Why Is US Broadband So Slow? 513
phantomfive writes "Verizon has said they will not be digging new lines any time soon. Time-Warner's cash flow goes towards paying down debt, not laying down fiber. AT&T is doing everything they can to slow deployment of Google fiber. How can the situation be improved? Mainly by expediting right-of-way access, permits, and inspections, according to Andy Kessler. That is how Google was able to afford to lay down fiber in Austin, and how VTel was able to do it in Vermont (gigabit connections for $35 a month)."
How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Interesting)
Competition... From the government, if necessary. Let's put our tax dollars to work for us for a change.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not competition, it's service. The government is meant to serve the people, and sometimes that means providing utilities for the public, with the public's input and desires accommodated.
As long as we keep private enterprise from buying up the regulations anyway.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not competition, it's service
Say what ??
Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's, US used to be the top country in the world in term of broadband competition.
I was one of the many thousands who were pulling cables in order to hook up the communities - and then the government stepped in, and gave the telco / cable operator the rights over others - which leads to what we have today, a scene where competition has been artificially choked off, and the country has suffered for it !
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've just noted that there is an existing infrastructure, and it is common to live off of existing infrastructure until forced to move off it. To that I will add that if I recall correctly, 10 years ago 90% of the optical fiber that existed was dark - there wasn't enough demand for it due to overbuilding in previous years. I wouldn't be surprised if that had something to do with the leisurely pace in adding both capacity and speed.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Interesting)
You've just noted that there is an existing infrastructure, and it is common to live off of existing infrastructure until forced to move off it. To that I will add that if I recall correctly, 10 years ago 90% of the optical fiber that existed was dark - there wasn't enough demand for it due to overbuilding in previous years. I wouldn't be surprised if that had something to do with the leisurely pace in adding both capacity and speed.
Bingo. The ISP I work for isn't looking at laying new fiber in trenches, what we're looking at is upgrading the equipment on either end. There are plenty of situations where an existing fiber pair can carry 10x or 100x more data simply by putting better optics on it, but that shit isn't cheap. Then you have to figure that Carrier-grade routers and switches also need to be upgraded, and those things can get really fucking expensive. And all the internal bandwidth in the world won't do your customer jack shit if you can't find peering/transit partners who are willing to increase the capacity at the handoff points without charging a shitload of money.
Sure, more fiber is better, but it's only a small part of the overall picture.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Funny)
yeah, but if pay $20 a month for internet you should upgrade all that like yesterday so netflix can send 50mbps blu ray quality streams to me
Re: How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
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My cable internet service has been $20-30 over the past 10 years with 3 different cable companies. Time Warner was one of them, and charged $20 most of the time I was subscribed.
Re: How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Informative)
Because just going to their web page is hard ...
http://ny-offer.aiprx.timewarn... [timewarnercable.com]
You're such a lazy fuck.
Thats $15 for 2Mbps down / 1Mbps up... My internet provider here in Sweden don't event have something that slow.
Re: How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct the US does not even place in the top 20 internet connection world wide anymore.
Mostly due to greed of US Telcos which is obvious after you read about them stealing
$300 billion in tax payer money like the thieves that they are.
http://www.newnetworks.com/bro... [newnetworks.com]
Re: How can the situation be improved? (Score:4, Informative)
My mobile phone is 60Mb down / 10 Mb up on a good day, 20Mb down 3-4Mb up on a bad day. Unlimited data.
The US has serious issues.
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Re: How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Informative)
Me. I pay 15€/month for 100Mbps down 10Mbps up over fiber in east Europe country. Another 6€ for TV and phone delivered on the same connection. The rest of the life here sucks, but that internet connection is great.
Re: How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who the hell gets high speed Internet for $20/mo?
Japan. Korea. Eastern Europe. Even some western European countries give you pretty good speeds for $20/month, with no cap.
Apologists will point to differences in population density, geography, history and so forth, but the simple fact is that the US is being raped by ISPs. The UK is in the same situation, if it makes you feel any better.
Re: How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Informative)
"Broadband" means multiple signal on the same wire. It's the opposite of baseband, like ethernet.
The FCC might just as well define "Basic Broadband" as "a box of cookies"... It's just that stupid.
1 option here - Comcast (Score:4, Informative)
20 mbps/$76mo. Steadily increases. It started out $20 for first 6 mos, then $50 something after that, 5 years later in the same apartment it's ~$76 with nothing but internet.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
The macroeconomic costs of having all roads be private would be huge. There would be a lot of lost productivity(not to mention fuel wastage) just on the collection of tolls. And of course anyone who owns property anywhere could find themselves at the mercy of a private interest who can essentially blackmail them by cutting off access to their home or business. Another example of an essential service where the government should, and in most rich places in the world, has intervened is insurance. The fact that the US pays so much more for getting so much less than countries with private health care systems has shown that private industry is either unwilling or unable to provide insurance at reasonable cost, and thus it must be taken away from them. Same with broadband, if US providers don't prove they are capable of *gasp* actually providing a decent service at a decent price then the government should step in. Broadband is in the new economy an "essential service", essentially the "roads" of the internet.
The classic straw man argument is of course "well then why doesn't the government run food stores? Everyone needs food!". While this is true, food retailing(not really going to go into production, which is a separate story) is actually one of the most competitive industries in the US. Competition forces companies to provide decent service at very low margins(1-2% in some cases). If the broadband industry were more like the food distribution industry then we wouldn't even have to discuss a government take-over.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, the government should step in when private industry is either unwilling or unable to provide essential services at a reasonable cost, the keywords being essential and reasonable.
The reverse sadly is true today. Local governments, likely under the influence of paid lobbyists working for existing corporate/telco interests, are actively writing laws to block the spread of broadband. Read for yourself the story of how the Kansas Legislature is trying to stop Google Fiber from expanding in Kansas [consumerist.com].
Best part is: the Senate bill [kslegislature.org] states that the goal [muninetworks.org] is to
"encourage the development and widespread use of technological advances in providing video, telecommunications and broadband services at competitive rates; and ensure that video, telecommunications and broadband services are each provided within a consistent, comprehensive and nondiscriminatory federal, state and local government framework."
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Do you pay to drive from one end of a WalMart parking lot to the other? It's private. Why aren't there any tolls?
Neighborhoods sometimes have private roads, and don't charge tolls. The residents pay for road upkeep through a property owner's association. Private roads through a business district could be maintained the same way, either through contracting work on their road or paying a road company in possession of the road a fee for its use. The net effect would be the same as paying for road maintenance t
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Do you pay to drive from one end of a WalMart parking lot to the other? It's private. Why aren't there any tolls?"
Two thoughts on that.
1. They don't charge tolls because they don't want to irritate potential customers.
2. The are charging a toll. It's built into the cost of their products.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you pay to drive from one end of a WalMart parking lot to the other? It's private. Why aren't there any tolls?
You should read about private toll roads/bridges. [wikipedia.org]
They come into existence one of two ways (AFAIK):
1. State Governments that are desperate for cash will literally sell the road/bridge to a private company, who puts up tolls.
2. State Governments that are desperate for cash will sell the right to build a private toll road/bridge to a private company,
always with guarantees that the State won't build another road/bridge within XY miles or something to that effect.
#2 almost always involves the State invoking eminent domain on behalf of private corporations.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
A property owner's association eh? If only there was some slightly larger public body that could provide broadband internet strictly for the benefit of it's members rather than for profit. Perhaps it could feature democratically elected managers. Of course it would have to collect dues from each resident in the area somehow.
You know, that's starting to sound a lot like local government.
Meanwhile horror and comedy stories about HOAs are legion.
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Mmm.. no. it's not that simple. When you give ANY entity dominating control, it gets lazy. The government is a prime example of this, not an exception. They're no better than a corporate oligarchy cornering the market. The only way for private enterprise to buy up regulations is if the government offers them for sale in the first place.
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You appear to ignore human nature completely in your rather convoluted spin.
Reality is, if any entity has enough money to influence people in key positions, and have enough interest in doing so, they will. That is why all functioning entities ran by humans have bureaucracy and internal policing. It's to reduce the impact of corruption's pressure on key positions.
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and you appear to fail reading comprehension. If anything, you support my position. It's true, any group of humans with sufficient power is subject to excessive bouts of self-interest. If you read the anon I responded to, you'll see that it is him who is biased. I was pointing that out to him.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not competition, it's service. The government is meant to serve the people, and sometimes that means providing utilities for the public, with the public's input and desires accommodated.
As long as we keep private enterprise from buying up the regulations anyway.
Arguably, 'internet access' can be broken down into two (broad) components, one a fairly natural 'utility' and one much easier to build a functional marketplace for.
The last-mile bit pipe between your house and whatever the local aggregation point is is, like most 'utilities' strongly inclined toward being a natural monopoly. Not as bad as something like roads(where running multiple competing roads simply wouldn't fit, in most cases); but between the cost and the disruption of laying additional runs, there is very, very strong pressure toward a sharply limited number of, typically incumbent, wireline players, with maybe a feeble wireless competitor that is compelling if you use under 5GB a month.
Once you hit the aggregation point, though, anything that flows over IP can, relatively easily, be offered for hookup to your pipe. Cheap residential ISPs, fancier offerings with loads of static IPs and symmetric bandwidth, assorted VOIP and video offerings, anything you can shove down a pipe.
Keeping the connection between me and the aggregation point installed, maintained, and lit seems like a perfectly sensible function for either the local municipality, or a suitably-tamed contract operator(It's a matter of pragmatism and local choice whether the work be done by municipal employees or an outside firm; but natural monopolies are to be kept on very short leashes). Once you hit the aggregation point, though, the more the merrier. Subscribing or unsubscribing is just a few ruleset changes, so can be fairly frictionless, and this avoids any...potentially unseemly....favor or disfavor by the municipal government toward specific content or services. They just keep the lights on, you buy what you want, or nothing at all(though, even if you buy nothing, it might well be cost-effective for the municipality itself to still offer access to its own site, emergency services contacts, etc. to residents, since traffic on the LAN costs near zero.
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it will never improve and here is why. if an area has a choice of cable/internet providers they will always be running marketing promotions to steal each other's customers. a person can simply move back and forth since the product is the same and a commodity. at some point one of them will go under. happened in every previous situation like this
RCN tried to compete in the northeast and failed. its expensive to build out a network. the content people want a lot of money for the content. Comcast pays 1/3 of r
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really? time warner cable has to share wires due to a merger years ago and earthlink is more expensive than going straight through TWC
with DSL it was artificially low prices to grab customers
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i have family on comcast and they never complained
i've had problems on time warner. get a new dociss 3 modem for the better error correction for old wiring. get all your stuff off wifi and onto cat 5. especially if your neighbors have wifi. i used to get disconnected from netflix and xbox live all the time on wifi. switched to cat5 and it's like night and day
govt enforces the monopoly. Want govt monopoly? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's governments that enforce the current monopolies and dualopies, what they call a "franchise".
Do you really want government "competing", keeping ie Google fiber out while they offer up government service that works as well as Congress does, with DMV style customer service, and healthcare.gov quality? The way government would "compete" would be to simply deny permits to any company offering a better service that what government bureaucrats and theirlobbyist friends throw together.
The only large-scale suc
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NYC there are no franchises and the two cable companies have different areas carved out. with FIOS in parts as well. no one will build in the other's area because by the time you lay the wire and run the marketing promotion, you won't make any money
NYC govt web site says otherwise, maps franchise (Score:3)
The New York City web site says that's incorrect. According to the city government, they grant franchises to specific companies to serve specific parts of the city. Here's the map of authorized service areas:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/... [nyc.gov]
Re:govt enforces the monopoly. Want govt monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about Government.
I have issues with them, too; but I'd rather a non-corporate entity build out and even own our infrastructure than profitmongers!
roads, water, electricity, bridges: all were started by government and that was the major funder. we would not have postal system and roads 'to everywhere' if the decision was left to the profiteering ones.
infrastructure is one of the things goverments do best.
as for your bullshit distraction about how well congress works, that's neither here nor there nor part of any thread on this topic. sheesh.
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I have issues with them, too; but I'd rather a non-corporate entity build out and even own our infrastructure than profitmongers!
I have news for you: local governments are incorporated, too.
And don't think for a second that the people involved in local government aren't interested in making decisions that personally profit themselves and their friends.
historically inaccurate (Score:2)
You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. Electricity, for example. Started by government? No, governments were fairly late entrants. The first electric utility was and Calder and Barnet, in Godalming. Several of the earliest electric networks were run by Edison.
Roads are most often built by governments these days, at a cost of about $1 million / mile. I get to see them allot, sitting in gridlock we paid millions for. Eventually I get home and turn on my lights, powered by cheap, rel
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My internet is never gridlocked like the government roads are.
Really? My internet through Comcast is great and I get the speeds I pay for, but only during non-peak times much like non-rush hour traffic on the roads. However, the speeds are abysmal on nights and weekends much like rush hour traffic to and from work.
We can add as many lanes as we would like to the expressways (internet backbones, e.g. cogent) to try and ease congestion, but at the end of the day it is the exit ramps (ATT/Verizon/Comcast/TWC/etc cross-carrier connections) and the local "last mile" road
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To get from where I live to Chicago I'd take I-80 to I-90.
Massive infrastructure with no obvious monetization plans?
Yes. Government.
There were many years between when we had cars and when we had a major national highway system. Plenty of time to let a private enterprise get in that space.
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I would pay taxes for the local government to lay fiber to each house. And terminate them at a government owned facility.
Then, let the various ISP's compete on price / service / etc for who will get my fees for Internet connectivity.
The government then charges a co-location fee from the ISP's who want to participate. To cover the heating / AC / physical security / etc costs of that facility. With a very slight (5%?) overage to cover updates/upgrades.
The tradgedy of the comms (Score:5, Interesting)
I had both hooked up and several months of free pay TV since they were both running at a loss to attract customers with "free trials", I also tripled the money I paid for 1000 shares in the initial government prospectus. The major telco who inherited the copper from the government was forced to split the business into wholesale and retail companies. The retail end was supposed to compete on a level playing field with other retailers, ( which going by the plethora of independent ISP's we have today is one part of the sell off that seemed to work rather well). Now we have gone full circle and are building a single publically funded fibre network under the banner "NBN" which started off as "FTTP for everyone" but has now been trimmed to "FTTN for most". The NBN basically owns and maintains the network and will charge retailers a usage fee.
In other words, after a 20yr lead, private enterprise has failed to deliver the infrastructure that the government is now attempting to build. For now most people outside the middle class suburbs (or living in a flat/unit) are on DSL over the original (government built) copper network. My hope for the next 20yrs is that they can claw back that taxpayer investment from the private companies who will profit from the new "free market" that the infrastructure will provide.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed - more competition is needed.
I moved here to the US from Australia last year. While speeds in Australia are nothing spectacular, we did have a LOT of choice when it came to ISPs. In Australia, in a mid-sized city (~350,000 people), there was a choice of 20-30 ISPs (ADSL2+, VDSL2 or in some areas, fibre). Here in the US, in a similarly-sized city, I have a choice of precisely one provider (the local cable monopoly).
Ok that's not entirely true - I also have AT&T DSL as a choice, at a whopping maximum speed of 6 Mbps down / 512 kbps up. But really, that's a non-option - it costs roughly the same and is 10 times slower than cable. (That upstream speed in particular is ridiculous in the year 2014 ... no idea why they don't use ADSL2+ with Annex M or similar tech to boost that up to 1-2 Mbps at least ... but I digress)
Having at least just a couple more options for ISPs would help, you'd think. With the vast majority of people in the US having only one or two choices of provider, what incentive do those providers have to improve their product? They have a captive customer base who literally have nowhere else to turn.
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I would love to get your local cable monopoly, or 6 Mbps choice.
In Venezuela, we get 1.5 Mbps on average.
You guys aren't that bad, you just can't compete with Europe or Asia (how should you? the US is quite bigger and harder to lay down fiber)
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)
You guys aren't that bad, you just can't compete with Europe or Asia (how should you? the US is quite bigger and harder to lay down fiber)
That is a bit of strange myth. Apart from central US perhaps being a bit empty many states are comparable to European nations.
Take for example California, it is just marginally smaller than Sweden and approximately the same shape. With four times the population one would think that the internet should be faster, cheaper or at least comparable.
It is all just politics.
Re:How can the situation be improved? (Score:4, Insightful)
It wont stop the incumbents from plotting and scheming to fuck it up. Look at Australia's experience, designed and underway and national NBN fibre to the home network. A change of government blatantly sponsored by the News Corporation the owners of Fox not-News and it gets scrapped with nothing but bullshit and PR=B$ left over about vague promises and a scam to sell the taxpayers the worthless rotting copper left in the ground for billions of dollars. Now matter what get's done, they will plot and scheme and lobby to undo it. They want their 1980s media model back where they had total control and you had to pay to be heard.
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Its not entirely clear that that situation is going to play out yet. The Tasmanian phone pole fibre trials would seem to point to anyone they hire looking at the books and saying "look, at worst you'll pay the same money for doing absolutely nothing over the next 5 years, only people will notice".
I'm still half-expecting it to be "discovered" how to do FTTH cheaply by them.
And then we get to focus on digging in to save Medicare...
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Yeah agreed. I think the rollout will continue in many areas as originally planned. Scope of fibre might be cut back a bit, and it might take longer than Labor's (probably overambitious) schedule, but I don't think the NBN is completely a lost cause.
At least that's what I hope. Maybe I'm just clutching at straws hoping to get some sweet sweet fibre. My parents are lucky enough to be on the NBN already, before it got halted ... they opted for the 50/20 speed tier (rather than 100/40), but even that is very,
Why Is US Broadband So Slow? (Score:5, Insightful)
Answer: corporate greed.
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You mean to tell me the same crooks that run cellular service will magically become inexpensive and high quality if they are allowed to go at it with wired service?
Lets go Google Fiber (Score:2)
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I'm no fan of Comcast, but, really, this is exactly what every for-profit business does. If you can get people to pay you $10 for a widget instead of $5 then you charge them $10.
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And the other cable companies are free from NSA surveillance, is that what you're saying? Don't be naive. NSA has its fingers in ALL of them.
Heck, they're not even bothering with individual companies and are plugged right into the main trunk [thehindu.com].
1 Mbps in Seattle (Score:2, Interesting)
Comcast doesn't cover all of the city, Frontier only offers service in a few tiny areas far away from the city, and CenturyLink suffers with mostly 40+ year-old wiring and equipment in most of the city, so those of us that can get 1 Mbps reliably here are better off than many. I'm right at the edge of service, so some of my neighbors down the street can't even get DSL. Dial-up is their only option. Because the city government is anti-Internet, they will not allow competition or even easy upgrade permits
Big picture remedy (Score:5, Insightful)
national franchise rights and debt (Score:4, Interesting)
as it is now, you have to ask every hick town for permission to lay cable and allow them to extort you via yarn museums and other costs
george bush tried to pass national franchise rights but it was fought by all the hick towns who keep taxes artificially low and leech off everyone else. and when telecoms refuse to pay, people there whine how they are underserved
and contrary to populist belief, the telecoms spend billions of $$$ every year in capital expenses. and they borrow to do so. comcast is $44 billion in debt. Time warner is $25 billion in debt. AT&T is also carrying some insane debt from its idiotic shopping spree almost 15 years ago to become a cable company. back then it cost almost $100 billion. its all in the public financial statements they file. they might not have FTTH, but cable and telecoms have spent tens of billions if not hundreds of billions of $$$ over the last 20 years building out their networks and the bill is now due. meanwhile newcomers like google have no debt and lots of cash and can invest a lot of money into FTTH and other ventures.
not being evil, just a fact of life. it has happened before and it will happen again. wintel beat IBM. and now IOS/Android/ARM/Qualcomm is beating wintel. AT&T and then the baby bells built out an amazing PSTN network and the cable companies came in with unlimited local and long distance calling to steal the customers. railroads built out a national rail network and the airlines and cars came in to steal their profits as well
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and contrary to populist belief, the telecoms spend billions of $$$ every year in capital expenses. and they borrow to do so. comcast is $44 billion in debt. Time warner is $25 billion in debt. AT&T is also carrying some insane debt from its idiotic shopping spree almost 15 years ago to become a cable company. back then it cost almost $100 billion. its all in the public financial statements they file. they might not have FTTH, but cable and telecoms have spent tens of billions if not hundreds of billions of $$$ over the last 20 years building out their networks and the bill is now due. meanwhile newcomers like google have no debt and lots of cash and can invest a lot of money into FTTH and other ventures.
not being evil, just a fact of life. it has happened before and it will happen again. wintel beat IBM. and now IOS/Android/ARM/Qualcomm is beating wintel. AT&T and then the baby bells built out an amazing PSTN network and the cable companies came in with unlimited local and long distance calling to steal the customers. railroads built out a national rail network and the airlines and cars came in to steal their profits as well
And they've gotten billions in tax breaks, and the government ignoring monopoly laws for them in exchange for building out those networks. Which they still own, and get to charge any third party who tries to "compete" with them for the privileged of using. They decided to pocket the extras as profit instead of using it for what it was supposed to be for, that's their greed and poor planning and their problem.
The government paid them to build out their networks for better service, and they spent the money on
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and last year comcast spent $7 billion on capital upgrades
what's your point? they spent almost $20 billion to pay for all the TV shows on their service. they spent $2.5 billion paying debt they took on to build out their network
when cable internet first started it was less than 1mbps. now its 100mbps over the same wires.
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$2 billion profit on $64 billion of revenue is not greed, its average profit margins
and i watch TV. i'd rather pay for slower internet and have better content on TV and better ways to access it like live tv on mobile devices and computers. my wife can watch reality tv and i'll watch a game on the ipad in the kitchen
Re:national franchise rights and debt (Score:5, Informative)
WSJ article (Score:2, Informative)
This article is in the Wall Street journal. That's suspicious right there. Of course they'd find a way to blame government regulation and interference for the problem, rather than abuse of government power to form and support monopolies.
I'm not saying their point is completely without merit. But I tend to think other factors exert more influence over why we have such relatively slow Internet service.
Regulatory capture (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course they'd find a way to blame government regulation and interference for the problem, rather than abuse of government power to form and support monopolies.
They're two words for the same thing: government failure [wikipedia.org] in the form of regulatory capture [wikipedia.org]. Granting a monopoly privilege certainly qualifies as "regulation and interference".
lack of local government oversight is the cause (Score:2)
The article's assessment is mostly correct. It even correctly mentioned that the previous net neutrality rules were unconstitutional. Except the article neglected the fact that new rules forcing local municipality to open up rights of way would also be unconstitutional because Federal agency has no power over local jurisdiction.
Forget about the federal or even the state government for a moment. The problem is that most people don't even know how to keep their local government in check. They increase local s
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I could be wrong, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I could be wrong, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we keep asking this question? (Score:5, Insightful)
This has been covered 2-3 times in the last year already, and the answers aren't going to change.
Corporate greed is the overwhelming reason.
Lack of necessary infrastructure is the other. But then that's because there is no system upgrading being done because of -- corporate greed.
Instead of having the same discussions about the problem, a more productive discussion would be about how to solve the issue and steps people can take to actually realize those solutions.
Re:Why do we keep asking this question? (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't work as an explanation because corporations in countries other than the U.S. (with faster speeds) are also greedy. So corporate greed isn't the cause per se. It may be necessary, but its not sufficient.
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Their governments are not corrupt like ours, or the they are government owned.
Re:Why do we keep asking this question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Other countries don't have lobbying loopholes where corporations can buy their own laws or have the issues with regulatory capture that the US does.
Who's getting slow internet? (Score:2)
Just curious. I'd assume it's the same rural folks who are against the high taxes that would widen pipes to their houses. I get 24/24 in suburban KC and I figure most similar communities are the same.
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or they live a person per mile and it would cost tens of thousands of $$$ just to wire their one home.
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I don't think we necessarily need f
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that's about average. nyc i was paying time warner cable $65 for 20/1 for a while. 15 years ago internet only for 1mbps cable would cost you close to $100
and i really can't believe tech people can be so dense. the internet is not your ISP. its not some magical one entity. its hundreds of networks connected together via different business agreements. just because you pay for 12/2 doesn't mean the server or network your linux iso sits on can support that for all their users at once. if you do a traceroute and
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KC has google fiber thus competition genius, the rest of us are paying out the ass for 20mb service that is down half the time
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and give google a few years
prices will go up as the media companies raise them
i'll take it as well if i could but google has no debt unlike every cable company in the USA with tens of billions in debt from past investments
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Well, lucky you, living in a city blessed by Google Fiber.
In the rest of the country, the Internet is generally slow. It doesn't matter if it's liberal or conservative. The government isn't forcing competition, and the government isn't taking the lead on building infrastructure, so the cable and phone companies invest way less on fast Internet than in almost every other industrial country.
Even in Silicon Valley, with its dense urbanization, left-leaning politics, and large population of knowledge workers, m
Municipal Fiber (Score:4, Interesting)
The best way is to allow cities and counties to create municipal fiber utilities that provide uniform and universal access of its citizens to ISP's. Municipalities can require multiple ISP's to service the city providing service level and price competition. The capital outlay for the fiber infrastructure is born by the city/county and is capitalized in use fees. Cities would set SLA standards for customer service response and repair times. Penalties for non-compliance and the right to replace ISP's that don't perform.
We would get the fastest and most robust internet connections available on the planet. We would get TV and phone service bundled on one wire. We would get lower monthly bills.
Re: (Score:2)
We would get the fastest and most robust internet connections available on the planet. We would get TV and phone service bundled on one wire. We would get lower monthly bills.
And unicorns would fly out of your butt.
No profit in Residential (Score:2)
At our office we have fiber from XO, TWTelecom, Abovenet, and a few other smaller players. Time Warner is spending ungodly sums to bring fiber down the corridor to serve ~5MM square feet of offices.
But, ATT only offers "up to 6mbit" DSL. Pricing is comparable for value, but the offering is simply not up to snuff.
Simple: LACK OF COMPETITION (Score:2)
Why does Slashdot keep asking rhetorical questions (Score:2)
Same reason we don't have chip & pin debit car (Score:2)
Money
Everyone wants improvement & no-one is willing to pay for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Google is willing to pay. Heck, some municipalities are willing to pay. This reminds me of an old joke:
A carpet-bagger and a Texas cowboy were seated on a train across from a very attractive woman. The carpet-bagger leans over and propositions the woman, offering her $10 for sex. Saying nothing, she just sits there, looking shocked. A few minutes later, the carpet-bagger offers her $25. At this point, the cowboy pulls out his revolver and shoots the man dead.
The woman gushes, "Thank you, sir. For standing
Yeah, right. (Score:2)
Expedite permits for people who refuse to do work.
How about: Municipalities write up a batch of permits and leave the utilities name blank. First one to schedule the work gets the permit and everyone else can go f*ck themselves.
Population density (Score:2)
It's all about population density. Google swoops in to a major metropolitan area and wow... they can deliver gigabit speeds for $35/month. What if you live in the other 99% of American where the population density isn't 50k per square mile? Oh, that's right, google isn't installing fiber there.
Differentiate between channel and service. (Score:3)
I think that the problem here is that there's no differentiation between the fiber itself and the service carried by it.
If a town lies down dark fiber and then lets the end customer choose operator using that fiber, then it wouldn't be a big problem.
As for putting fibers on utility poles - that's stupid for several reasons - risk of damage is high, complex arrangements on poles means high risk of conflicting wiring and it really destroys the general view of a small town having the air filled with wires crossing all over the place.
Compare Westford, MA, USA [google.com] with Kållered, Sweden [google.com].
It may be more expensive to bury the wires, but it will lower the costs in the long run.
To hell with "slow", just give me "cheap"!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't really care how "slow" my internet access is... Hulu streaming works at 500kbps, and I can't find any broadband providers that offer service speeds lower than that in the past decades. Just give me CHEAP!!!
I don't want to pay $65/mo to get bottom-tier FIOS speeds that I won't use. Yet FIOS deployment means I can't get cheap Verizon DSL anymore.
I don't want my cable company to eliminate their bottom tier, upgrading everyone to 15Mbps and doubling the monthly price. What does my mother need with 15Mbps internet access to read her e-mail? I know she'd rather have her $20/month back.
Where are all the cheap broadband packages going? I just checked due to another commenter, and see that Time Warner (not in my area) offers 2/1Mbps service for $15/mo... That would be pretty good, except they're about to get bought by Comcast, which doesn't offer anything below 3/1Mbps for $40/mo.
Screw your HighDef streaming video... Where's my entry-level internet service? When CELLULAR in cheaper, something has gone horribly wrong.
Re: (Score:3)
erh... BECAUSE cellular is cheaper, the low tier broadband packages are dying out. Think about it: You can have 20 bucks a month with 3G speed, either from a cable in your living room or wherever you choose to be with your cell phone.
Take a wild guess what most people will choose. Especially now with laptops that come equipped with the ability to insert a phone SIM, making phones obsolete if all you want is a data plan.
Why is it so slow? (Score:3)
Basically the inertia of massive infrastructure across a large, non-homogeneously settled area.
The insane costs and regulatory nightmare of laying new infrastructure.
Oh yeah, and the greed and apathy of the few major providers, standing atop their government authorized monopolies.
For the same reason its power and phone lines are (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was in the US last time, I was appalled. I saw phone wires and electricity wires hanging everywhere, phone distributors (I don't know the technical term in English for them, where a few wires from various households come together) that are a fire hazard, at best (that they're working was a veritable miracle), I've even seen hemp insulation.
Honestly, I thought I was somewhere in the USSR, somewhere behind the Ural, in the 60s.
Why is it in such a state? I can only assume it is, funny enough, for the same reason it was in the USSR, but for a different underlying reason: It worked. In the USSR it was not improved because of shortage. In the USA it is not improved because of profit. In either case it would have required investment that was not warranted. It's good enough for the customer. In the USSR, it was good enough for the comrade because they delivered the bare minimum of what was necessary. In the US, you get delivered the bare minimum of what is necessary to keep you paying.
Why is it so slow? (Score:3)
Very simple answer.
Pure Greed. AT&T, Comcast,Etc... they care more about profit margins than quality of service. If you will swallow paying $60 a month for paltry speeds then that is what they deliver. Plus they work hard to keep competition out so they dont have to lower prices or increase speeds.
It's greed, The companies hate you for even wanting more.
Honestly (Score:3)
I really feel like in the last couple years there has been an actual improvement in broadband speeds with the real push for DOCSIS 3. It's the one real improvement we'll see without replacing (too much of) the copper in the ground. Maybe I'm crazy but I really believe Google Fiber may have played more than a small part in this. Not actually being available everywhere, just the threat to the existing duopoly of cable/dsl providers that they may move in and provide some real competition.
Re: (Score:2)
i'm 40 and have seen the internet grow up and settle for the cheaper plans. i'm at 20/2 now
why do i need to pay for super fast internet?
its an upselling scam since the peering pipes can't support all the traffic
there is nothing out there that needs 100mbps access. netflix is like 5-10mbps. same with itunes. HBO Go looks awesome on my connection. most websites are on AWS oversubscribed cloud virtualized servers and circuits
i still buy blu rays because they look better
buying cheap access from an ISP that allo
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like you could benefit from faster Internet then. I'm not saying you should pay more for one of the faster options available to you now, I'm saying you would benefit if you got faster service for the same or less money.
Re: (Score:2)
why pay for faster internet when i can just buy more blu rays? or pay for cable TV to watch the same shows?
that's like paying for gas for a SUV when i can just buy a more efficient car
Re: (Score:2)
+1 truth. there's no super fast broadband because there's no pressing need for super fast broadband. I pay $30/mo for 30 up/30 down. Can't think of a reason why I would want anything more, and I'm certainly not willing to pay for it.
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dunno where your getting that deal, cause it sure isnt in the USA, 30 bucks, phht thats 3 down 768k up
Re:it's not that slow (Score:5, Insightful)
i'm 40 and have seen the internet grow up and settle for the cheaper plans. i'm at 20/2 now
why do i need to pay for super fast internet?
The point is that the super fast Internet is way too expensive. You're fine with 20/2 now, but if you could have 100/100 for the same price, would you stick with 20/2?
Not everything is publish-subscribe. I want to be able to set up storage boxes in friends' houses or the cloud or whatever, so I can have off-site backups of my data. I want to be able to play with various decentralized communications programs. Some people your age are starting to have grandkids. It would be nice to talk to them in HD, like those science fictions of the 21st Century were saying we would be able to do.
Don't worry about what you'd use the bandwidth for. If you have bandwidth, eventually you'll find a use for it.
Re: (Score:2)
i don't live in a house of couch potatoes
i take my kids outside
i like to read a lot of books. last year i read about 10,000 pages worth
my wife only watches a few reality shows on TV
i mostly watch sports and my kids will watch a few hours of TV max. mostly in the morning while i still sleep and at night when i want to sit and relax
if you have 5 netflix streams at one time maybe you are watching too much TV? its like the "advanced" smartphone users who use 10GB a month and think they are geniuses. all they do
Stranger danger hysteria (Score:2)
i take my kids outside
The practicality of that depends on the weather, whether the streets between where you live and the nearest public park have sidewalks, and crime levels in your neighborhood. A lot of parents are unwilling to let their kids play outside due to stranger danger hysteria [wikipedia.org].
i like to read a lot of books. last year i read about 10,000 pages worth
The practicality of that depends on whether you happen to live within walking distance of a public library branch.
my wife only watches a few reality shows on TV
i mostly watch sports
Netflix, Amazon, and similar VOD providers specialize in scripted programming. People who primarily use TV to keep up with time-
Re: (Score:2)
in theory towns can give up exclusive rights but then comcast gets to rip out the internet from the local government offices and schools and the towns will have to pay for access since part of the contract is comcast gives them free internet. republicans hate high taxes. they want others to pay for it
Re: (Score:2)
I feel this is more about the fact that people have to pay for the service and it is expensive. Not the fact that it is slow. I see a lot of post about how the government should get involved to make it faster and cheaper. Yet I see none offering a solution to the problems with laying thousands of miles of cables (fiber, copper, coax, etc) with all the associated hardware that makes it all work and cost and manpower to maintain that equipment while also serving the customers needs at a better price than what is currently offered. It all has to be paid for......
Yeah, living in the woods, you expect to pay extra for communications of every sort.
My problem is that I'm living in a semi-major city, next to Silicon Valley, with a minor Internet Exchange [sfmix.org] right in the city and several major exchanges not far away, and it would cost me $80/month for 50/10 cable service. Meanwhile, in South Korea, 100Mbps service would cost maybe $31/month.
As TFA points out, faster and cheaper Internet is possible. It's just not done in most of the US for various reasons.