Why Is American Internet So Slow?

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This is a good question. If I was to guess, I would have to say it's because of greedy, monopolistic, clueless corporate fat cats. But that's just a guess. ;)

According to a recent study by Ookla Speedtest, the U.S. ranks a shocking 31st in the world in terms of average download speeds. The leaders in the world are Hong Kong at 72.49 Mbps and Singapore on 58.84 Mbps. And America? Averaging speeds of 20.77 Mbps, it falls behind countries like Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Uruguay.
 
Geography is a big part of it, yeah. Easy for Hong Kong and Singapore to claim the top spots when they're also the 3rd and 4th most densely populated nations on the planet. For every mile of cable ran they serve way more people than the US would serve with the same mile of cable. The US, for instance, is down around 182nd most densely populated. As a comparison, Hong Kong has approx 17,000 people per sq mile. The USA has 82 per sq mile. A little different.

That said, it should be doing better. Estonia and Uruguay have similar population densities and are slightly ahead of the USA. My nation, Canada, is down at 230/244 but we face similar issues of having a duopoly and not a lot of interest in advancing internet speeds and pricing. Our speeds are slightly less than the USA. But, with a far smaller population density (82 per sq mile vs 9 per sq mile), I can forgive our companies a little ... but not by much.
 
LMAO. "Speeds averaging 20.77Mbps". A majority of the USA landmass can't get those speeds for love or money...and now magically they're the "average". Bullshit is bullshit.
 
I think the sheer size of the country has something to do with it. We have a lot of rural area in our country, which drags down the average. Also, the cable companies are greedy and want more money for less service.
 
Geography is a big part of it, yeah. Easy for Hong Kong and Singapore to claim the top spots when they're also the 3rd and 4th most densely populated nations on the planet. For every mile of cable ran they serve way more people than the US would serve with the same mile of cable. The US, for instance, is down around 182nd most densely populated. As a comparison, Hong Kong has approx 17,000 people per sq mile. The USA has 82 per sq mile. A little different.

That said, it should be doing better. Estonia and Uruguay have similar population densities and are slightly ahead of the USA. My nation, Canada, is down at 230/244 but we face similar issues of having a duopoly and not a lot of interest in advancing internet speeds and pricing. Our speeds are slightly less than the USA. But, with a far smaller population density (82 per sq mile vs 9 per sq mile), I can forgive our companies a little ... but not by much.

Good post. It's much easier to have competition for lines when there's a much larger pool of customers for every run of copper.
 
cost and corporations limit the USA more than anything else. every 6 months there is a new 'super fast extra extreme bang zoom rush fasto edition' package that adds another few mbps to your download but costs an additional $10 a month.
 
As Google fiber roll outs show us - As soon as we get competition in the last mile, speeds increase overnight.
"Oh Hey Austin, google fiber is coming, well don't worry about that, here is an overnight increase to your subscription speeds."

To me, it is as simple as opening up the last mile to competition. I am all for the Comcast merger, as long as the government says they have to open up the last mile to any and all competition.
 
Good post. It's much easier to have competition for lines when there's a much larger pool of customers for every run of copper.

And when a monopoly wasn't granted on the local infrastructure
 
LMAO. "Speeds averaging 20.77Mbps". A majority of the USA landmass can't get those speeds for love or money...and now magically they're the "average". Bullshit is bullshit.

Average does not mean "what most people have". Every household with gigabit Ethernet to the home wipes out a bunch of modem users.
 
It is the massive size of the US that causes the problem. Heck, we still have lines that run on telephone poles in most of the country.
 
It's not the size it's the lack of competition. Countries who do it right have government owned, controlled and updated internet infrastructure with multiple companies that compete for ultimate delivery to your home.
 
No excuse here in Canada, they gouge people big time, in nearly every city I have lived they have a very crap excuse for needing data caps which usually start at 40gb/month for a 5/768 connection, higher speed is 5/1 or 6/1 and cap of 60-75gb and that depends on where you live, at the same time in these town the local companies all have access to 100-500mb uncapped connections at virtually the same price, its like consumers are paying the difference to give the big companies a better deal. Pricing well that is the icing on the cake, most of us have a 5/1 60gb connection costing ~$60/mth add in the most basic home phone line total /mth sits at ~$90 oh cant forget the bundle savings of $4 but a network charge of $7 for privilege of paying the bill for the service in the first place. Try to get an unbundled line just for net use, well then the price in many cases ends up being within $5 of the same price of just getting the damn basic phone.

So yeh, American internet is slow, well we are similar in that regard but also pay that much more for the privilege, we make much of the equipment for others to use to make it all happen in the first place, isn't it a wonderful world, costs pennies on the $ to make, but can upsell it for any excuse of a selling price and in this day and age you very nearly have no choice in having net/phone car/insurance food/lodgings, bunch of yuppies :)
 
Average does not mean "what most people have". Every household with gigabit Ethernet to the home wipes out a bunch of modem users.

What average? Mean, median, or mode?

Lord knows how Ookla generated these stats. One way or another, most people in the USA do not get 20megabit down as it is not even offered.
 
Geography and regional monopolies/duopolies.

Geography is such an over-used bullshit excuse everybody wants to throw in... It PURE BULLSHIT!!!! You know why? Because speeds in major metro areas are NOT that much better than rural areas for the most part... You ask why again? Maybe beacause most metro areas are service by ONE (!!!!!!) maybe two major ISP's, which have pretty much a "status quo" agreement NOT to compete with each other... Keep prices locked, and spend no money on upgrading infrastructure... You know what happened in Kansas City when Google announced their rolling out fiber there? Both ATT and Time Warner started scrambling arround, offering great deals if you sign up for 12 or 24month contract... Time Warner even upped their downloads from ~20Mbps, to almost 50... For FREE!!! Hmm, why couldn't they do that before??? Ahh, you guessed it: NO COMPETITION!!!!

So again, stop with the geography excuse people.... Bottom line here is the major ISP's BOTTOM LINE!!!!
 
As soon as you guys figure out that America is all about capitalist greed you will start to understand the American people are nothing more than "trick ass marks" (c) Dave Chappell.

Pensions gone, jobs moved over seas just to save a buck. Did you guys know that in just 10 short years, to have a child here in the US has gone up 350%? In 2004 it was $7,500 dollars ... It's not 50,000 - 60,000 to have a kid in 2014.

Internet speeds? kids, lost jobs, etc. It's all fucking connected. They don't want you to have speed, they don't want you to have unlimited data. They want to spoon feed you very small expensive amounts of everything so they can get all your money. Money money money. That's all they care about.

Trust me, none of us are winning. We're all losing. It's only going to get more expensive and worse. Everything.
 
It is the massive size of the US that causes the problem. Heck, we still have lines that run on telephone poles in most of the country.

That would make sense if it were only the diffusely populated areas that were slow. Even highly populated dense areas have poor access. Remember that storm that hit NYC? When repair crews went down they finally decided to replace all the old copper with fiber. That's why internet is slow. Companies like ATT and Comcast are permitted to dump billions of dollars into too many other parts of their business, they put far too little back into their infrastructure. They do this because a bandwidth shortage is good for them. It makes bandwidth cost more. If there actually is a shortage then they can legally say so. Then they get away with charging too much. That's why it's slow.
 
Why is the internet slow?
Because the greedy bastards don't have any competition and can rape us for every last cent we have while providing shitty service because there's no one else.
 
Geography and regional monopolies/duopolies.

There's a fiber backbone that goes through my city of 150k. It's less than 1km from my house, and through it's length(it's a railroad), suburban housing for middle class families averaging 50k a year abounds. We have AT&T and Comcast as available providers. Both overpriced for the services offered. I've been considering talking to our mayor about creating a fiber utility owned and operated by the city.
 
That would make sense if it were only the diffusely populated areas that were slow. Even highly populated dense areas have poor access. Remember that storm that hit NYC? When repair crews went down they finally decided to replace all the old copper with fiber. That's why internet is slow. Companies like ATT and Comcast are permitted to dump billions of dollars into too many other parts of their business, they put far too little back into their infrastructure. They do this because a bandwidth shortage is good for them. It makes bandwidth cost more. If there actually is a shortage then they can legally say so. Then they get away with charging too much. That's why it's slow.
Exactly. The area where I live the cable is running on the copper infrastructure that was laid out 25 years ago. When Comcast came in and monopolized the area they have so far done nothing to improve the lines on which they run their services on now. At least they finally upgraded to DOCSIS 3.0 a couple of years ago...

I'm currently paying $80/month for 30/4 mbps service. I am really only averaging around 15 down on a good day, though.
 
I'm currently paying $80/month for 30/4 mbps service. I am really only averaging around 15 down on a good day, though.


Cox just upped the price to $62/month for my 25/5 mbit connection.
My only alternative is DSL that might give me 3 mbit if I'm lucky, or to downgrade my COX connection to 5/1 mbit for $48/month with a 100Mbyte cap.

I'd go with something slower (like 10-12 mbit) if it was significantly cheaper, but 3 or 5 mbit is just too slow, and a 100Mbyte cap is just too low to be pratical.
 
Considering the big telco's already stole 200 billion meant to run fiber to the last mile, I'd have to say it's because of them.
 
AND cause the govt doesn't give 2 shits to step in an make some hard rules on say that you pay for x but very rarely get it, they need to mandate that if it is sold as x speed that its gets this as a a low average not a rare average, they need to do like Nvidia does with the way they figure out boost clocks type deal.

I know my brother was paying for 8/2 70gb cap for like 3 years and I think we only ever got that for maybe 1 week tops, finally when it was having major issues even hitting the terminal "high speed" of 5/1 for like 3 months day in and out he called them up and they said "well the line is only rated for 5/768 so sorry about that. Hence they very much need to enact laws to prevent that kind of crap, a minimum service speed guarantee or something.

and for it to be high speed needs to be minimum 5/1 not up to, but minimum, I know lots of people that have DSL that are getting just over 768 down and only like 128 up but yet paying the same as their city counterparts would be for a standard 5/1, why make it fair when you can make yourselves and shareholders rich huh. Bell as an example raked in something like 4bln pure profit this year. Yep its expensive and we give the best deals possible my ass.
 
Geography is a big part of it, yeah. Easy for Hong Kong and Singapore to claim the top spots when they're also the 3rd and 4th most densely populated nations on the planet. For every mile of cable ran they serve way more people than the US would serve with the same mile of cable. The US, for instance, is down around 182nd most densely populated. As a comparison, Hong Kong has approx 17,000 people per sq mile. The USA has 82 per sq mile. A little different.

That said, it should be doing better. Estonia and Uruguay have similar population densities and are slightly ahead of the USA. My nation, Canada, is down at 230/244 but we face similar issues of having a duopoly and not a lot of interest in advancing internet speeds and pricing. Our speeds are slightly less than the USA. But, with a far smaller population density (82 per sq mile vs 9 per sq mile), I can forgive our companies a little ... but not by much.

Canada does not really have less population density than the US. It's probably denser, because 95% of Canada has zero or practically zero population. If you take away the strip of land within 100 miles of the US border the population of Canada is tiny.

All the flyover states of the US have millions of people living in farms and rural communities that will really kill an average.
 
Geography and regional monopolies/duopolies.
You called it dude.

I'd add favorable laws at the local, state and federal level (cough, bribes, cough) plus industry consolidation as a whole as other major factors.

It's pathetic that even China, goddamn China, has a more competitive phone and broadband ecosystem than the US.
 
It's because all the US internet traffic has to crawl through the NSA snoop machines. :(
 
It needs to be operated by an independent government agency, like the Post Office, for the same reason the Interstate Highway system is not privately operated.

Because it IS the information super highway, not the Verizon or Comcast wealth stick.
 
I posted this in another thread, but it NEEDS to be reposted just so people get the facts straight!!!
This screams nothing but GREED!!!!

v6f9ufd.gif
 
No, it really isn't pure bullshit. Maps are real things.

The ISPs could open open up their bandwidth overnight...if they cared about anything more than their stock price and how many billions of USD capital they have in offshore tax free bank instruments.. Because at the end of the day that is what is keeping speeds capped abysmally low.
 
It is the massive size of the US that causes the problem. Heck, we still have lines that run on telephone poles in most of the country.

Even in highly populated areas, they top out at 50Mb, if that. Some can get to 100Mb, but it's still way more expensive. The lines to provide faster service are there (at least to the backbone). I can understand the rural areas being very limited. That would bring the average down a bit. I just can't see why in some major cities, you're still very limited on speeds and/or ISP choices.
 
I posted this in another thread, but it NEEDS to be reposted just so people get the facts straight!!!
This screams nothing but GREED!!!!

I don't know... Getting the service to you has a base price. The price increase from the base speed to a higher speed isn't really that much of an increase.
 
No, it really isn't pure bullshit. Maps are real things.

Sure, the US is larger but our population density is very much focused to specific areas. The excuse of 'geography' is not really a valid excuse for major telecoms to use. Comcast has done very little to improve infrastructure in the US. the ~25 year old lines are hung and they have no intention of spending the capital to make improvements as they have no real competition and no incentive to do so.

Greed is the #1 reason for slow speeds in the US.

us-population-map.gif
 
I posted this in another thread, but it NEEDS to be reposted just so people get the facts straight!!!
This screams nothing but GREED!!!!

http://i.imgur.com/v6f9ufd.gif[/I MG][/QUOTE]Solution: just become poor and get the $9.95/month 5Mbps/1Mbps package instead. :p

Comcast is spending literally tens of millions of dollars (out of $65 billion in revenue last year) on data bandwidth. Peering agreements keep those costs low. Wow Internet.
 
Solution: just become poor and get the $9.95/month 5Mbps/1Mbps package instead. :p

Comcast is spending literally tens of millions of dollars (out of $65 billion in revenue last year) on data bandwidth. Peering agreements keep those costs low. Wow Internet.

Am I being whooshed here?

Tens of MM is not a god damn thing compared to $65BB in profits!
 
I don't know... Getting the service to you has a base price. The price increase from the base speed to a higher speed isn't really that much of an increase.

In this case it's what I found looking for an ISP for the house I'm renting. The cable infrastructure has been in this neighborhood since 1999. So it's been 13yrs since these greedy bastards spent a fucking dime on installing the lines. How in the FUCK do they get away with charging $50 for 6Mbps, where the the 50Mbs (almost 10 times the speed) yet then only charge $76... So for extra 32% in price, you get ~90% speed increase... Hmm, math eludes somebody.... And does it really cost them 32% more to up the bandwidth... FUCK NO!
 
Am I being whooshed here?

Tens of MM is not a god damn thing compared to $65BB in profits!

Revenue is not profit. They had approximately $6B in profit on revenues of $65B. Still, from my perspective, $6B is several metric fucktons of money...
 
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