's too far north to be habitable. The Northern Yukon does an awful lot to decrease Canada's average population density, but since there's NOBODY there it doesn't affect the difficulty of wiring up broadband. Australia, same thing, except it's like 95% instead of 80% empty.

            China is enough of a mix that it might make sense to compare to the US, but I'm guessing there are enough other issues with development, etc. to make it a tough comparison.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by JohnBailey (1092697)

        Not to mention the ISPs in some countries (the police state, UK especially) will try to limit service by machine with mac address (forcing you to use mac spoofing to allow a router).

        While others in the same police state will supply a wireless router as part of the subscription and couldn't care less how many computers are hooked up. Personally I have two desktops, an N800 and a Wii all happily accessing the Internet over here in Airstrip one through an iSP provided router, and not a word of complaint from my ISP. So long as I pay my bill and don't max out my bandwidth all the time, they couldn't care less.

        If you really need to go so far as that to get more than one computer to share y

        • > If you really need to go so far as that to get
          > more than one computer to share your connection..
          > Change your ISP to someone with sane terms as
          > soon as possible!

          Changing ISPs is more of a problem than you might think, especially with all the triple-play providers in large US metro areas.

          Typically these ISPs have entire neighborhoods if not entire cities tied up and you have a choice of provider X or Dialup (which is often Provider X again).

          In most of these areas people use cheap routers to h

  • "Network Readiness" (Score:5, Informative)

    by ShadowMarth (870657) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @05:22PM (#23018300)
    It took a fair bit of searching, but according to them, 'network readiness' means: the presence of an ICT-friendly and conducive environment, by looking at a number of features of the broad business environment, some regulatory aspects, and the soft and hard infrastructure for ICT; the level of ICT readiness and preparation to use ICT of the three main national stakeholders--individuals, the business sector, and the government; and the actual use of ICT by the above three stakeholders.
    • Network Readiness simply reflects the emotional state of male posters to Craigslist personals.
      Offers of BroadBandWith (BBW) and big pipes don't correlate as well with reality.
    • The definition sounds like a hybrid of "JD Power & Associates" BS and some corporate jargon.

      What about "Network Access per Capita" (the percentage of people in certain areas that can call their provider and start a broadband account/expect it to be up and running within a week)?

      Or "Network Cost as a function of bandwidth per the median income of an area" (no use in saying that it's "affordable" if it's "affordable" only to those in the area's top tax bracket.

  • Don't look at the ranking, look at the scores (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @05:30PM (#23018374)
    There's no statistical difference between the top ten or so (+- 4%) and the top 25 are all within a +- 10% band.

    Given that online surveys are notoriously bad and need wide margins of error, I would not read anything into this except for the obvious: First world countries (EU, USA etc) are ahead of Chad, Zimbabwe etc.

    Duh!

  • Just curious: What is the common definition of "broadband" these days, and in reports like this? Does broadband still mean communications that have been divided into many independent channels/applications (TV, phone, IP), or has it been dumbed down (and yet: become more useful) to meaning internet access faster than some threshold (e.g. 56Kbps), or what?

    It also seems that whatever threshold you pick, is going to be arbitrary and not immediately obvious to whoever is reading the list. 256Kbps is still pre

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by coolsnowmen (695297)
      The Electrical Engineer in me cringes every time I here the term "bandwidth" used in place of "data rate."

      Still, >200Kbs is the answer to your question.

      "The term broadband commonly refers to high-speed Internet access. The FCC defines broadband service as data transmission speeds exceeding 200 kilobits per second (Kbps), or 200,000 bits per second, in at least one direction: downstream (from the Internet to the userâ(TM)s computer) or upstream (from the userâ(TM)s computer to the Internet)."
      htt [fcc.gov]
      • By definition a phoneline is narrowband (0.004 megahertz wide).

        Therefore a line that is megahertz wide is broadband. For cable it's 6 megahertz per channel. DSL is about 1 megahertz wide per line.

  • It's no use having all the networks if they are going to stop working in several years, after IPV4 address space runs out. The fair question would be which countries networks can be upgraded to IPV6 with minimum effort. Full support for systems that need inbound connectivity, working NAT gateways for the rest.
  • ...but are those Koreans playing SC2??
    • Canada has low density, but the population tends to clump near the US border. Australia has the population clumped on their East coast. Therefore, these countries aren't representative of the difficulty of penetration in the United States.

      The US population is equally "clumpy" (see map [wikipedia.org]), being "clumped" along the east and west coast and along major waterways like the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. Yes that makes it difficult to get broadband to Buttscratch Montana (population 4 1/2), but it is absolutely

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.