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The average U.S. household has to pay an exorbitant amount of money for an Internet connection that the rest of the industrial world would find mediocre. According to a recent report by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, broadband Internet service in the U.S. is not just slower and more expensive than it is in tech-savvy nations such as South Korea and Japan; the U.S. has fallen behind infrastructure-challenged countries such as Portugal and Italy as well.
The consequences are far worse than having to wait a few extra seconds for a movie to load. Because broadband connections are the railroads of the 21st century—essential infrastructure required to transmit products (these days, in the form of information) from seller to buyer—our creaky Internet makes it harder for U.S. entrepreneurs to compete in global markets. As evidence, consider that the U.S. came in dead last in another recent study that compared how quickly 40 countries and regions have been progressing toward a knowledge-based economy over the past 10 years. “We are at risk in the global race for leadership in innovation,” FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said recently. “Consumers in Japan and France are paying less for broadband and getting faster connections. We’ve got work to do.”
It was not always like this. A decade ago the U.S. ranked at or near the top of most studies of broadband price and performance. But that was before the FCC made a terrible mistake. In 2002 it reclassified broadband Internet service as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service.” In theory, this step implied that broadband was equivalent to a content provider (such as AOL or Yahoo!) and was not a means to communicate, such as a telephone line. In practice, it has stifled competition.
Phone companies have to compete for your business. Even though there may be just one telephone jack in your home, you can purchase service from any one of a number of different long-distance providers. Not so for broadband Internet. Here consumers generally have just two choices: the cable company, which sends data through the same lines used to deliver television signals, and the phone company, which uses older telephone lines and hence can only offer slower service.
The same is not true in Japan, Britain and the rest of the rich world. In such countries, the company that owns the physical infrastructure must sell access to independent providers on a wholesale market. Want high-speed Internet? You can choose from multiple companies, each of which has to compete on price and service. The only exceptions to this policy in the whole of the 32-nation Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development are the U.S., Mexico and the Slovak Republic, although the Slovaks have recently begun to open up their lines.
A separate debate—over net neutrality, the principle that Internet providers must treat all data equally regardless of their origin or content—has put the broadband crisis back in the spotlight. Earlier this year a federal appeals court struck down the FCC’s plan to enforce net neutrality, saying that because the FCC classified the Internet as an information service, it does not have any more authority to ensure that Internet providers treat all content equally than it does to ensure that CNN treats all political arguments equally. In response, the FCC announced its intention to reclassify broadband Internet as a telecommunications service. The move would give the FCC power to enforce net neutrality as well as open broadband lines up to third-party competition, enabling free markets to deliver better service for less money.
Yet, puzzlingly, the FCC wants to take only a half-step. Genachowski has said that although he regards the Internet as a telecommunications service, he does not want to bring in third-party competition. This move may have been intended to avoid criticism from policy makers, both Republican and Democrat, who have aligned themselves with large Internet providers such as AT&T and Comcast that stand to suffer when their local monopolies are broken. It is frustrating, however, to see Genachowski acknowledge that the U.S. has fallen behind so many other countries in its communications infrastructure and then rule out the most effective way to reverse the decline. We call on the FCC to take this important step and free the Internet.
Editor's note: This article was published in the October 2010 issue with the title, "Competition and the Internet."Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
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51 Comments
Add CommentI take exception to the misleading notion that you only have phone and cable in the US. I have been delivering high speed wireless internet to my area (Tooele, Utah) for close to a decade. With 10.2 Mbps download speeds, that definitely qualifies as high speed. This system is in use by many companies in thousands of sites across the nation. What is more, we have been so successful that we are now replacing it in many areas with Fiber To The Home with speeds that start at 20 Mbps and go up. I can actually deliver 10 Gbps if someone really wants it. And I am not unique or unusual. There are thousands of smaller independent rural telephone companies and wireless internet service providers (WISPs) doing the exact same thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy company is privately held, privately financed, profitable and has not received any stimulus money. I saw a need, opened my billfold, and went to work. That is the American Way.
This article is entirely misleading as pointed out by the first response. To even insinuate that the internet market has not been opened up to private enterprise to create competition and make a broader range of choices available for consumers is entirely ludicrous and false.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author also compares the United States to countries that would fit within the state of Texas and not risk filling it up. Of course those areas have the opportunity to have superior infrastructure - they do not have to cover HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of miles to provide service to their citizens, not to mention those infrastructures were funded almost entirely (if not entirely) by government funds, not privately held enterprise which would have created competition as the author further eludes to. Let us compare apples to apples, shall we?
Also, I must admit that I take offense even further to the comments that elude to price and speed. I run an ISP (Internet Service Provider), and must compete not only with the major companies, the AT&T's and Cable companies, but multiple entrepreneurs like myself, and be able to do so in such a manner as to make a living to not only feed MY family, but the families of my employees. My company accomplishes this rather well, and has provided HIGH SPEED internet to remote areas that no one would have touched over the last decade and more.
We literally risk our lives to provide HIGH SPEED internet to remote areas of this nation. We cannot do it cheaper than we do already. To do so would be the end of our enterprise. We too have done so out of our own pocket, without the aid of government assistance. THAT as already stated in the original comment is the American way. I strongly wonder if the author (whose name I cannot find in the article) is not part of "Generation Entitlement", where everyone is a winner and everything is owed to them.
I am the President of Argon Technologies Inc. We have been providing wireless broadband to rural areas of Texas for the past 10 years. We have funded our growth from our own profits. In our areas, average home density is less than 1 household per 1/4 mile.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Telecom Act of 1996 tried to force the phone companies to open up their lines to competition. As soon as Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLEC) began to compete using the Telephone companies lines, this was changed by the FCC forcing many companies out of business.
If America wants true broadband, the Telco and Cableco special interests will have to be ignored by the FCC. As a Wireless ISP, we need two things: Spectrum and regulations that allow for it's efficient use.
I believe the best solution on the horizon is Ultra Wide Band. Signals that use large swaths of spectrum but only transmitting under the noise floor. Using this technology, I know I can provide extreme broadband to all of my customers.
Marco Coelho
Argon Technologies Inc.
Greenville, TX
The bottleneck with Cable and DSL is at the local loop. Opening the same wire to another provider could force a price war, but it won't make more bandwidth appear. For more bandwidth you either have to run fiber to the customer premises, or run fiber nearer the premises so you can run a shorter range DSL or a less loaded cable loop.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe issue is primarly one of population density. If instead of comparing S. Korea to the US you were to compare New York City to Seoul you would see a much different picture.
While I applaud the industriousness of the first several readers who have commented above, it's a bit naive to be comparing the freedom to compete in rural areas, where there are often no alternatives or encumbrances from incumbents to stifle deployment, and the inner city environments of the nation's larger cities and towns, where one needs to employ a complete battery of lawyers just to get a pole attachment or lay a fiber route between pops.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, simply because competitors are free to enter the market, hence "there is freedom" for new market entrants to compete, that doesn't mean that end users are receiving choice in respect to the type and quality of services that are offered by competitors in comaprison to those offered by incumbents. In the main the opposite is true. For example, in more cases than not, when a municipality or competitive provider builds a network, with very few exceptions (perhaps the respondents who preceded me above are among those exceptions), they are merely replicating the folly of the incumbents by putting in the same, exact types of asymmetrical, inadequately provisioned designs. In recognition of the smaller competitors, to whom I send many Kudos, there should be more of you out there. Unfortunately, perhaps for a host of unspoken reasons that the article omits mentioning, there are only too few of you to matter to the rest of the country.
There are multiple alternatives in my area, many of which now seem to be government funded. There are many encumbrances that stifle deployment, not only from incumbents, but from local, state and federal governments as well. We have to jump through all those hoops, even to the point of being more difficult than obtaining a simple pole attachment agreement. We provide many types of connections for customers to choose from: Wireless, DSL, Fiber, even the antiquated Dial-Up. Doing so, we face many hurdles to be able to deploy our services across vast areas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI grow weary of hearing how the "end users" are being poorly serviced and or treated because someone in Korea has 50 meg to their desktop. The end user isn't interested in free enterprise, they are interested in having the fastest service for the cheapest price, and truthfully I understand that line of thought, but I also realize that someone has to PAY, somewhere, in order to deliver what they want. Should I, the service provider sell it to them cheaper than what I buy it for? I certainly could do so, but the problem with that is that I will not remain in business very long.
What it seems to me is that people are asking for the government to make it possible for them to have the fastest and cheapest service in the world. Where is the incentive for an entrepreneur to invest their time, talents and money, to provide this self same service if there is no way for them to compete or make a profit for the effort they expend?
Asymmetrical? Inadequate? Perhaps suggest what you believe to be the answer and or the solution to this issue. That is, something other than "Provide more for less." I'd like a Big Mac meal for under $5, but yet the price for that "meal deal" goes up each year, and they provide no more in quantity or quality with the raise in price.
Why is it then, that the Internet market is expected to continually provide more, for less? I want to be paid for my efforts. I want to run my business without receiving a government hand-out. THAT used to be the American way. I am tired of the people that believe they are entitled to more for less, without so much as a seconds worth of thought towards what it takes to deliver what it is they ask for.
I can deliver whatever speed any user wants. They just have to PAY for it...
WISPs are great where they work and can offer reliable access. In my experience, there are more claims about this happening than there are actual deployments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, I should note that the fastest network in the country is run by a muni - Chattanooga, TN. Find a better deal than Lafayette's (in Louisiana) 10Mbps symmetrical service for less than $30/month. The best deals for broadband in the midwest are in Monticello, MN - where the city built its own all fiber network.
These are the best we have to offer, but state laws and occasionally federal policies make it harder for these communities to innovate and build the infrastructure they need even as federal policy fails to solve the larger problem of connecting everyone. You can learn more about <a href="http://muninetworks.org">these networks at MuniNetworks.org</a>.
I am a WISP as well -- in fact, I started the first one in 1992. As a longtime reader of Scientific American, I find it odd that this publication would take a stance on these issues, because they relate to politics -- not science -- and are therefore outside its area of expertise. What's more, the arguments for "net neutrality" regulation are not only unscientific (they are, essentially, unfounded fearmongering) and are based on false data. (I would expect that SciAm would do some fact checking, but apparently it did not.) The fact is that ISPs are not censoring the Internet. There is robust broadband competition, and there could be even more.... So long as regulation does not drive competitors out of the market. (Ironically, the regulation advocated above would create the conditions that the article incorrectly claims to be problematic.) Editors: if you're interested in an accurate picture of the situation not from a lobbyist but from someone who deals with it every day (and works hard on behalf of his customers), I'd be glad to write you an article. Just drop me an e-mail.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWISPs are great in their rural niches, but this article and most of the comments so far miss the key point--equal access to the underlying transport, the local loop and backhaul circuits, is what makes European broadband competitive, fast, and cheap. We had that a decade ago and there's no reason an FCC that wasn't in the pocket of the Bells couldn't bring it back.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have to agree with BrettGlass about this article, it seems that scientific american has become less science oriented than it was a decade ago. I am writing though to say I agree with the author. I live in Apple Computers home town, Cupertino and have been using ATT or Pacbell as it was known for over a decade and I am still stuck at 1.5 Mbp max. I am told I can't get a higher speed even though I have been willing to pay for the higher speed. One ATT person said that I was close enough to the central office to get higher speed but because the first
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this3 digits of my phone number ATT was getting confused. This phone number moved with me from another location.
This conversation was terminated because the call dropped which unfortunately has happened several times with ATT but doesn't ever happen with my other landline calls. Several times I have been on the phone with them and they ask for my number in case the call gets dropped so I guess they expect that but I have never gotten a call back from them. I got tired of trying to talk with ATT which is what I think they want. My only other option is the cable company. I don't have cable presently but I may eventually get a cable modem instead of DSL.
Another sign that we in the US are fast falling from our heavenly perch. We need to look closely at ourselves and learn from our friends, colleagues and enemies alike around the rest of the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm an end user of a local wireless provider in Northern California. Not flatlands of Texas. Here I get 0.5Mbps, sometimes I get 0.6Mbps, never more. The company, DigitalPath, refuses to even try to get a better signal. I pay $55 monthly. I have no other options, as I will never go back to the 6 years of hell I had on capped satellite. DSL and Cable are not available here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm glad all these small scale entrepeneurs are writing in talking about their successful implementations where the competition is slow speed and high cost. Great niche market.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately telecom like water sewer and electric has the economy of scale thing going for it, that drops the oneseys and twosey's costs, down to insignificant levels. Equally unfortunate is the fact that because all our politicians are bought and paid by Big Telecom there is little chance that anything can be done about it.
According to Time Warner their profit on broadband is over 3000% with their ancient antiquated cable equipment.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/04/time-warner-c-1/
Look at the chart from time warner's 2008 annual report 8.4 million customers, $4.2B revenue, costs $146M . Works out to a cost of a little over a buck a month a customer. When you look at the tiny bit of mass produced equipment requireed on top of existing , television, telephony applications it's easy to see why.
Lots of room for a nonprofit or municipal utility to provide service at for a few bucks a month.
Using public power infrastructure, a dirt cheap fiber to the block network could be installed in every city, town and village with wireless N 2/5 Ghz access points at each block node. From that block node, signal can be distributed via 1 GigE copper to most subscribers and fiber to the rare more distant ones.Portable users or folks who can't afford a wired connection can connect at 100+ Mbps with WiFi. Upfront costs would be around $30 per wireless user a $100 more for wired and a few $ monthly for O&M assuming universal access.
The FCC now recognizes that low speed smart meters would be a component on the broadband network they envision. The small incremental cost of the high speed network over the low speed smart meter net power companies are planning, pays for broadband network for a extra few dollars a month per subscriber.
Citizens could also do it for themselves with a cheap open-mesh router for $25 which lets them share their internet and secure the home network at the same time. The more plugged in, the more they mesh up. No fuss no programming just plug em in. Open-mesh allows restricting the amount of bandwidth available to neighbors. Contributors can also require logins, resell it if desired, restrict on mac addresses, and boot heavy users.
Stick it to em folks.
I live in the most densely populated state in the Union (NJ), not 5 miles from New York City. This article is right on the money. I have two choices for Internet service. The phone company which I use now (.5 MBS Max) or the cable company, that I used to use (.75 MPS Max). In either case about $50.00 a month. The FCC let the big companies have their way and they have given us some of the worst Internet and telephone service in the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The author also compares the United States to countries that would fit within the state of Texas and not risk filling it up. Of course those areas have the opportunity to have superior infrastructure - they do not have to cover HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of miles to provide service to their citizens, not to mention those infrastructures were funded almost entirely (if not entirely) by government funds, not privately held enterprise which would have created competition as the author further eludes to. Let us compare apples to apples, shall we?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK, let's compare the USA to Norway - which has about a third the population density, and most of whose ISPs are locally owned by the communities. And yet even the most remote communities (and they get _very_ remote in Norway) tend to have around 100 Mbps.
So, what went wrong in the USA?
I live in Minnesota, the Pine County area. We have Qwest and SCI Cable for our internet services. They don't service rural areas in Pine County. There are plenty stories like this in American. A lot of in rural areas lack high speed internet or no internet at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes the average american web surfer even know that his speeds are slow?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReclassifying internet service back to a "telecommunications service" may (or may not) be a necessary step, but as another poster indicated, it will not, in and of itself, result in better bandwidth or lower costs. It doesn't really matter what speeds a "CLEC" would *like* to sell if the infrastructure can't support it. And without direct sales to end users, an infrastructure owner may have even less incentive to maintain and/or upgrade his network. A monopoly is still a monopoly, regardless of who it's obligated to resell service to, and will behave as a monopoly by providing minimum service at maximum cost in the absence of competition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's hard to think of a solution that doesn't involve government takeover of infrastructure -- as with roads, water, and (in some cases) power -- but at the same time, I don't particularly want my packets routed through government networks where my usage might imply consent for search, or TOS violations could be actual crimes. How do other countries maintain a balance between "privacy and freedom" on the internet and government/municipal ownership? Or do they?
Doesn't a great deal of the non-competitive aspects of the network infrastructure business still boil down to the historical phone monopoly and the local governments' rush to collect a windfall by awarding cable providers exclusive contracts in the 1980s?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe satellite providers escape the local infrastructure costs but seem to have remained bit players (primarily because of weather related performance issues?).
I also completely agree with the article. Broadband service in the US is terrible, and it is largely the fault of poor competition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read the first few comments by various people claiming to be ISPs who provide wireless or wired service to small towns and rural areas. Perhaps they feel they have sufficient competition and do not want any more. They have special challenges, providing service to sparsely populated rural areas.
However, the status is completely different for the millions of Americans who live in major cities. I live in the Chicago metropolitan areas, and I have exactly two choices for broadband: either get terrible service and overpriced DSL from AT&T, or get terrible service and overpriced cable from Comcast. Like myself, millions of people here are renters, and can't even install a wireless antenna on the roof. Not that wireless service is even better. It's worse than the other two alternatives.
This has nothing to do with the things the earlier ISP commentators were talking about. This is largely the result of AT&T, Comcast and the other large telcos doing not one bit more than they can get away with. They would rather spend their money lobbying government and buying politicians, rather than in improving service. When frustrated consumers band together to bypass the telcos by doing their own municipal wiring, the telcos sue them. They have already made it illegal for municipalities to wire their own neighborhoods in many states.
This is simple greed on part of the telcos, and our pathetic system of government where lobbying money speaks louder than the voices of ordinary people.
Brett and other Rural WISPs are the exception that proves the rule. They are in areas where the Oligopolies are not interested in competing and these WISPs are great for the people who can utilize them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut WISPs can not deliver 10Mbps, 100Mbs or more to mass markets in dense areas. There we need fiber and the willingness to deploy it.
I live 6 miles from Apple Cupertino Headquarters in Silicon Valley and my neighborhood has NO DSL, Cable or Fiber. I am lucky that I have access to an (expensive and not ultra-reliable) WISP and get 5Mbps. But my neighbors who don’t have direct line of sight to the valley don't have that option. They have no choice of any Internet other than Dialup.
My office right on the Mt. View / Palo Alto boarder in the heart of Silicon Valley can only get flakey 3Mbps down / 756kbps up DSL service.
Unfortunately we gave local monopolies (ok a duopoly between an RBOC and a CableCo, basically the same thing) to the last mile in most urban and suburban areas. These oligopolists don't want to deliver the best Internet possible at prices that relate to costs. They want to sell content at a premium price and block competitors from delivering alternative content.
Its time that we the people take back the rights of way that were stolen when the regulated monopolies were allowed to be privatized. Having municipal dark fiber services that are managed like roads, water and sewers is the right way to do things. The municipalization of the physical plant fits the same model as roads. Its mostly rights of way and 10-30 year amortizable plant with little high tech. The municipalities would have no say or control of what is transported on the dark fiber. Instead it would enable a vibrant market of services and content on top of the public infrastructure.
Its time to divest the oligopolists horizontally. Let them truly compete with services on top of a publicly owned physical infrastructure.
By the way, not to promote any service, but AT&T is now running fiber to the home in my city, but I'd have to move my house across the street: they have no schedule for offering it on my side of the street (neighbors' poor credit ratings). They can bundle up to 12Mbps download, 400 channels incl. HD with a large disk DVR and phone in a service called 'U-verse'. I don't know what the total bandwidth configured to the home is, but I'd guess around 100mbps. It's not being widely advertised, probably due to service restrictions (financially targeting neighborhood infrastructure equipment investments).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh you are so far behind the times lol. In 2007 - Japan led all countries with an advertised 93,693 Mbits per second speed, followed by France at 44,157 Mb/s, Korea at 43,301 Mb/s, Sweden 21,423 Mb/s, and New Zealand at 13,595 Mb/s broadband speed. The UK came in 12th at 10,624 Mb/s while the US came in at 14th at 8,860 Mb/sec.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd you say 10Mbits is high speed?
You don't mention a source for your information, but having a background in computer performance evaluation (admittedly retired for years), the values you quoted seem absurdly high - so I did some quick checking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA BBC article from 2007 reports that the advertised standard internet connection speeds, when tested by speedtest.net, generally produce dramatically lower speeds than advertised: clustered around 1-10Mbps:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7098992.stm
Speedtest.net has their test rankings by country for both download and upload speeds. South Korea leads all download speeds at 34Mbps, followed by other relatively small (dense) countries as Latvia, Lithuania, the Republic of Moldova, Andorra, Aland Islands, etc. The U.S. brings up the rear of their list at just over 10Mbps. Please see at:
http://speedtest.net/global.php#0
The notion you take issue with is a fair one, and you are correction. However, 10.2 is not an acceptable speed for my business and does not compare to what is commonly, and cheaply, available elsewhere (as the article states). I currently have speeds just greater than 20 Mbps (the best I can do where I am) and can barely do what I need to do for my sole proprietorship. On one computer. Whereas my friends and colleagues in Europe and Asia have easy access to speeds greater than 100 Mbps. I commend you for your entrepreneurship and for providing a valuable service to your community, all at a profit. But the problem described in the article still remains.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisService like yours is provided to a few thousand people. There are 300 million people in the country. Furthermore 10Mbps is not high speed. 1000Mbps is high speed. This is what other countries are rolling out right now, and at cheaper rates than the US. Even more, it took about a minute for this page to load on my phone in NYC, it would take a fraction of that time in Japan. And their mobile boardband is cheaper. Telecom in the US is a disaster and you people don't even know it. Stop bragging about the wonderful service ATT, Verizon and TW give you. Their service and pricing is dismal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy problem with internet service is not the competition but the exorbitant prices. For example, I live in a rural area in Virginia and my choices for internet services are as follows: Verizon (DSL), Cox cable (cable etc.), Dish network (satellite only) and recently a company offering wireless (via an outside antenna). Each of these companies offer 'come-on' prices for low speed internet (<3mbs) and then after 6 months start charging on the average $60 per month. The longer you stay with a service the more they increase the monthly rate. If you want super speeds of say 4-10mbs then you have to pay the 'small business rate' of about $100 per month. Right now I'm thinking of switching from Verizon so called high speed internet (3mbs download) to the wireless company (they offer the same speed for $35 per month). I have been getting internet since the 80's (remember the old modem days and list servers) and it's always the same story - bait and hook the customer. So in my rural county it's not competition but price. I don't want TV/Phone/Internet package deals I want an internet service of say 5-10mbs download for about $60 per month for about 5 years. They (the service providers) can do it but they won't. Price control? I don't know what the answer is but in my area its not competition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, it finally occurred to me that the advertised transfer rate values you quoted might be valid if they were units of Kbps rather than Mbps. That would be unusual, but you might double check your source.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisApples and oranges. You need to compare metropolitan areas with similar population densities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(hint...there also isn't high speed rail between Chouteau, Montana and Caspar,Wyoming)
More proof that AT&T and the Bell Verizon companies suck. I remember when Bell South's rate for instate long distance during the day was $0.45/minute then they lowered the price when deregulation hit. With billions in fees to the FCC and the overpriced slack service, it seems apparent that greed has hurt Americans. We are overpaying the FCC to let ISP's bilk us. I was paying $90 per month for just internet but they lowered it at some point to $64.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere in Varna, Bulgaria (EU) for 12Mb/s I pay the equivalent of 16 US Dollars. Depending on the source my average download speed is always higher that 1 MB/s.(1.5 max). There are many other companies (around 10 in my city of 500 000 citizens) using the main telecom company's network or it's own newly crated optical network. In our capital city they pay even less for much higher speeds ... The companies here are just constantly upgrading their hardware so they are competative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with the Sci Am Editors that our broadband network is falling behind some others. The issue is regulation but not as they wrote of it. Other commentators have mentioned the fact that infrastructure investment is the key. When the 1996 telcom act passed Congress they hoped to force local competition. As usual, the politicians were only listening to their contributors so they ignored reality. For some time in the 1990's, local carriers(CLECs) were forced to give transport to their competitors calling traffic AT RATES BELOW THE CLECs COSTS. If CLECs invested in the "loop" transport (that is the portion of the connection that runs from an individual premise to the local serving central office)they would see their investment used by their competitors to lure end users away from the organization that ran the wires to their location in the first place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI live in a VERY rural area. Our local phone company has spent a bundle in replacing our obsolete copper loop connections with fiber optic cable to the pedestal (that means a connection point in the loop design where fiber optics is again converted into electrical signals and delivered on existing copper wires.) This business investment decision would never have taken place if our local phone company thought they would be forced to allow competition to use this investment to undercut their price and bypass them to the customer (me).
In this regard, AT&T announced some months ago that they would no longer attempt to compete in the local loop connection business and, instead, would concentrate on the wireless world where the need for loop investment no longer exists. This squares with the above comments of katgod.
Meanwhile, the bit rate speed of the DSL I can utilize is very low. The distance from my address to the copper/fiber interconnection point is well over a mile. This distance over copper limits the ability of the bit error correction software embedded at the interface to about 90 kbps.
It may someday be possible for all end users to be fully served by a wireless link for high speed transport. You must remember that even the politicians back in the 1920-1930 era understood that electrical and telephone services would never reach outside economical metro areas w/o subsidy. Hence, the Rural Electrification Act which provided start up funds for the utilities serving these areas. Since communications transport speed is an issue of international competitive mote, we should repeat history and insure all customer groups and areas have an even field.
This is just another reason I'm canceling my subscription to this magazine after years of membership. With each passing month I wonder more and more if I'm reading liberal political views on a topic or objective scientific analysis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt amazing me how many of these "scientists" have absolutely no understanding of basic economic theory and what a free market truly is. Having the FCC control the services that ISPs provide is exactly the OPPOSITE of a free market. Net neutrality will do absolutely nothing to network performance other than to worsen service for the average user and to increase costs for everyone.
ISPs have a fixed amount of bandwidth and operating budgets. If network neutrality is required, ISPs will have 2 options: ration bandwidth to their customer base or to raise prices - there is NO alternative. I'm sure (sarcasm intended) elected government officials would be much more competent at improving network performance than individual companies operating in a free market. Maybe an internet dictator or czar is in order to improve our download rates.
Well, I guess we could simply have the government print more money to subsidize the increased costs born by net neutrality. Keynesian lunacy seems it could provide quite the helping hand to handle this matter.
Back in the good old days, cable and phone companies had LOCAL monopolies. A community could take over the service if the people were not happy and wanted to pay the cost. The FCC is a federal monopoly and is not responsive to local needs. Keep them out. Give control back to communities to dictate what the local users want and what they will pay. Communities connect to the backbone like all ISP's.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKeep the FCC out of our hair ... they are a monopoly for the government and the big companies that pay for congress and the whitehouse.
Wireless is where this is all going. TV, phone, internet ... all the same IP service.
The only wires I want to my house are power to back-up when my panels aren't generating enought for all of my toys.
Very interesting - thanks for your comment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou seem to indicated that it was the principal telecommunication carrier that recently upgraded to a fiber optic network for your city. Do you know if this upgrade was financed entirely by the tecomm. company or did your city government contribute? Was this upgrade a very significant increase in available speed, or was it one of many periodic minor upgrades?
By the way, you stated that "my average download speed is always higher that 1 MB/s.(1.5 max)." Technically, MB/s. indicates mega Bytes (8-9 bits) per second rather than mega bits per second: was this just a typo, or do average 8-9 Mb/s.? Thanks!
A word from outsider.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKeeping my fingers crossed for the success of local private internet provider, I assume that nationwide providers are key players with overwhelming market share and those should to be made to compete with prices and Internet speed. Living in Poland used to mean (5 years ago) being really happy with 1 mbs D/256 kbs U for like $35-50 (at that time in the US you could get like 4 mbs from cable network for the same prices, if I remember right). Now, with no special infrastructural effort, when you live in city starting from, let's say, 100 000 citizens, you get from simple coaxial cable line up to 120 Mbs speed for roughly $50 a month. Owners of cable lines do not have to share their infrastructure with other providers, so this really high speed Internet is offer by providers independently, only on their own cables and the coverage is dispersed. Still, the broadband of 25 mbs is everywhere, where at least one cable provider exists. With phone lines it is different. Having access to one phone line I can take Internet from 3 or 4 different providers. Nowadays, on the plain copper cable I can get broadband up to 20 Mbs ($25/month) from the provider owning the line or up to 6 Mbs from provider renting the line ($15/moth). Optical fibers go as much as to hub boxes, one for couple of blocks, surely not to each house. So, when I see Comcast offer for broadband 50 Mbs D/10 MBs U for $100 and 20 mbs for more than $50, it means, something went terribly wrong. In Poland we pay for gasolin, cars, household equipment, electronics etc. more than in US, equally for houses and food stuff, and still maybe little less for natural gas and electricity; IT, since I remember, seemed to be always far cheaper and far more accessible than in Poland. It changed, so it is something you should be really worry about!
You americans do not know what aweful broadband connection is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI live in Brazil, and I pay R$108.00 (~~US$67.00) a month for a so-called broadband connection, with MAXIMUN SPEED of 300KBPS. Yeah, I'm not kidding, it's three hundred kilobits per second. And in Brazil, for some reason, everything different than dial-up connections are called broadband, there are no restrictions.
I do not choose to use that, I just have no alternatives. On bigger cities, you can choose connections up to 10MB, but for highter prices (a few of them costs the equivalent to 290 US$. It's just awful.
Anyone wanna trade? :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother formerly fine publication obviously hijacked by scientifically-ignorant Marxists, as this article is just such a crock-o-shite on so many levels.
First, whoever wrote this article actually knows nothing at all about the actual access technology, when they falsely claim “older telephone lines ... can only offer slower service”. Guess they never heard of DSL, huh?
Second, the physical infrastructure determines speed, not the “independent providers”, which simply just lease the physical infrastructure that’s already there rather than building their own, because, gosh, buildng actual infrastructure is so darn expensive.
Third, has anybody else besides me noticed that the regulated telecommunication services so happily mentioned as having so many competitive options can’t provide Internet service at rates higher that 256 kbps, the same as when phone companies first offered internet access?
In point of fact, the Internet wouldn’t exist at all if Reagan hadn’t deregulated telecommunications service by breaking up the national AT&T monopoly, which thought the Princess telephone was the height of innovation.
By unleashing the competitive forces heretofore stifled by the AT&T monopoly, multiple new companies invested in brand new and innovative national and regional infrastructure, including national fiber optic networks. These new networks, originally built to carry voice, were subsequently available for building the U.S. Internet, which by the way, was built entirely by the private sector and free of all regulation. In the mean time, AT&T withered away until nothing was left but it’s name, which eventually was taken over by a regional telephone company.
In the mean time, most of the western European countries initially fell woefully behind the U.S. in Internet development until they emulated the U.S. by removing the authority of their national PTTs to control their Internet, thereby unleashing the same competitive forces that allowed the U.S. Internet to be built in the first place.
So, tell me again why Internet services should be re-regulated as "telecommunicaton" services?
Quick! Read this comment while you can: "The Editors" keep removing it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo wit:
Well, I see that another formerly fine publication has obviously been hijacked by Marxists: this article is just a crock of non-scientific "progressiveism".
First, whoever wrote this article actually knows nothing at all about the actual technology, when they falsely claim "older telephone lines can only offer slower service". Guess they never heard of DSL, hey?
Second, the physical infrastructure determines speed, not the "independent providers", who simply lease the physical infrastructure that’s already there rather than building their own, since building their own would require investment of actual money, and lots of it at that.
Third, has anybody else besides me noticed that the regulated telecommunication services so happily mentioned as having so many competitive options can’t provide Internet service at rates higher that 256 kbps, the same as when phone companies first offered internet access?
In point of fact, the Internet wouldn’t exist at all if President Ronald Reagan hadn’t deregulated telecommunications service by breaking up the national AT&T monopoly, which thought the Princess telephone was the height of innovation.
By unleashing the competitive forces heretofore stifled by the AT&T monopoly, multiple companies invested in brand new and innovative national and regional infrastructure, including national fiber optic networks. These new networks, originally built to carry voice, were subsequently available for building the U.S. Internet, which by the way, was built entirely by the private sector and free of all regulation. In the mean time, AT&T withered away until nothing was left but it’s name, which eventually was taken over by a regional telephone company.
Meanwhile, most of the western European countries initially fell woefully behind in Internet development until they emulated the U.S. by removing the authority of their national PTTs to control Internet development, thereby unleashing the same competitive forces that allowed the U.S. Internet to be built in the first place. If they hadn't done that, France would still have Minitel, rather than the Internet.
So, tell me again why we would want to re-regulate the Internet as a telecommunications service under the 1934 Telecommunications Act?
Good article -- FCC should act on both reclassification back to telecommunication service and net neutrality now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour recent editorial assumes a lot when it suggests that broadband service in the U.S. is “awful” and then proposes a remedy likely to make things worse. First, the perception that broadband in the U.S. is awful is not shared by American consumers. A recent FCC survey puts consumer broadband satisfaction at 91%. A slightly older survey reported 90% satisfaction. These are very, very high levels of consumer satisfaction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecond, relying on simplistic international comparisons, in particular the Berkman Center study cited in the editorial, makes little sense. The FCC has noted that the U.S. is unique in many ways – instead of a single, dominant national broadband provider typical in the rest of the world, we have two broadly deployed competing wired broadband networks built and operated by hundreds of different companies. Real competition between cable and telecom broadband technologies have driven entry level broadband prices in the U.S. to the lowest levels in the world, and created a virtuous cycle of technology upgrades and innovation.
Finally, the notion that FCC should regulate how broadband is engineered, marketed and priced thereby creating “free markets” is nonsensical. Over the last decade, broadband companies invested over $700 billion dollars in building and upgrading broadband networks that now reach 95% of our country not because the FCC ordered them to do so or because the FCC provided the necessary engineering and technical expertise, but because they saw an opportunity for private investment. Ensuring that companies have incentives to invest in fiber optics and packet technologies necessary to keep our broadband Internet growing should be the FCC’s priority.
Steve Oldham
President and CEO, SureWest Commnunications
Chairman U.S. Telecom Assocation
There should be no real surprises here that the Bush guys made the wrong call. It's all a matter of who owns the fiber connections, and in whose service that adminisrative mindset operated. Unlike our American preoccupation with autos which led to the building of a national connecting system of highways and freeways, albeit to serve General Motors, Ford and Chrysler (but in the process most all of us), the development of fiber optic connections proceeded with no such demand or national insight, in a series of privately financed "toll roads" that, taken together have become the "internet." ATT's or Verizon's interest in fiber, is to connect and feed the demand created by their huge volumes of customers. They will always be behind the rest of the world (until we collectvely crater), because their interest is in maintaining their monopolies, i.e bottomline based, and driven by paying for their outmoded operational profits model.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNet neutrality is but the first step in converting national communications infrastructure into something that is truly focused on reaching both the crowded urban spaces and capturing he rural areas as well. Why do we not have federally supported fiber networks running alongside our highways? There are no technological obstacles to this. Fiber is cheap.
It's our system of promoting public wellbeing that is defective here, and will ever remain so as long as we remained hooked on the 19th century capitalism model that says the market will always produce what the public needs. Not true, never has been true. In a world in which resources are increasing limited, and in which abundance and wealth is increasingly taxed come upwith newer ways to satiate pleasure, we need to come up with newer economic models that have as their basic assumption, that the commonweal is a good thing
Its all about the fiber.... I think net neutrality is but the first step in the process, and one which we need to get over quickly. The fact that the Bush group made the wrong call 8 years ago is no surprise, considering who they were serving. ATT and Verizon develop fiber networks not to advance national opportunity and capabilities, but to serve the growing demands of their respective monopolies and billing empires. Just as the American system of highways and roads began with toll roads privately built and operated to get agricultural goods to market, so our national network is based on privately funded fiber toll roads, interconnected to become our "internet." We might ask, with all the dedicated rights of way tied to our highways and railroads, why we don't have fiber networks paralleling to support more capable broadband services nationally? Fiber is cheap, regardless of what we are told.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe issue is having an outmoded economic model that asserts that what is best for all is what the market demands. The fallacy of the model can be visually grasped by looking at where America stands in terms of health, based on our market driven food and nutrition system. Does anyone view our US obesity and health crisis as a vindication of the market's ability to advance national health?
Newer models are needed for addressing national economic growth, wellbeing, communications & infrastucture needs. Modes that are not based on 19th century market based models, but newer economic models that recognize the commonwealth of nations is based on sharing benefits of intellect, communications & information to raise all ships, & not just the pleasure craft of the wealthy. The fact that the recently elected "new deal" in Washington is now using the euphemistic term "investment class" as an interest to be considered in tax policy, tells me that we have not yet had the enlightenment of consciousness needed to competently address teclecom policy for the new age.
For now dog eat dog, get the best you can, where you can. Regretably for my grandchildren and yours, the American model needs some serious reexamination and restructuring ere we begin to understand that our placing in this world is not based on a wealth interpreted model of entitlement, but on our ability to put forward ingenuity and creativeness that advances the cause of all humanity, and not just those who can currently "pay" Embracing the policies of inclusiveness and collective thinking is the only path we have left to saving the fragile term of humankind on this planet.
In the late 1980's an idea for delivering high speed data to remote areas was to build spurs from a telecommunication backbone. A WDM shelf from an obsolete transport system was enclosed in a stainless steel enclosure built by AT&T and a multiplexer was fitted with a 1550nm laser from the same system. In a beta test of the enclosure it was installed on a backbone fiber between a terminal site and a repeater site. If the appropriate laser had been installed in the multiplexer a 1550nm spur would have been installed. A high power laser was used and it exceeded the project budget and an acquisition lead to the demise of the project. High speed data to remote areas would never be more than a niche market that would not be worth developing. Had the acquisition occurred a year later 45Mbps data would have been delivered to a beta customer that was twenty miles from a repeater site.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy using 1550nm optics capacity could be added by adding new wavelengths, once that technology was developed. The 1550nm optics have twice the range of 1300nm optics which would eliminate the need for half of the existing repeater sites. The development of optical pumps has, since that time, considerably extended the range of the 1500nm optics. In areas of sufficient population density the 1300nm repeater sites could be retained so that a spur could be established between repeater sites. As the 1300nm was replaced with 1550nm the obsolete technology could be recycled on the spur. Once the spur was established the available bandwidth could be sold to someone that would use some kind of technology to take the bandwidth the last mile to the consumer.
New technology is not needed to deliver high speed data to a much larger area of this country; the need is for a business model that would accommodate the service.
This is kind of late response, but it looks like not much has changed when about high speed Internet service speed and price ratios. I was looking into some offers in Canada and found them being in much better position. I commented on that here: http://www.broadband-square.com/2011/11/09/high-speed-internet-really/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother late entry response: I live in France in a village of 2000 people. It is a somewhat remote area as the largest city in the department only has 20,000 people and Toulouse and Bordeaux are 2 hours or thereabouts to the SW and NW of my location. I have an internet/phone/tv package with SFR at a cost of €33 a month. The internet speed is up to 25MBS but my community can only handle 8. A far better performance than the 3 mbs I usually find in the states. Phone service is unlimited while HD tv is up to 140 stations. I could get internet only (up to 25 mbs) for €15 a month. SFR is not my only alternative. I could have picked another provider from numerous competitors; Orange, Tiscali, Free, Darty, etc..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm surprised that during these economic hardships nothing has been done to combat the high cost of telecommunications mainly by allowing competition. Paying almost $200 a month for the exact same thing I have is 'ridunculous'.
Once again, the most critical factor in determining regional internet access cost is customer population density. Geographic service area size it critical in determining total cost; total costs must be distributed among the number of paying customers within the service area. There are other (non-linear) contributing factors, but this is the fundamental influence:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNational Population density (persons/sq. km)
504.1 - S. Korea
349.4 - Japan
102.5 - France
034.3 - U.S.
I hate that we're at near the bottom of the barrel of the web world in the US as we have to spend so much more money to get a lot less than other overseas countries as far as speed is concerned. My provider is Cos Communications and for 3 mbps I have to pay around $39.99 a month. They told me I have 3 available speeds to choose from... 1 mbps,3mbps or 15 mbps, which sounds strange to me right off the bat as there seems to be no inbetween especially when it goes from 3 to 15 mbps.For 15 mbps they want $53.9 a month and from what I heard that's way slower than overseas where they get 20 and over for what I have to pay for 3 mbps here in the US and it seems to be the fault of the FCC who ruled in 2002 that per the article above("it reclassified broadband Internet service as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service.” In theory, this step implied that broadband was equivalent to a content provider (such as AOL or Yahoo!) and was not a means to communicate, such as a telephone line.") Why is the FCC allowed to control our internet speed unless they're getting some kind of kick-back for all the exorbitant prices for meager speeds we are "allowed" to have here in the US!Someone NEEDS to look into this as we are the laughing stock of the web world here!!! Seriously PO'D!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBullshit. The article is right, it doesn't tell the whole story, but there is no true competition when it comes to internet providers and what we do have are terrible internet providers who provide piss poor rates (oh wow, you give 10 mbs? You realize that's still WAY UNDER the rest of the civilized world right?) and it's all because greedy asshat corporations have taken over our congress and push things to help them and fuck the rest of us over.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd how "high speed" is your high speed? Cause I'll bet it's nowhere near the rest of the civilized world. It's funny how defensive you ISP owners are that people are getting fed up with your piss poor service and the large ISPs buying off our politicians to dick us over so you greedy fucks can make more money with less work. That's not a TRUE America.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, you wouldn't. Compare New York City to Seoul and you'll still find we're shittastic in our rates and price.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this