US Ranking for Broadband Falls 298
Ant writes "Broadband Reports mentions Declan McCullagh's CNET editorial where he believes everything is a-ok in the world of broadband, and people concerned with falling global rankings are over-reacting. 'FCC figures released last month show that 94.3 percent of U.S. ZIP codes have high-speed lines available to them,' he writes; though as we've pointed out, the FCC considers one home in a zip code with broadband to mean that entire zip code is 'serviced.'"
Broadband (Score:5, Informative)
In
Additionally, nobody LIKES this one carrier, who up until just recently were actually charging their wholesale customers (ISPs who lease DSLAM ports via PPPoA/L2TP) more per connection than their retail customers. This ended when the ACCC (.au equivalent of the US FTC) served them with a competition notice, which they are now currently trying to work their way out of.
Yes, America has it good, comparatively. And, unlike Korea, they're not responsible for ~5/6 of all reported open proxy hosts.
Most "broadband" in USA isn't really that broad (Score:3, Informative)
For about the same price, in Korea they give you 10mb/s both ways. Orders of magnitudes faster.
Bah... (Score:3, Informative)
Wireless. I don't know how many other places have access to it, but I have microwave through michwave. Only requirement is LoS to the tower. Seems like rural areas with lots of farmland could really benefit from microwave.
Re:It's all percentage versus real numbers (Score:3, Informative)
Show me the website of someone offering 24MB/1MB DSL in New York. This guy gets that in Tokyo. [typepad.com] Show me the website of a company providing VDSL to a New York apartment for $50 a month like you can get in South Korea [hanaro.com].
I'm sure its nothing to fret about, after all 11th place is respectable for a country that didn't even bother to show up.
DSl Coverage (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Garbage? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Agreed AU ISP is a pain. (Score:3, Informative)
I pay $A109.95 a month for 512/512 DSL with 30GB of included data, and $A10/GB additional to that (although the 30GB is only for transit data, not data received via a second tier IX such as Pipe or VIX, so it's very hard to move 30GB in a month on a 512K line in any event).
I helped skew the numbers (Score:3, Informative)
The FCC form (Form 477) doesn't actually ask for any kind of correlation between "ZIP codes" and "number of people per ZIP code". One page asks about how many broadband customers we have, and another page asks for a shopping list of all our broadband customers' ZIPs. We offer broadband in about thirty different ZIP codes, even though most of them only have one or two customers.
(Since a T1 qualifies as broadband, natch, they think we have coverage thirty miles from our nearest tower -- one customer out there wanted a hookup badly enough that they were willing to pay through the nose, so we did it.)
Re:It's not a right (Score:3, Informative)
There are two entirely different things, and people often get them confused: rights and entitlements. Rights are things like the right to bear arms, the right to practice any (or no) religion, and so forth. Entitlements are things that the government should give somebody, such as cheese to poor people.
Access to communications _should_ be a human right, just like the right to education (article 26, Universal Declaration of Human Rights).
The freedom to communicate is a God-given human right, not the freedom to have cheap or easy access to all possible communications methods. I only have access to a high-speed connection when I am at the university, and only a modem connection at home, but I don't believe my rights are being violated by this. And as for the UDHR, it routinely tries to pass off entitlements as if they were rights just like this, and the worst part of it all is found in Article 29 Section 3:
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
My translation of what the U.N. is really saying here: "You should have all of these freedoms, and all of this stuff we list, unless it becomes inconvienent for us, in which case you can all suck our dicks and pretend to like it." The PATRIOT Act is nothing compared to that one line. It is equivalent to replacing Amendment IX of the U.S. Constitution, which currently says:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
with
The rights and freedoms enumerated in the Constitution may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United States.