Broadband Envy: Fixing American Broadband

Ant writes "Broadband Reports has a story on broadband services among countries including United States falling behind: 'Bombarded with tales of South Koreans and Swedes watching high-definition soap-operas via 100Mbps connections, the media has apparently developed a nasty case of broadband envy. This Reuters article suggests the US has "missed the high speed revolution", while last week Business Week dubbed America a "broadband backwater".'"

A concerted effort...

[danielrm26]

First off, we already know that "we have a much larger infrastructure". That argument is tired. We're still behind - even accounting for this significant hurdle. Other countries have made it a priority and have put measures in place that allow the process to bypass red tape and move forward.

We haven't, and we need to.

Yawn. Same old story.

[garcia]

His 10-megabit-per-second service from telecommunications company Bredbandsbolaget is up to 20 times faster than conventional cable modems, enabling a user to download a two-hour movie in a matter of minutes rather than hours.

His 10mbit cable modem is a little over 3x as fast as standard Comcast, 2.5x as fast as standard Cox in GA, about 2.5x as fast as Roadrunner in Western OH, and about 6.7x faster than the rest of the Cable modems I know of (I have heard rumors of Optimum Online being 10mbit). It's about 5x as fast as my Frontier/Visi DSL here in MN, about 6.7x faster than my parent's Epix DSL in PA... The only service I have heard of under 1mbit in recent memory is Qwest DSL here in Minnesota that is only 640k.

We are also comparing Sweeden to the United States... I don't need to rehash the fact that the US is quite a bit larger than Sweeden and the population dense areas are quite a distance apart. You just have to love that they mention sharing a DVD over the Net with a friend, WTF?! Give me a break, why did they even bring that shit up? They know that's illegal here...

Yeah, the US sucks for broadband. It's slow in comparison, it's expensive in comparison (although near here in Chaska, MN they have 1mbit (uncapped so it can go as high as 3mbit bi-directional) mesh-wireless for $17/mo), and it's controlled by single providers. In free markets supply and demand run the system. People are willing to pay $40+/mo for the broadband offered and the companies have no reason to upgrade when people do.

So true

[StevenHenderson]

This is very true. The US is behind, and for good reason. While other countries develop cutting-edge infrastructures that are government-subsidized, we are stuck here in the US paying money to monopolies (read: Comcast, et al) for relatively substandard services. Sure, it might be more than enough for people now, but there is no reason that a nation as advanced as ours should be so backwards in this area.

Size DOES matter.

[miroth]

The problem is the size of our country. In South Korea and Switzerland it's easy to string fiber everywhere for cheap, because the whole country is developed. In the U.S. there are miles and miles of wasteland that make it difficult to bring fiber to the curb.

2 words

[Lostie]

Population density.
Not so much Sweeden, but certainly South Korea and Japan the population density in the cities is much greater - so it's a lot more cost-effective to roll out high-speed broadband in those areas, and there is less of a problem with factors such as distance.
Also, all of those countries have had some form of government funding/grants (correct me if I'm wrong), especially South Korea which has had a huge amount of money spent on infrastructure. The main lesson we can learn from South Korea is that "if you provide it (highspeed broadband), the customers will come" (not least because of the lure of 'adult' sites ;))

The internet is a necessity these days

[Slashbot Hive-Mind]

Two years or so ago I visited Tami Nadu, a poor state in the south of India... Even in the smallest towns (say, 20 inhabitants which is nothing in India), you would find a place offering dirst-cheap internet acces (typically 2 or 3 computers sharing a 33.6k line). People there had taken to using that instead of phone because it was much, much cheaper! It allowed for exemple parents who had a son or daughter studying or working in an other city to contact him at a fraction of the cost of a phone call. It also allowed farmers to have up-to-date information on market price for their product or to ask for the delivery of fertiliser or spare parts for those who had a truck, or to know when one of their relative living in a city had an opening for a temporary job (at a building site, for exemple). It was amazingly useful - and it was not designed for tourists. Though we were happy to use the places, we were often the only foreigners the guy in charge of the place had had for clients this year. And while it was slow, for text emails a 33.6 line is more than enough. You really wanted to kill spammers there though - downloading 50 spam emails using broadband is annoying, but on a shared 33.6k line it's a real pain ;-)

People who reacts to article like that by saying that internet is a luxury are missing the fact that basic internet services like emails or simple websites are in practice often the cheapest way to communicate - you get far more information out of your phone line. And even poor farmers in third-world countries need to communicate, if only to the nearest city. Internet is more than just a greater provider of pr0n and pirated music...

Re:Size DOES matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really meant "miles and miles of wasteland" instead of "purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain", take a trip across country sometime, and learn to appreciate the natural beauty. There's more out there than what you see on your screen. ;)

My 4Mbit DSL isn't so bad

[AGTiny]

I just upgraded to 3Mbit/512k (in reality it's about 4/640) DSL for less than I was paying for 512k SDSL service. I pay around $45/mo. This is pretty good, and I can certainly understand the lack of 100mbit connections in a country as large as the US. I can download a couple Linux ISOs in a half an hour or so... I'm happy with it. :) Within 5 years or so we'll all look back on this and laugh... when everyone has gigabit ethernet or some other insanely fast fiber connection. Or maybe wireless!

Re:Why not just

[pikine]

If you bomb the place,
you too destroy their broadband.
Nothing left to steal.

--- Pikine's Haiku

2 words.... land mass

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Almost every other country we hear about doing this has one distinct advantage over the US. That advantage is that they have WAY less land mass to cover.

For example... If you took all the wiring and fiber placed in Sweden to get the infrastructure they have and used it in the US you could probably only outfit New York and Chicago before running out of material.

We suffer from the fact that as a nation we are a LARGE area to cover. Cell providers have figured this out. In iceland they can easily cover the whole country with a modest number of towers. Here in Michigan we have to have the same number of towers to cover the lower peninsula. Getting fiber between major cities in Sweden you are talking 150-250 miles while in the US you are talking 400-900 miles for the same setup.

Tech scales well... but money doesn't and we are a large country to scale to. When we hear about China or Russia beating us on broadband availability then we seriously have to wonder what is going on.

Re:Area to cover

[easter1916]

Sweden population - ~8 million. Korea population - ~50 million. USA population - ~290 million. What was your point again?

Re:So true

[tepples]

Worded for parallelism: "While other countries develop cutting-edge infrastructures that are subsidized by the government monopoly, we are stuck here in the US paying money to private sector monopolies for relatively substandard services." Meet the new boss, just like the old boss...

Re:2 words

[Paulrothrock]

RTFA:

A more just comparison would likely be Canada; but wait: they're not only offering faster speeds than their southern neighbors, but consumers pay less, and Canada is close to South Korea when it comes to broadband penetration.

Re:I wouldn't trade better broadband...

[kahei]

I'm very happy to be living in within a structure of a decentralized broadband access where each individual state dictates the best method of communication

So, you'd be QUITE HAPPY to have the means of communication DICTATED BY THE STATE eh comrade? Why, you COMMUNIST!

Nah, seriously, the reasons why the US has somewhat slower broadband probably relate to how much higher the actual demand for it is in SK and Sweden. You don't have to start raging against the monster of socialism every time the US isn't #1.

The size argument is crap

[Tridus]

12 comments, and most of them are already saying "its different because the US is so big!"

Bullshit. Look at #2 on the actual report, sitting beside South Korea: Canada. Canada being both geographically larger and far less densely populated then the US, the size argument is blown up right there.

The US is just a lousy place to get broadband.

Other countries do exist, you know

[lachlan76]

Maybe you should all stop complaining about how you don't all have ten megabit connections?
Over here in Australia, we are almost all on 56k. I can count the number of people I know who have broadband on one hand.
In the USA, you recently got to 50% of households with broadband. Care to guess how many people in Australia have access to high-speed internet? One million as of June 2004. Out of more than 20 million. THAT'S FIVE PERCENT!!!

Just because some countries have faster internet, that doesn't mean you're falling behind.

I'd kill people to get a 512k ADSL line, but I'm just not able to. Be happy with what you already have.

Re:A concerted effort...

[brufleth]

I've lived in Boston and Cincinnati. I don't consider either of them rural although I suppose Cincinnati could be considered suburban. Neither of them have anything CLOSE to 100Mb connections available to consumers for a reasonable price. Commence fighting over what a resonable price is.

Re:Yawn. Same old story.

[inburito]

You do know that USA is quite a bit more densely populated than Sweden, don't you? As a matter of fact the population density in USA is 45% greater than Sweden!

Btw.. What you are describing is a monopoly (which is the case in usa) and not a free market. In a truly free market we would have prices that are no higher than the actual cost of providing the service, anything else is reflective of monopoly power.

So ironically we have a fundamentally socialist country here providing a more economically sensible alternative than the home of capitalism can..

Korea gone streaming crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran across this the other day. http://www.digital-rapids.com/News_PressRelease.ht ml/ [digital-rapids.com] third story down. Its interesting because its really a cable over IP deployment using WM9. Korea can do this because the government has made it the highest priority to move education, telecommunications, and television to an all IP based infrastructure. Seems like Korea took those dot-com promises of hundreds of channels of television delivered over broadband seriously.

Uhm... small countries, here, people

[VonGuard]

It's significantly easier to roll out fiber and fat pipes to folks who live a maximum of 500 miles from the CO than it is to run those same cables out to the rural ass areas of middle America.

Fat pipes from city to city are also more costly than in the often-time-pickled Korea, or the lightly-dusted-with-population Sweden.

What about the UK?

[CamTarn]

The US a broadband backwater? Hah! The UK has only just started getting broadband in the last couple of years, and 512kbit is still considered 'high speed'. A 128kbit connection is considered broadband by the definition of the government (for the purposes of being able to say "We've made sure that over 90% of the population has broadband available to them.")

I'm pretty tired of hearing people from the US complain about their >1Mbit connections being slow.

In other news, every time I hear a web developer say "My page loads fast enough on my 4Mbit connection. If you're on dialup ... UPGRADE!! LOL." I wish for a shotgun...

Re:Small scale vs. large scale.

[nine-times]

What the people who compare the US to these tiny little countries fail to see is the vast differences in terms of scale we're talking about to make a comparable system in the US.

For me, a particular memory comes to mind. I was in Vienna, talking to a girl from Bosnia, and she asked, "St. Louis is close to Washington D.C., right?"

I sat and thought for a second, "It depends on what you mean by close, I guess." I had to explain to her that, in most places in the United States, it takes more than a few hours to get out of the country. You could be in the US, ride on a train in a strait line for a full day, and never leave the country. We found a map, and I showed her where NYC and D.C. are, and informed her, that's a four hour trip by train. She just didn't believe me. I then tried to explain Alaska. Don't ask. Most Americans don't understand how big and open Alaska is.

My point? Just that you're right. The scale of open land between the US and European countries is generally so large that people living there don't even understand how large it is. A lot of people in the US, unless they've travelled some, don't understand how big a country it is. What works for a small country isn't guaranteed to work for a huge one.

Re:So true

[DarkSarin]

First, there are a LOT of reasons the US is behind, and the baby bells (bellsouth in my area) are largely to blame, because of FCC regs. But then again, so is localized monopoly of cable service (again, blame the FCC).

The first step to cheaper broadband? FCC demonopolization of areas currently controlled by a single company (phone/cable). As it stands, I live in an area where I can only get Northland Cable. It sucks beyond beleif. They offer very slow connections at an outrageous price.

Two months ago I had DSL, but when I moved, it was outside the range. So I switched (I also went with vonage, but hey). I am now paying MORE for LESS (which in this case sucks).

Compare this to my mother. She lives 10 miles from the closest post office (give or take 2) in Boonesboro KY. It small enough that it doesn't even have its own zip code or fire dept. Bellsouth called her and offered DSL, starting this month. Go figure--she lives in the most rural area I can think of, and is getting DSL!!

Let me reiterate--if we want faster cheaper internet, gov't subsidy is one way to go. The better way is to open up the competition. This will also decrease the price of cable TV (note that satellite has already helped with this, but more competition is always good).

Nuff said.

Re:There are some complicated legal problems

[Ignignot]

Then to make it even worse the existing telecom grid was put in place by private companies using MASSIVE government subsidies.

Ah, but as Adam Smith said, the wealth of a country is proportional to the connectedness of the people in it (roads, trains, phones, etc.) so a government subsidy of broadband makes sense - it increases everyone's wealth and improves worker effeciency by leaps and bounds. The return from the combination of that and the multiplier effect should easily be enough to convince the government to invest in broadband connections for everyone. These things aren't just for entertainment and communication, they are extremely useful for work and education as well. I'm not suprised the US government has not subsidized the deployment, but they should.

Don't stop incentives for new tech!

[PatHMV]

I agree that we don't have widespread super-broadband because there's no profit in it in many places. And in some places, a government-run community based fiber system has worked - for now. But government intervention has the tendency of freezing the marketplace and ending the competition for new technologies.

Your cable modem rate would be much higher or may never have come about were it not for the phone companies offering DSL (and vice versa). Both competitors in that situation were willing to absorb large capital costs in order to make sure the other guy didn't get a jump on them.

Right now, there is a lot of competition to find new ways to set up high-speed connections. The cable companies, the phone companies, the electricity companies, cell phone and other wireless provider companies -- all these guys are hard at work looking for new technical solutions. If suddenly everybody has a government subsidized, decent speed pipe going into the home, all that competition will slow down or end and we may miss out on even better technologies that might come down the pipe later.

Look how long the phone service monopoly kept us stuck on 1920s-era technology services. Then France leap-frogged us by setting up Minitel service, but their adoption of Minitel by a government monopoly kept them out of the early stages of BBS and internet growth.

Re:A concerted effort...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Sure, it would be nice, and sure there's some money in it, but I think that - as priorities go - there are plenty of things that we should be more concerned about. Say, for example, terrorism, tort-reform, poverty...

Education and Govenment Funding.

[Run4yourlives]

Simply put, the two reasons the US ranks behind is twofold:

Education: As a percentage of population the US, has a smaller "educated" class.

Government Funding: There is a large segment of the popluation that is opposed to taxpayers funding anything that isn't intended on blowing something up.

Because of this, initiatives that aren't purley profit driven are very slow to catch on.

100Mb broadband great, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to have a nice 100Mb fiber connection to the house, but realistically, what would I gain over the 3 Mb cable connection I already have?? For new residential areas or or high density cities, it might make sense to put in fiber to the home, but it just does not make sense to rip and replace the infrastructure every few years. Technologies will change and having multiple providers as we do in the US is a better idea than letting any single provider have a monopoly (I realize some areas are already facing this, but with govt control it would be near universal with no hope of change.) When budgets are tight do you really think the govt. will want to buy new routers, provide adequate service (this is already a problem in some locations) or do other necessary infrastructure upgrades? The solution to our problems is to structure the market so more companies offer broadband preferably with many different technologies (DSL, CABLE, FIBRE, WIRELESS).

Internet Speeds versus Edge Speeds

[TheSync]

What I am really unsure about is whether these "10 Mbps connections" really provide 10 Mbps Internet connectivity. I am sittign on top of multiple OC3s, and the best actual Internet speeds I get is around 7 Mbps.

Re:A concerted effort...

[hunterx11]

The vast majority of China's population is rural.

Re:Economics

[BrianRoach]

Erm ... right, because here in the US, tax dollars are spent so efficiently by the government on things we really need ...

If just ONCE the tax dollar lottery went my way, I'd be a pretty happy camper.

- Roach

Re:Yawn. Same old story.

[yamla]

Although most of our population lives close to the U.S. border, our population density over that area is still approximately the same (depending on how you judge) as that of the U.S. in its entirity.

Furthermore, your argument falls apart when you consider that small towns in Canada, such as Fort McMurray in Alberta (and many towns even smaller than that) have had broadband for years now (since 1997, in Fort McMurray's case) while many major cities in the U.S. still don't have half-decent broadband penetration.

Re:What about the UK?

[kahei]

I don't think the UK counts, because of the weirdly submissive and undemanding nature of the population. The reason there isn't X in the UK is simply than nobody has demanded X (where X is dentistry, rail transport, etc).

It's better to compare countries that have demand and can reasonably be expected to be trying to progress.

P.S. This post (while factually true IMHO) is nasty, snide, and unhelpful and should likely be modded as 'Troll'. But you have to admit, at least I don't AC!

Re:So true

[k98sven]

How did this piece of misinformation get modded "insightful". It's plain wrong.

Sweden for instance, has had some government subsidizing of broadband. Sweden has no government monopoly on broadband services.
(the old government-monopoly on telecom was deregulated 10 years ago)

This isn't anything unusual either. Governments often subsidize private industry in sectors which are considered strategically important for the country.
(Can you say "military-industrial complex?")

Re:Area to cover

[yamla]

What? By those numbers, the U.S. has 81.98 people per square mile, Sweden has 46.05 people per square mile.

trolling, eh?

[Moraelin]

"I wouldn't trade better broadband... ...For communism, sorry."

Ignorant redneck, but patriotic, eh? ;)

You know, contrary to what Hollywood movies may tell you, there _is_ a world outside your borders, and it does _not_ all consist of naked tribesmen with stone spears, oppressed by some tribal warlord with a bigger stone spear.

Pick a geography book sometimes. Fascinating read. You may well find that other countries are just as democratic... if not more, considering that they don't have the "waah!! Terrorists everywhere!!" lame excuse to take away even more civil liberties.

"It's interesting how the author fails to mention that there are restrictions on websites that users can visit in the aforementioned country, but I digress. I guess that's a convenient oversight."

Sorry to dawn some reality on your self-righteous redneck rant, but: I don't think Sweden, Germany, UK, or any other EU countries have any more censorship than you already have in the USA too. Yes, the government does say stuff like "thou shalt not watch child porn", but guess what? So does yours.

We're not talking China. Noone will arrest you in Sweden for having a site about how much the government sucks.

So again: get that head out of your ass. Learn a bit about the world outside your borders. Or just learn anything, for that matter. Might actually do you some good.

"I don't want my broadband to be a beurocracy, and I can put up with a few hiccups here and there because down the road, we're going to catch up and feel at ease."

There's nothing especially bureaucratic about broadband anywhere in the EU.

"I'm very happy to be living in within a structure of a decentralized broadband access where each individual state dictates the best method of communication, rather than a country tell me that only DSL or CABLE is available."

Ah, the standard display of talking out of the ass. So you're that great and free because state governments decide for you? Well, gee. Funny how the rest of us thought that freedom had something to do with the government _not_ deciding stuff for you.

So basically, son, there are plenty of arguments about liberty or economics that might apply to this situation. But you don't even understand either. You don't understand that prized freedom you wave around as a flag, and you don't understand the economics either.

Your idea of more liberty is merely being a faithful doggie to a lower state government, instead of a centralized government. But a faithful doggie nevertheless. Well, gee. You would have had a great time during feudalism. You'd only have your baron bossing you around, while the higher levels (counts, dukes, the king, etc) don't even give a damn that you exist. Yep, great liberty there.

So lemme ammend what I was saying: learn some history too.

A less tired argument.....

[JohnTheFisherman]

...would be that we had far more broadband years before most (all?) of these other countries, and the ISP portion was even built without the luxury of huge government subsidies. These other countries finally decided to invest in some broadband technology a few years ago, and the years-newer installation is faster. Duh.

Ours will need to be upgraded at some point - and it will - and the leapfrogging will continue. We're also probably not going to see an incremental 2x or 4x improvement to keep up with the Joneses, but a 10x leap - but it probably won't happen for a few years.

I wonder if their news services will publish "OMG! We aer teh technakal bak watar!11!" articles, or if they had done so several years ago when the US was pretty much the only place you could get affordable broadband for personal use?

Re:Yawn. Same old story.

[SatanicPuppy]

The problem with saying that is that, in the places where the population is densest, we still have broadband that is no better than the places where it is less dense.

I moved to Georgia (112 psm) from New Jersey (1030 psm) and had exactly the same speed internet in both locations. The capability for better exists in both places, but they feel no need to provide it.

Our telecom regulations suck. We protect companies that provide inferior service.

Density is not an argument

[Frog in the well]

Ok, the population density in Sweden, Japan, and South Korea, is more than the population density in USA taken as a whole. But we have many cities here, with a sufficiently high population density, i.e. at comparable levels to the urban areas in those countries, considering this, how can the density argument hold?

Even in those countries, it must not be the case that every nook and cranny of them is getting broadband at 100Mbps, probably many of the rural areas are still working on the low speed ones. Considering that our cities have a very high population density, what is stopping us from getting the 100Mbps broadband?

It isn't going to happen here

[Rocketboy]

The news articles referenced dance around the problem while studiously refraining from saying it, but the issue in the US isn't geography, it's monopoly. I'll go out on a limb and make a prediction: 10mb/s+ links in the US will never -ever- achieve the market penetration rates that more advanced countries enjoy today. It's not in the Bell's economic interests for it to do so and they own the majority of the links to US homes. For a variety of reasons, Comcast is more of a contributor to the problem, not a solution. For the vast majority of us, broadband will get more expensive, not less, and what you can do with it once you have it will be increasingly restricted.

Current trends indicate that the major driving force behind widespread adoption of high-speed access is connecting with one's friends, family, and social peers. Much of that communication involves what may euphamistically be categorized as "restricted" (from the point of view of copyrights,) material. Given the current lock that monopolies of various types have on US legislative processes, I don't really see that changing, or much scope for effective, economical use of emerging communication technologies. That's why I conclude that the US is now and will remain for the forseeable future, a technological backwater.

It's also why Al Queda et. al. are already obsolete -- the US may have enjoyed the shortest run as the dominating global imperialist on record. We've been fading toward irrelevance in world affairs for a generation; the fall of the Berlin Wall destroyed both protagonists, it just took a little longer for us than for our Soviet cold war opponents. Of course, by the time it becomes obvious it will also be old history, but that's something the winners get to write. I hope someone writes it in my lifetime; I'd enjoy reading about it in my old age.

Back to the point: the US won't get all these fun toys because to most of my fellow citizens, broadband internet access isn't obviously helpful to their lives. Many technology-oriented careers, not just IT, are fading from this landscape in a gradual but inexorable migration toward the east, and while college enrollments are up in general (that is, more kids are going to college,) enrollment in technical and scientific fields of study is falling. Interior design and English may be worthy fields of study but I'm not optimistic that a healthy economy can be based on them. And the education kids are getting these days is not particularly helpful.

Re:2 words.... land mass

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Ahhh young grasshapper...

True...

But in Sweden 1 company can have a dream of covering the country in service and actually succeed in doing it. Even cell companies in the US have given up on that idea.

The Problem isn't size....

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't beleive the problem is size of the country. Fiber already links all major cities. The bottle necks are the lines running to the homes. Until the FCC or the consumers really push that won't be changed and it would require a large chunk of government funding(ugh). It would break the Bell in our area just replacing all the copper in this city with fiber if they had to do it on their own. I think wireless broadband will take hold much faster than 10Mbit wired links just because of cost.

Have Cake, Eat It

[Bob9113]

the media has apparently developed a nasty case of broadband envy.

So we spend the past 6 or 7 years creating laws that make running an ISP a legal and regulatory minefield, other laws that reduce the consumer value of having broadband, and create an environment in which incumbent telecoms are encouraged to kill competition and cook the books, then we scratch our heads and wonder why we don't have a better information infrastructure. Well, gee, I just can't figure it out.

Community != Government

[jellybear]

The parent post said "community" fiber to the home. Sometimes the impetus came from schools needing faster conenctions. But it could easily be ordinary citizens. The government, of course, needs to be involved if for no other reason than they have the authority to grant or deny the right of way. Imagine, though, if the town gave its people right of way along certain paths, and left it up to us to lay the fiber. I'm sure there are volunteer groups that would jump at the chance to have super high speed to the home. The motivating force to upgrade would be our own innate technolust, not some bottom-line economic motivation, or some political motivations.

I say, find out where the incentives and motivations are, and harness that. In this case, the motivated people are the users themselves. I anticipate someone will argue that if people really wanted it, they would pay for it. My counterargument is that, right now, the market does not offer that option. The current North American experience demonstrates clearly that when there are a handful of players, and the ability to compete depends on a heavily regulated access to right of way, then the corporations will NOT cater to the desires of consumers, but rather strategically limit the options of users to maximize returns. In Canada, the two main broadband ISP's (Rogers and Bell), are either charging people extra for high bandwidth usage, or cutting off service to people who go above a secret, unstated, quota. The profit motive is not causing them to upgrade their service in any serious way. It's only causing them to squeeze the consumer harder.

Arguments against public broadband

[drtomaso]

I have seen many arguments (some here, some elsewhere) against a broadband to the home innitiative. These include:

• America is too big to make the infrastructure changes economically feasible.
  This one seems logical- we are a big country after all, with a population density much less than countries in Europe and Asia. Stringing all that wire to less people will end up costing more. This would be a good argument were it not for the presence of a rather large industrial,democratic republic immediately to our north that enjoys broadband penetration rivaling that of Europe, Korea and Japan. Are they not big? Do they not have a low population density? Perhaps it has more to do with their lack of entrenched monopolies.
• Public Broadband would tax all while only benefitting it users.
  This is true- but why is a bad thing? Your taxes pay for the FCC, even if you never listen to the radio or watch TV. Your taxes pay for highways, even if you dont own a car. And your property taxes pay for schools even if you havent got a kid. The only argument that suffices when it comes to the question of spending tax dollars is cost vs benefits. Considering that opening up a broadband market may just be the shot in the arm our economy needs (think of all the goods and services that could be provided if everyone has access to 100MB connections), and the fact that other nations with more developed infrastructures and lower standards of living will be aptly suited as the destination of our outsourced jobs, I think the benefits to our nation as a whole far outweigh the burden of the taxes necessary to pay for it.
• This violates the free market!
  No. A well designed public works project fits neatly into the free market- it merely recognizes the fact that sometimes, the entire people of a nation can be a consumer. You know what really messes with a free market? Entrenched monopolies backed by government control. Build fiber to the home. Make the cost of a "broadband service license" low. Watch as hundreds of companies open shop to compete for your business. Giving companies monopoly rights in exchange for the infrastructure engineering would be a mistake- pay for it with tax dollars and license it out at cost to small companies. In effect, we would be using public monies to build a new market place.

Re:2 words.... land mass

[upsidedown_duck]

Frankly, this blows your argument out of the water.

No, the GP argument still stands, IMO. For a single fixed sum of money put into Sweden, they can equip their whole country and say "Hey, we beat you! Nyah!" For the same amount of money, the USA can equip only, say, Ohio. Capital doesn't grow on trees, so what are the odds that US companies can source 50 times the capital to bring everyone in the country up to Sweden's broadband? Compound that with competition among cable/satellite TV, cell phones, video games, home computers, and buying bread for our children, coupled with a tight economy, and broadband is still viewed as a luxury in much of the USA.

Maybe we have a hard time...

[HangingChad]

...admitting we're second rate in anything. We're always right, and if not we're definitely dogmatic as hell about being wrong.

We're in danger of becoming a technology backwater, not because of slower broadband, but because we're not investing in technology infrastructure, technology and science eductation and we're shipping intellectual capital in the form of tech jobs overseas to save that precious shareholder value.

Unlikely we'll ever face up to being second in anything. For some reason we've developed a national concensous that our crap doesn't stink and if we're doing it, then that's the best thing to be doing. Even suggesting that we're not number one in damn all everything will likely get me mod'ed down because disagreement these days is tantamount to treason.

Most of us grew up with notion that the US was the greatest country on the planet. It's not going to go down easy or well that such a notion might not be true anymore, in any capactity. Whether it's something litlle like broadband, or something bigger like health care, education, privacy or quality of life.

Re:Area to cover

[Aggrazel]

You can look at the numbers that way.

So how much would $150 billion buy in the way of network infrastructure anyway?

Re:Don't stop incentives for new tech!

[Catbeller]

"I agree that we don't have widespread super-broadband because there's no profit in it in many places. And in some places, a government-run community based fiber system has worked - for now. But government intervention has the tendency of freezing the marketplace and ending the competition for new technologies."

But the articles clearly show that this has not been the case. Highspeed access has progressed in leaps and bounds in Asia and Europe precisely because the governments pushed aside businesses to mandate change.

I must say that the profit motive is the very reason that we pay so much and get glacial melt speeds. There is no profit margin in upping speeds. Only costs -- if you use MBA logic.

Once again, it is selective cost accounting. If the ONLY reason to do anything contructive is to make a short-term profit for a corporation, then innovation slows. If a nation doesn't subcribe to the profit-only model of innovation, they can factor in things like quality of life, or overall good for the greatest number, or creating LONG-term profits in exchange for America's short-term model.

I don't have to pound theoretical justifications into the ground here. I merely point to South Korea and NW European nations. They have mandated that the fiber be dropped, the last mile crossed. They ate the short term costs, pretty major ones, in exhange for the long term success, ie everyone is hooked up for a reasonable cost. They don't need to "innovate" to get it done. It's DONE. They did it. No more nonsense.

And I'm sitting at home nursing a 128 kb cable connection at peak hours for 55 dollars a month. And they are raising the rates again. And they've locked me into a 100 dollar a month TV/internet package. Tell me who's being "innovative" here, the engineers, or the MBA's draining us?

If the US highway system had been built using the same logic of those building the internet, we'd be paying thousands of dollars in tolls a year to move at 20 miles per hour around private roads surrounding the suburbs. And all of it justified by profit-only cost accounting and hands-off government policies. And the roads would be heavily policed to see if anyone is carrying VHS copies of movies or cassette tapes of CDs, 'cause we wouldn't want intelectual property thieves causing liability for the road companies.

PS: the bushies have negotiated a new addition to new interstate highway funding in the future, kids; they'll all be toll roads. Welcome to the future rebuilt -- they just may get their private roads after all.

Re:Small scale vs. large scale.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone once said, "for Americans a 100 years is a long time while for Europeans, a 100 miles is a long distance."

Re:Yawn. Same old story.

[nelsonal]

Politically the tradeoff has been you have to wire the uneconomic areas to wire the economic ones, this was true for both phone and cable. Blame your local utility commission for making that tradeoff if you want. Because our hugely populated areas pay for the service to all the sparse areas (the FCC's USF) they haven't invested in the infastructure for the densly populated areas. The only reason NYC doesn't have fiber to everyone's door is that the phone company generally offers the same set of services across the state of NY to stay out of regulatory hot water.

If anyone wants the numbers. You can wire 6.3% of Sweeden and reach 80% of the poulation. In the US you would have to wire about 15% of the counties (I couldn't find pop/km data for the US) to reach the same 80% of the population. Wiring 6.3% of the most populated counties only raches about 65% of the US population. The density map of Sweden is here [www.scb.se]. For the US I grabbed the county stats list from the census bureau [census.gov]and removed the states and then sorted.

yes...

[zogger]

...you are correct. And a major part of the reason is the more or less fairly imminent global oil production decline. China along with a number of other countries are stockpiling oil in anticipation of higher prices and lack of availability. They had something like a 300% increase in just registered cars last year, their demand is going outta site, along with indias and some other developing nations. The PTB are really pulling out all the stops in trying to keep prices at the pump down in this critical election period, but watch it skyrocket after the elections. I mean, we are seeing the same prices at the pump we saw before it galloped to 45-50$ a barrel. It *should* have hit at the pumps by now, but it hasn't, hence I think it's being manipulated for political purposes.

If they-back to china- were actually releasing the oil to their population they wouldn't have as much unemployment, but stuck between a rock and a hard place they are stockpiling. Oil makes the world go round, that's about it. Transportation, manufacturing,agriculture, other energy production-all of the above and more goes back to the slick black stuff.

The US lags for some very good reasons!

[Xeger]

Yes, our telecomms companies are mired in the past, and don't understand that there is more money to be made from content than content delivery.

Yes, we have a ridiculous regulatory structure that virtually guarantees the eventual extinction of DSL -- I know I, for one, won't shed a tear about this. The telephone companies of this nation have a decades-long legacy of sloth and profiteering; trying to starve and harass third-party DSL providers out of existence is just a continuation of their legacy. The sweet irony of it is: their aging copper is virtually useless in the face of newer broadband technologies, and while they were busy crushing their "partners," they missed the narrow window of opportunity for any profit whatsoever. Now, they are forced to sit on the sidelines and provide POTS to Grandma while licking their chops and gazing dolefully at the cash cows of the broadband revolution. </rant>

Yes, the use of the Internet in the US has been almost solely reserved for the technological and educational "haves" in this country, leaving the "have nots" by the wayside -- though this is changing.

The single biggest reason we lag behind other nations in broadband deployment, however, is sheer scale.

The United States has 93 TIMES (9300%) the surface area of South Korea, and 22 times the surface area of Sweden. As the third most populous nation on earth, we have almost 300,000,000 people living within our borders. Our national POTS telecomms infrastructure is the oldest and most complex on Earth.

Broadband penetration to US households in 2001 was around 7%. I am frankly amazed at the progress we've made in the past three years. The nation's major population centers -- the west and east coasts, and the Great Lakes region -- are entirely wired for both DSL and cable modem, and we're working on deploying those technologies (and more exciting, newer alternatives) to the less populous interior of our nation.

All things considered, I'd say we're doing a good job.

Re:A concerted effort...

[nacturation]

These fuckers can find excuses anywhere. [...] What I want is not the bullshit excuses...

Okay, so what's your excuse? If it's so easy and profitable, why didn't you raise some capital, start your own company, and beat them to it? Excuses, right?

red tape?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but the problem is tne States is not "red tape." The problem in the US is capitalism run amok. It has been stated over and over in the business press that US telecos and cable companies DO NOT WANT low paying customers. It's not that bandwidth is expensive, it's that customers who pay less actually cost more. This is pure politics of profits. The problem with low paying customers is that demographically they tend to be more trouble and service is a cost.
So, to maximize shareholder profits, the answer is simple, don't lower prices. This has shit to do with red tape and everything to do with capitalism creating monopolies that the current government refuses to check.

Absolutely agree w/1st 2 ph's

[Lysol]

My brother and his wife (who's Japanese) are moving back to the states from Tokyo. He was asking just the other day what kind of pipe I have. I told him it's a 1.5/384. He wasn't impressed as they were looking to upgrade they're 25mb to 100mb before they decided to move. Er, welcome home...

We are truely seeing what happens when big media get's in bed with the FCC. While I believe that we will see higher speeds (Speakeasy is offering 6mb/768mb connections in some areas as well as DSL w/out a phone line - which I have), they will be nothing compared to some otehr countries. And I'm the first to agree this is dampening innovation. The pipe is now becoming a necessity in some areas, but don't expect the current administration to see that any time soon.

Take this example. I'm actually developing a video conferencing app for a company. While some players like Apple, M$, and even Yahoo (altho, their offering isn't much to talk about) their own vconf apps (Apple's, obviously, being the best), they all have high bandwidth demands. Apple's Tiger nextegn Mpeg 4 codec promises to lower these requirements, but for all pratical purposes, that isn't the reality now.

So for me, working on a new technology with a limited budget, I'm screwed. Unless I wanna fork out big bucks for a hige pipe, my 'innovation' is kinda dead in the water. And even if I did have a big connection, our business clients might not either. All because of artifical costs that the big providers complain about.

Another issue. In San Francisco, as well as other cities, you have to go thru quite a few hoops - STILL - to get a connection up. The latest was with my Speakeasy Onelink service - which is basically a data-only circuit that doesn't require phone service from SBC. However, it still requires SBC to come out; as part of this requirement I waited all day only to find my line 'tagged' by SBC some time in the past few days. I then called the Speakeasy guys, who said that SBC isn't required to notify anyone during this step. Great. Now Speakeasy/Covad has to wait for SBC to notify them that they've finished. So far that hasn't happend. Gee. In other words, this whole process, after years of availibility, is still crap. Still inefficient. Still a joke.

While I use Speakeasy exclusively - as a developer - since they're one of the only independent providers left - this whole process is still crap. The Bell's still have no intention of letting go of any control of the copper that we, the government, basically game them in the 40's/50's/60's. So while all these corporate interests still hold the keys, we'll be given little slices while other countries in the world will be given the whole pie thusly, enabling their little guys to 'innovate' a hell of a lot faster than ours. Of course, our adminstration and biz climate here is pretty stacked against the little guy, so no new news there.

Argh, this whole thing pisses me off..

Re:Don't stop incentives for new tech!

[Nurseman]

Tell me who's being "innovative" here, the engineers, or the MBA's draining us?

Not to be a troll here, but why exactly is it the Governments responsiblity to get you the internet service you desire ? I moved from NYC, where I had tons of high speed choices, to the boonies. I waited three years to get off dialup. But, I made the choice to move, I didnt expect the Govt to spend millions to offer me fiber to my door so I can surf the 'Net.

Quick lesson in logic

[hellfire]

The US is falling being, or screwing themselves for many reasons. The country is only #1 any more in making money. However, we continue to think we are so great, and then make excuses when someone else does well at something. Take this excerpt from the article:

As most will note, there's a big difference between wiring a compact South Korean urban sprawl, and draping fiber across the Rocky Mountains and into the rural communities of the plain states. A more just comparison would likely be Canada, but wait: they're not only offering faster speeds than American providers, but consumers pay less, and Canada rivals South Korea when it comes to broadband penetration.

A lot of simplistic thinkers will rationalize and compare South Korea to the US and make excuses. However, they will fail to notice someone like Canada who is doing nearly as well as Korea.

People take the same tack with gun violence in the US. We make excuses and comparisons with other countries, and then we miss the countries who provide better examples. For example, many countries in Europe have pretty strict gun control and very few gun related deaths, far fewer per capita than the US. We'd come up with excuses for that, but an even better logician would point out canada, who's laws aren't as strict, and who have a lot of guns as well. However they too have very few gun related deaths. Why? There's another reason, but that's not my point.

The point is that people will see one comparison and rationalize it. I've found for Pro-US were #1 chanters, I find making multiple comparisons often shuts them up.

And I am an american citizen, and I'm not satisfied with the state of broadband or guns or a whole lot of other shit in this country.

Re:Don't stop incentives for new tech!

[AmericanInKiev]

Do you know of any people who hyperventilate constantly because air is free?

You need think lessons my friend - I don't usually attack people for their stupidity - but you are coming really close to deserving it.

Do people use up too much air because its free.

Damn Straight they do.

Take the whole state of tennesee - burning tons of coal into the air - which convienently for them wafts over the mountains into N. Carolina where they have some of the nations worst air.

Not only is it "free" to hyperventilate coal - it doesn't even cost them deaths - since those lives are paid in NC.

Do me a favor - don't vote.

AIK

Re:Don't stop incentives for new tech!

[CoolToddHunter]

But the articles clearly show that this has not been the case. Highspeed access has progressed in leaps and bounds in Asia and Europe precisely because the governments pushed aside businesses to mandate change.

For now. As the grandparent pointed out, for many years we were (and still are to some extent) locked into 1920's phone technology. It's too soon to tell with the broadband in this case. Come back in 20 years and we'll see if those countries are locked into old technology or not. Time will tell.

Re:Don't stop incentives for new tech!

[mutewinter]

Everyone says there is no profit in it. They are wrong. There is always profit in something -- the question is, for who?

Who is going to really profit from ultra-high speed internet connections? Businesses and people who deliver DRM content. Porn sites, big media companies, etc. On the bright side, the technical innovators such as porn site owners and companies like Vonage have the potential to reap millions before over-regulation occurs.

Guess who really pays for it? Suckers!

Saying that businesses do things only for short-term profit is wrong. Big businesses pour millions and millions of dollars, sometimes billions into projects that loose money. Why? Because they think they can make even more money later on. Big businesses can afford to do this. I can't. Look at the dot-com boom, huge corporations literly pissed away money as did small investors riding the wave. Some made fortunes, others lost it. If I can't make a profit off of something within a year, sorry I'm moving on to something else.

On a more serious note, I had a 28.8k dial-up connection for nearly 10 years. It sucked ass. Today I have a 350kb cable connection from Time Warner which I pay just under $50 for. It gives me problems occasionally, but for the most part I'm happy with it. It still costs far far far less than I paid during the early years of dial-up.

How do you know we'd be moving at 20 miles an hour on private roads without the highway system? I hear people complain that its big business and MBAs that are the reason we don't have flying cars and all the crazy shit they predicted in the 50s that we'd have by the year 2000. I think you have it switched around. Its not logical to innovate when there is no need to.

MBAs, business men, and just average people reap millions off of publicly funded projects. The free market is here whether you like it or not. Its not an "evil" nor is it inherantly "good." Its just there. People are constantly trying to figure out how to make money for whatever purpose.

I'm not a right-winger. I'm not voting for Bush. I really don't believe that the US should be spending government money building some huge infrastructure thats going to be way cheaper to build in another decade. As long as there are millions and millions of starving people in the world I think we should have far higher priorities.

Yes, USA is DEFINITELY 2nd rate in healthcare

[Cryofan]

And you are right--we have a hard time admitting we are 2nd rate in anything. And there is a reason for that: we Americans have been subjected to decades of well-funded media propaganda, which has caused the vast majority of AMericans to suffer from this peculiar disease, which I cannot put a name to, but one symptom of it is the eternal calls to patriotism, and endless rhetoric about "the United States of America." We have manipulated for decades to think that America is so great, and thus we have given our consent to all sorts of foreign wars and foreign policy skullduggery.

This kind of manipulation still goes on here: most Americans are convinced America has the world's greatest medical case. Umm...no, it does not. Not for the average person.

And we do not have the world's greatest broadband. Here in Houston, the country's 5th largest city, you can get 1M down, 250K up for the grand sum of $32/month.

The reason why we have substandard broadband and substandard medical care is that our governmental structure was set up 200 years ago to reflect and maintain a SLAVE SOCIETY. They ran on slaves and indentured servants, and they built a Constitution to exploit the underclass. And they are still exploiting us.

Re:Area to cover

[Artifakt]

There are people even in the ultra-rich group that range from pretty decent to really good people, not just "rich" but !!!rich!!!. What's the most serious complaint you could make about Warren Buffet? Sam Walton seems to have been a better man with all his money in one place than all his heirs put together are now with that money divided among them. Do we really wnat to soak preople like those two? (Or worse, stand them up against the wall?)
What's screwing the rest of us though, is that a good chunk of our rich (speaking of the US), simultaneously want a small government that won't limit them, and a big government that will limit their competitiors, or those uppity consumers, or whomever. Right now, too much money is in the hands of people who want a fundamental paradox.
All too many of the ones that own the high speed networking systems want a government with enough power to choke off their competition, and simultaneously one that won't use that power to bring in non-profit solutions, regardless of percieved need. So we have rich owners of telecoms who want a huge federal budget (just so it goes to things like awarding them area wide monopolies and huge parts of the EM spectrum, paying the FCC to throttle their competition, and covering just their side of the court costs in prosecuting civil offenses), and are simultaneously sueing municipal governments to block them running pipes that last mile.
Imagine if the early electrical companies had simultaneously stopped rural electrification because it was government interference and successfully fought to make underwriter's laboratories a federalized sub-department of the patent office, and where the US would be today with that attitude prevailing. We are going to see that same sort of effect on our countery in 40 years or so, because of what's happening right now.

Re:Don't stop incentives for new tech!

[duffbeer703]

Actually, you're wrong about the roads.

Government sponsored roads were a government action that was initially seen as a way to keep the railroad and streetcar monopolies in check.

I would welcome toll highways -- it is ridiculous that trucking companies get to wear out roads with their huge trucks at our expense.

It comes down to this.

[Allnighterking]

Having lived in South Korea, and having lived here in the US. (Yeah I'm home again Yippee!) The reason for the difference is this. Attitude. I worked for a company for a long time that sold real time video feeds (Not p0rn ok!) for simulcasting events. When we had to deal with Korean bandwidth sellers they saw it and said "OOO this uses lot's of badwidth... we can sell more!" When we talked with US Bandwidth sellers they would say. "No this uses too much bandwidth we'll have to buy more." Canada which is a lot more spread out than the US (in terms of population) has better bandwidth penetration than the US. I live in the Silly Con valley and let me tell you it is one of the worst places in the world to ensure having good bandwidth. I've a friend who lives literally across the street from his DCO, yet can't get DSL because "The lines on his street are too old" and SBC refuses to upgrade. He'd get cable... as soon as his neighborhood is wired (Funny thing is he can get cable TV but the local provider doesn't do the net.) The solution turns out to be connecting to the house behind him which can get DSL and sharing the line via a really long wire. (BTW they are trying to figure out a secure, and reliable, wireless connection. The word secure being the key word.)

It really comes down to attitude. In the US they want to sell you bandwidth but don't want you to use it. If you use it they will send out a tech to cap your line. In Korea they want to sell you bandwidth and if you use it, they will send out a salesman to sell you a bigger pipe.

We DO move at 20mph

[PatHMV]

If you're talking about interstate speeds in major cities during rush hour. Frankly, the interstate highway system within cities is a good example of the inefficencies of government action. Any European will tell you that one reason the U.S. has not developed good mass transit is because our government has chosen to subsidize cars, not busses and subways (except in a few major metropolitan areas). Every free interstate road is a subsidy to car owners, which makes it cheaper for them to commute to work by car rather than by bus or train. It also encourages urban sprawl rather than consolidation of neighborhoods.

The free interstate system has also helped make 18-wheelers more profitable to distribute goods across country than trains or boats. Do you really think that's a good thing?

I'm not saying I'm against the interstate system or that every road should be a toll road. I'm just pointing out that the interstate highway system may not be the best poster boy in favor of government intervention in the marketplace.

Re:Don't stop incentives for new tech!

[tchuladdiass]

You do realize that those trucks buy fuel, don't you? And that fuel has a fairly large tax on it. Also, they go through a lot of fuel, more than cars do. So, they do pay for the roads themselves (along with all the other motorists), just indirectly. But proportionally, it is still right in there.

Re:Don't stop incentives for new tech!

[mrchaotica]

High-speed internet access gives us a competitive advantage (or if we don't have it it gives other countries a competitive advantage over us), so it's an investment, not a luxury, just like how the interstate highway system was an investment.

Re:Area to cover

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweden population - ~8 million. Korea population - ~50 million. USA population - ~290 million. What was your point again?

To point out the obvious to you, it's that smaller countries with smaller populations will find it easier to install broadband at a higher rate than large countries with large populations which have issues of scale to contend with. So you augmented the grandparent's point.
I'll just add here that the S. Korean government has subsidized the broadband infrastructure and supports it like it were a water/electricity utility for the country. It actually seems kinda like they WANT to provide this service for the betterment of all it's citizens, which isn't a bad idea.

Re:To be a bit blunt

[mrchaotica]

It's not about uses we know about, it's for uses that haven't been invented yet. The highway system was designed for troop transport and shipping, but one major benefit is all the economic growth from roadside motels and tourist traps and such (well, economic benefit if not aesthetic benefit) which weren't predicted.

Re:Forget the budget

[NoOneInParticular]

Without the United States? I think not. Korea was an independent state for 1300 (!!) years before the United States agreed with the Soviet Union to split it up in two. Your point being?

Re:Area to cover

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you chop your country up to smaller pieces then? Each of them could then simultaneously set up the broadband infrastructure just like Sweden and then connect to each other like Sweden connects to the rest of the Europe.
You could call them smaller pieces with some nifty name.. how about 'states'?