A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
economist.com
A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
#2tl;dr: The US is behind because the regulatory environment encourages duopolies instead of fierce competition like in Europe or Asia.
Re: A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
#3These articles never take into account the cost of laying fiber, equipment, etc, etc to move those bits. The US has some incredibly sparse population in certain areas. Compare to the population densities of Europe/Asia.
Of course, my father, living on a farm 18 miles from the closest grocery store just had fiber turned up (connected).
There are many gov't programs set up to pay for this. Check you bill sometime (cell, phone, internet) those taxes go to equal access, etc.
Obama and congress have an additional program to subsidize broadband to under served areas. http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/More-Details-On-Obama-6-B...
And yes, we are mapping are fiber, trying to figure out where it all is. The gov't wants to find out how much capacity is out there so they have a base to figure out the improvement in capacity.
*Disclosure: I work for a telecom (of sorts).
Re: A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
#4These articles never take into account the cost of laying fiber, equipment, etc, etc to move those bits. The US has some incredibly sparse population in certain areas. Compare to the population densities of Europe/Asia. Of course, my father, living on a farm 18 miles from the closest grocery store just had fiber turned up (connected). There are many gov't programs set up to pay for this. Check you bill sometime (cell…
I also wonder what the overbuild in the late 90's/early 00's did to the broadband market.
Re: A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
#5> "Others have achieved something similar by having an independent authority build and maintain the network and then leasing access to all and sundry."
Brigham City, Utah (about an hour north of Salt Lake) recently voted for this in their community. The city is building fiber to every home, and broadband providers can compete for customers while leasing the infrastructure from the city.
Re: A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
#6These articles never take into account the cost of laying fiber, equipment, etc, etc to move those bits. The US has some incredibly sparse population in certain areas. Compare to the population densities of Europe/Asia. Of course, my father, living on a farm 18 miles from the closest grocery store just had fiber turned up (connected). There are many gov't programs set up to pay for this. Check you bill sometime (cell…
Agreed, they never do. When my sister got DSL, it involved running a mile of underground cable through a swamp, just for her. This doesn't come cheap. Comparisons to Russia, China, Australia, etc would be of value.
Though that doesn't really explain crappy broadband in NYC or why my ISP, who installed fiber to my home, only lets me pull 6 megabit over it.
Re: A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
#7> "Others have achieved something similar by having an independent authority build and maintain the network and then leasing access to all and sundry." Brigham City, Utah (about an hour north of Salt Lake) recently voted for this in their community. The city is building fiber to every home, and broadband providers can compete for customers while leasing the infrastructure from the city.
Monticello, Minnesota attempted to build fiber to provide 50Mbps service to the city, but was sued by the regional telecom for unfair competition. The telecom then built up the infrastructure while the lawsuits went on.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/want-50mbps-...
Re: A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
#8Broadband in the US may not be as awesome as it is elsewhere, but to call it third-world quality? It's a big stretch.
Re: A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
#9tl;dr: The US is behind because the regulatory environment encourages duopolies instead of fierce competition like in Europe or Asia.
Or lack thereof. The article posits that the lack of government interference has caused the duopolies: the cost of entering a market is so high that only two bother, after that it's not worth it. The alternative is a system where the government pays the costs itself, or has the telecoms share the cost, thus reducing cost of entry and encouraging competition.
The way you word it makes it sound as if the government is regulating where it shouldn't be, but that's not what the article says at all.
Re: A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?
#10What on earth does someone do with a 100 megabit connection? (Answer: For one thing, to avoid bankrupting the provider, you don't use it.) I remember going from a modem to 768 kbs and thinking, "That's as fast as you could possibly need." As a heavy user, comparing that with faster connections, I know I was right.
It's actually latency that counts, and that runs up against the speed of light.