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The Internet

BBC Reports 38% Jump In U.S. Broadband Use 185

Posted by timothy from the pleasant-change dept.
Sammy at Palm Addict writes "The BBC tells how broadband internet usage has soared over in the U.S. 'More and more Americans are joining the internet's fast lane, according to official figures. The number of people and business connected to broadband jumped by 38% in a year, said the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).'"
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BBC Reports 38% Jump In U.S. Broadband Use More

BBC Reports 38% Jump In U.S. Broadband Use

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  • Yay! (Score:3, Funny)

    by krymsin01 ( 700838 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @01:59AM (#11197692) Homepage Journal
    More drones for the botnets out there. More DDOS attacks! More Spam! It's a Good Thing(tm).
    • Faster p2p downloads! Yeah!

    • Re:Yay! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by A beautiful mind ( 821714 )
      Actually this is not funny and i don't think it was intended to be funny, there are a lot of people without no proper education on the internet getting hooked on it these days. Im not thinking about the CS/IT level education they should be given, but some basic safety education which should be given to them...i would make it complimentary but let's stop chasing red herrings for a second, i would be very happy if they would at least offer it, offer basic safety education with a new internet subscription.

  • Problem with Broadband (Score:4, Interesting)

    by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:01AM (#11197702) Homepage Journal
    Is that in the USA (and the UK) it seems that broadband is kinda-fast. Maybe maxing out at a few megabit/s.

    Parts of the far east and scandinavia seem to have far faster connections already... yet in the west we are rolling out slow broadband services and haven't really got plans for higher speed ones.

    This will restrict the possibilities for video on demand and similar services. Of course it's likely that comcast et al might want that...
    • Yeah, it's true that the broadband speeds aren't that great, but it's never really been a problem for me. I don't really download huge amounts of stuff (no warez and DVD rips for me), and I certainly don't need video on demand, so I'm perfectly happy with my 512kb connection.
      On the other hand, as you say, things in other countries are much better. I know of a guy in Scandinavia who was getting a 1Mbit connection supplied by the government. It turns out that the only thing limiting his connection to that sp
    • I'm at 3mbps (in the US) and I can't see what I would do with more bandwidth that I can't do now. That might change in the future though.

      • Re:Problem with Broadband (Score:4, Interesting)

        by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:20AM (#11197756) Homepage Journal
        But it's probably not a 3Mb/3Mb connection either.

        When your connection gets faster it becomes practical to mount disks on remote systems. I'm forced to do this sort of thing for work and it's pretty slow even when i'm only editing source files.

        I also upload a number of large image files, and could always use this being faster.

        It seems like this is a case of the 640k problem.
        • > When your connection gets faster it becomes practical to mount disks on remote systems.
          > I'm forced to do this sort of thing for work and it's pretty slow even when i'm only
          > editing source files.

          I don't know what kind of work environment you have, but I find it much faster to remote-X my Lucid Xemacs over an ssh connection that I do to mount the disks and edit them that way.

          The added bonus is that I don't have to compile on my slow home boxen to test my changes.

    • Re:Problem with Broadband (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Umm... what about FIOS [verizon.net]?

      That seems plenty fast to me...

      • Hmmm Japan has it, I know someone in Finland with it... yet when i call up comcast they don't even know what i'm talking about.

        Sounds like the US and UK strategy is to squeeze as much as possible from our antiquated telephone and cable networks, and we'll worry about laying fiber some time later....
        • "Sounds like the US and UK strategy is to squeeze as much as possible from our antiquated telephone and cable networks, and we'll worry about laying fiber some time later...."

          FIOS *is* Fiber to the Premises

          It's not a future promise, it's not "squeezing the telephone network". It's a new network based on fiber to your house, it's fast, and it's being deployed NOW. Verizon is investing 2.5 billion in deploying it through 2005.

          Besides, what's wrong with copper and coax? ADSL2 offers 25Mbit speeds when used
          • I think you missed what the grandparent was saying. He was saying that the US And the UK are not using FIOS and instead trying to squeeze the most use out of the current telephone and cable networks.
            • "He was saying that the US And the UK are not using FIOS and instead trying to squeeze the most use out of the current telephone and cable networks."

              It seems you missed my point altogether.

              FIOS is Verizon's (a major US telco) name for fiber-to-the-premises. They are paying $2.5 billion to pursue a rather agressive rollout schedule throughout 2005.

              Verizon can't 'not use FIOS' because FIOS is their brand for FTTP services.
              • Yes but Verizon will probably only provide FIOS in areas where it will yeild short/medium term profits.

                It'll probably go into areas that already have some broadband services, instead of into areas with none.

    • Re:Problem with Broadband (Score:4, Insightful)

      by YggdrasilOS ( 713459 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:22AM (#11197762) Homepage

      The main problem with slow broadband--stateside and elsewhere--is the transmission medium. Rollout of broadband to new areas often entails laying down hundreds of km of fibre, as many areas have nothing but Cu wire prior to this. Add to this that the two most prevalent broadband solutions still use Cu for the "Last Mile", and you have huge bottlenecking problems. To their credit, Verizon is trying to fix the problem [verizon.com], but any infrastructure change on this scale is going to take aeons.

      Contrast this with S. Korea--the poster child for a wired society. Look back a measly few decades, and lo and behold, no telecom/cable infrastructure to speak of! By the time they started really getting serious about geting wired, fibre had become the Medium of Choice, so that's what they used.

      Everywhere. In everything.

      Consequently, they get blisteringly fast internet connections, and are often puzzled or pitying when their US friends complain about slow downloads or quadruple-digit ping values. The US can have this kind of speed, and it will, but the time required to replace an existing network (or notwork, as may be the case ^_^) is several orders of magnitude greater than the requirement for installing an infrastructure into a virgin environment.

      • Isn't that a problem with private companies (Score:5, Interesting)

        by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:27AM (#11197775) Homepage Journal
        Naturally the various bells and cable cos love it when they can roll out broadband without any real capital investment.

        Most people, like my parents, never saw the need for broadband, but now that they have 512k connections can't understand how they coped without them.

        People won't want a faster connection until they've come to expect one, but presently that only includes those of us who've worked with networks in the acaedemic or corporate world.

        At work i'll cancel a download that's under about 600kbytes/s and try to find a mirror - yet i remember when 3kbyte/s was revolutionary.

        Still if company X says that a 1Mbit/s connection is blazingly fast broadband then 90% of people will eat it up and never disagree. So there's no incentive to do anything better - which is surely where the government should come in.

        They happily build 10 lane highways, surely a good comm network is a natural extension of that.
        • No. It's a function of the economy. Have you checked to see how many miles of plant it would take to 'remake' the infrastructure for this entire country? Last time I looked it cost $18,000/mile to build cable plant and that was WITHOUT fibre. Even the government doesn't have deep enough pockets for that job.

          A couple months ago I looked into upgrading my DSL to 1.5 meg. At that time it was three times the bandwidth for twice the money. Not a bad deal on the face of it but I wasn't ready to pony up $100/mon

        • Yes, it would be wonderful if the government could step in and give everybody broadband. Then the US's internet infrastructure would be run with the same care and efficiency as Amtrak.

          No thanks.

          I don't know about other countries, but here in France, the speed and availability of broadband has gone way, way up since France Telecom's monopoly was broken and private companies were allowed to start doing things. Even just a couple of years ago, $50/month for a 512kbit connection was about as good as you could
      • Rollout of broadband to new areas often entails laying down hundreds of km of fibre, as many areas have nothing but Cu wire prior to this. Add to this that the two most prevalent broadband solutions still use Cu for the "Last Mile", and you have huge bottlenecking problems. To their credit, Verizon is trying to fix the problem [verizon.com], but any infrastructure change on this scale is going to take aeons.

        Would just like to say that we were in the same situation here in Sweden with an existing copper ne
      • Is it really necessary to write "Cu" instead of "copper", or do you just think it makes you look smart?
    • A large portion of the US still doesn't have access to broadband at all, and it's not only confined to extreme rural areas. Hell, I live 15 miles from Lansing, Michigan and I can't get anything faster than 26,000bps dialup. It's not like we're the only house for miles either, the cable company just refuses to string out the lines another 8/10ths of a mile because of the cost. That extra mile would cover atleast 90-100 homes, most who are fed up with DirecTV.

      Wasn't it just a few monthes ago when CmdrTaco
    • I have lived n both Finland and the US. In Helsinki they have cable modem and DSL just like in th US. In fact my DSL(1.5MB from Speakeasy) in the US is 3X faster for about the same money. Do you have a link for faster connections in the Nordic region?
    • Except for the fact that video on demand and other similar services are already possible through the coax infrastructure laid through out the entire country. As a matter of fact I watch COD pretty much exclusively.
    • Except that half the reason a lot of people switch to broadband is so they don't have to either hold a second phone line or not be able to receive/place calls while online. For someone like me who is online all day, that could be a problem. Sure, the speed is nice, but the freedom is nicer.
    • I live in Tokyo and I've got 24Mbps downstream DSL right now. However, I'm within 500 meters of the central office. The greater Tokyo area also account for about 30% of Japan's population in an incredibly densely populated area which makes it much easier to roll out service here.

      Supposedly in the US, now that the Bells have reasserted themseles as monopoly players, speeds will start going up. I've seen many references [com.com] to fiber to the home being on the horizon.

  • Teh Metrixs? (Score:4, Funny)

    by RileyLewis ( 826273 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:10AM (#11197721)
    According to a documentary I saw recently, in the not too distant future the entire world will be hooked up to some sort of large interconnected network of humans from birth, controlled by some robots or something. I think in parts II and III of the film series, the documentary maker goes more in depth about how a small bunch of people get all cranky and get everyone else cut off from the network. Probably overused their bandwidth or something.

  • Funny... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 1tsm3 ( 754925 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:10AM (#11197723)
    that BBC is reporting about the US trend. Whatever happened to the American analysts and news companies?

    • Re:Funny... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mattkinabrewmindspri ( 538862 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:41AM (#11197821)
      They stopped analyzing and reporting the news.

      They're too busy talking about Scott Peterson or the eating problems of that one Olsen twin. You know, the important stuff.

    • Whatever happened to the American analysts and news companies?

      outsourced to the uk apparently

    • Re:Funny... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Macsimus ( 245076 )
      Actually, along those lines, ABC World News Tonight ran a story not too long ago about the plight of illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico into the United States. The story was produced by ... the BBC. Wha-huh?!? I know American news organizations have cut back their international news budgets, but ABC can't even report a story in its own back yard?

      I will say, though, that the BBC did a pretty good job. Still, it was a bit odd watching a British reporter interview an American border patrol off

    • Re:Funny... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mwooldri ( 696068 )
      The way things are going, the BBC is becoming a major news force in the USA anyway. An awful lot of US public radio stations are carrying BBC World Service overnight (cheaper than NPR), you can get BBC World Service on XM and Sirius, and BBC World TV programming gets aired on local PBS stations. Sure there's BBC America but if the BBC got BBC World carried on more cable systems and on the satellite services then we'd see them referred to in the same vein as CNN, MSNBC, Fox...

      However, the BBC has advantag
      • If the BBC were ever given funds to develop a proper US news service, I'm sure it would be successful - politicans couldn't criticize it for being left wing or right wing

        Are you kidding? Just when the war in the Iraq started, Fox News pretty much stamped BBC News as liberal propaganda not that far above Al Jazeera. And you get a pretty good feel for what the Bush administration feel about different people by listening to Fox News.

        • I hope for everyone's sake you're wrong. That Fox peice hit news worldwide as everyone pointed and laughed and said "My god, they can't really believe that, can they?"
          • In case you haven't noticed, a lot of people do watch and are influenced by Fox News. You would have to be a left coast liberal completely out of touch with reality to think that Fox is just a big joke.

            I'm not trying to take sides, but whether or not you think Fox is news or propaganda, it is quite naive to discount its influence.

    • Re:Funny... (Score:5, Funny)

      by johannesg ( 664142 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @04:06AM (#11198014)
      Well, it is still unofficial, but the UK will be applying for membership of the US in the near future. It is all part of a greater plan in which Canada becomes part of the EU.

      Currently there are still some practical considerations (how do we move Canada to join up with continental Europe?), but once the polar ice has melted there should be nothing to stop us from sawing Canada free and towing it to its new location.

      The benefits to everyone are obvious: the EU is currently extremely crowded, but it will get a lot of extra land through this deal. The Canadians finally get a neighbour that respects them. The UK is finally rid of that damn EU, and the US... Well, I guess not everyone wins but the UK is only a small country anyway, most of you won't notice any changes...

    • Whatever happened to the American analysts and news companies?

      So how long you been living abroad then? Must have been gone for quite a while, huh?
    • ...since the corporate media refuse to report on them. [projectcensored.org]

      The BBC however is hardly free of self-censorship, and its news is presented very much from the point of view of the cliques that run it.

      The best news IMHO is dominated neither by governments nor corporations, but there's not a lot of that around these days, at least not on television or in dailies.
    • Maybe the BBC is sticking to an obsolete business model? Where is it written that foreign correspondents and news anchors must work for the same employer? Wire services have existed for decades. We don't read the Associated Press newspaper or watch the Associated Press newscast, so why should the wonderful web of BBC correspondents only appear on a TV network owned by their employer? They don't and the world has another interesting slant on the news, one that is different than that paid for by American

  • Hmm. Perhaps this isn't such a good thing... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rupan ( 723469 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:13AM (#11197731) Homepage
    I'm just imagining the l33t scr1pt k1dd13s on their parents' new DSL connection and shuddering.... or perhaps it is the slowdown that the surge in content demand will cause. Oh well... maybe it does have a good side... after all, the people will be seeding movie torrents too :)

  • Correllation with Lawsuits? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hypharse ( 633766 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:14AM (#11197735)
    Ok, this is a jump and it's surely not the ONLY reason, but I wonder how much the publicity from pirated movies/music has encouraged people to get broadband to try it? I knew many people that never even considered downloading movies online (or new of bit torrent) until the big MPAA pub over it. Now they are all pridefully exchanging the best torrent sites they have found for it.

  • Well.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jamesgomez ( 808411 )
    With all of the price drops in high speed internet service, it was inevitable that more would use it. Personally, I know people who don't need to have high speed internet service since all they do is e-mail and casually use their computers. Eventually, more and more will divulge into the computer scene, then upgrading from dialup to broadband once a computer is common in all households and a neccessity to everyone. Myself, I wouldn't be able to live without a computer for a few days, but most people are s
    • Eventually evrey one will be using hi-speed internet. Right now most (+60%) of the U.S pop is connected to the 'Net' has email or a blog they are accustomed to. In the next 5 years TIVO like devices will be the most popular things since the microwave. People will be able to connect it to the internet using super high speed connections and recieve TV quality broadcasts from who ever wants to post it. Multi TB drives and bittorent like transfers will dominate and independenly produced on demand video will
  • This means several things. To start with, it makes perfect sense in conjunction with these news [slashdot.org].

    It also means that the US, despite all their assumptions, are far behind the rest of the world in matters of broandband. France, for instance, you can get a T1 line for values near 50$/month, similar thing in Sweden. Even in Portugal, which is easily in the tail of Europe in terms of broadband, it's now quite hard finding someone still not connected via DSL or Cable. In Estonia, it's in their constitution that

    • United States 3rd in Internet penetration rate (Score:5, Informative)

      by mc6809e ( 214243 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:40AM (#11197814)
      What a crock of propaganda.

      The United States is 3rd in total internet penetration rate (68.8%) [internetworldstats.com], only behind Sweden(74.6%) and Hong Kong(72.5%).France, Portugal, and Estonia, aren't even in the top 25.

      Pathetic, and by your logic much less informed than USAians. Europeans should be ashamed.

      Oh sure. Maybe broadband is cheaper some places. Or more people have it in other places. Big deal. Many Americans seem happy with modems.

      1 Sweden 74.6 %
      6,722,576
      9,010,700
      Nielsen//NR Aug./04

      2 Hong Kong 72.5 %
      4,878,713
      6,727,900
      Nielsen//NR Aug./04

      3 United States 68.8 %
      201,661,159
      293,271,500
      Nielsen//NR Aug./04

      4 Iceland 66.6 %
      195,000
      292,800
      ITU - Dec./03

      5 Netherlands 66.5 %
      10,806,328
      16,254,900
      Nielsen//NR Aug./04

      6 Australia 65.9 %
      13,359,821
      20,275,700
      Nielsen//NR Aug./04

      7 Canada 64.2 %
      20,450,000
      31,846,900
      C.I.Almanac - Dec/03

      8 Switzerland 63.5 %
      4,432,190
      7,433,000
      Nielsen//NR Aug./04

      9 Denmark 62.5 %
      3,375,850
      5,397,600
      Nielsen//NR June/02

      10 Korea, (South) 62.4 %
      30,670,000
      49,131,700
      KRNIC - July/04

      • Re:United States 3rd in Internet penetration rate (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kell_pt ( 789485 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:59AM (#11197866) Homepage
        To start with, I'm having a hard time understanding how was that "propaganda". I think you're confusing "increase in penetration rate" (which is what the article is all about) with "total penetration rate".

        Moreover, you're confusing "broadband access" with "internet access". You're talking quantity, I'm talking quality. And just so you can see where I'm comming, those 75%ish where you're comparing the US and Sweden... in Sweden you'll be hard pressed to find a non-broadband access - you should give it some further thought.

        Read the report U.S. a Generation Behind in High-Speed Broadband [websiteoptimization.com] instead of just reading BBC news.
      • Penetration does not equal broadband. The article is about broadband connections, not access.

        Not to mention in this study, internet access at the library counts even if you dont even own a home computer. Internet access at work counts even if you don't own a home computer. Etc.

        The ITU subscribes to the definition of an internet user as someone aged 2 years old and above,

        who went online in the past 30 days. The US Department of Commerce, in contrast, defines internet users as those 3 years or older who 'c

      • What a crock of propaganda.

        The United States is 3rd in total internet penetration rate (68.8%), only behind Sweden(74.6%) and Hong Kong(72.5%).France, Portugal, and Estonia, aren't even in the top 25.

        Those stats can't be taken seriously. I live in Finland, and of all the people I know I can only think about a handful who don't use the Internet. I'd say that's maybe one percent of all the people I know. Those people are all over 70.

        Pretty much everyone in Finland handles their banking transactions (paying bills etc) solely though the Internet. Physically going to the bank is _rare_. Many people have an Internet connection just for paying bills, but they do indeed use the Internet.

        (Sidenote: I've handled two cheques in my whole life, everthing here is handled electronically with inter-bank connections.)

        Now, If 99% of the people I know use the Internet, and the study says 50% of the people I know don't use the Internet I'm going to go with my gut. Sure, there's a hell of a large margin of error with a sample of a single person's expecience, but I find it impossible to believe the deviation could be 49% even if my own top-of-the-head approximations are way off.
    • In most of those other (non-USA) places you mention, services and utilities tend to be government provided (and taxes are higher), whereas here you often have to deal with a commercial enterprise that only considers improving things for the customer (if it's going to cost said enterprise anything) when forced to by competition or government regulation.

      I live about 2000 feet from a phone company switching station that's only a decade or so old but only in the past few months has DSL become available (at abou

      • It seems like my post was seen like a bit of a flamebait. Lots of people answered with their personal experiences, apparently missing the point that we're talking about broadband. Here's food for thought [websiteoptimization.com].

        Sorry if the original post went too far . :)

    • Re:This means several things (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @03:35AM (#11197949)
      "Fance, for instance, you can get a T1 line for values near 50$/month, similar thing in Sweden."

      You can get 1.5MBit/1MBit DSL from Qwest for around $35 a month, including ISP.

      They don't use T1s in Europe - it's a US standard, they use E1s.

      There's no conspiracy. The facts are clear: the US government hasn't paid to put in the broadband infastructure. It's been the individual companies - Qwest, Verizon, Comcast and others - who have paid for the equipment and labor.

      We don't have "super fast" access because no one gives a shit. 95% of Americans probably couldn't tell you what "bandwidth" was - nor would they care. The biggest problem facing broadband adoption is not infastructure or cost, it's the fact that people already have dial-up and they don't see any reason to change.

      We have low broadband adoption for the same reason that we drive POS Chevys and eat absolute shit as food - we don't bother to demand a better product.
    • France, for instance, you can get a T1 line for values near 50$/month, similar thing in Sweden.

      Actually, in France you get 8 Mbps down and 800 Kbps up DSL for 14,90 Euros (20 bucks a month).

      Check it there [leneuf.fr].

  • Meanwhile.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by linguae ( 763922 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:19AM (#11197754)

    ....there has been a large jump in computers being turned into spam zombies, servers hosting warez, pr0n and other things, and malware installations.

    This isn't flamebait, but I notice that a lot of the Joe Average-type of users don't know how to secure their machines. They are usually very ignorant about the Internet. The majority of them don't know what a firewall is, use a browser that resembles swiss cheese (cough*Internet Explorer*cough), and do other dangerous things such as going on any random site to download some spyware-infested game or opening attachments in Outlook.

    Combine this ignorance about computers in general with a broadband connection, and they're an attacker's delight. With a broadband connection, most users wouldn't know that somebody is silently doing weird things with their computer, since their Internet connection is so fast, they wouldn't really notice a reduction in speed. Besides, broadband connections are always-on connections, further adding to the user's complete obliviousness to what's going on.

    It's kind of sad, because all these users need is a firewall (preferably external), secure browser, and, most importantly, some education. However, the latter approach is really hard to accomplish, and in order for the users to find out about firewalls and secure browsers, they would need to be educated about them, anyways. Maybe we need a commercial that tells the public to install firewalls and install Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/insert-your-favorite-browser -here, and to be actively preventing malware and other nasties from being installed on the computer.

    • Re:Meanwhile.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @03:06AM (#11197883)
      Wow, everyone is quite the Cassandra today.

      Compared to just a couple years ago I would say things are A LOT more secure for a variety of reasons:

      Melissa.worm showed corporate america their security is terrible and now its rare for me to see a client running Exchange without Symatec or Trend Micro's realtime scanner.

      The wireless/router fad puts everyone behind NAT, thus behind a firewall. The internet is chock full of articles on "how to open ports" because so many technophobes are behind firewalls but want to use P2P or some other app that requires port forwarding.

      People are getting *less* ignorant. Its easy to sit upon your FreeBSD high horse and mock everyday users, its a lot harder to help them. And they have been helped. There's a technophile in every family. The number of articles in the media regarding spam, spyware, and viruses is non-trivial. The fact that I can say the word spyware to a stranger and not be asked what that is shows that the message is getting across.

      Microsoft is seriously getting into the act. SP2 is godsend for the technophobes out there. Firewall on by default, better IE control, etc. Hell, they even recommend Ad Aware on their own site. [microsoft.com] Their aquisition of Giant can only mean good things in the long run.

      That being said, the worst offenders in my experience are computer savvy teens who don't give a shit, not new users. They're savvy enough to get warez and also savvy enough to do that eventual re-install long after they;re so infected its hurting their download rates.

      I've been doing some support for college students (for those who live in the dorm) and they're a lot more careful because they have data on there they need and have to put up with University policies regarding proper use. These skills translate over to the workplace pretty easily.

      So yeah, its not perfect, but in my experience its getting better, not worse. Sorry, but the internet has yet to collapse because of new users. In fact, more users means more eventual power users and an eventual critical mass where everyone has someone to lean on when they need help with their PC.

      • Re:Meanwhile.... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MtViewGuy ( 197597 )
        Compared to just a couple years ago I would say things are A LOT more secure....

        With all those dire warning articles in the mainstream press, people ARE taking heed of the warnings about Internet security and are installing protection programs as fast as possible. For example, you don't need to pay for that added security: install ZoneAlarm and AVG Antivirus for free to provide real-time protection, and run something like Ad-Aware SE and SpyBot (both are free) once a day to clean out tracking cookies and

    • It's kind of sad, because all these users need is a firewall (preferably external), secure browser, and, most importantly, some education.

      IMHO, what these users need is for their "computer" to be a VMWare image running on a blade-server. In a datacenter run by competent administrators, who know what a 'firewall' is, and how to do things like 'virus scans' and 'automated backups'.

      What they should have at home is a high-speed graphics terminal, not capable of being 0wnzd or misconfigured, because it has

  • Obligatory Porn Post (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WMD_88 ( 843388 ) <kjwolff8891@yahoo.com> on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:24AM (#11197771) Homepage Journal
    Really, people. It's all about the pr0n. 38% more people now have high-speed sex0r pouring into their houses.

    "Video-on-demand" my ass.

  • ...big business lobbyists didn't stop cities like Philadelphia from providing free public wireless access citywide. G(&* D(&** profiteers!

  • The thrill is gone. (Score:4, Funny)

    by tloh ( 451585 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:37AM (#11197806)
    Man, the slashdot Gods really knows how to take the thrill out of a man's accomplishments. Just yesterday, I was giddy with pride for having finally figured out how to get the modem-on-hold function working for my dial up. No I'm depressed and have lost all motivation to attempt the same thing with my Debian partition. Excuse me but I have to go sulk now.
  • The trend was known throughout the year as well, but was never served as a statistic. This finally positively affects the way I (and many others) design sites, in terms of bandwidth.
    • The ability to make your sites more content-rich is great, but the extra bandwidth could also mean a lot more sloppy coding from some people, and a lot of unnecessary crap from some people, too.

      Things expand to fill up the space they're given. If a site thinks you have more bandwidth, they'll tend to deliver more bits, even if you don't want those bits.

      • That's a good point. The author is from 'Palm Addict' so he probably knows that the unnecessary bits can (and should) be disabled. With a good browser, for example, you can control bandwidth better. I can't think of analogies for audio and video...

  • My downloading shoes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) * on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @04:10AM (#11198024)
    Now all we need in the US is services that are condusive to actually serving content instead of simply consuming it. I suppose the ridiculous asymmetry of broadband services in the US ought to be expected of a country raised by televisions.

    I've got a broadband connection. It's 3Mbps downstream and 256Kbps upstream. While it is decidedly quicker than a 56k dial-up connection in either direction it is definitely not designed let me serve content at reasonable speeds. Many ports are also blocked at the cable company's head end so I can't use standard service ports (80, 21, etc). I also have to pay an obscene amount of money if I want a static IP address that I can point a DNS entry to.

    Some people do have residential broadband that offers saner upstream bandwidth, no port blocking, and free static IPs. Unfortunately this is not the norm here. Most of us either have to pay for hosting or a "business" service package from our broadband provider. In either case we're paying a lot of money for services that ought to be provided for all broadband users.
  • So will broadband use drop by 30% after 4 months?

  • US fears socialism (Score:4, Insightful)

    by max born ( 739948 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @05:49AM (#11198260)
    But the US is still behind compared to other nations, ranked 13th in the world by a UN telecoms body.

    Because the US government refuses to invest in infrastructure. Congress believes the road to Internet growth is best left up to private companies.

    I'm definately not for big government, but there are some things only goverment can do. The Internet is a bit like the federal highway system and entrusting its growth to the likes of Comcast and Verizon is a bad idea.

  • At least in my area, performance has been slowly degrading over the last few months.. I was the first to have broadband, having to wait forever for it to be available, as most here dont even know what a computer is..

    The day after Christmas was dismal.. Felt like we were back on dialup most of the day..

    Stupid kids with their stupid games.. Bandwidth wasters.. Nothing more.

  • The article is saying there are 32 Broadband connections in the US.. "more than 32 million broadband connections by the end of June 2004"

    Doing some fuzzy math, for a country of 300 million people, that means 10% of the country is connected.. BUT WAIT!!

    Connections are to HOMES, not to People, just like TV. There are roughly 95 million TV homes (maybe more these days). So 32 Homes with Broaband means roughly 1/3 of the country or about 100 million people (more than 1 person per home... + all those who "borr

  • "During his 2004 re-election campaign, President George W Bush pledge to ensure that affordable high-speed net access would be available to all Americans by 2007."

    The President hopes to have these new Internets online very, very soon. But first, certain rumors will have to be put down.

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