Why America's Internet Is So Crappy and Slow

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We all know the internet is crappy in America. You know what would be really interesting? An article that offered up ideas on how to fix the problem. ;)

You may have heard that the internet is winning: net neutrality was saved, broadband was redefined to encourage higher speeds, and the dreaded Comcast-Time Warner Cable megamerger potentially thwarted. But the harsh reality is that America's internet is still fundamentally broken, and there's no easy fix.
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Steve said:
We all know the internet is crappy in America. You know what would be really interesting? An article that offered up ideas on how to fix the problem. ;)
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Outside of a few geographically miniscule areas, the notion that the rest of the world has internet far superior to that in the US is a myth.
 
Never fear the government is here to save the interwebs. For a new price of $99.99 you can surf any site you want now.
 
Monopolistic problems deserve capitalistic solutions.
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That's the most idiotic line in the article. Capitalism is what drove us to the monopolistic problem in the first place. Cable companies and phone companies in America have monopolies in most areas because it's too expensive to build that infrastructure when someone else has already done it and then try to compete with that entrenched party. Only in huge urban centers where the potential customer base can number in the millions does anyone even bother to try and even then most of them barely scrape by. Google has been doing a decent job of forcing competition in some areas but the real answer is municipal broadband. Forcing the companies that have gotten so arrogant that they routinely insult their own customers to compete with a taxpayer funded system would right the ship really quick.
 
Dwango said:
That's the most idiotic line in the article. Capitalism is what drove us to the monopolistic problem in the first place. Cable companies and phone companies in America have monopolies in most areas because it's too expensive to build that infrastructure when someone else has already done it and then try to compete with that entrenched party. Only in huge urban centers where the potential customer base can number in the millions does anyone even bother to try and even then most of them barely scrape by. Google has been doing a decent job of forcing competition in some areas but the real answer is municipal broadband. Forcing the companies that have gotten so arrogant that they routinely insult their own customers to compete with a taxpayer funded system would right the ship really quick.
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No poor regulation of capitalism that favored large companies got us here. If they had allowed true competition we would be fine.
 
Dwango said:
That's the most idiotic line in the article. Capitalism is what drove us to the monopolistic problem in the first place. Cable companies and phone companies in America have monopolies in most areas because it's too expensive to build that infrastructure when someone else has already done it and then try to compete with that entrenched party.
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The monopolies were granted by local, usually municipal, governments. The ISPs came in and said we'll wire you up if you give us a closed market. The governments agreed. That is NOT capitalism.
 
Not too bad considering the size of the US of A. We'd likely have pretty dang fast speeds too if we were the size of Singapore ;)
 
Brokennails said:
Yeah, we're only 27th in the world...... Yeah a myth huh

http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
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Whats funny about that list is, all the countries above are miniscule in size compared to the US. In fact, the combined land mass of those countries probably wouldn't cover more than 40% of the US. So there is a logistics hurdle when operating here in America.

That said, the huge profits these companies are raking in, they could easily wire the whole country for 1Gbps speed, and still be raking in the dough. So even though the US is more expensive to develop, with the amount of money they make off the internet, there isn't much of an excuse for US speeds to be so low.
 
Shmee said:
No poor regulation of capitalism that favored large companies got us here. If they had allowed true competition we would be fine.
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The poor regulation is largely due to lobbying efforts by those large companies though. They're not hapless bystanders in the legislation, politician primary, or voting process here and it is facetious to pretend that they are or that their involvement is minor.

Also competition for large scale infrastructure is not a good thing nor will it bring down prices due to the extra over head of duplicated infrastructure, management, and support staff that is required for competition to exist. Read up on natural monopolies in particular natural monopolies involving infrastructure like water, power, and sewage.
 
Shmee said:
No poor regulation of capitalism that favored large companies got us here. If they had allowed true competition we would be fine.
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+1
This was corrupt-capitalism, and now socialistic laws are just going to make things worse.

1984: The Future is Now, Bitches! :D
 
Terpfen said:
That is NOT capitalism.
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Its what unfettered capitalism (aka laissez-faire) looks like and in order for them to make those deals the ISP's had to either apply political pressure or buy out the local politicians.

Which is depressingly easy and cheap to do compared to doing the same for a Senator, Congressman, or President.

Historically Capitalism, in particular Laissez-Faire type Capitalsim, tends toward monopolistic or oligarchic economies which are nearly indistinguishable from the fedual lord granted Rentier monopolies that preceded them. ISP's are just the modern day version of this.

The only way to stop them is to either bust them up or regulate them so heavily that their monopoly power is mooted. Nothing else will work. Even people like Friedman agree with this.
 
Dwango said:
That's the most idiotic line in the article. Capitalism is what drove us to the monopolistic problem in the first place. Cable companies and phone companies in America have monopolies in most areas because it's too expensive to build that infrastructure when someone else has already done it and then try to compete with that entrenched party. Only in huge urban centers where the potential customer base can number in the millions does anyone even bother to try and even then most of them barely scrape by. Google has been doing a decent job of forcing competition in some areas but the real answer is municipal broadband. Forcing the companies that have gotten so arrogant that they routinely insult their own customers to compete with a taxpayer funded system would right the ship really quick.
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You are confusing "Crony Capitalism" for Capitalism, especially in this case. The Cable companies were given local monopoly privileges sanctioned by the Federal government in return for expanding their userbases of "broadband". Crony Capitalism springs from the government playing favorites for whatever reason. It could be anything from a kickback to an attempt at social engineering. Usually the former under the guise of the latter. This is only possible when the government has the power to pick favorites to pedal.
 
I live in San Francisco, and I'm finding out I'm living in a rather dead area as far as internet connectivity. While I'm sure some of it is definitely red tape with the city allowing infrastructure to be built, a big portion of it is that I'm not serviced by many options. I can get AT&T "uverse" service at a whopping up to 6Mbps of speed, I can get Comcast at up to "Blast!" speeds of 105Mbps (maybe... more on this later), I currently have Sonic which I love but again it's DSL speeds, and I'm at 5Mbps (which is what the AT&T "uverse" speeds more likely than not would be). So I've tried one company "MonkeyBrains" (who wouldn't want to be signed up to a company called that!), it's basically a company that does wireless transmitters on rooftops for 20/20 service for $40/month... sorry we can't get signal where you live which is confusing as fuckall because I can see their maps and I can see the places that can get signal and looking around I'm at the top of a hill not the bottom so I actually have more visibility than most. tried another one called Astound, which is basically a cable service 100Mbps for $40/month (12 month trial) why the fuck not, it's not comcast! Sorry we don't service your address... meanwhile today I saw a truck servicing a cross street about 100 feet away, sorry double checked you're SOL, this makes me wonder if Comcast can deliver to this address too. Webpass, which does fiber to the house... er apartment, and if you don't have an apartment then fuck off we don't do you.

So yeah... I live in a big bustling city, and I got fuck all for choices as far as internet, 2 big behemoths who claim they aren't a monopoly in most areas, and 1 little guy who's giving me too little to be useful.
 
fuzzylogik said:
Not too bad considering the size of the US of A. We'd likely have pretty dang fast speeds too if we were the size of Singapore ;)
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Yep, its all about population density.

Yeah, we're only 27th in the world...... Yeah a myth huh

http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
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So lets look

Population density (per sq. km) of that list 1-27 (<<< = less then USA)
1. Singapore 7200
2 Hong Kong 6700
3. South Korea 505
4. Monaco 16,500
5. Romania 90
6. Japan 337
7. Sweden 20 <<<
8. Netherlands 400
9. Macau 18,900
10. Lithuania 51
11. Latvia 35
12 Aland Islands 18 (only 600 sq miles in size...about the size of Dallas/Fort Worth)
13. Denmark 128
14. Taiwan 650
15 Switzerland 188
16 Moldova 105
17. Iceland 3 <<<
18. Jersey 844
19. Andorra 184
20. France 114
21. Estonia 29 <<<
22. Norway 15 <<<
23. Luxembourg 194
24. Finland 16 <<<
25. Bulgaria 66
26. Hungary 108
27. United States 32
 
westrock2000 said:
Yep, its all about population density.
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Agreed, and even the countries above the US on that list that have an overall lower population density still very likely have their population clustered among a few very dense population centers.

It's also very interesting to note the growing disparity between the US "average" and the speeds that you can actually get in most major areas. US "average" is 33.46Mbps but it's pretty easy to get 50Mbps+ if not 100Mbps+ via Cable or other services such as FIOS, etc in most areas. With Comcast currently looking to bring 300Mbps+ to most of the areas they service within the next few years, things are actually looking pretty good.
 
Wiffle said:
Whats funny about that list is, all the countries above are miniscule in size compared to the US. In fact, the combined land mass of those countries probably wouldn't cover more than 40% of the US. So there is a logistics hurdle when operating here in America.

That said, the huge profits these companies are raking in, they could easily wire the whole country for 1Gbps speed, and still be raking in the dough. So even though the US is more expensive to develop, with the amount of money they make off the internet, there isn't much of an excuse for US speeds to be so low.
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They are tiny, but relatively speaking, so are our urban areas. Easy to understand why rural areas in the US are slow, but there is no good reason why the top 50 or 100 metro areas don't have better speeds, outside of a few places with google, fios etc, other than there is no motivation for ISP's to do so.
 
Terpfen said:
The monopolies were granted by local, usually municipal, governments. The ISPs came in and said we'll wire you up if you give us a closed market. The governments agreed. That is NOT capitalism.
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This is why the infrastructure should have been a project like roads were, combined with the idea of public utilities.

The taxpayers already footed the bill for the creation of the internet, if we would have just had the foresight to do it as a public project where cable and communications companies could lease portions of it to provide private access, then you wouldn't have one corporation building infrastructure then having a total monopoly for access.

The way it was done is we basically had public backbones and only corporations with enough money to create their own infrastructure to connect to it have a chance, which means only already huge corporations will be able to be providers.

There is no way to have a diverse amount of broadband providers that way, and even if we could find a way to fund that, where are all the separate wires for each provider going to fit on the telephone poles??
 
Despotes said:
Socialists here attacking Capitalism. What a surprise. :rolleyes:
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Well what good is capitalism if it just turns into defacto feudalism, with a few people having all the money, ruling over all the people?

Calling rules to try to keep the entire system from becoming like that "socialism" is the same as a toddler kicking, screaming and throwing a tantrum because their parents wouldn't give them what they wanted.

Whaaa! I don't want to have to follow any rules. WHAA SOCIALISM!!!

The commie 50s gave us a strong middle class.. What's "Capitalism" done since the 80s, other than turn the country into a debt laden shithole where the wealthy suck the country and everybody dry, while most of the country sits back and takes it willingly because they've been convinced to not do so would be evil "Socialism".
 
To be honest until recently companies such as time warner cable, comcast and AT&T all had their part of the country. However when they get on top they typically get lazy which is what has happened.

Today in Utah there is Utopia Fiber company. Google Fiber, in North Carolina we have North State installing fiber.

So there are a bunch of smaller companies that are beginning to spring up which the bigger companies are going to have trouble competing with because of failing to upgrade.

From what I've been seeing and hearing with upgrades from these big companies they cannot compare with the smaller fiber companies.

I personally think Google Fiber will take over mainly because of their code of conduct to "Do no evil"
 
GlowingGhoul said:
Outside of a few geographically miniscule areas, the notion that the rest of the world has internet far superior to that in the US is a myth.
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I can't speak for the entire world, but for Europe, this is complete bullshit. That chart doesn't tell the full story at all. In most of Europe, not only can you get acceptable bandwidth, but you can get it at FLEXIBLE PRICES. You can literally get 5/4Mbps internet for $5 a month in many countries, and can scale up pretty high. Where the hell can you do that in USA? Oh right, nowhere. $5 won't even get you dial-up.
 
And users like myself in rural locations, running 5kb/sec at peak times with 30% packet loss are not counted on most of those stats. Because according to the stats we are 5mbit.. At 4-5am.
Real world usage speeds are much more accurate than alleged line speeds.

Testing should reflect that, plus latency, packet loss, etc.
 
mesyn191 said:
The poor regulation is largely due to lobbying efforts by those large companies though. They're not hapless bystanders in the legislation, politician primary, or voting process here and it is facetious to pretend that they are or that their involvement is minor.

Also competition for large scale infrastructure is not a good thing nor will it bring down prices due to the extra over head of duplicated infrastructure, management, and support staff that is required for competition to exist. Read up on natural monopolies in particular natural monopolies involving infrastructure like water, power, and sewage.
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Just going to point out everywhere google fiber has been deployed prices have dropped and speeds increased. So the few places there is competition Point to different conclusion
 
UrielDagda said:
This is why the infrastructure should have been a project like roads were, combined with the idea of public utilities.

The taxpayers already footed the bill for the creation of the internet, if we would have just had the foresight to do it as a public project where cable and communications companies could lease portions of it to provide private access, then you wouldn't have one corporation building infrastructure then having a total monopoly for access.

The way it was done is we basically had public backbones and only corporations with enough money to create their own infrastructure to connect to it have a chance, which means only already huge corporations will be able to be providers.

There is no way to have a diverse amount of broadband providers that way, and even if we could find a way to fund that, where are all the separate wires for each provider going to fit on the telephone poles??
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Don't believe for a second that the ISP's (formerly the cable companies) laid their patchwork of lines without a cent from us. They gladly accepted rural broadband funding grants for years on end.
 
Faster Internet connections into institutions and public organizations would be a nice thing, but faster service to peoples' homes would just mean more perverts downloading disgusting pics and streaming crappy reality TV shows they watch while slurping up booze and pondering getting a skull tattoo on their bicep. America doesn't need to enable them or give them a faster pipe to air out their dirty laundry on Facebook
 
You know what would be really interesting? An article that offered up ideas on how to fix the problem.
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^ that right there

same can be said about a lot of the issues we face as a society. but i guess as they say the first step in correcting a problem is acknowledging there is a problem
 
Im so tired of "Capitlism Sucks" and "Socialist Dog". They both suck. They both have huge downsides for some people. They both have nice upsides for some people. Its almost as if we haven't found the best system yet.

All I know for sure is companies running as essentially monopolies in all their areas (HOW do Comcast and Time Warner not compete. Seriously.) have crappy service and high prices, like all monopolies.
 
Romale23 said:
So the few places there is competition Point to different conclusion
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But already many places have 'competition' in the form of 2 or even 3 ISP's yet service and pricing still sucks throughout nearly the whole US and even in some of the best areas still isn't good vs most of the rest of world in terms of bang vs buck.

Google is the exception proving the rule
 
Cali3350 said:
Im so tired of "Capitlism Sucks" and "Socialist Dog". They both suck. They both have huge downsides for some people. They both have nice upsides for some people. Its almost as if we haven't found the best system yet.
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Its true neither system is perfect but that doesn't mean they're both equally bad.

'Bad' is after all better than 'Worse' or even 'Awful'. Hell some of the countries with the highest satisfaction, quality of life, and standard of living are Socialist as all hell (Scandanavian countries) while still having as good or better entrepreneurial ventures as the US.
 
Terpfen said:
The monopolies were granted by local, usually municipal, governments. The ISPs came in and said we'll wire you up if you give us a closed market. The governments agreed. That is NOT capitalism.
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Yup it is a government involvement issue, without the government ENFORCING the lack of choice by allowing the local monopolies there would be competition.

Personally I don't know how we get back to the free market at this point.

One thing I think I would do is legally define "Broadband" and "High-Speed Internet" to be a specific level of throughput before it can be used on the product being sold -- not unlike the requirements for "certified free trade" or "all natural" in food labeling (I know that those are weak examples). I think robbing the "oligarchy" (God I hate that word) of their marketing buzzwords (unless they meet the requirements) that lets them more or less mislead consumers.
 
The cables companies paid off the government to get a monopoly, SOOOO lets let a former Comcast lobbyist run government agency fix the problem... YAY!

More straight up communism on [H], just a normal day.

People continue to ignore the entire problem. THE CABLE COMPANIES/ISPs ARE ALSO THE CONTENT PROVIDERS.

That is the problem that should be addressed. If they competed on just delivering access to the internet there would not be a problem.

The only other solution that should have been looked at is maybe doing something like we do with electricity where "no-one" owns the lines. That anyone can get hooked up and then provide the internet over those lines.

The "internet that everyone needs now days" is fulfilled by a DSL connection honestly. Filling out job applications, school work, etc can all mostly be accomplish with 3-4Mps down. This is all about getting our content a different way and the cable companies not liking it because they can't ram advertising down our throat.

Hing-sight is 20-20 though. Remember with the ISPs told the RIAA to go pound sand with their six strikes crap? Yeah, that's not going to happen with municipal broadband. The spying and watching will get worse.

But MAH NETFLIX.
 
mesyn191 said:
Its true neither system is perfect but that doesn't mean they're both equally bad.

'Bad' is after all better than 'Worse' or even 'Awful'. Hell some of the countries with the highest satisfaction, quality of life, and standard of living are Socialist as all hell (Scandanavian countries) while still having as good or better entrepreneurial ventures as the US.
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Haha, try getting ahold of one of those companies when you need support though. We deal with a metrology company out of Sweden, and had some major problems with one of their devices. We couldn't get them to acknowledge there was a problem for months, let alone even trying to get ahold of someone at all. Seems like they were perpetually on vacation.
 
XvMMvX said:
The cables companies paid off the government to get a monopoly, SOOOO lets let a former Comcast lobbyist run government agency fix the problem... YAY!
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Its mostly local govt. that were paid off plus most people here or elsewhere don't really like the current FCC chairman either.

XvMMvX said:
More straight up communism on [H], just a normal day.
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Lazy strawman at best and almost no one on [H] is Communist nor is that being brought up as viable solution either. And no Socialism isn't Communism.

SRTie4k said:
Haha, try getting ahold of one of those companies when you need support though.
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How is your trouble getting support from one company in anyway shape or form some sort of evidence against Socialism or my comment? Even the people who hate the ISP's like Comcast don't hold up their poor support as proof against Capitalism. Apples to oranges at best, and that is being generous.
 
UrielDagda said:
This is why the infrastructure should have been a project like roads were, combined with the idea of public utilities.

The taxpayers already footed the bill for the creation of the internet, if we would have just had the foresight to do it as a public project where cable and communications companies could lease portions of it to provide private access, then you wouldn't have one corporation building infrastructure then having a total monopoly for access.

The way it was done is we basically had public backbones and only corporations with enough money to create their own infrastructure to connect to it have a chance, which means only already huge corporations will be able to be providers.

There is no way to have a diverse amount of broadband providers that way, and even if we could find a way to fund that, where are all the separate wires for each provider going to fit on the telephone poles??
Click to expand...

This idea is similar to what was done in the UK. BT owns all the phone lines and Virgin is running it's own fibre lines. The UK has a lot of competition as BT is forced to lease it's lines to competitors. As a result anyone with a phone line has to pay a line rental charge, which if paid of front works out to around £10-15 per month and includes calls. With bundles connections speeds of near 15Mb/s can be free-£5 per month. With virgin, after the introductory price I was paying £30 for 50Mb/s and could have paid £35 for 100Mb/s or £45 152MB/s. The best part is that all of these packages offer unlimited downloading.
 
tetris42 said:
I can't speak for the entire world, but for Europe, this is complete bullshit. That chart doesn't tell the full story at all. In most of Europe, not only can you get acceptable bandwidth, but you can get it at FLEXIBLE PRICES. You can literally get 5/4Mbps internet for $5 a month in many countries, and can scale up pretty high. Where the hell can you do that in USA? Oh right, nowhere. $5 won't even get you dial-up.
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Yeah, in Lithuania I pay $8/month for a 60/50 fiber connection.
 
He complains about the last mile being copper and copper being slow.

If 100mbps isn't enough for home small SOHO operations, then you have a problem. Yes you share that bandwidth with a small subsegment of neighbors. But you aren't going to saturate it that easy.

If you need faster access, then you really need a dedicated business line.
 
mesyn191 said:
The poor regulation is largely due to lobbying efforts by those large companies though. They're not hapless bystanders in the legislation, politician primary, or voting process here and it is facetious to pretend that they are or that their involvement is minor.

Also competition for large scale infrastructure is not a good thing nor will it bring down prices due to the extra over head of duplicated infrastructure, management, and support staff that is required for competition to exist. Read up on natural monopolies in particular natural monopolies involving infrastructure like water, power, and sewage.
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Oh the lobbying by large corporations has a lot to do with it, but in the end it was our amazing elected officials that caved to the lobbying that caused this issue.
 
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