Why American Internet Service Is Slow and Expensive 351
An anonymous reader writes "Reporter David Cay Johnston was interviewed recently for his new book, which touches on why America's Internet access is slow, expensive, and retarding economic growth. The main reason? Regulatory capture. It seems the telecommunication companies have rewritten the regulatory rules in their favor. In regards to the fees that were meant to build a fast Internet, Johnston speculates those fees went to build out cellular networks. 'The companies essentially have a business model that is antithetical to economic growth,' he says. 'Profits go up if they can provide slow Internet at super high prices.'"
Because... (Score:5, Insightful)
SOCIALIZE! (Score:5, Interesting)
Communications is a basic service provided by government. It's defined in the US constitution as well, as the Postal service.
There's no reason for private internet providers to exist.
Get rid of them, implement a government-designed system, like the roads. It would be far cheaper than building the highway system.
The best part of government ISP is that it has to follow constitutional freedom-of-speech rights, whereas a private ISP can shut down any message critical of the company, since private organizations don't have to follow the constitution.
Re: SOCIALIZE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the government tramples on constitutional rights all the time (i.e. 2nd Amendment), the FCC would find a way to restrict your "freedom-of-speech rights". Using your highway system example, driving is a privilege granted by the government to use their roads, not a right. Just as they have implemented laws and rules and restrictions on driving, they could easily do so on the internet. Fines could be implemented for cussing, anit-political rantings, etc. and it would just become another government cash cow. We would end up paying as much or more as we do now in registration fees and licensing, and likely have less freedoms on the internet.
Re: SOCIALIZE! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's another form of "capture", in this case by control freaks. We don't have a government that represents the people, at least not all of them. All too often government represents the interests of the rich and powerful, the loud and obnoxious, or those who want others to conform to their way of thinking--when what government should be doing is guaranteeing and preserving freedom (and yes, that includes freedom FROM monied interests in some cases, sorry libertarians).
Government should not be in the business of controlling individual liberties without a damned good reason. The "driving is a privilege" BS is a prime example. That should never have been allowed to take root, has no basis in any kind of constitutional republic, and that it has taken root we're going to be forever eradicating it, just as we're going to be forever eradicating the "because it's on a computer/on the Internet then law enforcement should have it without a warrant" crap too. Both things, BTW, have been allowed to exist because some people are fearful of cars and some people are fearful of computers and control freaks use those to gain support for their positions.
However, consider this: corporations are not exactly huge defenders of freedom and individual liberty. They are in fact quite the opposite and they prove it constantly. It is at least possible for people to take their government back and make it work for them. I would aruge it is their duty, as would some rather wise folks from a couple hundred years ago. It is not possible to make a corporation behave correctly in a civilized society absent a monetary interest or force of law. We need the force of law on OUR side, not theirs. In this case, it need not be government provided broadband. I don't want the government making my computers, shoes, jeans, etc. and broadband isn't something they should do either for just those reasons you specified. However, government can and should require certain behaviors out of the private entities that do so, in no small part because of their use of right of way, the limited useful spectrum, and the fact that they seem to have taken our money and stolen it. Governments should not be prohibited from stepping in and providing services in those areas where private companies don't want to, which of course is what private companies have been buying into law for some time now.
It's not black and white, this or that, etc. There are ways to make things better without giving all the power to one side or the other. The point is right now the power is too far on the private side when it comes to money, the "force" is all directed against the citizens, and it's not helping anybody.
Re: SOCIALIZE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: SOCIALIZE! (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to have it done by the government. In rural areas in the central U.S., power lines are often provided by co-op because of the lack of profitablit. Essentially the same owners although directly (as customer-owners) instead of indirectly (through the government). I never had any complaints with my power lines through the coop. I imagine I wouldn't have any problems with coop internet service either. And the great thing for rural folks, who already have a co-op organization, the right of way and necessary machinery are already under control. They'd just have to lay down the wiring.
Folks in town need to convince their rural neighbors to get their coop to do this, then extend their reach into town. And the coops could even connect to each other and provide a competitor to the companies that connect the various ISP networks together. Then you don't need network neutrality, because the coop will belong to and therefore serve the customers.
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Which is why the Postal Service censors my mail... oh... nevermind.
Stop being paranoid, please. It doesn't add anything.
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yeah, and since the USG (and other governments) is oh so big on allowing free xfer of data and free press like wikileaks, it'll be sure to be a utopia...and of course with joe biden and his ilk in office, we'll be able to send whatever files we want to whomever without the media companies, who make money selling make believe restrictions on distribution of data, will never get in the way. Seriously, the whole net neutrality thing is a double edged sword.. Either way we're cut. While the shapes of the bla
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Yes, absolutely, that's a great idea. And it should be administered by the NSA!
I think a lot more people are worried about their right to privacy than freedom of speech.
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Europe had government-provided telecom systems for decades and it was a total disaster. European Internet and wireless is so fast today because European governments (uncharacteristically) killed off government telecom services and forced companies to compete by making it easy for consumers to switch. We need to change our telecom market so that there is competition, not nationalize it.
What should be done? Prohibit long-term contracts
Re:SOCIALIZE! (Score:5, Insightful)
gross inefficiencies, waste, and abuse
This is a oft mentioned fallacy by the anti-government crowd. The cheapest way to get a letter (an actual paper one, not e-mail) from NYC to LA is via the US Postal Service. The reason that the conservatives in Congress were so against making Medicare available to be purchased by anyone is because they knew that private insurance companies wouldn't be able to compete. There are some things government does well, others it doesn't. It's not a universal truism that they fuck up everything they touch.
Re:SOCIALIZE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes and no (on the USPS). The reason I say that is due to one question: how much of a break in taxation, fuel, and other costs does the USPS get? I'm willing to wager that they don't have to pay any FAA-associated fees for aircraft certification, and are usually exempt from state vehicle taxation, fuel taxes, property taxes on post offices, vehicle insurance premiums (the gov't handles that), etc. There's also the fact that the USPS doesn't have to pay taxes on income, and has no shareholders to please. FedEx, UPS, DHL... they all have to pay all of that and more.
I bet it's enough to have an artificially-reduced bottom-line - far, far smaller than the likes of FedEx or UPS. This in turn artificially lowers the entire overhead costs per entity once you count in HR/salary costs.
I don't hate the post office or anything, but before pointing to them as a shining example? At least remember that unlike their competition, the USPS gets to start the race quite a few strides ahead of the competition.
Re:SOCIALIZE! (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the USPS doesn't have any air fleet nor do they do own any railroad assets. They have to purchase space from other carriers like UPS, FedEx, DHL, and AmTrak. Basically, like any other private company, they have to contract that part out.
I'm not sure if they get any special breaks on their ground vehicles, though.
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It's not good for any organization to be the only option public or private. Lack of competition leads to stagnation and a sense of entitlement (yes, governments and corporations have entitlement issues).
Look, people move to the boonies for a reason. Usually it is to escape the jungle of civilization. I don't buy the argument that a lack of high-speed internet access leads to economic failure. All this tal
Re:SOCIALIZE! (Score:4, Informative)
You picked a terrible example. The United States Post Office loses billions of dollars every quarter.
Your larger point is sound--government bureaucracy doesn't necessarily mean higher overhead. But, I would rather see the one-cable-co one-phone-co monopolies broken up. Arkansas of all places has terrific connectivity because the Comcasts of the world never bothered locking the market up [arstechnica.com].
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I think you're missing the point. Sending a letter from New York City to Los Angeles isn't cheap because of Government Efficiency, and it's a poor example for AC to present to those "anti-government" types.
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Well, that's not quite right, either. The only reason, say, UPS can't deliver the mail is because it's illegal for them to touch your mailbox. Unlike roads, I don't think the public benefit of having a bankrupt, quasi-private agency deliver the mail outweighs the public cost of four million tons of junk mail and an $11.6 billion shortfall.
I'll agree that I'd rather see municipal broadband or government-leased lines than The Local Cable Monopoly.
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Re:SOCIALIZE! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a oft mentioned fallacy by the anti-government crowd. The cheapest way to get a letter (an actual paper one, not e-mail) from NYC to LA is via the US Postal Service.
What a horrible example. Of course it's the cheapest way. Legally, it's the only way to send a non-priority letter. Now, I don't have a beef with the postal service, and as far as postal services go the USPS is pretty good compared to what you find in other countries. But you can't knock private companies for not being competitive when they're not allowed to compete by law.
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Because it's a real-world case that interferes with Libertarian faith-based economics?
Where is this "law" that prevents FedEx, UPS, or DHL from shipping around pieces of paper for less money than the USPS?
Re:SOCIALIZE! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well it depends on your definition of efficient.
Private industry is extremely efficient at providing as little as possible for as much money as possible. So from the standpoint of owners it's very efficient.
The government on the other hand is good at providing large scale service for a lot of money. So if you look at it as a business, it's grossly inefficient. But the difference is that the 'owners' of the government are at the same time also customers, so they mostly end up better off, since they also get much better service from the government then they would from a private party.
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And thus the nail is squarely struck.
Private Industry has the goal of making money. So the most efficient way of making money will be pursued. This is typically by gaining a monopoly for a sought after service and charging as much as you can for it.
Governments have the option of changing their goals. For instance. Maybe a goal could be Healthy People. If that is your goal, then you use what resources are at your disposal to achieve that. Education, prevention, and therapy are available. Work out what
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The solution is competition, right? So I'd advocate a mixed system - the local government is responsible for connecting every home in the township or city or municipality or whatever you call it to the grid by a fiber network. Then any ISP in the country can bid to provide network connectivity and television choices over that network. The gover
Re:SOCIALIZE! (Score:5, Informative)
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USPS is burdened by Government dictating stuff that's popular but inefficient, such as keeping post offices open that have insufficient volume to justify their existence and keeping rates on first class postage artificially low. But, that's what happens when "someone else is paying for it" and democracy means polit
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Yes, but not for any of the reasons you cite. In the Bush years, the Republicans passed a law forcing the USPS to fully fund retirement benefits 75 years in advance. As in, they have to save money now for workers that haven't even been born yet.
No other entity, public or private, has to deal with those requirements. If it was FedEx singled out for this instead of the USPS, it would be FedEx facing "insol
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Re:It's an Internet (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I live in the sticks ( >70 miles outside of a major metro area), and in spite of a county population density of around 22 per sq. mile [wikipedia.org], I get 30mbps at $30/mo. (more often than not it drifts above 40, especially in winter when the tourists all stay home).
I could probably count on one hand, with all 5 fingers to spare, the number of "one percenters" who live out here.
It isn't fiber-to-the-doorstep, but given the low population and the alternatives in most other rural areas, it ain't half bad. *shrug*
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So Tilamook has great internet and great cheese? Cool! Curious to know how that happened. The internet, not the cheese.
Doesn't really prove anything, since you're clearly not typical. But the "1%" nonsense is getting old. Hey, I'm no TP worshiper of the free market, but blaming everything on the superrich is childish.
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Uh, did you miss the part where I called the 1% thing "nonsense"?
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Er, just pointing out, the 1% is not all "super rich". Not all 311,592 of them. Of course, there are super rich people in the 1%, but in order to be considered a 1%-er, statistically speaking, you "only" have to make about 3-400k a year.
Of course, this just serves to underline the income gap in the US when it's not the top 1% that's the ultra-rich, it's the top .01% or .001%.
Re:It's an Internet (Score:4, Insightful)
Gees dude do you know your mathematics at all 1%. Population of the US 311,591,917 - Jul 2011, now that's 311,592 people
Mathematics: 3,115,919 people.
More mathematics: Those people combined make 13.3% of the wealth and pay 22.3% of the federal income taxes (source [heritage.org]). This indicates the complete opposite of your use of the term "parasite", regardless of whether you look at the dollar value or the percentage.
Re:Because... (Score:4, Informative)
If you wanted to regulate an industry, you would want to fill your regulatory body with people who are experts on the industry. Well, where do you think experts on an industry typically come from? From the industry itself.
It's not cheap to build (Score:5, Interesting)
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Essentially it was $4k per subscriber. That's an awfully long payback when you are only getting less than a few hundred bucks a month
*facepalm*
$100/mo is 30% ROR - I don't know, but that is quite good. Even for 10% ROR, you know, $33/mo, it is not that expensive as infrastructure goes. And you can upsell your customers with lots of stuff over these connections, be it TV, or phone service, or security systems, etc.
Re:It's not cheap to build (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Somehow lots and lots of suburban households are able to be serviced with telephone, electricity, water, natural gas, and even cable television for ballpark $50-$100 per month each. It is just a basic consumer infrastructure problem, one that has been solved before literally billions of times already. Why are broadband companies so especially less competent than others at providing this kind of service?
I am paying $45 per month for a decent DSL service. There is plenty of money up for grabs to pay for these things, if the malignant monopolies can be pushed aside.
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That happens only if those utilities are socialized or at least heavily regulated.
The issue here is that networking and wireless are in the transition phase from newfangled with high investments to utilities which have to be regulated because otherwise the providers can squeeze the customers because there's no market, hence no competition.
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Not if you're used to making money with hardly any investment at all (because you're the incumbent) and have to pay off many people (execs, politicians ...)
Re:It's not cheap to build (Score:5, Insightful)
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Then explain why Verizon is on the forbes 50 and has one of THE highest margins in the fortune 500...
I bet most of the profits (Score:2, Insightful)
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And into greasing the wheels:
http://www.followthemoney.org/database/topcontributor.phtml?u=259&y=0 [followthemoney.org] (scroll down to see who they greased.)
This is a failure of LAW, not failure of ISP (Score:4, Insightful)
Just one change in the interpretation of the law, where the customer's right to withhold payment for service not received, regardless of what the business printed on their contracts would do the trick.
It would incentivize customer service instead of incentivizing legal trickery as it does now.
Can you imagine the legal representatives of some company defending themselves against a defamation lawsuit where some plaintiff is suing because the company screwed up his credit report ? The plaintiff shows the judge a http://www.speedtest.com/ [speedtest.com] report showing 23kB/sec when the company claimed a 3MB/sec speed? The corporate lawyer approaches the judge and shows the bill clearly showed $53.93 and the plaintiff only paid fifty cents!
The judge looks at the plaintiff's speedtest report and asks the corporate rep if the IP address on the sheet is theirs.... well follow your imagination of how that meeting should go.
A business license should not be an open pass for theft-by-one-sided contract.
The same reason our passenger rail system stinks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The same reason our passenger rail system stink (Score:5, Insightful)
This breaks down when you *aren't* far away from major, major cities (1 million plus), aren't far away from commuter towns (30k)... and can't get anything but Satellite or line of sight wireless. I am in this situation. It takes me 5 minutes, more or less, to get to town. I am within range of the circuit. The problem? There's a load coil in the line. Good for phones, bad for DSL. That's really the only thing stopping me from having way cheaper roughly 1.5mbps DSL.
This also breaks down when you pay lots of money *in the middle of the city.*
IMO, the basic, fundamental problem is that, because of the nature of the service - like electricity - we have monopolies with basically no competition. You either get DSL or Cable, pretty much... unless you're in one of the few fiber areas. That doesn't exactly generate much competition - one DSL company, one cable company. It's difficult to maintain a market-driven good-for-consumer-pricing environment when there's only one player, maybe two.
And then we get into caps and speed and all that, and it gets worse. ;)
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Replace it my hairy ass! They might want to actually attempt to install some of it! The fact that they choose not to and cherry-pick areas where density and demographics provide the highest and fastest payback likely has more to do with their choices of installation areas.
YOU are an apologist for these companies and there is no way around it. I first received DSL in my area in 2001. Optical links, used correctly, should be less, not more, expensive. It's not the hardware, it's the politics. The industry wan
Re:The same reason our passenger rail system stink (Score:5, Informative)
The country is big, with lots of low density areas. Thousands of miles of cable don't just pay for and install themselves, and the incentive to cover a lightly inhabited area just isn't there.
There were huge federal subsidies given to the telcos to build out internet infrastructure for exactly that reason. It was stolen and used to line the pockets of the telco investors instead.
Re:The same reason our passenger rail system stink (Score:4, Insightful)
Must be why Wyoming has no water or electricity. Can't be done.
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Re:The same reason our passenger rail system stink (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the usual crap excuse by people who don't want to admit that it's just a matter of money, i.e. regulation, incentives, taxation etc.
Europe and Russia have well developed (hence popular) passenger railway systems. Oh and the US used to also. You may want to look up why it was run down.
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They are also heavily subsidized and protected from competition, and they are still very expensive. In the end, they are not a good deal.
Re:The same reason our passenger rail system stink (Score:5, Interesting)
I hear this all the time. Sweden is less population dense than the US is! Estonia is less population dense than the US is! Norway is much less population dense than the US is! Why does New York City and San Francisco (the most population dense areas in the United States) get slower and more expensive internet than rural areas in Germany? Hey, Mexico has slower and more expensive internet than the US, and it is more population dense! Maybe it's an inverse relationship after all!
If you plot population density vs internet quality in countries, I don't think you'll come up with any clear trend. And if you only look at urban environments, internet in the USA is still crappy, which is another reason not to bother considering population when wondering why US telcos charge lots of money for low quality service.
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France is roughly equivalent to the state of California in size and population density. Please explain why California doesn't have passenger rail and internet service equivalent to France (listed in TFA).
'They' did not rewrite the rules (Score:2)
Your US and local Gubmint wrote, rewrote and and continues to rewrite rules to keep themselves funded and local monopolies de jure.
Pleas stop blaming the (now thousands of) companies because you keep electing leeches.
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Fair enough.
Does this figure in government subsidies? (Score:2)
Don't different countries subsidize the internet in different ways, and to different extents?
If I pay $20 a month to my ISP, then another $20 to my government, to subsidize the ISP, it's the same as paying $40 a month for an unsubsidized ISP. But this calculation may only look at the money paid directly to the ISP.
Re:Does this figure in government subsidies? (Score:5, Informative)
According to TFA, telecom companies received $3000 per household in subsidies over the years, so it's not like US internet is unsubsidized.
In my country (the Netherlands) local governments put coax in the ground in all non-rural areas for radio and TV. Then at the time of the dot-com boom, those coax networks were sold to telecom operators at ridiculously high prices. They financed that by issuing stocks, which lost most of their value when the bubble burst. So effectively it was the stock holders who bought overpriced telecom stocks who paid for the broadband infrastructure.
Ah, regulations... (Score:2)
There is no problem that cannot be solved, or created, by adding another layer of regulation.
Misses infrastructure reality (Score:2)
Any book that wants to claim to talk about US Internet speeds has to deal with the fact that our average local loops are significantly longer than those of most other countries.
I think there is a great detective story here, because it isn't just a rural or suburban detached house issue, but even in cities the average local loop length is longer, and every meter cuts down on DSL speed.
I suspect that in the 70's and 80's a lot of central offices were consolidated, which made tons of sense for efficient voice
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People still use DSL?
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Ok, so, we've known for awhile that our landline infrastructure really doesn't make sense for data. I believe we have some of the oldest phone infrastructure still in use on earth.
It's all relative (Score:2)
Relative can be made objective too (Score:3)
It'll always be of a certain speed and at a certain price. Some people will be happy with that. Some will think it's too slow. Some will think it's too expensive.
Is "substantially slower than what is available in other countries at a comparable price" objective enough?
almost a monopoly (Score:2)
sure (Score:4, Interesting)
The main reason American Internet service is slow and expensive is that it's been left in the hands of private corporations instead of treated as a regulated utility.
The secondary reason is that there has been such an enormous consolidation among providers that there are now 3 or 4 companies providing most of the nation's Internet.
End-game laissez-faire looks like this: dog eat dog leaves just a few very big dogs, and they can then pretty much just split up the customers so there is practically no need for competition. It's happened across American corporate culture. Five or fewer corporations where there were once hundreds if not thousands. I was reading the other day that there used to be hundreds of corporations in the packaging business. You know, making boxes and cartons? Now there are basically two and one of them is a multi-national based in New Zealand. The number of banks has been cut in half every couple of years for three decades.
Does anyone believe that AT&T feels it has to be competitive?
Manufacturing scarcity - TANSTAAFM (Score:5, Interesting)
This Catbeller has been banging this drum for over eleven years, may I just say?
The "free market" ain't, and never can be, free, when you are dealing with players who understand the markets better than you do, and, furthermore, will cheat like motherfuckers. Conspiracy isn't necessary. The unwritten rules are always clear. Manufacture scarcity.
The new forestry corporations did it in the late 80s, buying up forests and rights, until in 1992 they tripled wood prices overnight, blaming Clinton and his evil environmental regulations, which didn't exist yet, being as he just was elected, for the cause. They cornered the market and fixed prices. The on;y congresscitter to object was fabulously ejected by them funding his shiny new opponent. No one else dared say a word.
Enron INfamously pretended that evil regulations made them incapable of restraining costs as they shut down power plants on mathematicians say-so to jack prices. California's entire budget mess for the last ten years can be traced back to that robbery. Free market is only free for those who control the market.
Enron not-so-famously was hell-bent on cornering the world's water supplies in drought areas - guess why... but don't worry, in their absence other bastards have bought up water rights, and soon "scarcity" will quintuple water prices across the world.
Kucinich in Cleveland was right, when he said the new private power companies would raise rates after they took over power grids. Cleveland to this day still has lower electrical bills than all the surrounding cities with free-market electric companies gouging them for decades.
And internet and radio internet... ah, so damned obviously they have refused to build infrastructure and have been "forced" to raise prices while the rest of the world simply licenses companies to build infrastructure at a decent price. Eleven YEARS ago, here, I posted a quick calculation: how much have people paid, in total, for DSL, cable, and modem charges combined - and how much had the telcos actually spent. It's eleven years later. We've pumped a good chunk of a trillion into their pockets, and they've spent a tiny fraction of that on actual buildout. They are taking us like a lost tourist.
Most of the rest of the world does it correctly. Scale has nothing to do with it. We don't have a limited amount of cash and a limited workforce; our companies can scale up any buildout. THEY DON'T WANT TO.
Copy whatever country did it right. Let local muni governments build out the systems for a fraction of the cost that these lying sacks of excrement quote. Let this end. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Market. Not when the "free" market companies can buy each other or merge, thus eliminating the market, or simply cooperate by obeying unwritten rules to jackup prices.
well cable can do better but it needs more hardwar (Score:2)
well cable can do better but it needs more newer hardware to make room.
Most cable systems are stuck if lot's of old MPEG 2 only boxes and stuff that top's out at 750 MHz - 864 MHz and lot's of sd only boxes as well.
node splits and SDV can help as well.
DSL is running on the old phone wires and it's needs RT near by to be able to offer high speeds.
Fiber is fast but digging up to install it is the hard part and all the other wires and pipes in the way makes it even harder to install.
People are talking about population density (Score:5, Informative)
In Finland we, in contrary to Sweden, have the industry building out the networks for their own money. Very little is subsidized unlike in Sweden. Still we are able to have really good internet connections. Currently we pay around 30-50euro/month for 24 / 2mbit ADSL (depending on where you live and ISP) in most places where fiber isn't avaliable but fibre is in general being expanded in most population centers and then some local areas such as small municipalities build their own fiber networks.
Where you can get access to fiber you pay the same for a significantly faster connection. I know for example that in my appartment building I would get 250mbit for 50/euro month.
As a matter of fact we are aiming at being able to provide 100mbit to everyone by 2015 source from the finnish broadcasting company [yle.fi]
It doesn't matter how you reason, there's absolutely no reason what so ever that the major population centers in the US wouldn't have high speed internet access for affordable prices except the telco cartels.
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Finland has roughly 5.4 million people, total. The top nine metropolitan areas in the US have 5.4 million people or more and each occupy less land area than Finland. If Finland's population can support ISPs that offer fast service without subsidy, why can't each of these major metropolitan areas do the same.
It makes sense that East Bumfuck doesn't have gigabit internet access, but I live in one of these major metropolitan areas (right fucking downtown) and can't get anything better than 15 Mbps for $80. Why
Capitalism is dead in the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
To take a current example, look at Samsung vs. Apple. No matter who wins, users loose. Where Apple is winning they are trying to eliminate Samsung, and vice versa. Whoever wins, your costs will be artificially high, and your service will suck.
The banking industry is the same way. So is agribusiness. At the consumer level supermarkets have razor thin profit margins, but the big players in food production also form a corrupt insiders club: Monsanto, Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland. Individual farmers are not agribusiness insiders, they are another group of victims.
This is capitalism in name only. It does not produce the benefits for society that is the claimed rational for a capitalist economy. As a consumer you have no meaningful choices because all the vendors are corrupt and inefficient. It's organized theft at a global scale.
Politicians are under regulatory capture (Score:2)
"The US has the best government money can buy." This whole regulatory capture issue starts at the top. With de facto bribery being legalized, people who are best at that fundraising game become politicians. They are the ultimate regulators, a frightening thought. They are first legislators. They write the laws and appoint people to see that they are enforced.
"Crony capitalism" is the term we're looking for. When government intervenes in the markets, hold onto your wallets. It's always done under the gui
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keep in mind (Score:2)
I think US Internet and wireless service suck: they are slow and overpriced. And Johnson is right: that's due to regulatory capture, insanely consumer-hostile regulations written by Internet and wireless companies. We either need a lot more regulation of these companies or a lot less regulation (and more competition), but right now, regulations make entry into the market hard, yet allow these companies to screw consumers any way they want.
Having said that, however, keep in mind that the French have much le
Re:But calculate the same as the beer calculation (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:But calculate the same as the beer calculation (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you factor in locations in the US, where the population density is comparable to Japan's?
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I always though people complaining about lower population density, were complaining about the last mile. Do you mean to say fiber between major interconnects is very very expensive too? Do you have any sources for this claim? And how does Japan avoid these interconnect issues (I assume they interconnect with a lot of countries to help support their last mile)
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So what you are saying is fiber laying should be done state by state, and should not be attempted to be done country wide at the same time? Why didnt the ISPs think of this?
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The habitable area of Japan is miniscule. It would be more like comparing to Delaware or Massachusets.
South Korea is a special case. (Score:5, Interesting)
South Korea has a special circumstance: (According to a marketing guy at a router company where I worked) About 95% of their population lives in giant apartment buildings - large enough that they have telephone central offices in their basements.
You don't have to dig up the neighborhood to get the service to them. You can just put an edge router in the basement, run indoor cat5-or-better up the existing communication conduits (if it wasn't there already), and feed them 100M (maybe 1G by now) Ethernet, which gets from building to building and to the backbone via fibers in the bundle that was already there (in old construction) for the telephone service. This makes installation VERY cheap and wiring distances short enough that high speeds are easy.
With that speed available the biggest bandwidth user (according to this guy) was live 1-to-1 naked video "phone calls" between youngsters of opposite sexes still living with their parents. It let them do their courtship form their bedrooms without being in each other's presence unsupervised, or making physical contact (either of which would cause much consternation with their elders in their strongly regimented society). It's much like the way affordable automobiles and drive-in movies changed the courtship habits in the US, especially after WW II.
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South Korea has a special circumstance: (According to a marketing guy at a router company where I worked) About 95% of their population lives in giant apartment buildings - large enough that they have telephone central offices in their basements.
So, any area where people live or work in giant buildings should have great Internet? Then why is the availability of good broadband in Lower Manhattan so poor?
The urban density excuse is ridiculous. It doesn't explain why sub-sub-suburban Sebastopol, CA has FIOS. The explanation is an independent ISP [pressdemocrat.com] that somehow hasn't gotten screwed over by the legacy carriers and media conglomerates.
Telecom in the U.S. just does not have enough competition. If there's enough competition, problems like population densit
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Wow, it looks like SimCity with half the building models removed!
Re: but! (Score:4, Funny)
What about American exceptionalism?!?
Beer is cheap [slashdot.org]. What could be better than that!
USA! USA! USA!
Re:So what do we do? (Score:4, Insightful)
Those people from 40 years ago? They're the ones in charge now.
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So how about it slashdotters -- any ideas?
What if we all went and got bridging routers, and just made one big fuckin' mesh network?
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Start lynching CEOs.
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30 years ago [...] if I needed to change my reservations I would just have called the hotel from a payphone.
In 1982, were the phone companies still maintaining their payphones instead of decommissioning them as they do in 2012?
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Both technologies [high-speed Internet and cellular phones] are great examples of the FAILURE OF CAPITALISM in an unregulated and greed driven free market system.
As I understand it this is primarily a failure of the regulators, who mistakenly thought that two competitors are "competition". In fact the equilibrium with two is to split the customer base about equally and keep the price as high as practical. They can do this with price signals and market research rather than explicit collusion (and don't eve
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Our Cell industry IS largely unregulated - we think of the FCC as performing that function - but compared to most other Western countries, they aren't doing much. Same as ISPs (which, in fact, overlap the Cell industry quite a bit.)
Lobbying (and the results it produces) are a capitalist idea, and they result in bad or no regulation..
Re:One could ask the same question about Cell serv (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's so *unregulated,* why does so much money go from telecoms to congress in the form of lobbying?
The word you're looking for is: bribery.
This is a point where ideology really fraks things up: all regulation is not bad. You drink clean water, eat safe food, and breath clean air BECAUSE OF REGULATIONS. Regulations are bad when they favor the few over the many, especially when the few are taking advantage of the many. In this case, the "regulations" in place are largely from the few (wealthy and dishonest) managing to bribe enough people to make laws to give them more power and control, AT THE EXPENSE of everyone else.
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The internet backbone has multiple routes between two points, but it is far from a complete graph. It is probably pretty close to being a planar graph, in which case the number of links grows linearly with the number of nodes. The number of nodes per subscriber is probably higher in rural areas, but that doesn't explain why many urban areas can't get fast and cheap internet either.
Below the backbone level, the vast majority of connections has only one upstream route, so the topology there is a tree. Certain
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If the number of links grows linearly, then your performance is going to be poor -- though this may be hidden by over-subscription.
Keep in mind that if your network is actually a tree, there is only one route from any point to any other, so you have no redundancy. (It is also possible the redundancy/network complexity is not directly obvious -- when I was dealing with these matters we had a single IP PVC set up over a frame relay network -- even though it looked like a single IP connection, there were failo
Single digit GB/mo cap (Score:2)
What's wrong with high speed (LTE) wireless?
The fact that it's being rolled out with the same single digit GB/mo cap as 3G and satellite.