We're Number 9! US Broadband Speeds Rise, But Slower Than Many Other Countries' 355
curtwoodward writes "The United States of America: The greatest country in the world, the last superpower, born of divine providence. Unless you're trying to connect to the Internet. The latest State of the Internet Report from network optimization company Akamai shows that the US has slipped in the global rankings of average connection speed, despite nearly 30 percent of yearly growth. That puts ol' Uncle Sam behind such economic powerhouses as Latvia and the Czech Republic. Oh, and we pay more, too. Is it finally time to shake up the ISP market and make Internet connections a public utility, on par with electricity and water? Or will edge projects like Google Fiber make a dent soon?" For those who favor the idea of Internet service as a government-run utility, what do you see as the best-case scenario for such a system?
Re:My rating... (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally I think over regulation is the problem. Wired agrees:
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/ [wired.com]
Google (or somebody like them) would be more likely to come if it weren't so hard to.
Re:My rating... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but that is BS...
"In return, Kansas City got a fiber network it couldn’t possibly afford to build on its own — or maintain. Municipalities like Provo, Utah that thought they could afford to build their own public fiber network found they couldn’t afford to run it. That’s why Provo, Utah sold their fiber network to Google for just $1."
Ok, so the tax payer funds it, and then gives it to somebody else to run for one dollar! Yeah that is the problem! Wow, if we all just did that, fund the thing we want and then give it for free to some private enterprise! Sounds like a bargain to me!
While local government has a role to play, no doubt there, having one company after another dig up the same piece of ground is actually quite silly! Here in Switzerland where we are ranked pretty high the solution has been to allow access to the underlying networks. Competition here is the ability of a competitor to have access to the fiber, or wire that another company has put into the ground. Force the AT&T's to allow anybody to use their pipes for a reasonable fee and very quickly you will get higher speeds and lower costs.
Big Companies Oppressing America (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a perfect example: I live a half-mile from a major Internet fibre line, which AT&T owns the hardware to access, and I have a max available 3Mb DSL as the only choice for Internet. One of my neighbors would love to get on the same shitty "broadband" that I pay for, but AT&T told him "there are no more ports available" in our area, after multiple attempts to get through to someone with real answers. Same story about copper going away etc.
Taxpayers actually paid for that Internet fibre run that runs nearby, and AT&T somehow keeps anyone from accessing it with their Congress-owning money powers. Fuck those evil bastards.
Re:My rating... (Score:5, Interesting)
We blame BOTH the companies AND the government.
If the fox raids the henhouse because the dog was taking a nap, you skin the fox AND you send the dog to bed without supper.
Re:lt and cz are small; us is big (Score:5, Interesting)
1/2 Population density, but that is an average of population/territory. It's an irrelevant figure. Canada has the same thing, but 90% of Canadians live in a very small area of Canada's territory (surprisingly, almost all within a 100 miles of U.S. border).
I wager, that Sweden, only has to wire a few major metropolis areas to cover 90% of it's population. So a better measure would be, in order to provide coverage to 90% of your population, how much land mass do you need to wire. And in this, no country on the planet comes close to America.
If you graphed this out, we would likely appear an order of magnitude higher than any other nation.
Re:US Post Office (Score:5, Interesting)
I (heart) U.S. Post Office.
Re:US Post Office (Score:2, Interesting)
The USPS example makes a pretty good case actually. A British study found that the U.S. postal service is the most efficient in the world.
Facts don't deter people with ideological arguments. The GP thought "US Post Office. That's your best case scenario." was some sort of an argument, and that he was modded up supports the idea that he's far from alone. When "debate" reaches that level, only rants and bumper stickers matter.
We all know that government mail delivery was a plot hatched by the pinkos at the Constitutional Convention, and should do everything to fight it. There are more important principles at stake here than silly things like low cost, fast reliable delivery.