Why the US isnt the world leader in speedy internet access
Too_Many_Tools
Posts: 765
FYI...
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/why-the-us-isn%e2%80%99t-the-world-leader-in-speedy-internet-access
[h=1]Why the US isnt the world leader in speedy internet access
By By Tim Fernholz of Quartz [EMAIL="?subject=Why%20the%20US%20isn%e2%80%99t%20the%20world%20leader%20in%20speedy%20internet%20access&body=I%20thought%20you%20would%20be%20interested%20in%20this%20story%20I%20found%20on%20news.msn.com%3a%20Why%20the%20US%20isn%e2%80%99t%20the%20world%20leader%20in%20speedy%20internet%20access%20(http%3a%2f%2fnews.msn.com%2fscience-technology%2fwhy-the-us-isn%25E2%2580%2599t-the-world-leader-in-speedy-internet-access%23tscptme)"][/h][/EMAIL]The US is ranked 14th in the OECD, a group of wealthy economies, with only 28.8% of the population accessing a fixed broadband subscription.
If youve heard about the backward state of US internet infrastructure, youve probably read the anecdotes about Riga, the Latvian capital has faster-than-fast internet speeds, or Estonia, with its post-Soviet technology obsession has become an internet leader.
Related: Heres the one thing someone needs to invent before the internet of things can take off
Still, both countries lag behind the US on the World Economic Forums ranking (pdf) of internet bandwidth available per user. The US, which ranked 35th in 2012, offers the average citizen 62.3 kB per second, while the top performer, Luxembourg, offers its citizens connectivity at the thrilling speed of 4 MB per second. The top 10 providers of high average bandwidth have something in common: They are small, rich countriesHong Kong, Malta, Singapore, and Iceland round out the top five. While the US has high-speed internet access in some cities that out-strips other countries, slow speeds in rural areas drag down the average.
But a similar phenomenon plays out when it comes to broadband penetration: The US is ranked 14th in the OECD, a group of wealthy economies, with only 28.8% of the population90 million peopleaccessing a fixed broadband subscription, which is three times as many as Japan, the country with the second-most subscribers, and 30 times more than Switzerland, the country with the highest penetration.
Related: 70% of people would be willing to have a smart toilet share their personal data
Perhaps the biggest difference between the US and other countries is subsidies. South Korea, another economy whose internet infrastructure and wired population often bests the US, has made lowering the cost of internet access a national priority; for example, some of the cost of internet for the low-income population is covered. That would be a hard sell in the US where the idea of subsidizing health care for the poor is controversial.
Thats why the real debate is how much broadband internet can be considered a utilitya public good provided by the private sector. While telecoms are heavily regulated, theres not the same sense in America that internet access is a necessity in the same way that power, water, and even telephone land-lines are. That view would be a sea-change for policywhile the Obama administration invested in broadband in the 2009 stimulus plan, it still falls behind many other countries that already consider it a public good.
Related: Over 60% of internet traffic doesnt come from humans
The national broadband goal announced by the president (pdf) is connecting 99% of the nations schools by 2018, something South Korea has already done. China, meanwhile, announced this year it would spend $323 billion to put its entire population online by 2020.
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/why-the-us-isn%e2%80%99t-the-world-leader-in-speedy-internet-access
[h=1]Why the US isnt the world leader in speedy internet access
By By Tim Fernholz of Quartz [EMAIL="?subject=Why%20the%20US%20isn%e2%80%99t%20the%20world%20leader%20in%20speedy%20internet%20access&body=I%20thought%20you%20would%20be%20interested%20in%20this%20story%20I%20found%20on%20news.msn.com%3a%20Why%20the%20US%20isn%e2%80%99t%20the%20world%20leader%20in%20speedy%20internet%20access%20(http%3a%2f%2fnews.msn.com%2fscience-technology%2fwhy-the-us-isn%25E2%2580%2599t-the-world-leader-in-speedy-internet-access%23tscptme)"][/h][/EMAIL]The US is ranked 14th in the OECD, a group of wealthy economies, with only 28.8% of the population accessing a fixed broadband subscription.
If youve heard about the backward state of US internet infrastructure, youve probably read the anecdotes about Riga, the Latvian capital has faster-than-fast internet speeds, or Estonia, with its post-Soviet technology obsession has become an internet leader.
Related: Heres the one thing someone needs to invent before the internet of things can take off
Still, both countries lag behind the US on the World Economic Forums ranking (pdf) of internet bandwidth available per user. The US, which ranked 35th in 2012, offers the average citizen 62.3 kB per second, while the top performer, Luxembourg, offers its citizens connectivity at the thrilling speed of 4 MB per second. The top 10 providers of high average bandwidth have something in common: They are small, rich countriesHong Kong, Malta, Singapore, and Iceland round out the top five. While the US has high-speed internet access in some cities that out-strips other countries, slow speeds in rural areas drag down the average.
But a similar phenomenon plays out when it comes to broadband penetration: The US is ranked 14th in the OECD, a group of wealthy economies, with only 28.8% of the population90 million peopleaccessing a fixed broadband subscription, which is three times as many as Japan, the country with the second-most subscribers, and 30 times more than Switzerland, the country with the highest penetration.
Related: 70% of people would be willing to have a smart toilet share their personal data
Perhaps the biggest difference between the US and other countries is subsidies. South Korea, another economy whose internet infrastructure and wired population often bests the US, has made lowering the cost of internet access a national priority; for example, some of the cost of internet for the low-income population is covered. That would be a hard sell in the US where the idea of subsidizing health care for the poor is controversial.
Thats why the real debate is how much broadband internet can be considered a utilitya public good provided by the private sector. While telecoms are heavily regulated, theres not the same sense in America that internet access is a necessity in the same way that power, water, and even telephone land-lines are. That view would be a sea-change for policywhile the Obama administration invested in broadband in the 2009 stimulus plan, it still falls behind many other countries that already consider it a public good.
Related: Over 60% of internet traffic doesnt come from humans
The national broadband goal announced by the president (pdf) is connecting 99% of the nations schools by 2018, something South Korea has already done. China, meanwhile, announced this year it would spend $323 billion to put its entire population online by 2020.
Comments
I'm getting abut 10 Mega Bits Per Second upload and download speeds here in Helsinki for 5 Euro a month.
Well if they would just quit moving their lips as they read my posts they could keep up!!
When comparing to other countries, how the cities are set up isn't taken into account.
Let me tell an anecdote:
Having had a discussion one time in Texas, it's a big joke when vacationing Europeans land at DFW (Dallas-Forth Worth Airport) and expect to take a bus to all the different sites around the US for the weekend (Nashville, Atlanta, Statue of Liberty, Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, ). They end up in Arkansas or barely Tennessee before having to turn around, having seen nothing but a lot of empty land and trees. If they start the other way and head west, they barely get out of Texas into the desert of New Mexico.
So it's unfair to compare the European or Asian countries where it's mere minutes from town to town on average. In the US, you're basically going to have to exclude the rural and isolated areas, and just look at metropolitan areas or within at least villages and above. There's just so much empty space with absolutely no reason to ever run optical fiber to. Plus the more... uhhh... country folks tend to not want fast internet anyways.
What also isn't fair is that even if the rural areas are using dialup or cellular Internet, they are still getting some level of service. So again it's not fair to average all the service speeds together, low and high, with other countries that have an all-or-nothing approach.
Anyway your argument about poor networking in the USA due to a dispersed population is often stated but does not stand up to facts.
Nearly 90% of the population of the USA lives in cities. You are more urban dwellers than most of Europe. Finland for example is only about 70%.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdFk3R1R1aXZPTlROdW9jZUpLZS1xVGc#gid=0
The simple fact is that the USA is a rather large country with population density significantly sparser west of the Mississippi. You can't have DSL Broadband and optical fiber service perform profitably in such rural areas.
Taiwan claims superior penetration of the internet, but the realities are that my DSL service speeds degrade significantly when I go international. To the USA is the best service, to Europe and the UK is the absolute worst.
I suspect the Russians in Siberia are still using dialup service if they can get anything at all. Europe may be fast within the EU, but is it a snail for those of use in Asia.
Of course, some of the slow down could be due to the NSA offloading whatever they are snooping.
I don't buy that. How is that different than Finland say with 30% of the population living out in the forrset? The NSA...sorry USA should be doing better if you look at it like that.
I suspect most of the people in the forests of Finland get better than dial up connection via the 3G network.
We can compare the USA to Europe in terms of size and population. The simple fact[1] is that the USA has a larger percentage of it's population living in cities than most of Europe. Ergo the sparse population argument does not wash. The statistics indicate it should be easier to get most Americans a high speed connection.
[1] Where "simple fact" is rather complex but comes from googling around about population statistics, see link given above.
Ah yes. It's no good having giga bits per second from your ISP if the pipes to the country can't cope. Somewhat a different topic.
Leads to the weird situation though that I might have faster access to Parallax in the USA from Europe than that farmer in Iowa.
What difference does it make that Finland is a single nation? As a whole 90% of Americans live in cities. It should be as easy to wire up city dwellers no matter what state their city is in. Same as wiring up city dwellers in Europe no matter what country they are in.
It's further compound by the fact that this can only be reconciled at the Federal level and there are toxic relationships between the representatives. Think about the recent federal government shutdown as an example.
So the cost is probably double per mile in USA vs Europe, take for example the cost of the
Martin, Exactly. Countries in Europe can't tell each other what to do, except via whatever machinations go on in Brussels. States in America can't tell each other what to do. Still we all have a decent network and you don't.
So, I still don't see what the hold up is.
As someone who has never been to the USA and only follows what goes on from the news and the odd documentary I'm kind of worried about you guys. Never mind the lack of internet, that's just another symptom. What I get here is that your infrastructure is old and falling apart, dams, bridges etc. Education is appalling. Healthcare is a shambles, The government can't even pay it's civil servants. That's before we get on to the failure of the banks and the auto industry. And now the NSA is doing a good job of encouraging the world to move away from USA based software and "cloud" services whilst at the same time consuming piles of cash that could arguably used to do something more useful, like subsidising network roll out, say.
This impression could all be far removed from reality but its seems as if the whole place is collapsing.
And that isn't a partisan thing, though we do have one party who has a very high degree of unity on that position with the other having a solid percentage of it's members joining in. That does open the door a crack, but it's not significant right now IMHO. Interestingly, it's not just "those guys in government" in that we as people appear to be of similar mind. Nobody really talks much about that right now though. And we really should too.
Edit: And Ken holding the line on that kind of discussion here is wise. It's wise because a whole lot of us simply can't talk. Hate to say it, but it's true. I do engage politics elsewhere and it is extremely painful in nearly all venues. This worries me. I think it worries alot of us, but yet we still can't talk reasonably where the discussion crosses some purity line or other and there are a LOT of purity lines, fault lines, if you will.
IMHO, the optimal scenario is a public private mix, like France is currently doing. In dense areas, have private companies do it because competition and the overall density of people make a for profit effort viable. In rural areas of moderate density, couple that with public efforts and for sparse population areas, use the public or nearly completely subsidize the service. And that sort of equation has worked well here multiple times, but is currently off the table.
The basic problem with employing market forces is the nature of infrastructure. It's not realistic to expect meaningful competition when the rights of way are basically set and or spectrum in the case of 4G, etc... is limited. Some degree of cooperation is needed to maximize the service for everybody and that runs in conflict with the profit motive, and so here we are struggling with it. Some companies appear to understand having robust service for everybody makes for a much more vibrant and profitable digital marketplace. Again, as France as realized. So they are making investments where they can do so and at least break even on it. But, that's only a partial solution at best.
I just got fiber Internet and it's insane fast. Having been in the slow lane since DSL was cool in the 90's, I'm frankly stunned at what real broadband does. And I've got a reasonable price by global standards too. Few of us have that option right now.
Funny thing about that. I could have lived just a few blocks away from where I am now and would be stuck with either dialup, cable or long distance wi-fi services, which are popular here in rural areas.
I'm a bit worried too. Somewhere, we've gotten off track with basic priorities and it looks to me like we won't be getting back on track for a while yet. As the pain grows, perhaps that will change.
And the priority needs to be making things better. Lots of ways to do that too. The need for purity in an ideological sense currently trumps making things better in a very large number of instances where we need policy to advance the state of things for everybody.
Our politics right now are really crappy. Seriously. But we are a freedom loving bunch, and this is going to have to work out as it works out. I suspect it will be awful painful too. Maybe it has to be.
A whole lot of us have our heads down working on the work we can do, living the lives we can live, just sort of powering through right now. Could be worse!
Up until recently, I owned a place in the middle of nowhere in Michigan. House sat in 35 acres. Could not get city water so I had a well and we had to have a septic tank...BUT, I had Comcast installed as soon as I moved in back in 2002! Internet/cable/phone, no problem.
I'm sure I only had electricity because it was above ground with those awful, ugly step-down transformers on poles.
Yup.
Interesting pictures. Not quite what I had in mind though. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was a new thing that happened not to work out for unforeseen reasons. The World Trade Centre was, well totally unprecedented.
If you listen to disaster and apocalypse fear mongers (like something recently posted here), you'll be rattled all the time and someone else will benefit. Life goes on well past Dec 12, 2012 and Zombie invasions
Are you taking my "collapsing" too literally? I mean it in terms of civilization as much as material stuff.
Are you telling me not to worry because actually the banking system did not fail, the auto industry is OK, health care is good, the people are getting a good education, New Orleans is not a disaster area, the USA does not have the biggest prison population (percentage wise) in the world, the NSA has not undermined world confidence in the USA, etc etc etc,
On the topic of education, sitting in the middle I do worry about a major power in the west where 30 percent, and increasing, of the population reject the evolution and believe man has been like he is since the beginning of time whilst in the east more than fifty percent or the population think Stalin was a good guy!
This is scary stuff.
I would tend to go with the Adam Smith's hidden hand of free market forces. If that is, consumers had perfect information. which they don't, and producers did not have the law in their pockets.
Perhaps we should wind this up before the political debate explodes.
Hope the New Year brings you greater prosperity wheresoever you seek it.
--Steve
P.S. This was one of my favorite train wreck pictures:
I don't have a landline (and I am not alone). I use cellular and 3G/4G for data. It cost more but the speeds are nice, and I get this almost anywhere except of the beaten track.
IMHO, the fibre being rolled out here in Oz should only be to end of street, and delivered to homes, etc by wireless - the old analog tv frequencies are available worldwide now (find the common frequencies) and use them for better WiFi (I have seen this is being experimented with already).