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Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

corp.sonic.net

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Re: Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

#21

Post by makecheck »

robterrell wrote: post #11
makecheck wrote: post #3

The conclusions are interesting, although I think they give government intervention way too much credit. If other product lines are any indication, people can become pretty content pretty quickly; they may not demand more even if they might achieve it. I suppose life is just too short and people move on to more pressing concerns. If tomorrow all TVs in the world stopped working and shows could only be watched online,…

But it's entirely true that the FCC was under the watch of Republicans when the telecom act was defanged and shared access to customer copper was rolled back. Maybe you don't remember, but ten years ago you could get various providers on the copper you had -- I had DSL from a local company over my Verizon-provisioned phone line. My dad had earthlink service over his time-Warner cable line. There was a price differenc…

I didn't say the Republicans' involvement was untrue, I said it was irrelevant. When an article points out a political party in this way, the publication is implying that the outcome is because of that party (something that simply can't be known from the facts). I suggested that they leave this out because it is more important to report on exactly what the FCC did and exactly what the outcome was. It allows people to have reasonable debates without becoming heated over their politics.

Re: Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

#22

Post by bane »

The interesting bit is that I'm not sure in many cases it matters.

I'm lucky to have FiOS (25down/5up), and I have many times the bandwidth I can manage. I can be downloading a couple torrents, my wife and I can both be streaming a movie, our phones can both be updating, I can forget I left Pandora running, and a friend can be in another room doing goodness knows what, and web sites still load more or less the same as normal.

I'd don't think I've ever come close to saturating my connection mainly because the sites I'm connecting to...even major sites...can't serve me data fast enough. For example, I routinely wait for youtube to buffer (though oddly 720p appears to load faster and more smoothly than any other resolution)...often I'll watch something on hulu while a videoclip buffers on youtube.

I've been on 100mbps connections in East Asia and didn't notice any perceptible difference...I did about the same amount of stuff in about the same amount of time...the sites I was connected to simply weren't servicing me any faster.

Re: Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

#23

Post by asharp »

bane wrote: post #22

The interesting bit is that I'm not sure in many cases it matters. I'm lucky to have FiOS (25down/5up), and I have many times the bandwidth I can manage. I can be downloading a couple torrents, my wife and I can both be streaming a movie, our phones can both be updating, I can forget I left Pandora running, and a friend can be in another room doing goodness knows what, and web sites still load more or less the same a…

Please note that most of the bw in Asia is to other parts of Asia. There is lots of peering and lots of fibre. Trying to get to the US, on the other hand, and you have a few, very expensive (comparatively) cables. This is why you find cloud companies in korea doing live disk replication into japan. The fibre in the region is just so cheap that it just doesn't matter anymore.

You would probably notice that if you were using local (or even localish) sites, that there would be a dramatic improvement.

Re: Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

#24

Post by loungin »

baltcode wrote: post #18

Why doesn't another big company step up and lay down its own copper/fiber into homes? Sure, it will be a BIG investment but the return should be awesome. I am sure it will be worthwhile in at least some areas like NYC, Bay Area, Boston etc.

It's a small drop in the bucket, but at least a start somewhere. Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber

Re: Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

#25

Post by asharp »

I do find it strange that you can go and get wholesale bw in the US for $1/mbit or less, yet residential ADSL tails, sold with contention ratios in the order of thousands:1 can be sold for like $60/month....

Re: Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

#26

Post by mbreese »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #20
ary wrote: post #7

The last line stood out to me. > ... passing by along the way the idle fiber infrastructure that the FCC set aside nearly a decade ago. Can anyone elaborate on what exactly they mean? Is this dark fiber sitting around somewhere? Did the FCC sanction the deployment and private companies built it out (and then ignored it) or was government money spent to lay the wires?

There is tons of dark fiber, due to the economics of laying cables. Digging a ditch is expensive. The fiber you put in the ditch is cheap. So if you are already digging a ditch, you load it up with 100x as much fiber as you imagine yourself ever needing in the future. This is vastly cheaper than digging a second ditch 5-10 years down the line.

Yeah, but aren't we talking about the "last mile" problem, not about dark fiber? I thought that most of the dark fiber was in long inter-city/state runs, not running down my neighborhood street.

I thought he was referring to dormant fiber that the telco owns that used to be available to third-parties at wholesale rates.

Re: Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

#27

Post by ck2 »

Not sure what people are going to do with 20mbps+ broadband when they will certainly set caps that will be used up within the first few days of your billing cycle?

Sonic apparently has no cap but that's virtually unheard of today. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/05/...

Which would you rather have, unlimited speed with a 150gb cap or 6mpbs with no cap?

Re: Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

#28

Post by gcb »

When choosing internet service 4 months ago for my new place, i made a decision that my next job hunt will be around areas were walking distance from the office are covered by sonic.

Startups think about mentioning this as a benefit. seriously.

Re: Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

#29

Post by gcb »

prpatel wrote: post #4
blahedo wrote: post #2

Having just moved (and thus done my shopping for a new internet connection), I found it pretty galling that I was pretty much expected to either get a $30 land line or a $50 cable-TV package if I wanted to get internet. Technically I didn't need to get the bundle, but they didn't even list prices for an internet-only connection. I have line-of-sight to our local water tower, though, so I was able to get a wireless in…

Telco's don't usually advertise "naked DSL." If you search hard enough it's out there.

I could get naked dsl from ATT only after i found this phone number in an old blog comment!

spread it 1-800-288-2020

Re: Why U.S. Broadband is So Slow

#30

Post by shmageggy »

bane wrote: post #22

The interesting bit is that I'm not sure in many cases it matters. I'm lucky to have FiOS (25down/5up), and I have many times the bandwidth I can manage. I can be downloading a couple torrents, my wife and I can both be streaming a movie, our phones can both be updating, I can forget I left Pandora running, and a friend can be in another room doing goodness knows what, and web sites still load more or less the same a…

Unfortunately, due to the duopolies described in the article, most of the rest of us are stuck dreaming of such a fibery heaven. Verizon has said explicitly that they won't be coming to my area. Ever.
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