How are we going to fix America's broadband problems?

[Eeezee]

Why is so much of America stuck at 6 Mbps or less? We need to demand better, faster service. Internet prices are rising all the time, yet the service hasn't improved in years; and there's no sign of internet companies increasing user speed on the horizon.

What can we do to fix this situation? Why is America one of the last modern nations to break into the greater than 5 Mbps for the average user? 350-500 Mbps is the norm in places like Tokyo, and you can easily get faster internet in most of Europe. The most I've seen here is 6Mbps on a cable modem

Even Canada is kicking our ass in this useful graph, but not the UK?

Another article

Looks like we beat Italy and eastern Europe too

 

[FreshPrince]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
Why is so much of America stuck at 6 Mbps or less? We need to demand better, faster service. Internet prices are rising all the time, yet the service hasn't improved in years; and there's no sign of internet companies increasing user speed on the horizon.

What can we do to fix this situation? Why is America one of the last modern nations to break into the greater than 5 Mbps for the average user? 350-500 Mbps is the norm in places like Tokyo, and you can easily get faster internet in most of Europe. The most I've seen here is 6Mbps on a cable modem (unless you can afford a T1 line in your home).

Even Canada is kicking our ass in this useful graph, but not the UK?

Another article

Looks like we beat Italy and eastern Europe too

T1 = 1.54Mbs....so I'm

anyways, verizon offers 15Mbps/15Mbps for $55, which is damn good IMO...now getting it to become available at your house, that's another question

 

[FoBoT]

dude, some of us live in the sticks and are lucky to have anything better than dial up

 

[alfa147x]

others of us live in cities or near cities

It pisses me off too

:|

 

[altonb1]

I have Comcast SPEEDBOOST. I'm cool like that.

 

[Slew Foot]

Haha, suck on that Mexico!!!

Maybe that's why they flock over the border, they want faster internet.

 

[GenHoth]

I'm really not concerned about it

 

[potato28]

Move everyone onto the Eastern Seaboard? That's the only way to make the speeds as fast as Japan. I still don't know how Canada has more speed than the US, Bell and Rogers suck hard when it comes to anything out of the city.

 

[Iron Woode]

Rogers in Canada offers an 18 Mbps service @ $99 per month.

http://www.rogers.com/web/link...=WAVX&_removePackage=1

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: potato28
Move everyone onto the Eastern Seaboard? That's the only way to make the speeds as fast as Japan. I still don't know how Canada has more speed than the US, Bell and Rogers suck hard when it comes to anything out of the city.

Even then I doubt speeds would increase by much. I'm tired of that argument, "America is a big place!" America has the biggest cities in the world; why don't these cities have greater speeds?

 

[frostedflakes]

Probably has something to do with the fact that US surface area is 26x that of Japan. It's much less costly to deploy fiber over such a small area.

EDIT: A lot of the big cities do have pretty decent internet. I think in high competition areas (Tri-State, for example) FiOS and cable offer 50Mbps.

 

[shiner]

Originally posted by: Eeezee

Originally posted by: potato28
Move everyone onto the Eastern Seaboard? That's the only way to make the speeds as fast as Japan. I still don't know how Canada has more speed than the US, Bell and Rogers suck hard when it comes to anything out of the city.

Even then I doubt speeds would increase by much. I'm tired of that argument, "America is a big place!" America has the biggest cities in the world; why don't these cities have greater speeds?

Someone failed geography.

 

[GeekDrew]

there's a huge difference in density... it's very profitable for them to deploy fiber in areas of Japan, where people practically live on top of each other, whereas it's not at all profitable to deploy fiber in my area, where the population is probably less than 1 person per square mile.

 

[adairusmc]

Originally posted by: shinerburke

Originally posted by: Eeezee

Originally posted by: potato28
Move everyone onto the Eastern Seaboard? That's the only way to make the speeds as fast as Japan. I still don't know how Canada has more speed than the US, Bell and Rogers suck hard when it comes to anything out of the city.

Even then I doubt speeds would increase by much. I'm tired of that argument, "America is a big place!" America has the biggest cities in the world; why don't these cities have greater speeds?

Someone failed geography.

:laugh:

:thumbsup:

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: shinerburke

Originally posted by: Eeezee

Originally posted by: potato28
Move everyone onto the Eastern Seaboard? That's the only way to make the speeds as fast as Japan. I still don't know how Canada has more speed than the US, Bell and Rogers suck hard when it comes to anything out of the city.

Even then I doubt speeds would increase by much. I'm tired of that argument, "America is a big place!" America has the biggest cities in the world; why don't these cities have greater speeds?

Someone failed geography.

I don't think geography has alot to do with it. sweden and canada both have better end user internet, and both are less densely populated than the us. On the other hand germany and england are both very heavily populated, but have even worse end-user internet than the us.

 

[frostedflakes]

BTW I'm calling shens on 350-500Mbps in Japan. Maybe commercial lines, but I thought residential lines topped out at about 100Mbps.

 

[indamixx99]

Yeah there's no way Japan would have 300-500Mbps for regular residential customers.

I'm thinking some of these countries have government funded programs set in place to upgrade and improve their existing telecom infrastructure. There's really nothing like that in this country, while most of our money is going into Iraq.

 

[Capt Caveman]

The numbers willing to pay for such higher bandwidth just don't justify the cost to upgrade infrastructure.

 

[Spacehead]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
dude, some of us live in the sticks and are lucky to have anything better than dial up

Or no option at all... well, satellite.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

I don't think geography has alot to do with it. sweden and canada both have better end user internet, and both are less densely populated than the us. On the other hand germany and england are both very heavily populated, but have even worse end-user internet than the us.

damn near everyone in sweden lives in stockholm.

damn near everyone in canada lives in a few cities near the US border.

poor people who don't give a rats ass about super fast internet fill our inner cities.

fiber to every single house is an expensive proposition and build out will be slow. especially because a lot of people don't give a rat's ass. compare that to japan/korea where you only need fiber to a large apartment building.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

I don't think geography has alot to do with it. sweden and canada both have better end user internet, and both are less densely populated than the us. On the other hand germany and england are both very heavily populated, but have even worse end-user internet than the us.

damn near everyone in sweden lives in stockholm.

damn near everyone in canada lives in a few cities near the US border.

poor people who don't give a rats ass about super fast internet fill our inner cities.

fiber to every single house is an expensive proposition and build out will be slow. especially because a lot of people don't give a rat's ass. compare that to japan/korea where you only need fiber to a large apartment building.

FWIW, I read that it costs Verizon over $1000 per house to roll out FIOS.

 

[senseamp]

I live in Silicon Valley, the supposed tech hub of the world, I am about a mile from Apple's campus, and the fastest DSL I can get is 768 kbps, and even that with CRC errors. Otherwise it would be 384 kbps.
It's quite pathetic that AT&T is still using the old too far from central office line, as if they cannot put a repeater station somewhere closer. It's like they don't care if they compete or not. Don't be surprised if other countries lead us on broadband centric technologies, simply because we have too many entrenched monopolies controlling the pipes.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I think that we offer dialup brings america down! We have more rural areas that are 'stuck' with dialup, then most other smaller countries.

 

[adairusmc]

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
I think that we offer dialup brings america down! We have more rural areas that are 'stuck' with dialup, then most other smaller countries.

And who is going to pay to get broadband internet to these rural areas? You?

If there aren't enough people in an area to make broadband financially feasible for ISP's, then those people do not deserve broadband.

 

[CptCrunch]

I have 10mbps/1mbps currently, and my local ISP will be upping to 20mbps/2mbps in the next few months (yay)