Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Originally posted by: RabidMongoose
Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Awwwww, look at the Elite Americans jealous of the Rural Indians that can DSL and they can't, poor babies. You get what you deserve, send a quarter to the Multi-Billionaire Phone Co Execs that have been raping the U.S.
Well it's not as if we have the poorest Internet connectivity in the world. We're probably doing alright, especially for a country of our size with spaced out populations.
Countries like Japan, South Korea, and some of the smaller European countries are definitely far ahead of us.
Well my friend Declan just cranked out a one year old article touting that the U.S. is 11th in Broadband and that is good. Too bad he ignores that the U.S. was a lot higher and dropping. A shame that Declan had gotten caught up in the RRR FLL spin cycle.
1-10-05
U.S. broadband A-OK
It's become fashionable to fret about the purported need for a "national broadband policy," a concern typically accompanied by laments that the United States lags other nations in adopting speedy Internet connections.
Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, recently complained that "the United States is ranked 11th in the world in broadband penetration!...When we find ourselves 11th in the world, something has gone dreadfully wrong. When Congress tells us to take immediate action to accelerate deployment, we have an obligation to do it."
The June 2004 figures say the United States has 11.2 broadband subscribers for every 100 inhabitants, in 11th place and far behind South Korea's 24.4-people-per-100 top ranking.
Those figures are misleading. South Korea is roughly 100,000 square kilometers, about the size of the state of Indiana, with a population clustered around large cities like Seoul.
In other words, all but a tiny fraction of Americans have the option to pay for a high-speed connection--but not everyone wants to cough up the cash. My mother, a teacher in a midsize town in Pennsylvania, vows she won't pay for a speedy Internet link at home because she has one at work.
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From my website on 1-19-2004
U.S. drops to 11th in Worldwide High Speed Internet deployment and falling
Despite its economic and political might, the USA is falling behind other nations in arming consumers and small businesses with a key economic tool: high-speed Internet access, also known as broadband. The USA ranks 11th worldwide in broadband use, according to a recent United Nations report, behind such places as South Korea, Hong Kong and Iceland.
Spreading fast Internet access in the USA is so critical to long-term economic might that TechNet, a group of top U.S. tech CEOs, says it's the 21st-century equivalent of landing a man on the moon. "I'm just amazed how far behind we are," says Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo.
South Korea's $50 billion program first linked 80 major cities and towns with superfast cable. Then, the government launched high-speed video services, such as telemedicine.
In the USA, broadband has been slowed by a patchwork of federal and state regulations.
Moreover, major phone companies didn't want to invest in broadband because they feared the FCC would force them to lease lines to high-speed rivals.
