Slashdot Log In
High-Speed Broadband Making Headway In the US
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Sep 09, 2008 03:30 PM
from the every-little-bit-helps dept.
from the every-little-bit-helps dept.
darthcamaro writes "No, the US isn't the fastest nation on Earth, and it's not the most connected. But according to a new report, it sure is getting a whole lot better lately. 'I think the US growth rate is something we expected,' David Belson, Akamai's director of market intelligence and author of the report, told InternetNews.com. 'If you look at the money being spent to build out the fiber to the home infrastructure, and if you look at the competitive deals that are going on, vendors are trying hard to make it affordable and "outspeed" each other.'"
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.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.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Stupid benchmark. (Score:5, Insightful)
>>> "vendors are trying hard to make it affordable and "outspeed" each other"
Yeah...by introducing limits on customers usage of bandwidth and the most popular protocols. This is NOT a net win (pun intended) for end-users. I'd rather have slower link with unrestricted access than have a theoretically faster link that I can't use to do what I want.
Re:Stupid benchmark. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Stupid benchmark. (Score:5, Funny)
Silence! All other country's have superior internet connection's to the one's in the US.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Connection is? One is?
Man, I thought my Texas education was horrible.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone can "hog all the bandwidth", that is a sign of a badly managed network. Ensuring that each user gets their fair share without artifically limiting the whole network is one of the main responsibilities of an ISP.
Ten years ago I could have understood it, but with todays technology it should no problem ensuring that each user gets their fair share. Of course, lots of ISPs still deal in ancient idiotic ideas like capping per tcp session. Sure, it is the simplest way to cap, but it is just as easy to
Stupid economics (Score:3, Insightful)
"If someone can "hog all the bandwidth", that is a sign of a badly managed network."
Or a sign of users who don't understand what "shared resource" means.
"Ensuring that each user gets their fair share without artifically limiting the whole network is one of the main responsibilities of an ISP."
"Fair share" is right up there with "unlimited" as the most abused words in a discussion about broadband.
If life was fair, then people wouldn't be leaving their P2P connections running full-tilt 24/7 and giving everyon
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Fair share" is right up there with "unlimited" as the most abused words in a discussion about broadband.
If life was fair, then people wouldn't be leaving their P2P connections running full-tilt 24/7 and giving everyone else affected the middle-finger.
I love how everyone likes to blame 24/7 p2p:ers when in reality what they do is a minor issue in a well managed network. (Note: Well managed, which doesn't seem to be case with many networks)
12-18 hours of the day the network really isn't fully used, and as such the bandwidth used by p2p:ers isn't scarce. It doesn't hurt anyone that someone uses it at off hours. Supply is greater than demand. In fact, it is good that some people p2p during that time since it makes use of a resource that would otherwise be w
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This PR release (which it really seems to be) sounds a great deal like Bobbitt's "Market State" where the battle cry is "Maximize Opportunity!"-- or in other words: "It's really, really fast... so long as you don't use the 'really really fast-ness' too much."
There's no use on having a formula 1 race car if you're only allowed to do 10 laps a month. On a track filled with mandatory diversions.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no use on having a formula 1 race car if you're only allowed to do 10 laps a month. On a track filled with mandatory diversions.
Sure there is. I only need to go to stop on the other side of the store once or twice a week, but when I have to go there I want it to take the minimal amount of time possible (because obviously my time is very valuable - I drive a formula 1 race car for god's sake).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've been on road runner for some time and it seems to have a decent speed and not have a bandwidth limit based on protocol.
I'm aware some companies are doing this, but some companies != all companies.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
shop around and find someone who suits your needs.
But there isn't that much choice, is there ? all those ISP's all look alike: same prices, same speeds, and they don't really want the market to change ...
Re:Stupid benchmark. (Score:4, Insightful)
I did shop around. The only provider I can find that services my apartment (ignoring dial-up, as that's not a 24/7 solution, and ignoring satellite, as beyond its traditional failures I don't have anywhere to mount a dish) is Comcast.
Choice would be great, but not everybody has that option.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Your other option is cellular based internet. You can get plans around $50 a month and have broadband anywhere in the country you can get a cellular signal on your network.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Two parts of Minnesota, but my primary, most recent experience with Comcast taking over TW-Roadrunner areas, was right here in downtown Minneapolis.
I went from more than a clean MB down to 800KB, wi
BwaHAHA: (Score:5, Insightful)
"...and if you look at the competitive deals that are going on, vendors are trying hard to make it affordable and "outspeed" each other."
As opposed to, uh, slapping each other on the back while they fix prices and swallow up any hope of independent providers and actual competition while they stretch their already-inadequate infrastructure to a taffy-like consistency as they arbitrarily mess with their own traffic, routing it through mysterious big boxes that read, "NSA SEKRIT BOX -- DON'T TOUCH" after they force their customers to sign EULA's which read like some Kafka-esque road to nothing(except certain death).
And their commercials suck, too.
I'm calling bullshit (Score:2)
I can choose Comcast (6Mbs) or Qwest (who the fuck knows, slower then comcast). If my town signed up for Utopia I could get good speed but Farmington has decided to not join in. It's been this way since I got high speed back in like 1999. All this lovely stuff for like 55 bucks a month. No new vendors, no break in price, nothing but high prices and poor customer service.
Thank your government (Score:4, Insightful)
So what is preventing competition from existing? What is stopping someone from springing up to start a local alternative to their crappy service? Or, what is stopping an existing large company that provides a similar service from expanding to provide this service that you and so many others demand? See my subject for the answer.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
If you look at the situation with plumbing companies in early 20th century, you'll see that in fact broadband access is a natural monopoly, because duplicating last mile infrastructure is very wasteful. What is needed is not less government involvement but careful regulation that enables competition, much like any other utilities market. I won't come up with a detailed solution - that's what MBAs are for.
Last mile (Score:5, Informative)
The town I live in does something similar with electricity: they run and maintain the powerlines and buy the cheapest power at the moment from a number of different sources (with x% being from renewable sources). If power is expensive from everywhere, they fire up their own powerplant (coal, ugh) and generate the electricity themselves. The rates are good, the grid is well maintained, it all works pretty well.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So what is preventing competition from existing? What is stopping someone from springing up to start a local alternative to their crappy service? Or, what is stopping an existing large company that provides a similar service from expanding to provide this service that you and so many others demand? See my subject for the answer.
It's not just the government's fault. Certainly, they've been an enabler. But can you imagine trying to pitch a system of government-owned infrastructure in the US?
Part of the problem is the way ownership of the infrastructure works in the United States. Specifically, it's that infrastructure clashing with property rights that provides the problem. If, say, Comcast owns their own lines, in order to provide service, they need to go into a neighborhood (likely with permission from the local government), and t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
cities are ok (Score:2, Redundant)
it's the rural areas where the real problems are, telcos are simply not motivated to do anything at all about it.
In the cities you can usually choose between several broadband providers, in the sticks you're lucky if you have one.
If not then it's good old dial up or isdn for you.
Re:cities are ok (Score:5, Interesting)
but the most bizarre thing [at least for me, even though I'm not in the US], is that small towns, after asking the telco/cableco's to provide the town with higher-speed internet access and being told no [generally because of the relatively small population], when the town then plans to setup their own high-speed service, the very companies that told them "No, we can't be bothered", turn around 180 degree's and sue the town to stop the implementation [not that they would then provide the service if the lawsuit succeeds, but just to delay and/or prevent the town from providing the service].
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, but can you blame them? I look at my Mother's situation. She lives twenty miles from any incorporated city. They would have to run a line twenty miles with only one customer every mile or two. There is just no incentive for that.
As recently as 1984 she still had a party line, and even now she is a member of a rural cooperative for both water and power.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"it's the rural areas where the real problems are, telcos are simply not motivated to do anything at all about it."
I agree, but can you blame them?
The telcos couldn't be blamed if they hadn't been given billions of dollars [newnetworks.com] in subsidies to build out broadband, but they did get paid and didn't build out. So yes, they are to blame. They are also to blame when because they refuse to build out, even though they were paid to, they sue local governments for doing it themselves.
Falcon
Maybe in some areas... (Score:2, Interesting)
...but not here. We can choose Clearwire, Verizon or Time-Warner. Time-Warner keeps inching up peak rates, currently 8Mbps downstream, but average throughput is a lot lower. Clearwire and Verizon aren't even in the running speed-wise.
FIOS isn't even on the drawing board yet.
Don't get me wrong, 8MBps peak is better than the 3Mbps peak we had when we signed up, which is better than the 768Mbps we got from Verizon DSL, which is better than the 56K we got from a local dialup. But when I look at what we brin
Re: (Score:2)
What about usage caps? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if these reports will start taking into account usage caps employed by some ISPs. After all, what would be the point of upgrading from a 5 Mbps line to a hypothetical 500 Mbps line if your ISP caps your usage to the same number of GB in both cases? It would LOOK like ISPs are offering faster speeds, but you wouldn't be able to use that faster line to do more than you could with the slower line.
Welcome to Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not fair off from the situation in Australia, where bandwidth caps are the norm. It's possible to get an ADSL2+ plan [whirlpool.net.au] where you could exceed the monthly download cap in less than 5 minutes! [google.com]
Parent
Wrong Direction (Score:2, Insightful)
They need to stop working on getting people with high speed internet faster internet, and work on getting people that only get dialup high speed internet.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, what they're currently doing makes perfect sense from a business stand-point.
People who don't have or use the Internet are few and far between, being generally uninterested in the concept (read: "I don't even own a computer!"), or they live in an extremely rural environment, which means the profitability of serving them in lessened, having to roll out new cable to serve just a few people.
People who have dial-up, on the other hand, are already online. They know what's out there. They might say, "We
From my experience (Score:3, Insightful)
Vendors may be increasing areas of coverage slowly but I'd say gaining customers is their priority, not upgrading networks. Lack of competition may be the source of this stagnation since only 4 names come to mind when I think broadband: Time-Warner, Comcast, Cox, and Verizon FIoS. Who else is rolling out fiber?
Emphasis on Satellite (Score:3, Interesting)
It's funny, I was discussing this earlier on the drive to work. We both live in a rural area and commute into an urban environment, and experience the pains and joys that both bring.
We both basically reached the same conclusion -- The United States, she is a big place. It's always going to be easier to wire up a thousand people living within a few blocks of each other than that same thousand living within a few miles.
If we really intend to catch up, we need to take a cue from cellular networks and increase the emphasis, availability, efficiency, and cost of satellite internet.
It's basically a matter of a high tech, potentially high-cost solution, or a low-tech, lower-cost band-aid that only treats the screaming wound -- the large urban environments. We have 300+ million people living in this country, and even our biggest city, New York, has only around 8-10 million of that encapsulated. We are a big suburban / rural society still, albeit a lot of times by choice now, and having a large, open-air data network is going to be more key to us than trying to cover each and every house in the U.S. with optical fiber.
Re: (Score:2)
Satellite-based broadband internet service is available now:
http://www.wildblue.com/ [wildblue.com]
Disclaimer: my dad is a reseller.
But, anything based on satellites will always have a latency that's a few hundred milliseconds on the side of uncomfortable if you want to do anything interactive, like gaming or video chat. Bandwidth is happy though.
Re: (Score:2)
"But satellite information takes hundreds of milliseconds to get to the surface - which is a pain in the rear for anyone who wants low-latency applications (games, 2-way voice and video)."
I still think it's a vast improvement over dial-up or nothing. If you're interested in lag-free gaming, you're also going to be interested in faster hardware, more expensive equipment, etc, and the cost of a landline isn't going to be nearly as prohibitive.
"Once every user needs different content, the model doesn't work ve
Well, sort of (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as you don't read the fine print, anyway.
I've looked at the offers available here, and the funny thing is that they pretty much permanently lock in the duopoly.
All this proves is that US broadband really sucked (Score:3, Interesting)
This is like the "most improved player" trophy that little leagues award to kids that used to stink, but now don't create too much trouble for their teams.
Many areas of the US can not get broadband. (ISDN and T1 are not broadband - it's not 1993 anymore). I live in a fairly middle-class neighborhood in the North East, and I have a choice of ONE broadband provider. That's right, my local cable co.
DSL - too far away. FIOS - it's always 6 months away. Satellite ok, I can get that, but $50 a month for 512k down and 128k up sucks. I don't consider that broadband.
Broadband in MOST of the US is still pathetic - slow and expensive.
-ted
Re:All this proves is that US broadband really suc (Score:2)
FIOS - it's always 6 months away.
Yeah? If that's true, you sure are lucky. FIOS has been "6 months away" for a few years now where I live.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
At least yours is planned. Colorado isn't even under consideration [fiostracker.com]. Gotta be east or west coast, apparently. We hicks in the middle of the country apparently ain't good enough for it [dslreports.com].
Free Markets and Economic Infrastructure (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like some Slashdotters' feedback on the following problem:
I live in an area of Northern New England where most people don't have broadband. It's somewhat rural, but certainly not 'very rural'. There are maybe 12-15 homes per linear mile in most areas. The ILEC was, until recently, Verizon.
The main issue was that Verizon is a big public company with a huge market. Yet, it necessarily has limited resources. It's not that running DSL up a residential road would be unprofitable, it's that for the n dollars it would cost, they could spend that same n dollars in Jersey City and get a better return on investment. You can't blame them for seeking that return. For this reason they continue to upgrade and invest in their dense plant and do nothing in their sparse plant. When they still owned the area, an engineer told me their plan went to 2014 and our county wasn't on the plan.
Now, since then Fairpoint has taken ownership of the plant. They want to sell voice and data, sure, but they also want to sell video service over DSL, which is where the real money is (for now anyway). So, they're sending trucks around, surveying lines and poles, figuring out the fastest way to get DSL in. Their logistics make Northern New England look like a huge market, where Verizon saw it as a distraction. They're even finding CO's where Verizon installed DSLAM's 3 years ago but never offered service, simply because they couldn't be bothered. Some people are getting lit up the next business day after calling. This is very positive, we're lucky the plant was sold.
However, for any sized market, there's still a long-tail where people aren't going to be profitable enough to serve. We had Rural Electrification in 1936 which is largely parallel because both served/would-serve to improve total overall economic efficiency. There are also PUC's which can force changes (in theory), and towns can bond for their own fiber plants. However, Government is always the easy 'big stick', but it would be nicer, more sustainable, and more peaceful, if there was a creative third-way. Besides that, the US Federal Government already charged us all for FTTH and it never materialized [newnetworks.com]. So it's not just violent, it's dysfunctional. And the municipal fiber projects are very slow to meet market need, and seemingly often have management and funding problems.
So, I'm asking folks here for great 'third-way' ideas. I've come up empty, but there are lots of clever thinkers in these parts.
"the US isn't the fastest nation on Earth" (Score:2, Funny)
Sometimes, the comedy just writes itself.
Going down ....
Oh, joy! (Score:3, Insightful)
Does this mean that someday soon, I may see speeds in excess of 768K/384K [1] to my very own home? You know, what AT&T calls "High Speed Internet?" Oh, frabjous joy!
1. Actual speeds based on DSL synch rate, may vary, and are not guaranteed. Many factors affect speed. Service and speed not available in all areas.
More trunk lines (Score:2)
Where do they get this "most connected" number? (Score:2)
Seriously, you expect me to believe that? (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the biggest problems as of late (Score:2)
So they have restricted their really nice broadband in the city and will only offer higher connection speeds with a business plan.
Broadband in America (Score:2)
The way I see it, broadband in America is a very dynamic game of chess.
Urban centers almost always get the best Internet connections first but are generally tied down to one or two ISPs available in the area. Those two usually compete for customers by increasing services but in some markets they both stagnate. Since local governments emulate each other in the US they are slowly starting to experiment and switch to what works but only the Federal or state level can really do what must be done to get rural cu
Re: (Score:2)
No they pocketed that sh*t a looong time ago and reported it as profits. What they're doing now is keeping the prices to customers high, buying the *now cheaper* equipment and very slowly rolling out only to the most profitable areas. If you're in BFE you're still fucked.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm going to go ahead and assume that the director of a marketing agency has left his hometown at least once in his life, possibly more.