The Broadband Gap: Why Is Theirs Faster?
In Japan, broadband service running at 150 megabits per second (Mbps) costs $60 a month. The fastest service available now in the United States is 50 Mbps at a price of $90 to $150 a month.
In London, $9 a month buys 8 Mbps service. In New York, broadband starts at $20 per month, for 1 Mbps.
In Iceland, 83 percent of the households are connected to broadband. In the United States, the adoption rate is 59 percent.
[…]
Urban density explains much of that disparity. In most of the world, by far the most common way to deliver broadband is DSL technology that sends data over copper phone lines.[…] In the United States, phone companies could have offered a faster tier of DSL service to urban apartment dwellers. But instead they chose to offer slower speeds that they could also offer in the suburbs, where most of the more affluent customers live.
[…]
There’s another thing to keep in mind while comparing Internet speed: truth in advertising. Data from Ofcom, the British communications regulator, shows that advertising from Internet providers in the United States overstates the speed of their broadband connections less than providers in Japan and the major European countries. (See Figure 10 in this study.)Even without any change in government policies, Internet speeds in the United States are getting faster.
This is from part one of a three part article.
Part II: The Broadband Gap: Why Is Their Broadband Cheaper?
Part III: The Broadband Gap: Why Do They Have More Fiber?
It’s not size that matters… it’s what you do with it…
and how over priced it is.
ok,
I have a friend in europe, that has 50mbps..for around $35 per month..
I also recently found an idiot in the USA that says he has 100mbps(LMAO) for around $25, no matter what we say, he says “thats what it shows on the icon, from windows.” DUH! thats your NIC stupid.
I just saw a billboard in my neighborhood advertising the new Comcast speeds, I do want the 50 down but truthfully what good does it do when I have a cap on my monthly use??
OOOh 50 d/l, ….(homer drool).
There was an answer to a similar article on Digg from an actual ISP owner in Atlanta. Long answer but the critical point was: he saw his customers as a problem (one example, paraphrased: but if we give customers that speed a bunch of file sharing bums will use it 24/7 at highest capacity and we’ll need to increase hardware support to match it…).
Japanese are so well covered by high speed Internet because their ISPs think ahead: what will our customer need in the future. American ISPs are trying to match the already existing demand as late as they can: those pesky customers want more, arghh – now we need to work and increase our capacity. That is the bottom line problem.
Everything else (like #4 tries to portray) is consequence of thinking backward.
“I do want the 50 down but truthfully what good does it do when I have a cap on my monthly use?”
Add to that that in my case at least, I am often limited more by slow site servers and not my connection speed.
Unless you’re streaming movies or such what re you going to do with 50 down?
#4 Yea, we have the idiot AT&T digging up our streets for their newest tv/internet crap while the tons of copper hang on poles over their heads. Didn’t AT&T learn anything from their longline business? Can’t they see the local loop for voice is going away? WIRELESS.
Perhaps we’d have a better situation if 10 years ago, certain people weren’t insisting that companies have to share their network with their competitors. That certainly took away the incentive to develop a network.
The other problems come as:
SPEED at the other end..
Bumps in the road, going threw servers along the way and a couple are LAGGY..
Speed comes down to only a few things.
1. GAMING..
2. How many windows can you open at 1 time..
After that, its the speed of YOUR system.
Otherwise..
WE are pushing to hard..
If we make things faster, SITES will increase the graphics HIGHER, and make them HARDER to view for those slower systems.. Such as, WHAT happened to the 800×600 site design? Just because MANY have wide screens doesnt mean you have to FILL IT. I would rather have 2-3 screens showing.
The PROBLEM I see, comes with the speed of the OTHER end. Watching or streaming video, and it CANT KEEP UP. OR videos in such a LARGE format, that IT CANT keep up, and takes ALL your bandwidth for NOTHING special.
GET the other end FASTER FIRST. Look at the Cartoon network, then TRY to go to the site on saturday mornings.. I have NEVER seen a site that can handle a 1,000,000 user hit.
Yes, let’s take money from people doing janitorial jobs, or from sales of vegetables, and use that to give people free internet to download movies.
You guys just need to be glad you don’t live in Australia.
Th best deal I could get is $85/month for 8mbs ADSL1 speed and an 85gig limit per month.
However most people use the main carrier (Telstra) who charge $150 for the same speed but only 60gig, and for that you could thank our recently kicked out conservative government who sold off Telstra which was previously a public owned utility (as well as the publicly owned power, gas, and transport systems).
We now get raped every month when the bills arrive, all because some pencil-dicked politicians thought it would be easier to sell off well performing reasonably priced public assets rather than make any cutbacks to their pet projects or increase taxes a bit for the wealthy (sound familiar?).
So we have a monopolistic company like Telstra who allow other ISPs access to their network but charge them a higher wholesale price than they charge their retail customers.
We don’t even have any naked broadband services that cost less than if you just had a normal telephone line anyway. Cheapest I’ve seen is $60/month for a pathetic 7gig limit, and forget about wireless, you’d have to sell your kidneys.
You guys in the US are lucky!!
This whole faux debate is utterly stupid.
Europe has a much higher population density than the United States. Most of the populace is served by cities.
Distance is a major factor in internet speeds, DSL is a fine example of this.
Exactly what are consumers going to do with higher bandwidth? Watch movies? That is already near DVD quality with Nexflix, Hulu and Joost.
If the USA is so far behind, why not compare versus Canada?
You know … because we should be behind Canada if we are so far behind, right?
What good is 50M service from Comcast?! It just means you’ll hit your 250G cap sooner!
Wireless or Fibre! Get your cable off my property.
One thing to note with Comcast – if you have business service, there is no cap – you pay a little more than home service, but I feel it is worth it and you get 5 static IP’s as well.
I was once talking with the people that do economic development in North Dakota – governments need to realize that high speed data is like the railroads of the late 1800’s – towns on the railroad prospered, towns that did not get railroad service floundered. The same thing will happen with countries and high speed Internet – countries that adopt and push it will prosper, countries that don’t will get left in the dust.
Paddy-O,
I find it disturbing that we agree. And everybody complaining is a bunch of whiny bitches.
Oh and that rumored japanese 100Mb, it is only available in select areas. This is just more of the fosstard-o-sphere faggot dance.
#18,
If you have the money, the phone company is more than willing to bring the DS3 right to where ever you are.
Oh, and thats not your property, you are just leasing it from the government in a forever lease arrangement. I am sorry you were mistaken and thought differently.
# 20 GregA said, “I find it disturbing that we agree. And everybody complaining is a bunch of whiny bitches.”
I read the whole thread to this point and no one has said what you’d do with that much bandwidth at home. It’s very strange.
Cow-Patty,
… no one has said what you’d do with that much bandwidth at home.
No vision.
What would have happened to medicine if we never allowed surgeons to open a body. What would have happened if roads were restricted to 10 MPH and a load limit of one ton. What would have happened if the Catholic Church still retained the final word on scientific advancement.
Maybe video is the current main user of high speed bandwidth, but we don’t know about tomorrow.
22,
WE wont ADMIT to what we would do..
the problems come from the RIAA/MPAA and a few others, TRYING to regulate something that have no control over..
AS WELL as, installing COPYRIGHT protections into TRADE agreements, that are so OUT REACHING that they make the USA look like a wimp.
#13, ECA,
Good points. I’ve noticed more and more sites are optimizing for broadband even though there are many people without broadband.
My in-laws have cable strung 1/4 miles on either side, but can’t get the company to put it in front of their house. So they use dial-up.
Does anyone realize that Windows XP SP3 was close to a 300 MB d/l? Regular updates for Windows, Open Office, and even Firefox are mega size. A-V updates for AVG are usually in the 1-2 MB range, every day.
It becomes a disadvantage to be online if normal activities become prohibitive. And forget the idea that MS allows you to order a hard copy of SP3. That is only one. There are too many more.
Why would I need or want 50 meg dl and 15 Up, and no cap?
Well I have 15/1.5 now and if I stream a low def movie from netflix and try to online game my online gaming suffers. 6 computers in this house and my wife uses one to work from. Now whats it going to be like if I try and stream HD movies from at least two of those computers, which netflix allows. Heck what if I try and host an online game with some friends while my wife streams a HD movie. I realize what I already have is so much better than what was offered just a few years ago, but with the larger amount of streaming content available nowadays bigger pipes just make more sense.
I am going to look at that business level service mentioned above.
25,
Very true..
I remember wondering the net on dialup, and it was fine.. couldnt play many games, But Im playing those 10 year old games NOW, very well.
And watching NET displys go from 800×600 to 1024×768 is just STUPID..
# 26 Fritze said, “Well I have 15/1.5 now and if I stream a low def movie from netflix and try to online game my online gaming suffers.”
Finally an honest answer. So, watching yet another movie and playing children games. That’s what we need to be more productive and a reason to “catch up” up to EUs broadband rates. Yep, this is a total non-issue.
#28,
From my own experience, I don’t think his problem is bandwidth as much as it is latency. It sounds to me like he has a janky router. I bet if he got the router from his cable company rather than daisy chaining a router to a cable box his issue would go away.
That is just my suspicion, but I don’t know. I know I do similar activities without issue.
#29 Could be. Depends on how much he is trying to stream at once to all those computers. Either way, spending money out of my pocket so that people can become even more sedentary & non-productive is BAD for the economy. Any pol who wants to do this is not that bright (either side of the aisle). Take that money and pay bonuses to inner city teachers who are demonstrably superior at their job.
It’s simple; nobody knows what the price really should be in other countries. I challenge someone to show me how you figure it? And its not reasonable to just tell me a number that some bureaucrat made up. What is that actual cost.
Oh, sure, the point of presenting an article like this is to say how good it is in other countries and how backward we are here in America.
Maybe another way to look at is how many resources are devoted to the task, who are they and are they good at it. So, in France how many government agencies does it take to screw in a light bulb (or give cheap internet to all). I can tell you for sure that its a lot fewer in America but it won’t be for long if you get your way ud.
um…hello..capitalism..?
/soundwash AADD mode
we lag by design. -due to our incrementalistic class-warfare /rollout marketing model that requires something “new & improved” every 6-8 months.
(planned obsolescence comes to mind too.)
it’s how they get us to buy the same crap
over and over and over again.
look at the CD-ROM speedgame -they could have just come out with 52x burners within 2-3 iterations of the tech. instead, we spent several years going from 2x to 4x, 8, ,12, 16, 24, 36, 48, 52x. -ditto for DVD and now blue-ray.
the media is the limiting factor, usually.
-you trying to tell me they only now
figured out how to make a blue laser?
-how long before UV lasers?
-heavens forbid should they introduce the holographic storage medium that was shelved years ago before it’s *time*
no doubt this HVD terabyte medium will start
at around 30-60gb with limited speeds and they’ll start the whole cycle all over again
rather than start us off at say 3tb and 1gb/s
(omg..they’d have nothing to fuel the end of year sales bonanza..better known as christmas…) :s
if you follow PC parts/pricing, you’ll find that normally, there are 4 price drops per year, supposedly to introduce new tech. -and are typically based around intel and amd’s speed roadmaps. (that model is now starting to erode)
the ISP speedgame is quite similar.
they cant offer to beat the “competition” if everyone comes out with the max speed in just 2 or 3 steps. they have 5 “media / speed packages” of the same crap re-arranged
25 different ways to sell to 10 demographics
and half the time the one you get depends on how slick the sales person is on the other end of the phone…(someone reword that better plz)
-when i surf, i rarely ever see my netmeter
go past 4-5mbs downspeed. average is 1-3mbs
and only peaks at 4-5mb when i hit youtube/liveleak type vid links. -regular browsing just isn’t that speed intensive.
i hit 10-16mb peaks only when downloading
ISO images, podcasts and *some* vids..
i posit that everything that will be “invented” already has been invented
and nothing shall be released before its
economically “time” do so.
(i bet those who have hi-level military
Skunkworks clearance are giggling right
about now)
anyway..
bottom line: tecnically, it’s a non-issue.
we are supposedly behind speedwise only because it is politically and monetarily profitable to do so.
-s
the end-all will be the NWO-VD format:
a holographic X-ray laser player that allows 100petabyte storage, projects your current carbon footprint high above your head and sterilizes the user all at the same time..
:p
—–
/separate, semi-related rant
what really sucks is the HD/movie madness. personally, as it stands now, whatever the format, if you cannot push your F’n movie in 800megs or less, too friggin bad.
the internet should remain first and foremost
a communication, information and technology tool. NOT a surrogate backbone to push movies and/or mind-numbing **feature length HD advertisments**
if they want to push IPTV, movies and “premium” HD content, they should be doing it over their own dedicated backbones and stay OFF our internet.
(they save a ton of money by using the net
instead of a separate backbone.
by allowing the above to feed via the internet, lawyers at the RIAA/MPAA et al now think they have the right regulate *every piece of equipment* their coveted movies travels through.
-this of course, plays well with the politicians and corporate news because they have lost the ability to *control* public political opinion, what is “news” and by extension, what we *think* due to blogging, homegrown “news” sites and everything in between.
no doubt very soon, the net will be fractured
and regulated ad nauseum in the name of national security, terrorism, copyright law, and of course the greatest political and media trump card of all: saving all the “innocent children” from pr0n (and all those bazillions of baby-eating ebildoers lurking in a chatroom near you)
the Net was great until megalomaniacal corporations and their political stooges showed up..
somehow, i get the feeling BBS’s will make a “required” comeback in the years ahead just
so we can speak our minds like we do now..
’nuff said?
-s