Why U.S. Broadband Service Is So Awful

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Do you know why broadband service in the U.S. is so awful? Scientific American not only has an explanation, they say they have a one-step solution to fix the situation too.

The average U.S. household has to pay an exorbitant amount of money for an Internet connection that the rest of the industrial world would find mediocre. According to a recent report by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, broadband Internet service in the U.S. is not just slower and more expensive than it is in tech-savvy nations such as South Korea and Japan; the U.S. has fallen behind infrastructure-challenged countries such as Portugal and Italy as well.
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Why dont they just make america smaller? If you got rid of all the country bits where noone lived, and all lived in a 10 square miles around washington, in giant towerblocks that blocked out the sun, then you could all easily have 300mb/s with wireless n meshing. Their doing it all wrong as usual.
 
I'm sure it has nothing to do with Japan having 10x the population density and South Korea 15x the population density of the US.
 
It's too bad the government is so far gone because even though I'm a conservative I'm in favor of a REAL infrastructure bill or situation to get it done. That's what our tax dollars are supposed to pay for anyways.

And I mean just for that. No pork. No bailouts. No union pay offs. None of the rest of the BS we've gotten over too many years.

The country is several decades overdue to have a serious infrastructure situation dealt with. Pick your poison: Bridges, electric, utility.
 
If you read the article, it says that the US is also behind infra-structurally challenged countries. It has little to do with the fact that we live in a very spread-out country, our ISPs simply don't want to invest in our infrastructure.
 
who would have thought monopolies result in a worse product at a higher price? Go figure.
 
Why would they want to at this point? They got people paying big bucks for crappy connections.

I was on WildBlue for 2 years where I live, simply because I had no other choice for a connection other than dialup unless I wanted Verizons 5 GB limit over CDMA. FINALLY, Virgin Mobile has stepped up to the plate and offers a CDMA/3G unlimited option for 40 a month. And even than, my speed is pretty limited, at best I'm getting 1.5 MB download speed and around 300 KB upload.
 
based on the article, it is because we are limited to service per area
 
Emission said:
If you read the article, it says that the US is also behind infra-structurally challenged countries. It has little to do with the fact that we live in a very spread-out country, our ISPs simply don't want to invest in our infrastructure.
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But being spread out has EVERYTHING to do with whether or not ISP's invest in infrastructure. There is less incentive to keep infrastructure up-to-par in less dense areas. You'll typically find that ISPs that are located in primarily large population areas have better broadband plans than ISPs that also reach out to less populated areas. If you've got to upgrade 3 miles of cabling to give 10 customers better quality service, there is not much motivation to do so.
 
[in other countries] the company that owns the physical infrastructure must sell access to independent providers on a wholesale market.
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and this is different how? instead of a middleman buying something that isnt theirs and selling it to the customer at an inflated price, in the US we buy directly from the owner of the network at an inflated price. aside from government taking over the internet, there is no other way to slice the pie. this still does not create any competition between the network owners; only among the middlemen who merely resell the connection.

if you are on an air plane and the engines catch fire, does it matter if you are in coach or first class? you are still going in the same direction as everyone else, its just the people in first class might have more booze then the rest.
 
ccmfreak2 said:
But being spread out has EVERYTHING to do with whether or not ISP's invest in infrastructure. There is less incentive to keep infrastructure up-to-par in less dense areas. You'll typically find that ISPs that are located in primarily large population areas have better broadband plans than ISPs that also reach out to less populated areas. If you've got to upgrade 3 miles of cabling to give 10 customers better quality service, there is not much motivation to do so.
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A very simple point that eludes so many people.
 
ccmfreak2 said:
But being spread out has EVERYTHING to do with whether or not ISP's invest in infrastructure. There is less incentive to keep infrastructure up-to-par in less dense areas. You'll typically find that ISPs that are located in primarily large population areas have better broadband plans than ISPs that also reach out to less populated areas. If you've got to upgrade 3 miles of cabling to give 10 customers better quality service, there is not much motivation to do so.
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Pretty much the core of it all.
 
I'm pretty damn sure my AT&T DSL service is bottle necked ... ok that's the wrong term, I should say slow as shit is all about the local infrastructure and has nothing to do with the country wide infrastructure.

Look at the FIOS service, those are very small service areas they cover.

Yet, puzzlingly, the FCC wants to take only a half-step.
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Not puzzling at all if you think about the fact that there is a LOT of lobbying that is being done by these "information providers"
 
As much as I hate big government you have to look at Internet connectivity as almost a utility that every American needs access to in order to stay competitive with other countries.

The problem is instead of being a good third party looking out for the consumer and business a like the US Gov will just screw it up more like everything else.
 
bpmurrGT said:
As much as I hate big government you have to look at Internet connectivity as almost a utility that every American needs access to in order to stay competitive with other countries.

The problem is instead of being a good third party looking out for the consumer and business a like the US Gov will just screw it up more like everything else.
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Yes they will.
 
To satisfy my curiosity what is the normal speed you guys get in america and what about the amount Gb is included in a moth? cuz i usually have 20Mb/s down and 3Mb/s up here in Romania and i pay 10 bucks a month for unlimited amount of data
 
ccmfreak2 said:
But being spread out has EVERYTHING to do with whether or not ISP's invest in infrastructure. There is less incentive to keep infrastructure up-to-par in less dense areas. You'll typically find that ISPs that are located in primarily large population areas have better broadband plans than ISPs that also reach out to less populated areas. If you've got to upgrade 3 miles of cabling to give 10 customers better quality service, there is not much motivation to do so.
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Is that why VZN refuses to wire my hometown with Fios? I live in fucking Boston, seed of the country, and I'm stuck with shitty ass Comcast.
 
siralexu said:
To satisfy my curiosity what is the normal speed you guys get in america and what about the amount Gb is included in a moth? cuz i usually have 20Mb/s down and 3Mb/s up here in Romania and i pay 10 bucks a month for unlimited amount of data
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I get 10 Mb/s down and 1 Mb/s up for $20. Sigh.
 
ccmfreak2 said:
But being spread out has EVERYTHING to do with whether or not ISP's invest in infrastructure. There is less incentive to keep infrastructure up-to-par in less dense areas. You'll typically find that ISPs that are located in primarily large population areas have better broadband plans than ISPs that also reach out to less populated areas. If you've got to upgrade 3 miles of cabling to give 10 customers better quality service, there is not much motivation to do so.
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The whole issue is it is a huge investment without any short term return. American companies are all about profits in the short term because they are led by suits that are compensated that way.

The government should build the backbone just like with interstate highways. From there it should be handled like a utility where local municipalities take over. That way companies like Time Warner, or AT&T would have to compete.
 
We usually have unlimited plans, unless it is over cellular wireless networks. Cable modems get 5-10 Mbps down and 512k - 1Mbps up in most areas. DSL usually gets 3 Mbps or less down, but there are some areas that jump to 20-30 Mbps. I believe DOCSIS 3 is being rolled out now with up to 50 Mbps, but as was stated earlier, it is not always about your pipe. The ISP could be overloaded and unable handle the traffic themselves.

I've heard the vast distances argument for a while now, but I have not seen details that back that up. It may be logical, it may make sense, but it's the Devil in the details. I want it proven. It has been too long to speculate any longer. We certainly need to do something different.

I wouldn't doubt it in the least if it has something to do with regulations. If these regulations make our internet more expensive, then that is where we must start, by cutting those. Competition would surely help, even if it is not all the way to the "wire to the door." The Internet most certainly is a required utility now.
 
siralexu said:
To satisfy my curiosity what is the normal speed you guys get in america and what about the amount Gb is included in a moth? cuz i usually have 20Mb/s down and 3Mb/s up here in Romania and i pay 10 bucks a month for unlimited amount of data
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I am with Cox in Las Vegas NV. I am paying about $45/mo for 10 Mb down/768 Kb up, with a 200 MB combined down/up cap.
 
I don't get this population density argument. That's not stopping Sweden from being wired with fibre...
 
siralexu said:
To satisfy my curiosity what is the normal speed you guys get in america and what about the amount Gb is included in a moth? cuz i usually have 20Mb/s down and 3Mb/s up here in Romania and i pay 10 bucks a month for unlimited amount of data
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15Mb/s down and 768k/s up, time warner bloat runner
 
bacon said:
The government should build the backbone just like with interstate highways. From there it should be handled like a utility where local municipalities take over. That way companies like Time Warner, or AT&T would have to compete.
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This is the only possible answer to wiring America. Waiting on business to wire America will always be a failure.

If we waited on business to electrify America, some places still wouldn't have electricity. And the Free Market Zealots would be just fine with that. They would have comments like "Well, why don't you MOVE to where the electricity is?"
 
qdemn7 said:
This is the only possible answer to wiring America. Waiting on business to wire America will always be a failure.

If we waited on business to electrify America, some places still wouldn't have electricity. And the Free Market Zealots would be just fine with that. They would have comments like "Well, why don't you MOVE to where the electricity is?"
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Very true, the reason many other countries have a good internet infrastructure is because their governments pumped in a lot of $$$ to have it built. Not because they may be smaller.
 
siralexu said:
To satisfy my curiosity what is the normal speed you guys get in america and what about the amount Gb is included in a moth? cuz i usually have 20Mb/s down and 3Mb/s up here in Romania and i pay 10 bucks a month for unlimited amount of data
Click to expand...

I think here in Florida you can get Brighthouse just internet for like $60/month giving 20mbps down and 5mbps up
 
So why do many dense areas - say, San Francisco - have such crappy options for internet? With one of the highest educated populations in the US and a median income of $80k/year, you would think that ISPs would be falling all over themselves to serve it - but they aren't.

This is the issue - it costs a lot to tear up urban areas and lay cables. It costs a lot to lay cable over long distances. It costs a lot either way, and I would really like to see some quantifiable numbers to say which is which. I don't think it is unreasonable to think that it would be cheaper to install capacity to a new town 50 miles away than do it through 5 urban city blocks with all the planning and disruption it entails.

The issue really comes down to competition. What happened when Ma Bell was broke up? Competition increased, prices dropped. People always get caught up in this binary choice of GOVERNMENT or FREE MARKETS. But really, there are 3 choices:

Government
Markets
Businesses

Adam Smith stated that the first things businesses do is try to decrease competition - stifling free markets. A proper role of government (in which admittedly it fails often) is to attempt to either prevent or rectify that. In this case, it is forcing those with the pipes (who, BTW, received huge government subsidies to help build it!!) to open them up to 3rd party providers.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Why dont they just make america smaller? If you got rid of all the country bits where noone lived, and all lived in a 10 square miles around washington, in giant towerblocks that blocked out the sun, then you could all easily have 300mb/s with wireless n meshing. Their doing it all wrong as usual.
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That's not the solution, as you would have discovered if you had read the article.

For example, the population density of Sweden is only 20.6/sq km vs 32 /sq km for the US. Sure, the total area of the US is much greater.. but what if you compare with just one state of the US, with a similar population density? Clearly broadband is expensive and slow in many metropolitan areas of the US, not just in the countryside.

Phone companies have to compete for your business. Even though there may be just one telephone jack in your home, you can purchase service from any one of a number of different long-distance providers. Not so for broadband Internet. Here consumers generally have just two choices: the cable company, which sends data through the same lines used to deliver television signals, and the phone company, which uses older telephone lines and hence can only offer slower service.
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For example, when we ran fiber optics to my parents house (20 miles from a city of 45,000), there were half a dozen providers offering service (the company that actually put down the fiber was not one of them).
 
Up until recently the best you could get most places in the U.S. were a few Mbit down and 768kbit up.

I noticed my situation improving when we actually got competition. When FiOS moved into our area, our Comcast - without notice - would increase in speed periodically over two years, and went from 5Mbit down, 768kbit up to 8Mbit down, 1.5Mbit up.

Then I switched to FiOS and now I enjoy a more reasonable 35mbit up and down.

This is pretty rare though, as FiOS has not made it most places, and most places don't even have any competition. In many cases getting proadband for $60/month still gives you 1.5mbit down and 348kbit up.

In many places in the U.S. you can't even get broadband. There are actually people still using 56k modems.
 
Poor service, high price, few options, low bandwidth...
Sounds to me like the market isn't regulated, and if it is, it's broken...
Without a working market, that is what you get... monopolies, which, in technology in particular, means bad news for the buyers...

Population density isn't all there is too it... USA has a population density of 83/sq mi, Sweden has 53.3/sq mi...
Pretty tough actions from the regulating body against the "monopoly" wired telephone company threatening with high fines unless they let other carriers sell services at a max-price(which has been lowered many times over the years) has maybe not pushed prices down as much as one could have wished, but what you get for the money has increased rapidly...
To get "broadband" development to kick off even in non-metropolitan(not excluding metropolitan) areas, the government offered deduction/subfinanciation. How big part this made in reality is for me unclear as I'm not really into politics, especially financial-politics.
Local governments(usually the local state electrical company) has taken a big part in many metropolitan areas to create open metropolitan networks(optical fiber used almost exclusively) where they only supply the infrastructure and service providers (pay a small fee to) sell services to connected households. Sure, households(more like the owner of the building) that wants to get connected to the network has pay the operator of the network(usually the local electrical company) a "close to self-cost" price, the goal of the network is to "break even", though not initially, not to make a profit...
The profit(from the city point of view) comes from having the network-infrastructure, just like roads etc...
 
32/5 for $60 here... can bump it to 101/15 for $100... too bad cablevision can barely sustain what they have. my connection is not nearly as flawless as i'd like.

verizon offers 35/35 for about $60

it's still no 100/100 or whatever swedes get for the equivalent of $40. 35/35 should be the minimum of what is offered.


at least fios seems to be pushing speeds up a bit every so often. 35/35 is apparently more like 42/35 now.
 
siralexu said:
To satisfy my curiosity what is the normal speed you guys get in america and what about the amount Gb is included in a moth? cuz i usually have 20Mb/s down and 3Mb/s up here in Romania and i pay 10 bucks a month for unlimited amount of data
Click to expand...

I'm paying for 5 Mb/sec down with 512 Kb/sec up for $35 a month. Time Warner is pretty reliable, but the rates/service sucks. They cover so much area, they have to offset the rural area costs, but I'm sure there is so price-hiking going on here too.
 
As much as I would LOVE faster internet (although I have fios and it's not THAT slow), I have a problem with this :
In such countries, the company that owns the physical infrastructure must sell access to independent providers on a wholesale market.
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The ends don't justify the means here. We can't undermine the free market just so we can all have faster internet. I don't agree with forcing companies to sell THEIR infrastructure.

Now, if a company owns the infrastructure and wants to sell it, then by all means, go for it. But we don't need the government telling companies what they MUST do.

Also, many communities have opted to create their own networks which has worked out pretty well for them.

So yes, we need faster internet, but there are better ways to go about doing it that don't involve the government. They're already too involved in, well, everything.
 
(whine) "I live in the country, 100 miles from anyone, and I can only get dialup and it is slow"

these idiots need to get a clue. I am reminded of japan, where someone made hotel sleep cubicles that were reminiscent of a morgue room.

like others said, our population density and geographic size is nothing like those other countries.
add to that the massive costs in burying cable, getting right of ways and so on.
it becomes very unfeasible.
That is why we are stuck with our current telco and cable monopoly structures.
 
I live in a town of 12k to 13k people, I have my internet access through the local utility company, they ran fiber to my house and I pay $30 a month for what they claim to be 1.5Mbps, however, I always test out at much more than that. It is by far the most reliable internet access I have ever had, goes down maybe once a year and just for maybe a couple hours before they get it fixed.
 
qdemn7 said:
This is the only possible answer to wiring America. Waiting on business to wire America will always be a failure.

If we waited on business to electrify America, some places still wouldn't have electricity. And the Free Market Zealots would be just fine with that. They would have comments like "Well, why don't you MOVE to where the electricity is?"
Click to expand...

You could move to where the service is, or pay for it yourself to be installed where you currently reside. Why should *I* have to pay for your ass to have internet way out in the sticks? I live in a place where DSL, cable, and fiber is all available and they constantly compete to get business.

Not sure why people always think they are entitled to things these days... Should probably spend more time working and earning what you want rather than bitching about you don't have something..... don't you think? ;)
 
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