US Broadband Won't Catch Up With Japan's For 101 Years 708
An anonymous reader writes "Internet speeds of users nationwide shows that the United States has not made significant improvements in deploying high-speed broadband networks in the past year, and if the average US Internet speed continues to improve only at the same rate it did from 2007 to 2008, the country won't catch up with Japan's current download speed for another 100 years, according to findings released by the Communications Workers of America's (CWA's) Speed Matters campaign." With enough statistical mangling, nearly anything can be presented as plausible, but that's not enough to cover up my envy of Asian broadband speeds.
Japan is a lot smaller than the U.S. (Score:1, Interesting)
United States:
9.8M square kilometers
Japan:
377K square kilometers
When you're running physical cable, this makes a huge difference.
Of course, I'm probably not the one to compare to because I have FIOS (up to 45 M/bps) and Cable (up to 16 M/bps) available to me. Currently I have FIOS @ 15 M/bps downstream and 2 M/bps upstream.
Re:Euro/Japan envy is getting stupid (Score:2, Interesting)
God yeah, here I am in London, my boss is pushing me to take another two weeks holiday because I'm not using it up quickly enough. Might have done all my work by Thursday so can have a three day weekend. I'm annoyed that I pay nearly 2% of my gross wage (about average for programming in London) on insurance each year - car, buildings, contents, health, travel of course. Maybe I should buy a less powerful car...
Or I could work in the US, get like 2 hours holiday a year, get fired for turning up 1 minute late, pay all my money on health insurance.
Or maybe if you have skills in the US, you can bargain for better deals like 25 days holiday + national days, free healthcare, dental, etc. Maybe the US system encourages people to work hard, whereas laziness is often seen to be rewarded in the UK.
Bu-Bu-But the free market rules! (Score:1, Interesting)
Internet access and health care are two perfect examples of why government can do good things, contrary to Republican dogma.
Re:Japan is a lot smaller than the U.S. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, that goes a long way toward explaining why you can't get Asian-style symmetric 100mbit broadband out in the sticks, but there ARE densely populated cities in the US. I could throw rocks from my apartment and hit 3 AT&T buildings. Why can't (won't) they provide better than 16mbit/512kbit ADSL to subscribers who are literally across the street from their switch? Because they don't have to. We don't have the regulation to make them, and thanks to the high cost of running new copper we will never have the competition to force them to offer more than lackluster speed at high prices. Hooray for deregulation and free markets...
Re:Better Comparison. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a GOOD thing that the US is not moronic enough to wire our large, open country to the same extent that a small, island country can.
And what about your major cities? Does it strike you as odd that the supposed hub of all technology, in California, has shitty internet access?
Re:Geography (Score:3, Interesting)
not south korea, though.
why is it countries that have US troops in them have better internet than the mainland USA.
other than size, that is, i know size makes a huge difference, but fiber optics lines, without being dug up at all, have increased bandwidth year after year for more than a decade now. america has more dark fiber than anyone else, personally my wager is on greed, being the single biggest factor in holding back high speed internet.
12Mbps std in 2002, then 18Mbps in 2005... (Score:5, Interesting)
I lived in Japan for three years, and when I got there in 2002, the *basic* package offered by Yahoo! Japan was 12Mbps DSL for an intro rate of ¥2000 a month (about US $20), bumping up to ¥3500 a month later on. By the time I left in 2005, the *basic* package cost the same, but the *lowest* speed available was 18Mbps -- something that still doesn't even *exist* at the consumer level anywhere in the US (that I'm aware of) in 2008.
The US broadband market is suffocating under the rank hypocrisy and greed of the telcos, and the bald corruption and bribeability of the congress. Somehow the Japanese broadband market has a heck of a lot more internal competition, yet the companies there can still make a profit offering much higher speeds for relatively lower rates.
Frustratedly,
Re:Japan is a lot smaller than the U.S. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:oook (Score:1, Interesting)
Building out broadband is considered complicated, expensive and time-consuming, but actually most of us could do it in our spare time, if we put our minds to it and got the necessary permits. Who here paid someone else to build the home network? And why would we? It's not hard. The only reason I'm not out digging trenches for fiber is that I'd be caught up in red tape in no time. Bureaucracy is holding us back, not anyone's status in the nation circus.
Re:oook (Score:5, Interesting)
ofcourse, it's linear! Also Japan is the same size as the United States.
From the report the article cites:
"One explanation of why, in most instances, broadband penetration and a range of available geographic variables show little or no correlation is that large countries tend to have extensive coverage of DSL and cable networks. In fact, the total landmass of a country has a very low correlation with broadband penetration per 100 inhabitants across the OECD (see Figure 1.7). For example, Canada has the highest penetration rate among the G7 countries â" which are all smaller."
Canada has a higher broadband penetration rate than Japan, the UK, France, Germany -- in fact, Japan and the USA have similar broadband penetration rates.
It's not dispersion either (how clumped-together people are), Japan, the US and Canada have similar dispersions.
Re:Japan is a lot smaller than the U.S. (Score:3, Interesting)
I back up my important documents to amazon S3. While I really am happy with my 5MB down, the 512k up really, really sucks when I need to backup another couple gigs of photo's. Last backup took about 26 hours, and really, really hurt the downloads I was trying to do, since the upload was saturated. I'm soon going to start doing digital home videos.. (planning on having a family with the wife soon) and I can't even comprehend how much time its going to take to upload those files. Increasing the upload speed will change the course of the internet, as people will stop looking at it as a "one way" communication, where you "browse" the web.
Re:Euro/Japan envy is getting stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
They are interesting numbers considering the phenomenon of karoshi [wikipedia.org], which, AFAIK, is unique to Japan.
There is also a study [jpc-sed.or.jp] about the growth of mental health problems in the workplace and the increased use of prolonged employee leaves.
So maybe it's not just the hours, but how intense those hours are.
It would also be interesting to know how the numbers were calculated and if they measure work times based on tools like Blackberry usage and VPNs, two things that "help" me work more hours than just those when I'm in the office. I couldn't find the report gaebler referenced. Quick googling didn't show it and the search function at JPC-SED is broken.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Finland is third? I have 512/512 because that's all I can afford, and I live in a city. 20 mbps sure as fuck isn't the average speed over here.
Re:Euro/Japan envy is getting stupid (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/10/15/waittimes-fraser.html [www.cbc.ca]
Re:Japan is a lot smaller than the U.S. (Score:3, Interesting)
You have the wrong perspective. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Better Comparison. (Score:3, Interesting)
It depends on who is defining "high speed".
Youtube is basically unusable over the speeds that the FCC defines as broadband, for example.
Re:Euro/Japan envy is getting stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
The grandparent poster probably made a judgement based on reputation of the country. In Europe, Belgium has some fabulous beers. France has a huge reputation in wines. When talking about European cuisine, what comes to mind are the italian pastas, French haute cuisine, Swedish smoked salmon, Spanish tapas, and wonderful cheese from all over. Every European country has their specialties, and the differences between those specialties are like day and night.
The average non-American is familiar with exactly two brands of American beer: Budweiser (which sounds very, very German) and Duff. The Californians are known for their wines (and they're good value for money) but we don't see an awful lot of Californian wine over a decade old on the shelves here (whereas I'm sure the opposite is true). As for American cuisine, the most well-known dishes to the outside world are hamburgers, pizza, hot dogs, KFC and Thanksgiving turkey. The burgers, hot dogs and pizza (and the fries with that) aren't even American by origin.
Obviously, this is not the entire picture, and I'm sure that actual US cuisine is a lot more varied than the picture I just painted. But I can see why the grandparent poster thinks Europe has better food and drink.
Re:Bu-Bu-But the free market rules! (Score:2, Interesting)
You're blaming government-granted monopolies on the free market?
...and you can always count on Republican Dogma to be backed up with misdirection and red herrings.
Government doesn't create utility monopolies, The Last Mile does. It isn't realistic to expect two or more companies to make massive investments in infrastructure if only 1 line can be used at a time, so agreements are made with local governments so one company can serve all the customers in an area, yet have to put up with some regulation in order to prevent abuse of a captive audience.
And yes, internet access speeds have been entirely left to the free market in the U.S. You may have only one cable line and one phone line to your house, but the competition between the two has left us with an anemic [nwsource.com] average download speed of 1.97 Mpbs, compared to Finland (21) or Japan (63!).
The one decision that really saddled us with crappy access was the FCC ruling that internet access was an information service rather than a telecommunication service - so telecos no longer had to lease their lines at wholesale prices to competitors.
Re:oook (Score:2, Interesting)
Poverty is not an indicator of economic health. The US has its share of the homeless and destitute which is disproportionately high given it's national income.
China's economy is not precarious, their budget surpluses are enormous and their cash reserve is so large that they are the largest holders of US government debt.
China could stop producing dead tomorrow, and they'd have the cash to keep the show running for quite some time.
Re:Euro/Japan envy is getting stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
The average non-American is familiar with exactly two brands of American beer: Budweiser (which sounds very, very German) and Duff
Eh, then familiarize yourself with more before you make a blanket statement that all American beer sucks. I wouldn't presume to think that all European beer sucks just because Heineken tastes like skunky piss water.
but we don't see an awful lot of Californian wine over a decade old on the shelves here
Well, for starters California doesn't have a monopoly on American wine. Most American states produce small amounts of wine and at least three of them (New York, Oregon and Washington) have well developed wine industries that compete favorably with anything that comes out of California.
Besides that, I've been to Europe. Most of the liquor stores that I visited had a rather depressing selection of American wine. I actually saw a bottle of Sutter Homes white zin in Florence that was going for around 40 Euros. Here in the states that would sell for $4-$5 a bottle and would be considered the budweiser of the wine world. It made me wonder if all the European wines that I see on my liquor store shelves also represent the bottom of the barrel ;)
The burgers, hot dogs and pizza (and the fries with that) aren't even American by origin.
America is a nation of immigrants from different cultures and countries. Each of them have brought a unique piece of their own culture to this country. Eventually those different cultures assimilate into something that's uniquely American. Hamburgers and hot dogs weren't invented here but does anybody really think of them as German any longer?
A theory .... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:oook (Score:4, Interesting)
These companies have no problem running their fibre through some farmer's land but they don't want to give him any of the benefits.
I know it's not that simple but the fact is the US lagging behind has nothing to do with how but the US is. It's because companies don't want to service certain areas. As someone who lived in rural Pennsylvania, I know what kind of contempt Verizion has for people in the country.
Despite the fact where I used to live isn't that far from the nearest broadband and it's an upcoming area with a lot of rich people moving in I don't think they offer any sort of broadband even now. In fact I know there are people there that don't even have decent dialup because of the line noise but Verizion's policy is basically as long as you can tell someone else is on the other end they don't give a fuck how noisy your line is. Businesses are exceptionally tight and the only way the US will ever catch up to anyone else is either force companies to roll it out or the government lays its own broadband.
Re:What would we do with all that bandwidth?!?! (Score:3, Interesting)
I run a subversion server at home for various uses, including international projects. As soon as I can be bothered, I'll also set it up to stream my music to me wherever I am. It's currently hosting my pictures for sharing with people. Are you saying I don't need good bandwidth at home for that?
And, for the record, I'm also in IT, though not for decades, and let me tell you, if you've ever gone to a partner company's office to download the VPN client to their computers only to find that they're on some 512Kbps DSL line shared with eight people, you'll understand the need for faster connections. (I do realize you conceded that businesses might need faster connections.)
Imagine a hypothetical home with five children and two computers in the home office. Three kids have their own computers. There's a Wii in the basement and a PS2 and/or PS3 upstairs (the kids like Final Fantasy XI online).
So you've got three kids upstairs watching youtube and/or pirating stuff (they think Dad doesn't know, I'm sure), or downloading music on iTunes, or watching TV on Netflix, or playing games, two kids on the two consoles, Dad is in the office playing Counter-Strike: Source, and Mom is watching re-broadcasts of Oprah online.
18Mbps can run out pretty quick.
Re:oook (Score:3, Interesting)
So, explain France?
No government push for broadband (after the cable-tv catastrophe)
ADSL-2+ for EUR 30 more or less everywhere
30mbit->100mbit cable internet in the big cities
50mbit->100mbit (symetric) fiber going in all over the place (for 30-40 EUR/month)
Answer: a free market. The only rules the government is enforcing are the anti-trust rules.
Re:oook (Score:3, Interesting)
I, once again, assert that while, yes, there may be fewer in number in absolute terms, you are mistaken if you think that there are no Americans living in the crushing poverty you probably only see on World Vision ads. Just because you don't see it on TV doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
No I must, in the name of intellectual honestly, concede that I have not been to the US before. However, I can't imagine that it is any different to the UK, Australia and other first world nations that I have been to, where I have seen the same kind of poverty I've seen in the third world, only hidden beneath a veneer of flashy cars and cafe lattes. To me, this does not hide it, it only makes it more abhorrent.