The U.S. Falling Behind In Broadband? 161
prostoalex writes "Michael J. Copps of the FCC has published a column in the Washington Post describing the United States' Internet disconnect as far as broadband: 'The United States is 15th in the world in broadband penetration, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). When the ITU measured a broader digital opportunity index (considering price and other factors) we were 21st — right after Estonia. Asian and European customers get home connections of 25 to 100 megabits per second (fast enough to stream high-definition video). Here, we pay almost twice as much for connections that are one-twentieth the speed.' To be fair in comparison, USA is 2nd in the world as far as number of broadband lines installed."
Hey there Chicken Little! (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously though, the author completely ignores the vast geographic differences between the US and other industrialized country when categorizing the US as falling behind in broadband acceptance. The US has an average population density of ~30 people per square km, industrialized Europe's is ~100, while Japan's is 336. The higher the population density, the less cable is needed (and hence, the lower the cost) to provide broadband to all these people.
In addition, the US is HIGHLY suburban, with the vast majority of broadband users living in sprawling neighborhoods with relatively large amounts of land (e.g. 1/4 to 1/2 acre+). Compare this to Europe/Japan, where a larger proportion of broadband users (and the population) live in densely populated cities. As an example, I live in a typical suburban U.S. neighborhood where almost everyone has broadband. To hit every one of the 100 homes, it would take 1.3 to 2.6 miles of cable (depending on cable location). In a European city, this same amount of cable could easily cover 2-10X the # of families living in typical apartments/condos.
Also, I don't see how large-scale adoptance of broadband in the US would help the economy by the stated $500Billion (a whopping 5% of GDP). The only people I know who don't have broadband either: don't own a computer (lack of money, interest, or live on a farm), are worried about their kids hitting the porn sites, or are grandparent types who just have no clue what the internet is and have no desire to learn. If we got all these people surfing online watching YouTube videos, searching for nudie pics, playing solitaire, and creating myspace pages, how would the economy grow by 5%?
REALITY: Real countries invest in infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)
Just as we've fallen massively behind in scientific research (US scientists leaving to go to Singapore, only 8 percent of NIH grants accepted compared to 20 percent in 2000), so we are falling behind on every measure that dictates what a First World country is.
But, hopefully, our long national nightmare will be coming to a close. The stock market (a predictor of future investment) seems to think so.
Healthcare, poverty, why is this even an issue? (Score:2, Interesting)
look at population density! rural areas? (Score:3, Interesting)
this is common in the US, so there is no surprise that broadband penetration is like it is. it cost an absolute fortune to run the infrastructure here. the cable tv companies decided not to install in the area because everyone already has satellite. this is the most hilly part of indiana so wireless isn't a good option. cell phone reception is great, if you're with cingular so maybe you could get broadband through them, i dunno. satellite internet isn't worth the price.
seriously, whats the options?
Well, duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, even 50x more bandwidth than the pathetic 200 kb/sec I'm liable to get on a good torrent is not a lot when they are doing traffic shaping.
Now if there was a broadband offering here in San Diego County that gave true 1mb/sec downloads without traffic shaping, monitoring, shutting off the connection YOU ARE PAYING FOR, or other such shenanigans then I could reasonably recommend them to family and friends. As it stands, You might as well just use dial up, since email, google, and MySpace is all the internet is good for anyway. What good is broadband without bit torrent? Are there hundreds of uses that I'm somehow missing? Does the average person really give two shits about streaming random teenagers singing into a webcam on youtube?
The corporate stranglehold on this country is the problem. It is the terminal malignancy that we are under not just in the technology sector, but in every way that should matter to the US citizen.
Yay, we voted out the corrupt and dirty Republicans! What's that you say, the Democrats are just as sold out to corporate interests and also don't give a shit about the American populace or the concepts of civil liberty as envisioned by our forefathers? Oh, shit....
rhY
Re:Enough already (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in Arizona and for years have been trying to get a high-speed Internet connection, but only 26.4 K dial-up was available. Last week DSL finally became available from the telephone company and I am now enjoying my new 1.5 Mbs DSL connection. It is a wonderful improvement over 26.4K dial-up. In my neighborhood, 56K modems had only been able to connect at 26.4K and DSL was not available. I had not been able to get either cable or DSL even though I have had to watch their advertisements for both products on TV.
On several occasions, I tried to order a 256K high-speed wireless connection from a local Internet provider, but according to their computer reception would not be possible at my address. I mentioned that my neighbor 50 feet away has one of their antennas on his roof and is successfully connected, but she was still reluctant to send someone to my address. My roof has just as good of a view of the nearby hilltops as his, but after several telephone calls and a couple of months time, they never did send anyone out to check. Fortunately, DSL finally became available instead so and last week several of my neighbors and I are now celebrating our new high-speed Internet connections.
I live in a city of about 50,000 people, not in a rural area, so I don't really understand what the problem was. From where I live, I look outside and can see nearby an airport, a private University, a hospital, a shopping center, and a golf course with an expensive gated community nearby. I am not a rural customer out in the middle of nowhere.
Over the last few years I have taken several computer courses at a Junior College, in which part of the study material was offered on-line. I had choose between downloading the graphics intense study material or driving over to the college which, fortunately, was only several miles away.
Ppffffttt....Falling behind? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hey there Chicken Little! (Score:1, Interesting)
Broadband connectivity should be regulated in the public sector like other essential services.
Michael Powell's push for deregulation in the communication sector started a consolidation of power that seriously weakened our ability to be competitive. The lack of low cost broadband is already impacting national commerce. Considering the increasing role that communication plays in national security, there is even a very real case to have federally funded broadband.
It's not Chicken Little my friend. When you pay for broadband in this country, all you get is a big fat turkey!
There's plenty of data to support Copps (Score:3, Interesting)
The physical factors account for some of it, but not much. For one thing, the suburban qualities of America doesn't give much insight into why it is that city dwellers in most of America still have broadband speeds that pale in comparison to those in much of Europe and Asia. Remember that according to the FCC, broadband means anything over 200kbs, so talking about "broadband" in America and South Korea is really talking about two completely different things.
The "America is so huge" argument doesn't work when you also recognize that most Americans only have two broadband providers to choose from. The consolidation of the telecom market means that it is a losing proposition for one carrier to enter a geographic market that another carrier has already taken. Usually it comes down to "competition" in the form of a choice between the dominant local telecom and whichever cable operator has the contract for the area. You can drink anything you want, as long as it is Coke or Pepsi.
By defining broadband as an "information service" the FCC and the Supreme Court (in the Brand X decision) turned the incombent telecos and cable companies loose. They no longer had to lease excess capacity to new entrants in the market. The anti-competitive measures taken by the Baby Bells in the late 1990s were essentially excused and ratified, and almost all of the plucky broadband competitors that sprung up to bring broadband to the masses were squashed by the giant, slow-moving, ever-consolidating telecom entities.
The South Korean approach worked in part because the government created an initial infrastructure and allowed carriers to compete on top of it. Here in the US, we talk about the free market incessantly, but in reality we have coddled the Baby Bells. They are the severed pieces of the old AT&T, which was essentially a government-protected monopoly for decades. So when the heads of these companies talk about how pissed off they are at Google, et. al., for using "their" networks, just remember that they were born rich. Sure, they built the fiber optic networks and invested billions in infrastructure, but were it not for government intervention in the early years of telecom, they would have been in the same place as Covad and all the other newcomers. Anyone can compete in the broadband market in theory, but in reality if the incumbents have a decades-long lead on you and billions of dollars, how in the hell are you going to get the funding necessary to compete? Of course, with that nice head start, the mutant offspring of the Baby Bells are fervent supporters of free market competition. Funny how that works, isn't it?
Look up broadband prices in the US from 10 years ago, five years ago, and now. Evidence of a truly competitive market? Check prices per megabyte in the US against those in the OECD report linked to below. Something isn't right.
I could go on and on about this, but Copps is right. The US is getting its ass kicked in broadband, and the "hands off" approach the government has taken over the last ten years has clearly not worked. Sure, we're a big country, but the technical aspects are the smallest part of the equation. After all, the Internet was started here. DSL was invented here. Fiber optic cable was first put to practical use here. We screwed up politically, and now we're paying for it.
Broadband Reality Check II [freepress.net] (PDF)
OECD report on broadband access in several countries [oecd.org]
GAO report on broadband [gao.gov] (PDF) - takes the FCC to task for failures in its methodology for determining broadband penetration.