FCC Commish - US Playing 'Russian Roulette' with Broadband 290
LarryBoy writes "In a speech given at the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps lambasted US broadband policy, saying that the US is 'playing "Russian roulette with broadband and Internet and more traditional media."' Copps also took issue with an op-ed piece ('Broadband Baloney') by fellow commissioner Robert McDowell last week. 'In his speech, Copps didn't mention McDowell by name, but he did claim that broadband in the US is "so poor that every citizen in the country ought to be outraged." Back when then OECD said that we were number four in the world, he said, no one objected to its methodology. Copps also had fighting words for those who blame the US broadband problems on our less-dense population; Canada, Norway, and Sweden are ranked above us, but all are less dense than the US. Besides, this argument implies that broadband is absolutely super within American urban areas. Copps noted, though, that his own broadband connection in Washington, DC was "nothing compared to Seoul."'"
Quit Capping the Upstream (Score:5, Insightful)
>broadband in the US is "so poor that every citizen in the country ought to be outraged."
I don't know if the average citizen would even realize if their downstream bandwidth were boosted significantly. If my mother can download her web page in 3 seconds instead of 5, I am not sure she really cares.
The real battle seems to be with the upstream. Face it, sending photos sucks. If I have to do any sort of large
And to worsen things, I don't believe this is an infrastructure issue. These are obviously artificial caps levied against all users (both the legitimate and abusing customers). Maybe they could throttle the upstream for those with prolonged heightened levels of usage?
Jim
http://www.runfatboy.net/ [runfatboy.net] - A workout plan for beginners.
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Re:Quit Capping the Upstream (Score:5, Insightful)
If I get 11Mb/s total (I do, 10Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up), let me adjust the caps myself. If I want 5.5/5.5, or 9/2, let me have it. If I want 1/10, it's the same difference to the local cable loop.
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Nothing stops the cable company from re-allocating the channels. Most consumer broadband cable companies are running their entire data services in what amounts to the same frequency allocated to a single analog channel 2-13.
Th
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Any speed up to the local plant's restrictions are possible, all you need is a customer interface.
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POS: 256Kb / 128Kb (2:1)
Lite: 512Kb / 256Kb (2:1)
High: 5Mb / 512Kb (10:1)
Xtreme: 10 Mb / 1Mb (10:1)
Nitro: 25Mb / 1Mb (25:1)
So in the real world it is possible to offer different ratios.
How do they accomplish this? Simply, there is enough upstream and downstream frequency allocated to provide enough bandwidth, and they let the modems themselves do the actual rate limiting.
This is fairly trivial, and
Re:Quit Capping the Upstream (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no way a cable company will provision 10Mb (or 25Mb) upstream. Frequency space is just too tight. Hell, many companies are deploying switched digital, which is nothing more than a hack IMHO, specifically because channels are so scarce, and it only gets worse in the face of HD.
In short, what you're asking simply isn't doable given current network infrastructure. Things may get a little easier following the digital switchover, as that will free up frequency space previously used up by analog channels, but given the plethora of specialty channels, not to mention services like VOD, cable (and DSL) operators simply aren't in the position to offer the kind of service you want.
What the actual frequency spectrum does has little bearing on what the modem caps are,
That's just naive. Frequency spectrum dictates the top-most bandwidth one can offer. IOW, if you want to offer 10Mb upstream, you must provision channels to support it. Period. And there's no way a cable operator will do that given the spectrum crunch they're in, now.
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They'd also rather have you download 80 GB a month than upload 80 GB per month.
hosting (Score:2)
They don't want you running a webserver off your residential internet connection.
Because they charge more for the bandwidth a webserver uses. The last tyme I saw the going rate for a T1, which cable can beat, was more than $1000/month. Of course that was years ago, they may of come down.
FalconRe: (Score:3, Informative)
If you consume content, you will likely make someone else more money than the phone or cable corp. makes from broadband alone. If you provide content as an individual, that's less likely. Those who make money from consumption are likely to pay those who provide connections to make downloading easier than uploading...
That goes double for providers who make their own content (Time Warn
Re:Quit Capping the Upstream (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm afraid that that's not even remotely true. The upstream bandwidth available on almost all US cable plant is a tiny fraction of the downstream bandwidth available. The system only became (theoretically) symmetrical with DOCSIS 2.0. But all the deployments I know of in the US are still at DOCSIS 1.1. Even if they have a fully DOCSIS-2.0-compliant network (which is no one I know of in the US, but there may be some) I believe that no US ca
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It's probably the same implementation. (Score:3, Insightful)
I know this probably sounds crazy. Why would a company cripple user features this way, right?
Well, it turns out that some people are willing to pay more for internet than ot
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Better yet...stop overselling bandwidth! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so much the caps that are the problem it's the fact that your broadband provider is selling 10x (or more) the bandwidth they have available working on the presumption that you will not actually use your full bandwidth most of the time.
This was all good and well when email (not spam) and simple web pages were the Internet norm, but with dynamic pages, streaming video, audio, other content, and unparalleled levels of email we need to stop over-selling the actual bandwidth available. If what we have isn't good enough to service the customers -- upgrade the infrastructure to something that can handled 30MiB/s down and 15MiBs up (or whatever)
Also, stop calling them "unlimited" plans with the simple truth is every provider limits your bandwidth usage either by threats or through packet shaping.
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We oversell DSL, but we monitor the links to make sure we have sufficient capacity for all
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That's pretty steep. I have two 30Mbit Internet circuits under my purview at work and we are paying under $3000 each for those circuits. They are 30-up/30-down.
We can "consume" 30Mbit/sec using those pipes due to the way things are set up (inbound traffic travels on only one pipe). On the outbound side, I have a little round-robin going between two default gateways so we can actually
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If my mother can download her web page in 3 seconds instead of 5, I am not sure she really cares.
High bandwidth isn't for loading a web page faster, it's for something that actually uses high-bandwidth like streaming video.
Also, with a high-bandwidth video connection and IP-multicasting, you could have practical internet TV stations with a million listeners.
The internet is a hell of a lot more than just a series of websites, but without the truly fast connections most people will never get to see that. To
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Yes, everyone on YouTube is a techno-nerd.
Re:Quit Capping the Upstream (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm actually talking about a high quality video feed produced by professionals that would play on my IP-TV capable television.
Right now that doesn't exist, and the closest we come to that is people downloading TV shows with bittorent (who are the afformentioned techno-nerds).
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Hmmm... How many decades has "America's Funniest Home Videos" been on the air now?
Oh, so you mean like...
Akimbo: http://www.akimbo.com/ [akimbo.com]
Democracy Player (Miro): http://www.ge [getmiro.com]
professional videos for download (Score:2)
I'm actually talking about a high quality video feed produced by professionals that would play on my IP-TV capable television.
Actually there are high quality video feeds you can download, though I'm pretty sure there are more I can name two now, BBC and CNN [cnn.com].
FalconRe: (Score:3, Insightful)
Youtube and its competitors can support such feeds. The problem - at least in this case - isn't infrastructure or capacity; you can tell because Netflix has no trouble dumping Hollywood flicks to you in realtime. The problem you're describing is that the kind of content you're describing is hard to make, and that most of it is too expensive to do without the support of television c
Stage6 (Score:3, Informative)
http://stage6.divx.com/ [divx.com]
Well, apart from the good video quality, it is another Youtube ^^
Re:Quit Capping the Upstream (Score:5, Funny)
Absolutely. It's a series of tubes!
Re:Quit Capping the Upstream (Score:5, Informative)
What the hell are you talking about?
I'm talking about the internet not being a web-browser. The content you're talking about is poor quality short clips, intended to supplement a web page. The content I'm talking about is a well produced high quality television broadcast that'll compete with cable and satellite producers, but also have the nearly infinite amount of choices. Right now if you want to distribute content like the cable stations produce, you need a ton of money to buy time on a satellite. An internet TV revolution would eliminate that need and open up an entirely different means of content distribution.
I'm talking about the internet taking over the television and going into the family room, not the computer room. That's starting to happen a little with consoles, but nowhere to the degree I'm referring to.
Re:Quit Capping the Upstream (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not confuse your crap filter for infrastructure issues. Many television stations use the internet as an infrastructure adequately. Movies are distributed over it commercially. Video phones have been working fine for almost a decade now. The internet does require that you have a good solid connection at the server end to pull it off, but any Joe Average can get a ten meg unmetered line with a box for around $1200/y; that's not exactly huge scratch.
Moving to the internet reduces costs dramatically. If anything, it makes the kind of broad, high availability content you're currently desiring easier, in that the people who have the means to pull off two big things can focus on funding and production, and leave distribution to the world wide wank. Look what's happened with gaming for a similar clear example.
I don't believe this is an infrastructure issue. (Score:2)
These are obviously artificial caps levied against all users (both the legitimate and abusing customers). Maybe they could throttle the upstream for those with prolonged heightened levels of usage?
It may be in part because of the infrastructure, but I think the biggest reason is because braodband providers overstated, oversold, their capabilities. I'd bet many providers didn't expect as many users to use as much bandwidth. The services were billed as all you can eat so when a lot of people did just th
Your mom is waiting (Score:2)
You're assuming she only goes to low-bandwidth web sites. Which she probably does, because most web users aren't aware that anything else is available. But suppose she goes to one of those streaming video sites that the TV networks are setting up. She'll probably wonder why she gets a better picture
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What would I do with 1Gb fiber. I'd not have to go to work haldf the time. I could call up a video "chat" with coworkers and export the screen from the compters in
Density? (Score:5, Funny)
I agree that their aren't many folks as dense as us at the moment, but which are more dense? Norwegians or Swedes?
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Re:Density? - Bullshit (Score:3, Funny)
(Just kidding. Actually, ALL swedes are dumb as hell, their ugly pr
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But seriously folks, about 80% of Canadians live in urban areas, as opposed to about 75% for the U.S. Apparently we huddle together for warmth.
I am guessing that the rate of urbanization matters more than population density in regards to ease of broadband access.
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The rate of urbanization in the US at 75% is average among developed countries. Compare Ireland at 60% to see if your theory holds up. I suspect not, as it seems to me that broadband access depends entirely on the political will to make it happen. The US's problem is that they have offloaded all responsibility for important infrastructure from the government to local monopoly corporation
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Density *could* be factor, mostly just monopolies (Score:4, Informative)
That being said, I do believe that the ridiculous telco/cable monopolies that have been governmentally supported for so long now has an effect as well. It's a combination of alot of factors, just like most other things in life.
Re:Density *could* be factor, mostly just monopoli (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Density *could* be factor, mostly just monopoli (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that the country is larger shouldn't make it more difficult as such. Making a large network is just connecting two smaller ones no?
Re:Density *could* be factor, mostly just monopoli (Score:2)
Re:Density *could* be factor, mostly just monopoli (Score:2)
Why does anyone ever make these "US is huge!" types of arguments? China's huger, and look what they've done in the last 20 years. I put it down to the US's biggest cultural problem: irrational American exceptionalism. Too often Americans assume
Re:Density *could* be factor, mostly just monopoli (Score:2)
Just look at NY (Score:4, Insightful)
So the connections between the cities are fine, what about the cities themselves? Take NY City. It's the biggest and densest city in the U.S. There's no distance argument to be made here. And there are 10 million potential customers -- that's more than the entire country of Sweden, all in one compact area! Yet if you only compare NY and ignore the rest of the country, we're still way behind in broadband.
No, sorry, the density argument holds no water at all. At least, it is clearly not the limiting factor on broadband, because where it isn't a factor at all broadband is still limited.
You are however absolutely correct about the monopolies being the cause. Why don't we have better broadband? Because the telcos neither want nor need to provide it. Hell, it wasn't until the mid to late nineties that we started to see sub-$0.10/min long-distance POTS because of the lack of competition before that. Why would they go run off and invest in more technology when there's nobody for you to go to if you think they're too slow? Right now the only "competition" we have is DSL vs cable, and they have apparently decided that it's perfectly adequate to just compete on price and the slightly different features of DSL vs cable.
Re:Density *could* be factor, mostly just monopoli (Score:4, Informative)
Godwin's (Score:5, Insightful)
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So claim it! It can be "El Cabri's Law," or something to that effect. :)
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One of these recent squabbles had someone insisting that Japan isn't densely populated. Well, it's not, -- if you assume that those people are evenly distributed across all the islands, including Hokkaido and a bunch of isolated volcanic rocks.
About time. (Score:3, Insightful)
Incorrect Priority Alignment (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to fix this, I suggest the following it: take all of the cables away from the existing telcos and make one nationwide heavily regulated company that would just maintain the lines and sell bandwidth to whoever could afford it. That would go a long way towards leveling the playing field.
Sure, you could de-regulate: end geographical monopolies and grant any company wanting to run cables access to the public rights-of-way. However, this would needlessly duplicate infrastructure, and companies would use inter-networking contracts to limit competition. The biggest impediment to offering new services in a telecomm market is to connect to existing networks. Incumbent networks have a huge advantage because they already connect many, many customers. If you create a startup telco, your customers expect to be able to talk to people on the other network. The incumbents can simply price you out of the market by making it expensive for your customers to talk to theirs.
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And somehow a single government controlled monopoly will be better than numerous independent monopolies?
We have watched as the monopolies have leveraged their power, money and influence over plenty of other governm
Re:Incorrect Priority Alignment (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Because the mandate for a governmental body is to, above all else, benefit *the people*, as opposed to the pockets of the shareholders.
We have watched as the monopolies have leveraged their power, money and influence over plenty of other government entities (financially mostly) and what makes you think that they won't do the same thing here?
Uhh, that's what rules and the legal system exist to solve. If the wire-leasing entity is required, by law, to be neutral, and there's evidence of impropriety, then the victims sue. Problem = solved.
Of course, this is all based on the assumption that you have a fair, functioning democracy that would create such an entity and set up it's mandate appropriately. Unfortunately, institutionalized bribary (aka, lobbying) in the US system makes this all but impossible (see the US Copyright Board for an example).
Yes, I just contradicted myself in my own post.
who owns local infrastructure? (Score:3, Informative)
And somehow a single government controlled monopoly will be better than numerous independent monopolies?
It's working fine in at least one place, in northeastern Utah a group of communities have been able to build a Broadband Utopia [ieee.org]. Anybody can start a business delivering any service the infrastructure is capable of, whether it be broadband access, phone service, tv, or a combination of them. It is capable of speeds of up to 100Mbs.
Falcon
Monopolistic Conflict of Interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Enter the loophole in the law that states that if they build a brand new line from the central office to your house, they can control its content. Guess who can't put in new lines? Right... the "competing services" who are supposed to be able to access the lines that already exist. Therefore, you have a conflict of interest in that the line maintainers are the only ones capable of putting up new infrastructure... thus guaranteeing a monopoly of service. Now, while it may make business sense to wire up the areas that can and will be heavily subscribing first (it's called "return on investment"), you'll find that some other areas that have gotten it only did because they're in between the source and target area, so they just went and wired up that section too.
That said, I cannot get FiOS in my neighborhood. Neighborhoods around me are getting wired for it and receiving it. We aren't... and believe me, it's not because we're a poor neighborhood (probably has more to do with our being an older subdivision that still has above-ground lines). I've called Verizon a few times and the response I always get when I ask for a date is, "We can't give you a date because that would commit us." Duh! That's the point of my asking for a date or time frame! Verizon first sticks it to us with FITL, so we can't get any form of DSL other than IDSL/ISDN, unless you go with a T-1 or other dedicated line like that... then they stick it to us by not wiring up the neighborhood... and they further stick it to us by being the only telco that can do so, and limit the service to themselves. I'm sure there are other companies that could be wiring up neighborhoods too, and would love a shot at doing it... if they were legally allowed to do so.
Basically, like you said... the ones who maintain the lines should not be allowed to sell the services. Give the line maintainers one responsibility: infrastructure maintenance and upgrades. Everyone else, including Verizon, would have to "buy" their time and space on the lines.
slow broadband in the Bay Area (Score:3, Interesting)
Outraged indeed (Score:3, Informative)
For the same monthly cost back home in Southern California I can only get (at best) 10mbps/512kbps down/up on cable; granted my neighbors aren't using too much of the pipe.
So how is such a difference possible in Japan?
1. All utility cables are all mounted above ground on poles in Japan, greatly reducing installation costs. (Same in Seoul,Korea last time I was there).
2. The gov't has a "fiber to the curb" initiative; so basically the installation is either subsidized or forced (political coercion?) to be the responsibility of the provider.
I must mention to all the satisfied customers who find their 7mbps/1mbps "broadband" sufficient that there IS a difference. When the internet (at least domestically) becomes as fast as a company or home network at 100mbps. It's night and day.
I won't mention how antiquated DSL technology in the US is...
OECD numbers flawed (Score:2, Interesting)
The OECD's methodology is seriously flawed, however. According to an analysis by the Phoenix Center, if all OECD countries including the U.S. enjoyed 100% broadband penetration -- with all homes and businesses being connected -- our rank would fall to 20th. The U.S. would be deemed a relative fa
ISPs aren't the REAL problem (Score:2)
Bandwidth is *expensive* and transport fees are *ludicrous*. ISPs are getting screwed by the telcos, and those costs get passed on to the end-user. Now, don't get me wrong, the big cable providers are sleazy, too, but they are at the mercy of the telcos, who obviously HATE the cable companies and want them to go away.
It's just a big mess, and I think the only real solut
Funny thing on NPR today ... (Score:3, Interesting)
During the article, I kept wondering why we Americans can't use that high-speed comm gear.
One obvious theory is that the high-speed stuff was installed explicitly for espionage purposes, with no intention of letting mere citizens use it. Is this too cynical? How else can you explain all the "dark" fibre that has been installed, at great expense, and then (supposedly) not used? What other theories, in addition to sheer stupidity, can explain it?
Is it tinfoil hat time here? Is it true that, whatever your country, your local government and commercial comm traffic is mostly being relayed through American routers, for the purpose of intercepting and analyzing the content? Maybe you should ask your local ISP and phone suppliers about their routing
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very simply: bad projections that never happened.
During the peak of the dot com boom, people started to build the infrastructure to sustain the current growth. At the time, *everything* was turning into a web service and everyone and their dogs were creating new internet startups. The prediction for bandwidth was through the roof and backbone companies took notice and started building more
Correcting factual errors (Score:2)
Russian Roulette? (Score:2)
Don't even get me started (Score:2)
Trust me, if I was
Worldwide costs (Score:3, Informative)
There is ONE reason broadband penetration sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
'nuff said.
Whether we're talking about the old, monopoly-that-was AT&T, or the current, Dr. Frankenstein built me a monster AT&T, the moniker AT&T represents a lack of progress. Verizon, although late, is moving in the correct direction. Sprint is deploying WiMax as fast as it can. Some cable companies are exactly where they should be (OptimumOnline, RCN, I'm looking at you), and other, although a little slower, are getting there (Comcast, WOW, Time Warner, Charter).
Notice that in areas where Verizon is competing with Comcast (or other cable companies), broadband is doing *well*. Also notice that in areas where 5-10 mile fixed wireless is implemented, things are good to. In other areas with some competition, things are okay, too: It's a little expensive, but in Chicago I have options for 8 Mbps cable (Comcast), 25 Mbps cable (RCN), 15 Mbps ADSL2+ (Cyberonic), 3 Mbps fixed wireless (multiple WISPs), or 3 Mbps mobile wireless (EVDO, Sprint, Verizon, both RevA).
But areas dominated by AT&T? The *vast* majority of customers are locked in at 3 Mbps down, 384 kbps up. A few (located close to AT&T DSLAMs) can get 6 Mbps down, 768 kbps up. And AT&T's "new" U-verse is limited to 6 Mbps/1 Mbps.
This is unacceptable.
Frankly, AT&T's status as a monopoly provider in the old days fucked up the market so badly that it took decades to recover; and the recover some how involved putting a new AT&T together that is poised to fuck up the market again. The single *best* thing that the FCC can do now is strongly regulate AT&T's capability to strangle other providers, giving time for less-evil companies like Comcast to put up some decent infrastructure.
Anyone who disagrees with me; try and imagine what the U.S. broadband market would look like if AT&T was really pushing the curve in terms of what was possible. They're financial stable, profitable, and have plenty of cash on hand; if AT&T was deploying "true" next gen broadband infrastructure (at least as good as Verizon, or perhaps better), it would fundamentally change the market. The cable cos would be rushing out the door to deploy 25+ Mbps everywhere, and Sprint wouldn't be the only company pushing WiMax.
The U.S. broadband market would be a different place if you could get Verizon FTTP everywhere. Sadly, AT&T is still the dominant company, and until either A) the FCC starts to regulate the hell out of them, or B) Consumers & Businesses wise up and stop purchasing service from them, we'll be stuck with shitty broadband.
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I'd have to say our broadband in this country does suck, by and large. If it was only a problem in rural areas, then it might be understandable, but in many rural areas (sounds like yours is one) the networks are run by co-ops, and the damn speeds go UP as opposed to the big national companies who are whining about how damn difficult it is.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T offers the following plans, generally:
- Mediocre DSL: 6M/768k, $60/mo.
- Crap DSL: 3M/768k, $40/mo.
- Crappier DSL: 1.5M/384k, $30/mo.
- Why-Bother? DSL: 512k/128k, $20/mo.
Charter offers similar plans, like so:
- Mediocre Cable: 6M/512k, $60/mo. plus cable TV
- Crap Cable: 3M/128k, $40/mo. plus cable TV
- Useless Cable: 1M/128k, $20/mo. plus cable TV
- They-call-this-broadband? Cable: 512k/64k, $20/mo. but no cable TV requirement
Personally, I'm on a grandfathered DSL plan, at 1.5M/768k for $25/mo. I don't call AT&T for service, because if I do, I will get my plan changed to something current and end up paying more for less. Yes, it beats dialup. No, it's not good. I drool at the thought of having even 1/10th of what is "normal" in Korea.
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Buckeye express has:
- 10M/800k; $70/mo (heavily throttled during peak hours)
- 7M/768k; $45/mo (ditto)
- 1.5M/128k; $30/mo
- 96k/96k; $20/mo (yes, that is right 96k)
Would it be too much to ask for 5M/2M?
Oh, how I recall my unbundled Speakeasy DSL. Now those were the days.
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broadband in theTwin Cities (Score:2)
Uhh, no. Try Urban Minnesota and the average speed is 4mbit down 384Kbit up...
I live in Minneapolis and though I haven't checked my speeds yet when I download files I rarely get even 200Kb. I have no idea what my uploads speeds are, I used to upload files for classes but didn't tyme it. That's cable, I don't even know if the phonelines are capable of dsl where I live. The lines where my sister lives in Minnetonka aren't capable, but the ones on the next street over are.
FalconRe:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Of course you're going to think yours is big enough if you don't know how to use it...
Faster broadband, both upstream and down (especially up) would have an enormous societal impact. Think of all the travel that could be avoided (jet fuel not burned) if video conferencing didn't suck. Think of all the commuting that wouldn't have to be done if VPN access were equivalent to sitting on the corporate LAN. Some of us with fiber-optic connections are already seeing the benefits. $0.99 Amazon movie rentals that only take 12 minutes to download, for example. You can literally start watching in seconds. The whole thing is done transferring in less time than it would have taken to drive to Blockbuster and back... Remote desktops are actually usable for non-graphical apps, and even for some CAD applications...
Faster internet access really would provide better quality of life for many people.
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Other country's infrastructure proves the issue is not technical. The speed of service
in other countries implies to me that the issue is not real market demand.
I think the issue is monopoly/cartel behaviour from the telcos, and I don't think it is
good. (on Digital Penis envy, how and why others chose the products and services they
chose is their own business. Or should we disallow Hummers and Cadillacs, et al, because
th
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I fully agree with this. I'm getting 15/1 or something ridiculous like that here in Hampton Roads, VA from Cox. Not to mention that Cox has introduced something they call "PowerBoost" whereby when extra bandwidth is not being utilized you get a huge jump in downstream rate for a few seconds. So basically if I download the latest Leopard dmg from Apple or a new Fedora ISO or whatever it will get these little boosts where I'm downloading damn near 1 megabyte/second for a little while and then it drops back
government and broadband infrastructure (Score:2)
Now, let me think, do I want to stick with Cox where the service keeps improving and I get like zero outages or do I want to have some government-run bureaucracy forcibly providing me internet service?
And what do you think of the government giving Cox and other broadband providers taxpayer money to buildout broadband? How do you feel about it when they don't buildout the infrastructure they got taxpayer money to do?
FalconRe: (Score:2)
We have close, unless you use it then you get a nasty phone call telling you to stop.
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Its tough to "sell" a new internet "product" when 90% don't have enough bandwidth.
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The fiber network is a lot less spread though since it's not really financially viable to drag fiber out into the wilderness.
Standard "monopoly" response (Score:2)
I'm not trying to be an ass or troll you, but go down to city hall and ask what the laws are regarding starting a new cable service. You might be pleasantly surprised to find that anyone can implement cable service so long as they pay a franchise fee to your city for using their rights-of-way.
What is most often (but is not always) the case is that cable access is a natural monopoly in your area. If you have Time Warner, Comcast doesn't want to
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Dammit, where's my mod points when I need them? That's the most hilarious thing I've seen on Slashdot in weeks.
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Re:The US is no longer First World, but Second Wor (Score:2)
If it were true that we had second world healthcare, I don't think all those foreigners would come here to see our expensive specialists; we have the best specialists in the world. There isn't just "one" metric to judge healthcare on. (I generally agree that we should have universal coverage, but that has nothing to do with 'first-world' and 'second-world')
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We do. We really really do.
Actually, it's also incredibly annoying. I work in a Canadian office, in concert with an office in Princeton, New Jersey. You know, famous University town, fairly close to New York City. And their broadband connection is *pitiful*. Makes any kind of remote work on their gear painful, to say the least, and it only gets worse when we need to transfer large amounts of data (such as ISOs) between the two offices.
Re:The US is no longer First World, but Second Wor (Score:2)
To me, "Second World" means "communist or former communist." I can see USA's dropping from First World (advanced Western) to Third World (developing) much easier than its dropping from First to Second.
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Interestingly, Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] agrees with you (for whatever that's worth). This I did not know. Apparently this is why "developed" and "developing" are preferred terms, these days.
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Originally, when I got my first degree, I was not permitted to travel to communist block countries, so I am using the definition whereby the Industrialized Nations (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada) were part of the First World and the poor nations were the Third World.
Admittedly, India was originally in that category, and South Korea too.
But, in the 21st Century, we have nations with functional first world status, and then we have declining power
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Think about it, Bill Gates is the 2nd richest man in the world, according to Forbes. The richest person lives in Mexico.
Emigration issues (Score:2)
Why don't more Americans emigrate to Mexico? You were saying Mexico was improving over USA.
I did see a news report on ABC or NBC that noted that a record number of Americans had emigrated to Canada--which would fit your theory. But the anchor closed with a note that even more Canadians had immigrated here, which wouldn't, since Canada is still First World however you count it.
The
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Steal taxpayer dollars? Wake the fuck up. The pendulum has swung far, far in the other direction. The main beneficiaries of government freebies over the last several years are corporations. Quite literally the governement is letting bridges fall down so that rich people and powerful corprorations can get more money that they didn't earn.
And it gets worse.
Government-sponsored monopolies get to rule our broadband and give nothing back in return. Most places, most of the time, unless you want