The Problems with Broadband in America 800
Tenken writes "Salon has an article about the state of broadband in America. After seeing what many other countries have accomplished with their broadband markets, namely Japan, Korea, and (gasp) even Canada, the current state of affairs in the U.S. is looking pretty dismal. I'm sure I'm not the only one tired of paying $45 a month just for cable internet." From the article: "Across the globe, it's the same story. In France, DSL service that is 10 times faster than the typical United States connection; 100 TV channels and unlimited telephone service cost only $38 per month. In South Korea, super-fast connections are common for less than $30 per month. Places as diverse as Finland, Canada and Hong Kong all have much faster Internet connections at a lower cost than what is available here. In fact, since 2001, the U.S. has slipped from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband use per capita. While other countries are taking advantage of the technological, business and education opportunities of the broadband era, America remains lost in transition."
Cable internet (Score:2, Informative)
The Article (Score:5, Informative)
In France, you can get super-fast DSL, unlimited phone service and 100 TV channels for a mere $38 a month. Why does the same thing cost so much more in the U.S.?
By S. Derek Turner
Oct. 18, 2005 | Next time you sit down to pay your cable-modem or DSL bill, consider this: Most Japanese consumers can get an Internet connection that's 16 times faster than the typical American DSL line for a mere $22 per month.
Across the globe, it's the same story. In France, DSL service that is 10 times faster than the typical United States connection; 100 TV channels and unlimited telephone service cost only $38 per month. In South Korea, super-fast connections are common for less than $30 per month. Places as diverse as Finland, Canada and Hong Kong all have much faster Internet connections at a lower cost than what is available here. In fact, since 2001, the U.S. has slipped from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband use per capita. While other countries are taking advantage of the technological, business and education opportunities of the broadband era, America remains lost in transition.
How did this happen? Why has the U.S. fallen so far behind the rest of its economic peers? The answer is simple. These nations all have something the U.S. lacks: a national broadband policy, one that actively encourages competition among providers, leading to lower consumer prices and better service.
Instead, the U.S. has a handful of unelected and unaccountable corporate giants that control our vital telecommunications infrastructure. This has led not only to a digital divide between the U.S. and the rest of the advanced world but to one inside the U.S. itself. Currently, broadband services in America remain unavailable for many living in rural and poorer urban areas, and remain slow and expensive for those who do have access.
For instance, when farmers gathered at this year's Iowa State Fair to discuss their policy concerns with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, the topic on the minds of many was broadband. And for good reason. Twenty-five percent of Iowa's rural communities have no access to high-speed Internet service, and over half of the remaining rural communities are serviced by only one provider. Those lucky enough to live in areas served by Iowa Telecom can pay as much as $170 per month for a DSL line.
President Bush has called for "universal, affordable access to broadband technology by the year 2007," and Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin recently declared broadband deployment to be his "highest priority." Martin recently took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to tout "the dramatic growth in broadband services." In his editorial he boasts of "fierce competition" among broadband providers and tells us we're "well on our way to accomplishing the President's goal."
The facts tell a different story. Today, major cable companies and DSL providers control almost 98 percent of the residential and small-business broadband market. This trend is the direct result of FCC policies that fail to encourage real competition among broadband providers, giving free rein over the market to the cable and DSL giants. The corporate giants are also vigorously fighting to stop cities and towns from building "Community Internet" systems -- affordable, high-speed broadband services funded in part by community groups and municipalities -- even in places where the cable and DSL companies themselves don't offer service. Yet, like rural electrification projects in the early 20th century, today's Community Internet projects offer the best hope of achieving universal broadband service.
Like so many other challenges faced by the Bush administration, the response to the growing digital divide has been to redefine success and prematurely declare victory.
In the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Congress directed the FCC to oversee the timely deployment of Internet services that "enable users to originate and receive high quality voice, data, g
Re:how big the country is.. (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.cylist.com/List/400300113/ [cylist.com]
Although, to be fair, most of Canada's population is within 500 miles of the US/Canada border.
Other Countries (Score:3, Informative)
The Megababy Bells (Score:5, Informative)
With FITL, it's fiber optic cable from the central office to a "lightspeed box" in your neighborhood, where it gets converted to copper wires to go to your home. If you're lucky enough to be in a FITL neighborhood, the best you can get is IDSL (aka ISDN). The Megababy Bells insist on putting the DSLAMs in the central office, when they could put it out in the lightspeed boxes, thus creating IFITL (Integrated Fiber in the Loop). By pushing the DSLAM out to the neighborhoods, a vast majority of people could get broadband... but that means opening up the lines to competition, which I know Verizon doesn't want to do... thus the concept of FIOS... which takes advantage of a loophole in the law, allowing them to maintain total control/access of those fiber lines because they've put brand new ones out there from the central office to your home.
Since nobody other than your local power company, local cable company, and local phone company can put lines up on the phone poles (or in the conduits, if you have underground lines), they're going to kill off the broadband companies.
Re:Here the problem arises. (Score:2, Informative)
Mediacom and Verizon.
Thank you fcc. Asshats.
Preach on, Brother! (Score:3, Informative)
I live in Ohio. I've had DSL for about 5 years. In two weeks, I'm moving. I'm moving less than 10 miles away from where I live now.
I checked into getting DSL at my new home. It isn't offered. The CO hasn't been upgraded.
I looked into getting a cable modem. Cable isn't offered.
I checked into getting ISDN. It isn't offered.
I even checked into getting a T1 business class line and starting a coop. It isn't available.
I asked them (SBC) when the CO is going to be updated. Their answer: They have no plans to upgrade that CO.
Aside from dial up, satellite is really my only option (they can't take the sky from me - but lets face it, satellite internet sucks).
They forgot Sweden (Score:5, Informative)
Why the gasp at Canada? (Score:5, Informative)
Even lowly Saskatchewan has had broadband in smaller markets [compared to US markets of similar size], since the late 1990s.
Re:I wonder (Score:2, Informative)
Actually the last time I looked, I, and not the government of Canada or the tax dollars that said government takes from me, was still paying the DSL bill.
Content problem, and also verizon dsl = $15/ month (Score:1, Informative)
Lately I find that if you don't do P2P, there's not much content that requires more than standard broadband. I mean, high speeds are nice, but it's not critical to have it. It's not like dialup, you know.
Even MP3s take 3-5 min to download on a regular DSL, so I can't complain.
Downloading movies is too dangerous these days, it's much easier to pay $15-17 to netflicks, and rent DVDs (which take forever to download even with fast connections)
The strangle of entitlements... (Score:1, Informative)
1) Universal access- this goes back to the telephone days when the urban users with a lower per capita infrastructure cost subsidized communications infrastructure for rural users.
2) Geography- We're a big country and there's a lot of empty space to cover between population centers.
3) DSL vs. Cable internet- There is a fight going on here between these two legacy infrastructures that ends up wasting the potential to create a unified solution and move forward there. Much like multitasking diminishes the quality of any one task; any investment made in DSL is fruitless for cable subscribers and vise versa. Parallel infrastructure is good for redundancy yet highly wasteful.
So as long as I, an urban payer in the middle of San Francisco, have to subsidize both two types of infrastructure development and also rural users spread out across a large continent, costs are going to remain high and speeds mediocre.
It's the same idea as a bar fight, the big guy may have more force in terms of mass, but the little guy has less momentum and therefore spends less energy starting and stopping his kinetics.
As far as the dual infrastructure concept, that is hitting us really hard, much like the waste of covering an area with both GSM and CDMA cell towers that don't inter-operate. We are literally funding two competing standards and splitting our effort when a unified standard would get the service activated and then more money could be spent on the content (which all around needs more investment).
Personally, I hate DSL as I have yet to see an implementation of DSL that is a reliable as cable. Yes, I know, we all have assholes and stories about which is better, but personally, I would prefer to have my coax come in and split off into data, voice and television (not unlike Sprint ION or something similar) instead of paying one bill to SBC for mediocre internet service (that I use constantly), one bill to Comcast for great cable service (that I use rarely).
Give me one wire! One wire!
The universal access is stickier as there is a social need for above average income people to subsidize below income average people (if you disagree with this, just go live alone in the forest and horde your wealth) however, it's a burden for sure. Perhaps there should exist tiered access where you are guaranteed a dialtone and 256kbps data (over your cable line) so that the wires have to be there but no one builds a backbone to nowhere.
Re:what's with the gasp? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Here the problem arises. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Here the problem arises. (Score:4, Informative)
Competition drives innovation, and lowers prices - it also forces the inept and the profiteering out of the market.
Re:Here the problem arises. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Here the problem arises. (Score:5, Informative)
I've heard it said, and it may just be FUD from the ISP's, but if multiple broadband ISP's (ignore the fact DSL and cable can be available in two places) were to compete in the same region then prices would be driven down in competition to a point to where the providers costs in laying in the infrastructure down are not going to be made up in profit.
In a perfectly capitalistic economy this is true, but the majority of telecommunication companies are cartels. They fix prices above the competetive level, competing more on who can service specific addresses than on pricing or services. Additionally, they may compete in different market segments -- one company may be cheaper but offer only slower (e.g. 512kbps) service, while another is more expensive but only offers 1.5mbps service. One caters to people on a tighter budget, the other caters to people with more disposable income.
In this country we really do have good infrastructure. Our backbones are typically high bandwidth even considering the amount of traffic they carry. Many large ISPs and hosting providers offer vast quantities of bandwidth, of which only a fraction is used. The real problem is the last mile: while your local ISP may have an OC-12 pipe coming in, they only use a quarter of it for one of several reasons. The last mile of copper might be too old or low quality to support faster speeds, it might be an artificial limitation designed to boost revenue (artificial scarcity), or they just don't want to raise consumers' expectations which could upset the whole market.
In any event, the issue isn't about what we as consumers want, or what technology is available, or what is best for us, it is about what makes the companies money. After all, these are corporations, they exist to earn profit and return value to the stockholders.
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:4, Informative)
Basically, any place that is serviced by Shaw or Rogers will have Broadband service through cable.
If you check the CIA Factbook on Canada, it is larger than the US [cia.gov] and has telecommunications infrastructure which provides excellent service through modern technology [cia.gov].
Repeat after me "Canada is even bigger" (Score:3, Informative)
No it's smarter government... (Score:5, Informative)
I moved from a job in NW Ontario where I provided service for the Hudson Basin -- towns that were hundreds of miles from roads, hours by plane -- these towns had better broadband access than most of rural Wisconsin.
The average household in NWO has better access than the average household in Chicago... but of course, they had broadband available many years before most people in Chicago. The difference is the politicians, both local and national, see the value of providing their citizens with connectivity.
Finland had a much higher percentage of landline-less communities a little over a decade ago. They responded by building one of the best cellular networks in the world. Additionally, they saw the value of broadband and integrated that into their infrastructure too, despite very low population densities and long, cold distances.
Whereas in the US, politicians seem to find it better to leave it to the "freemarket", as dictated to them by the deep pocketed telecoms and media conglomerates who tell the elected official what is best
Re:how big the country is.. (Score:3, Informative)
It's going to take awhile to replace all the old infrastructure in america...
that's why many smaller countries have already have newer systems in place.
Canada is bigger than the United States of America AND is in America, you know, just FYI.
So, *gasp* indeed!
Re:Some minor defenses... (Score:5, Informative)
As has been pointed out many times before, Canada is actually more "urban" than the US. Something like 3/4 of Canadians live in cities whereas about 2/3 of Americans do, or something like that. Yes, queue jokes about huddling together for warmth, etc., but the facts are there. It helps that only 20% of Canadian land is "habitable" (meaning you can grow crops on it), which is the type of land typically settled on hundreds of years ago. So, Canada has an easier time hitting more of its population with broadband due to population density.
Also, Canada has certain government initiatives to get broadband access to the more remote parts of Canada, such as the far north. Canada has always been on the leading edge of communications technology, and is actively trying to stay that way. The first commercial communications satellite was Canadian owned, as was the first national coast to coast microwave telephone network. This is all because the politicians realized from the start that the only thing stopping the small relatively isolated colonies that became Canada from being absorbed by the US was to overcome the vast communication and transportation obstacles that separated them. Those ideas continue today.
Re:Other Countries (Score:5, Informative)
*Gasp*
Here in France, we have unlimited phone service, unlimited 20Mbits bandwidth usage, 100+ TV channels.. ALL for 30 Euros / Month.
No extra charges.
Oh, and the modem is given for free, and is a wifi access point.
Re:Repeat After Me. Population Density. (Score:3, Informative)
NY: 54471 square miles, 19M people, about 348 per square mile.
So, your argument does certainly not hold for New York state. Sweden for example has a very low population density, so this can't be the only answer.
The current deal here (Germany) is something like 30 Euros for 6Mbit DSL + 30 Euros for telephone (includes flatrate for calls to all landlines).
Re:Some minor defenses... (Score:5, Informative)
France 2004 gdp: ~1.7T
USA 2004 gdp: ~11T
France sq miles: 211k
USA sq miles: 3537k
France gdp/sq mi: $8M
USA gdp/sq mi: $3M
Re:Here the problem arises. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:One word... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Preach on, Brother! (Score:3, Informative)
The price may be really high,, but it is available to you.
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:3, Informative)
If you're going to play comparison, at least get your numbers right.
The USA has a population density of 17
30 according to my source [wikipedia.org]
Japan is like 325
Close enough, 337.
and Korea is #3 in the world for population density at well over 400
491, which makes it number 12 if you take out the islands and administrative areas that aren't considered countries in their own right (Hong Kong, Macau, Gibraltar, Gaza, West Bank...)
Now lets look at Canada (3), Australia (2) and other countries below the US with better broadband. Also look at Nasa's night time pictures of North America, and you'll see that the US population is concentrated towards the East and along the West Coast. All the arguments that you and others always use to excuse the US's low performance in broadband and mobile communications make me think that Slashdot is infested with US phone company shills. Instead of making excuses, ask why. Demand answers from your phone companies and politicians.
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Informative)
Don't know about them, but I live in Germany, with a 6 Mbit DSL connection, 16 Mbit coming my way this winter (ADSL2+). This is for 60,- a month, including flat rate, telephony, etc.
No, the phone company is not subsidised, it is a private company and to add insult to injury, it is profitable. I happen to know because I work there. (which also means I don't pay the 60,- thanks to an employee-special).
Sorry, but the reason everyone is ahead of the US in broadband is simply that everyone is ahead of the US in broadband, and your conspiracy theories should be better applied to the "baby-bells" than to the rest of the world.
Re:Other Countries (Score:3, Informative)
Welcome to 2005, it's been a nice year so far, and here are the local updates:
* 6 Mbit ADSL connection
* Flatrate, no limits whatsoever (and hey, on good days I pump those 6 GB in 48 hours)
* free local (on-net) calls
* optional (10 extra) country- or europe-wide voice flatrate
And this is very common over here (Germany). It's not a luxury, it's pretty much standard issue for anyone with serious Internet use. Casual users take a smaller package (say 2 Mbit flatrate). 56kbit exists, but is largely irrelevant. Cable is what we make jokes about sometimes.
Re:Some minor defenses... (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, New York County is only Manhattan. (Queens is Queens County, Brooklyn is Kings, Bronx is Bronx, and Staten Island is Dutchess.) So that number is a bit skewed - Manhattan is far denser than any other borough in New York City or any part of New Jersey.
According to Wikipedia, NYC's population density is 26403 people/square mile (that's rounded up just to match the look of your number). Newark, NJ's population density is 11400 people/square mile and Jersey City's is 16093 people/square mile. Other areas close to NYC in NJ have lower densities (those are the two main "cities" in NJ on the edge of NYC). So the average of the whole NY metro area would be a lot lower than 66950. And nobody's going to bother laying infrastructure for a single borough, although typically the telcos and cablecos will start with one borough and work their way out.
Just to compare, Tokyo is similarly difficult to calculate (it depends on if you're talking the 23 official wards of the city, the prefecture of Tokyo, or something else), but the 23 wards have a density of 34734 people/square mile. So, both cities are pretty dense, but NYC is not even close to twice as dense as Tokyo, which your numbers suggest.
I do sort of agree with your main point, though, which is that there's no real reason why the Northeast Corridor, the California Corridor or the cities of the upper midwest shouldn't be wired up better, if population density is the problem. The USA is extremely regional, and there are whole areas that are just as urban and just as large (in terms of population) as all of South Korea, for example. The NEC has a greater population than South Korea in a smaller area, so it should be theoretically cheaper to wire up on a per capita basis.
Re:Here the problem arises. (Score:2, Informative)
What open market? Most of the telecom infrastructure in the US was put into place as part of Ma Bell's regulated monopoly. The government granted the monopoly and in turn AT&T produced universal access, something no company could have done in an open market.
Besides, do you want to go back to mutiple sets of utility poles everywhere, each one serving one of the competing utilities, like they had 100 years ago?
Re:Repeat after me "Canada is even bigger" (Score:2, Informative)
Tell me, How's broadband in northen Canada? Northwest terroritories have the same high quality service don't they?
This ought to answer your questions about broad band access in Canada [broadband.gc.ca]. Here's the coverage map for the North West Territories [broadband.gc.ca]. Notice that Inuvik's 2894 people [broadband.gc.ca] can chose between cable and DSL access. Also take a look at the National Satellite Initiative [broadband.gc.ca] which literally covers the entire country, though admittedly the latency is an issue for things like VOIP.
Re:Some minor defenses... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Some minor defenses... (Score:1, Informative)
I work for a rural telco. We have fewer than 5,000 subscribers spread over a 50 mile diameter. We offer DSL to all of them. We can provide up to 24Mbit. We are currently laying out fiber to the premise.
Here is the snag: We belong to NECA [neca.org]. Under NECA tariffs, the telco has to charge the ISP more than $20 per circuit. In some cases the telco is required to charge more than $30 per circuit. The telco doesn't have a choice. They can't charge less if they want to without violating NECA tariffs. So the ISP has to charge more than that to break even, and even more to turn a profit.
Even the ISP side of the telco has to charge more than $30/month for DSL to stay in the black.
So you may think that the telco is making a ton of money on DSL. Well... yes and no. The NECA tariff mandated money actually goes to NECA, not directly to the telco. Then, NECA does a giant shell game with the enormous pool of money and divies it back out to its members according to intentionally incomprehensible algorithms. Telcos with Big 5 accounting firms fare better in the shell game.
In short, density is not the problem. FCC, IRS, and other politics are much bigger stumbling blocks. To play in the telco world in the U.S. you have to compete in all the circus games, or you get buried. The costs of regulation are enormous.
In today's world, anyone with a couple million could buildout a fiber network, buy a softswitch or two, and open a local telco/ISP with all the candy. They could charge low rates and make money hand over fist. Until the feds kicked down the door, and starting screaming nonsense about LATAs, and billing rate areas, and tariffs, and excises, and some words I'm pretty sure they make up impromptu.
Re:Repeat after me "Canada is even bigger" (Score:4, Informative)
Now that I am in Seattle, I expect to have more broadband options but there are two cable companies that split the city (so there are two monopolies) offering the same service that I had in Ontario in 1995 for more money(?). DSL is an option but you need a land line and have to deal with QWEST. Also, I believe that recent changes may allow QWEST in the future, to decide not to lease their line third-party providers such as Speakeasy. You may guess that I don't like QWEST very much. I hope that some of these other schemes, wireless, satellite, powerlines can bypass the Baby Bells and cable oligarchies and maybe we can get some real hi-speed here...
Re:I guess you want it for free... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and if you think that population densities are a real factor, which they are to come extent, they are not impossible to overcome. Case in point, Canada, with lower population densities than the US has better service for less, because their legislation keeps monopolies out.
Like the example from the article where a small town with zero broadband ISPs which started to have companies leave for that reason decided to do somethin about it. They asked the ISPs if they could serve the community, but they refused citing the small amount of profit they'd make there not being worth their time. So the community started a public community internet project to offer WiFi throughout the town. The ISP's reaction? Trying to convince the state to pass a law to make that illegal.
That's the kind of mentality we as a nation have, and it's hurting us. We should stop being so high on ourselves, admit our faults, look to others which do it better than we, and fix it!
Re:Why the gasp at Canada? (Score:2, Informative)
Don't Complain (Score:3, Informative)
I pay 45$ a month, for 1Mbps ADSL with a monthly cap of 1GB. That's the best deal going in the country. Australia, is somewhat better off.. but not significantly.
At any rate, for those of you in the states that think your broadband providers are lousy.. you've actually got it reasonably good. Not south korea good, but good all the same.
Re:Here the problem arises. (Score:3, Informative)
I envy you my brother, paying $45 for cable internet. My cable internet is also about $45, but you can't get it without cable TV... So my cable bill, for TV I rarely watch and internet is around $99 a month.... If they would unbundle the cable tv and net, I would get rid of the TV and keep the net.
(My other option is DSL, but I dont have a home phone- just a cell, which equals no telemarketers, plus, most of the people I call are in Cleveland, about 40 miles away, which is long distance, so the cell is much cheaper... So to get DSL, plus the required home phone, would be about $60 a month. At least for the extra money with the cable package, I get to watch Walker Texas Ranger occasionally) Reminds me of the hooker- "the sex is free, but the talk will cost you..."
Re:Some minor defenses... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Here the problem arises. (Score:5, Informative)
Why should Verizon be forced to sublease below market value the lines they invested money into, digging up streets and putting up poles.
First problem, Verizon (well all the bells together before they were broken up) did not pay for all the digging to put those lines in, that cost was heavily subsidized by taxpayer money. The other problem with this argument is that the cost of putting all this copper in place was payed off a long long time ago, and it's dirt cheap to maintain.
Then further there is a very serious problem with this one part of it
sublease below market value
It's just not true. Quest for example sells basic phone service for 12.50, they then sell the raw copper loop for $15. And that loop will only be able to serve DSL and thus make it profitable and worth while for the CLEC if they are within range of the CO. Most are not, and since the FCC just took away all access to the ILEC metro fiber assets (because they deemed them unesesarry) only phone service can be offered to customer out of range of the the CO, so the CLEC's and ISP's were forced to resell the ILEC's DSL at tariffed prices (this also means they can have that customer for phone service). With DSL, Quest sells 1.5M/768k DSL for $19.95 for a year and then $39.95 after that, the "below market value" price for just the loop (no email, bandwidth, tech support, etc.) that a competetive ISP must pay is $19.95 (a big discount from $19.95 as you can tell) for a year and then $33 after that. Oh, and then they have to pay for the ATM trasit of customer bandwidth at $250 per Mbit, plus port fees. That and the FCC just took these off of the tarif rates, next year, Qwest and all the other ILECS will be able to set the prices to whatever they want, and customers will be completely screwed because they will have very little choice.
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Informative)
Anyhoo, I am American. Fifth generation Texan. The way socialism is defined here is "government spending to enhance the public good". Not as any step between capitalism and communism, but as a thing in and of itself that is used more or less synonymously with communism. It's ridiculous, of course, but true.
Hence the opposition to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare (except by Bush &c), public schools, and so forth: they're all communist ventures.
So while I am well aware of the Marxist connotations of the word "socialism" and it being a step on the road to communism, that is not how it is commonly used in this country today.
3rd-world?!?! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Some minor defenses... (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder how many times I have said this.. but just about any nordic country has lesser population density than the US and our population is quite spread out. You know, telecom corporations used to be in a similar monopoly position like in the US but our broadbands got a LOT cheaper when they were forced to share their copper.