Is U.S. stuck in Internet's slow lane?

[FreeStateDemocrat]

Source: MSNBC/AP

'We're now in the middle of the pack of developed countries' says expert

By Peter Svensson

updated 7:54 p.m. ET, Tues., Oct. 30, 2007
NEW YORK - The United States is starting to look like a slowpoke on the Internet. Examples abound of countries that have faster and cheaper broadband connections, and more of their population connected to them.

What's less clear is how badly the country that gave birth to the Internet is doing, and whether the government needs to step in and do something about it. The Bush administration has tried to foster broadband adoption with a hands-off approach. If that's seen as a failure by the next administration, the policy may change.

In a move to get a clearer picture of where the U.S. stands, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday approved legislation that would develop an annual inventory of existing broadband services — including the types, advertised speeds and actual number of subscribers — available to households and businesses across the nation.

The inventory wouldn't cover other countries, but a cursory look shows the U.S. lagging behind at least some of them. In South Korea, for instance, the average apartment can get an Internet connection that's 15 times faster than a typical U.S. connection. In Paris, a "triple play" of TV, phone and broadband service costs less than half of what it does in the U.S.





Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21549824/

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Another failure due to the idiot's obtuseness. I thought there had been a program to increase high-speed access through local libraries but the puke administration eliminated it from the budget. But the private sector will always do a far better job with free market forces restraining the cost to consumers but only if there is no interference from government with regulatory pressures that would inhibit unbridled corporate avarice.

[msongs]

1. the stranglehold of unregulated corporations choking off competition nt

[flashl]

2. False pretext ...

Getting us to support increased spying? Developing an inventory?

"In a move to get a clearer picture of where the U.S. stands, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday approved legislation that would develop an annual inventory of existing broadband services — including the types, advertised speeds and actual number of subscribers — available to households and businesses across the nation."

These are the same people who exports IT jobs, functions, and databases overseas, they simply want to know if it had an desired effects to control information flow between U.S. Internet users.

And, if they wanted expanded Internet usage, they wouldn't allow the RBOCs to block states, and local government from sharing their highspeed connections. The dot.com era created an EXCESS of fiber optics and highspeed connections in the U.S.

[thunder35]

3. Too much monopolies with Comcast

[flashl]

14. Exactly

Excerpt from an old DU Post - Not your father's ISP

Some ISPs simply discourage end users from offering WiFi connections to neighbors; most explicitly rule it out in their terms of service. But a small Canadian ISP called Wireless Nomad actually requires it.

Nomad does things a little differently. The company is subscriber-owned, volunteer-run, and open-source friendly. It offers a neutral Internet connection with no bandwidth caps or throttling, and it makes a point of creating wireless access points at the end of each DSL connection that can be used, for free, by the public. Bell Canada this is not.

"People like to share," says Nomad co-founder Damien Fox when we talk about the company's history. And if WiMAX radios run cheap enough, the members of Wireless Nomad could eventually blanket much of Toronto with high-speed ‘Net access. The operation has been tough to keep running, and Fox admits that "if we knew then what we knew now... we probably wouldn't have done it because it was too crazy."

But Fox and cofounder Steve Wilton have kept Wireless Nomad up for two years already, and they hope to see the subscriber-owned model take off in more communities in Canada and the US. Here's how they did it (and keep on doing it) at a lower price than Bell Canada's own DSL offerings.

Read More ...

If the U.S. is sincerely concern about lagging behind then let those ma-and-pa ISPs and small ISPs that gave the needed push for the Internet boom with the know-how connect their communities.

Remember NorthPoint? They brought DSL to the home NOT the RBOCs or telecomms. There is no mystery in anyone mind why Northpoint went to its untimely demise after its effort to partner with Verizon. The CLECs demise occured in the same fashion.

[rodeodance]

4. the invisiable hand of the market!

[onehandle]

5. I love Monopoly! As long as I'm the banker.

The American Corporate mindset.

[rodeodance]

6. put the U.S., with 55 percent of its households connected, in 17th place for adoption rates

But the OECD numbers are in line with other international measures. Figures from the British research firm Point-Topic Ltd. put the U.S., with 55 percent of its households connected, in 17th place for adoption rates at the end of June (excluding some very small countries and territories like Macau and Hong Kong).

"We're now in the middle of the pack of developed countries," said Dave Burstein, telecom gadfly and the editor of the DSL Prime newsletter, during a sometimes tense debate at the Columbia Business School's Institute for Tele-Information.

Burstein says the U.S. is lagging because of low levels of investment by the big telecom companies and regulatory failure.

Click for related content
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Several of the European countries that are doing well have forced telephone companies to rent their lines to Internet service providers for low fees. The ISPs use them to run broadband Digital Subscriber Lines, or DSL, often at speeds much higher than those available in the U.S.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission went down this regulatory road a few years ago, but legal challenges from the phone companies forced it to back away.

[flashl]

9. CLECs were doing quite well during dot.com boom

the RBOCs / telecoms systematically shut them down. Reversing the harm to CLECs will increase service in areas that the telecoms refused to service or ignore.

[Bitwit1234]

7. Why would the monolpoy that has control of the internet

allow competition. They are buying up more and more of the small companies. Once they do, the price sky rockets.

[jordi_fanclub]

8. 3rd World leaders MAKE 3rd World countries!

"In Paris, a "triple play" of TV, phone and broadband service costs less than half of what it does in the U.S."

Or less!!!... I live in a small city in one of the poorest EU countries and the communications prices are:
- "Triple Play" is 40euro = $58 (includes TV, Internet 24 Mbps and Phone - free to landlines in EU, USA and Canada)
- Mobiles: the rates can be so cheap as a flat 5 cents/min (withOUT any plan at all; and with UNlocked phones at $60)

The SAD thing about USA is... HOW an imbecile-misleader-fraud could so passively destroy a such great country?! :mad:

[benld74]

10. yeah but teleco stocks are doing well because of it!

[Heywood J]

11. Of course. This is a surprise?

Where I live, my choices are Verizon, Verizon, or Verizon. Or perhaps AT&T, if they ever get off their ass and pull the required cable this way, but they're just as bad. Even Verizon won't be pulling the fiber this way for quite some time, despite it being available ten miles south. It's even worse that all the RBOCs are busy gobbling each other up again to reassemble the old AT&T system.


Free market, my ass. I came from across the river, and in Ontario there were all manner of small startups who provided service over Bell's phone lines for far less. If you didn't like that one rolled over to the feds or hiked your rates, you could choose another. Sure, it took two weeks, but it was there. There's quite a dearth of choice on this side.

[mainer]

12. My visiting Dutch relatives say our connection is soooo slow

They were here visiting, and used our home computer to check their email and airline schedules. They can't believe that we put up with our slow connection. (We're hooked up via Time-Warner broadband.) They said that in Holland, everything online is practically instantaneous.

[Purveyor]

13. About the only thing the US is a leader in anymore is 'war, death and destruction'... eom

[BushOut06]

15. Competition was supposed to take care of that , and it failed. Nationalize it.

The only thing that competition has done is give us slower, more expensive internet access. We're supposed to be the most technologically advanced country in the world, but internet connection in this country is a JOKE. Meanwhile, the telecom industry is getting rich by charging exhorbitant fees. It's time to bring it all under one umbrella, and nationalize it.

[MadHound]

16. Broadband out in rural America is obscenely expensive, if it is available at all.

Which is why I've stuck with dial-up. Does it suck, yes, but better than no internet at all.

[ngant17]

17. I have a 2nd landline for internet

and our gov. taxes are almost 50% of cost (local dial-up number access only, about $25/month). I'm not against the taxes,maybe they should tax the fiber and coax cable companies more so the price might come down. That doesn't sound logical, but if the gov. can do that with landlines, I don't see why fiber and coax cabling, and HF radio spectrum (i.e. cell phones) can't be as cheap as a local phone line.

[Wcross]

20. I was in the same boat but couldn't take the 24.5kbps speed.

My phone lines gave me 24.5kbps on the fast days. I had to upgrade to satellite Internet and you are right, it is obscenely expensive.

[kineneb]

21. cable modem more reliable than phone lines here

as long as the cable co. can keep the hungry squirrels from eating the main fiber optical line over the hills... apparently the little beasties have developed a taste for the cable housing...

other major problem is forest fires burning through the cable...

The phone service is so poor that some of my friends have dumped their land lines altogether and have gone to cell phones only.

[SwissTony]

18. Australia also has a very slow and poor internet service

certainly compared to Holland (where I lived until about a year ago). I can confirm what your rellies said, mainer. We had very fast unlimited 24/7 internet, TV and phone through the cable at very acceptable costs. Where I now live (northern Australia) I can't even get ADSL, so I don't bother with internet at home. I'd end up throwing my laptop into the wall. Wireless might be a possibility, but is not cheap if you want a decent download capability.

[Doctor Cynic]

19. I'm wondering whether China is better or not

...yes yes, you have to put up with the firewall...and for whatever reason some political sites were slower than dial-up (such as this one, since I did check DU when I was there)...but the state monopoly there has laid high-speed broadband to every town and village in the country. It was surprising to see kids in villages playing wow and starcraft. It was much cheaper than anything here (in Canada). So I could say that the internet in China is very fast and cheap, except for the usual "undesirable" sites.