United States Failing In Internet Availability.
By Jamie Wednesday Oct 31, 2007 4:00pmIn September I did a post talking about the telecom companies blocking a proposal by Internet company M2Z to supply free broadband Internet to the entire country. In the wake of the disturbing news, we now find out that the United States is rapidly falling behind in Internet speed, availability and price:
The United States is starting to look like a slowpoke on the Internet. Examples abound of countries that have faster and cheaper broadband connections, and more of their population connected to them.
What's less clear is how badly the country that gave birth to the Internet is doing, and whether the government needs to step in and do something about it. The Bush administration has tried to foster broadband adoption with a hands-off approach. If that's seen as a failure by the next administration, the policy may change.
This graph gives a bleak view of how the United States has fallen behind in the online game.
(click for full size)
You can't help but think about the jobs that would be created if we updated our nation's Internet infrastructure. Crews would have to be hired to run new network cables and techs would have to be hired to implement the changes. It could result in tens of thousands of jobs.
There is also the impact on education. Schools rely more on the Internet for education, and since a lot of children either don't have Internet or have limited time on it because they tie up the phone line, they can't go online to do their studies. Some of these children don't have this access due to the high prices, others because they just can't get it in their part of the country.
This is should be unacceptable for the country that pioneered the online world, but the Bush administration is doing nothing to correct it. They always give a lot of talk, but when talk needs to turn to action then they have the mentality of Ted "the tubes are full" Stevens when it comes to the Internet.
I think the saddest part is that we pay so much more and get so much less, yet the telecom companies want to charge even more beyond that. For example, I know people in the U.K. that pay less than 1/2 the price for their Internet connection and get speeds 4 times faster than I do here. We aren't just turning the Internet into molasses on the information super-highway, we are trying to price it out of existence for the small business or struggling family, and then the people who do have high-speed Internet get their service cut for using it to much. We have a serious problem here that requires government interaction and regulation.
So I decided to take time to see where the C&L readers stand in the online world, explicitly what kind of Internet they have available in their country, so I have attached a poll asking just that. I have excluded satellite Internet service, as I feel that it doesn't count in the mix of things with the current extra-high prices of it.
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Can we expect any good information about the states these days (namely since the Bushco takeover)...I think not!!!
Do me a favor and join this organization www.speedmatters.org Thanks.
"United States Failing In Internet Availability."
the list of things america has fallen behind in has gotten a bit too long. I think it might be easier to assume we are behind in almost everything and just list those things we are still kickin' ass in.
we still kick ass at:
military spending
divide between the rich and poor
obesity
ignorance
hubris
The U.S. under Bush: Failure is the "new" Success.
If America's ratings continue to plummet, they will soon rival the ranking that the U.S. has attained throughout the world in health care by the WHO, which is an abysmal 37th.
And I thought I was the last person on earth with dial-up. Somehow I don't feel any better. *sigh*
I'm from Denmark (no. 1), and I pay around $80 for a 10/2 Mbit adsl line. It is possible to get a slower one 256/128 kbit for $20.
Old News. Okay C&L lets get it together.
it's real easy,
if the top .001% don't profit from it, whatever it is, we suck at it.
Notice that the 2006 chart show mostly European countries with short warm spells they call summer. The inclimate weather gives them the edge!
We are still apparently beating Spain!
I am sure some corporate stooge will use this to bolster the idea of allowing 'private industry' the 'freedom' to create a tiered network as the 'premium' high bandwidth users will fund the new infrastructure needed.
The situation in the US kind of sucks for you. There is a private monopoly or cartel like situation with what seems to be low investment in infrastructure. I think you will continue falling behind other nations. In Denmark we had a very good national phone company which layed the cobber lines everywhere. Now it is privatized and recently bought by a capital fund that since has drained it for money and sold all buildings. It has a huge debt now and will most likely be split up and sold.
The only way people are getting fiber connections is if, the city decides to do something. Nationally it's dead as in the US.
You need a survey category for FiOS. That's what I have. 5/2 Mbit/s for $34.95 per month.
Yeah, we could actually create thousands, maybe millions of new jobs if we updated all of our infrastructure. There are so many advances that could be made in terms of technology, if only we were willing to pay the price of not-cheap labor for a brighter future. But hell, with so many tech support jobs going overseas (tech support! As if we don't have hundreds of grad students here who could do it!) I can't see the government sticking within our borders on this one, IF they decide that it is a problem at all.
I heard the fastest connection is like 40 Gbps (that's gigabits per second) and it is by a 75 year-old woman in Sweden whose son set up the internet line she's on as a demonstration project. She can download a full-length movie in like 2 seconds.
http://www.infopackets.com/channels/en/windows/gazette/2007/20070727_75_...
The Chimpy Adminstration charting a bold course for the future?????
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
michael @ 9:
Sadly accurate.
So that's why Fox was doing a hit piece on the subject. In reference to No. Korea their "expert" claimed it was due to No. Korea's low population. Must be we have clogged tubes.
King George the Dim does not want to give the peasants anymore ability to freely communicate on the internet than he has too. Well, at least not without seeing to it that there is more money to be made and that it goes to his bootlickers.
It's even more telling if one realizes that Canada has far fewer people per square mile than any other country on the list.
If Canada had the same density as France or UK, we'd be higher up on that list.
Shows you where priorities lie in infrastructure and social development north of the border.
As currently constituted, the Internet is a valuable, viable instrument of citizen empowerment, activism, and resistance.
OF COURSE they're gonna fuck it up...,
Chuy, did you folks just fall off the turnip truck?
They're trying dozens of expedients by which to eviscerate the power of the web.
Ending net neutrality will be the next step, and it's almost a fait accompli already.
If that doesn't do it, they have thousands of geeks working on other solutions.
The one I think most likely will be to enable/demand ISPs to require 'libel' bonds ($1,000,000 ea.) from anyone who blogs or runs any kind of web site.
What else? They don't pay me enough to say...
buffering...
The Truth Hurts @ 15:
Boldly doing whatever the hell they feel like doing since '00.
It's no longer the case that anything is good for the country, good for the future, good for the individual.
We have a culture of greed, and it's crippling everything, turning us toward third-world status.
I think you're going to get a very skewed survey...
Whatever the actual percentage of slow-speed, dial-up internet users is, it's a good bet that very few of them spend much time trying to watch the big-bandwidth videos at C&L. If so, you're surveying people who overwhelmingly have high-speed service... and obviously they live in a locality that provides it.
"Online game" is right, especially when talking about South Korea.
When I was there last, in 2005, there were more internet cafes than convenience stores.
I've seen first hand and read that in South Korea, online gaming is absolutely huge and it's the only country I know of where someone has died from online gaming (I'll see if I can find the article after I've had my morning coffee).
But, if memory serves, he did an online marathon of a few days straight on the net.
As bad as it is, the real world still holds far too many wonders for me to get that involved with the net.
the robber barons are hurting our economy. public financing of campaigns, please
David Elliott @ 19:
Yeah, but it's not like Canada is leaps and bounds above the States.
Fact of the matter is, the US is massive, we have big chunks of rural lands, but the dense areas are wired up fairly well. Most of the well wired nations are small.
The only way we're going to get the whole nation wired is if we do what we did with the interstates. Let the government build it.
Pat@27 has a good point. I despise telcos as much as the next person but the scope of the challenge to extend broadband access across the United States is not trivial. DSL can only be deployed within proximity to a switching station, while cable broadband degrades as the number of users increases on a given line. Wireless has its own set of issues. Considering that the United States has about 300M people the actual number of broadband users dwarfs every other country - it's only in per capita that we come up short. There is plenty of motivation from all directions to increase access to broadband connectivity and improve quality.
Unfortunately QoS issues run up against Net Neutrality concerns and nobody has quite figured out how to resolve the two things. Anyone who has worked in a corporate data center knows that QoS management has serious, non-sinister value to users. I suspect that the rate of deployment will increase, driven by those entities that stand to gain most by being able to pump large numbers of bits down the last mile to consumers.
Yet one more example of how the BushCo FAILURE of leadership has caused the US to become a second rate (or in this case 15th) nation.
Dear God, please save us from this buffoon!
Why, that would be the free market at work for you!
So efficient, so on top of it, always ahead of the curve.
Welcome to America, where it's always just good enough to sell to you.
Net Neutrality and Internet Access are both things we at C&L should be adamant about. Join the organizations that fight for individual internet users and our rights. We all win.
http://www.savetheinternet.com/
www.commoncause.org/NetNeutrality
That shouldn't be too hard.
Speaking of failure, anyone catch the BBC interview with Bush's identical twin sister Karen Hughes? Delusional would hardly begin to cover it...I could only stomach it for about 35 seconds...
Samson- @ 3:
Don't forget incarceration!
It's our #1 industry!
Here in South Korea, the vids at C&L download in about 2 seconds, or less. I've noticed you put a warning on for "big" files. Those take 3 seconds here. The whole country has high speed connection with fibre-optic cable. I know it's a small country, but the USA had better get moving, or you'll be a dinosaur.
Edwin @ 34:
Hehehe!
WAY too late!
If 'God' had started the internet, instead of Gore, we'd be #1, in the world in speed, because of all the faith-based speed grants made by this administration.
Pat @ 27: Y. . . the US is massive, we have big chunks of rural lands, but the dense areas are wired up fairly well. Most of the well wired nations are small.
If you check, you will note that Canada is even more massive (in acreage) than the US. It has roughly the same percentage of their population split amongst urban, suburban and rural dwellings. However, Canada has only one-tenth of the population that the US has to service, as well as only one-tenth the population that the US has to finance their system.
"For example, I know people in the U.K. that pay less than 1/2 the price for their Internet connection and get speeds 4 times faster than I do here."
I hear that there are caps on total gigabytes per month there. Currently not running into that here. Without taking into account caps, the comparison is inaccurate.
Here in Canada we have pretty good coverage for broad band. However, it always erks me no end to read that my service for which I pay 55 bucks a month is supposed to be "up to" 8 meg service.........not in the year or so that I've paid for 8 meg service have I ever received it. I don't sleep much and I'm on the net at all times during the 24 hours of the day, and never have received that speed. When I up graded from 5megs to 8(my cable company Rogers just upgraded me to this new speed for no extra charge ) I've not noticed any increase in speed......I think I'll downgrade my service back to 5 and save myself 10 bucks a month because the 8 meg service is no faster than what I got at 5 meg service. Be aware of the "UP TO" scam.
Also a third party DSL carrier of phone and internet services is offering me a bundle of land line and high speed DSL service at 12 meg service "guaranteed" at a price less than I'm paying for the eight meg service from my cable ISP. What is so surprising about this 12 meg service is that this reseller is selling on the BELL Canada DSL backbone.....Bell Canada doesn't even sell 12 meg service to home users and their price for 5 meg service is higher than reseller is charging for 12 megs.............looking into making the change now.
If only 20 percent of Americans have internet access, that means that 80 percent of Americans are pretty much unable to discover the truth on issues. They rely on television and radio and local newpapers for their view of the world. Television is flooded with the neocon propagandists like O'Reilly, Hannity, Carlson, Beck etc. The radio has Limbaugh, Savage, Boyle and others too numerous to list here. Plus there are the local call-in radio shows dominated by the same agenda.
A few years back the Indianapolis Star newspaper was bought from the Pulliams by Garnett publishing. Now all of the editorials and opinions are from right wing wackos like Krauthhammer, Jonah Goldberg, Cal Thomas and their clones.
So 80 percent of US citizens have no real way to verify the facts. The media outlets are continually telling them that Democrats are a bunch of socialist wackos that wants terrorists to win and to tax you to death, and they believe it.
The dumbing down of America is important to the neocons and the corporates. They are happy that 80 percent of the people don't know who Dennis Kucinich is, let alone where he stands on the issues.
We of the internet community need to educate everyone we can about the truth about the issues and to help elect the only candidate that really represents the American people.
Dennis Kucinich 08 - America and the world needs him.
Well where I live you can get a faster connection (cable) if you want it, but it's extra. What is extra here is standard in Europe. Is there anything wrong? hehehe :D
Damm those states speak volumes :)
This is of no concern to the president and his neo-con supporters. Education is anathema to everything they stand for, so of course this is part of their agenda. Stupid sheeple equals support for extremists - education equals enlightenment, knowledge, logic, and reason; none of which has a place in Bush's world.
I just go back from Northern Thailand. Their infrastructure (schools, roads, hospitals) are much better than ours in Hawaii. When the 3rd World becomes more attractive than America what does that say?
Not only do most of those countries have wider broadband availability than in the U.S., but it's a sh*t load faster!
That's because Bush hateses them nasty Internets, precious, gollum! gollum!
Hello here!!
From the Netherlands, it's Whitehouse.
Part of the problem is simple economics: in the USA, you can use a dial up connection all day and pay no more than your monthly phone bill; therefore, there's little incentive for email-only types to switch.
Broadband in Japan took off because a local call used to cost 8 cents (10 yen) per minute or $4.80 an hour. Using your account an hour a day added over 140 dollars to your monthly bill in addition to your monthly service fee and your ISP fee. As a result, internet use in Japan was almost non-existent as recently as 1999 and most people did email via their cell phones. Only recently, after the government deregulated part of the market and YahooBB started passing out free modems and signing people up in train stations, has broadband use taken off in Japan.
But the data shows that we've actually risen by more than 400%. Other countries, such as finland, have gained by over 2000%, but still, connectivity is only increasing. I whipped up a little excel if anyone is interested.
I guess no html that I have the energy of learning.
http://john-riley.net/other/clips/'07.11.01-rising_internet-1.jpg
I have FiOS -- 5Mbit download speed, and 2Mbit upload speed. Pretty good, I thought...until I spoke with a friend who lives in Sweden. He has 100 Mbit upload AND download. And he pays less for it than I do for mine.
The goal of the neocons, especially Rupert Murdoch, were to transform the US into a has been nation. They have pretty much achieved that through their Jedi mind tricks of media talking heads and stupid politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Samson- @ 3:
high school dropouts
greenhouse gasses
Christ in a cheese sandwich
heh...
.
The United States of America is failing
P E R I O D !
.
This internet poll is biased. Things are actually much worse than you would think from the results of this poll, whatever they turn out to be. Here's why.
This poll is only seen and taken by people who use this web site. The main focus of this web site is video clips. Video clips are generally unwatchable and even un-downloadable by people with dial-up connections. Therefore, this poll is only seen or taken almost exclusively by people who DO have broadband connections already.
Naturally, people who are too poor or too busy also cannot see it, even if their neighbor has broadband. Seniors and others who might not have someone nearby to help them get started are also unlikely to be in the pool of people available to be included in this survey. We have a lot of work to do, if we want to try to keep up with South Korea and the rest.
We got cable almost 2 years ago. We had to kick and scream and call our senators daily to get it.
The status quo administration, fascist pigs that they are have no interest in increasing the power of the people by providing the information highway and it's access to the entire nation. This issue is my pet peeve and I have been aware of it a long time.
You should know that in the red state areas they don't even have cable TV yet. I could get two channels in South Dakota when I lived in Rapid City. Now they're up to 4. They're heavily controlled.
While they are quashing our ability to build numbers on the net, they are busy trying to take it away from us altogether with regulations that will fork it over to the creeps who ruined cable TV. We really need some help with this issue. Here is a heck of a site to go to on this issue:
http://www.speedmatters.org/challenge/state.html
Please join and make noise. We want our internet.
Because of this administratio, we are behind in everthing. What else is new?
You all have raised a good point about our government or rather the Neo-Cons wanting to dumb us down by not wanting to provide high-speed internet access.
The internet is a threat to their ideology. The more educated we are the more of a threat we are.
Another point not mentioned is computer speed. You can have a great broadband connection but if your computer is not up to speed in terms of Megahertz, videos can drag. My daughter's new iMac and our new HP PC can run downloaded and run videos quickly but the kids hate my older Mac G4, which I love because the thing is 5 years old and keeps on going without any problems. But at 455 Megahertz the thing does bog down on some of the videos despite the FIOS connection.
So to get the full benefit you need a substantial broadband connection and a decent computer.
I've spoken to a few Bush loving Republicans and some of them don't even own computers let alone know anything about the internet. They are just as happy listening to Rush Slimbaugh on the radio or Fox news.
In terms of America and the internet, here in DC the big push is IP4. There are tons of small contractors getting in on the action to upgrade their govt clients internet severs to IP4. This is providing alot of jobs and work, at least here. Still the big monopolies are in charge of the internet connections. Verizon installed and operates the FIOS connection we have and I loath Verizon but have to use them.
The smartest thing we can do is divest wholesale from retail telecom. SBCizonBell can stay the wholesale provider, but the retail has to be opened up with no reason for favoritism.
Tim in Japan @ 25:
Oh yeah. Korea is crawling with internet addicts, cell phone addicts, text messaging addicts. Antything electronic and they're beeping away, all the time. I just watch 'em and read the newspaper, or do a crossword. (How old fashioned, eh?)
South Korea has no natural resources so they have made huge investments to sugre ahead in IT and technology. I don't understand much of it (newspaper guy). Yes it's a small country, but super high speed internet was deemed a necessary investment, to be #1, even if it was very expensive for tiny Korea. The USA is a LOT richer than Korea!!!!!!! (But then Bush spends all the money on the military, mercenaries and spies-- silly me, I forgot.)
Are you kidding? We are not falling behind in technology or internet speed at all. The technology is there and mostly invented by US companies. There is one tiny tiny tiny glitch though. It's called corporate greed. The internet service providers won't spend a dime to upgrade their systems in case they lose one red cent in profits. Moreover there is no reason for them to change that stratagy either. They have a captive audience due to a monopoly of the internet services. They are colluding to keep the prices high (like the oil companies do) and to limit the number of providers (competition) and really don't give a damn whether you want the latest or fastest service. it's all about the money!! Did you ever wonder why you have no choices if you want cable tv? It works in similar fashion, Crappy product, Lousy service, and they could care less too. Their attitude is "If you are so unhappy why don't you choose another provider... oh wait there aren't any, Ha ha". Until we stop the monopoly the corporations can do as they please and the customers be damned.
Remember the 2004 picture comparing US slavery states (civil war era) and states that George Putz "won" in 2004? I would not be surprised if the above image of internet access by country closely matches how the US has fallen from the lead in scientific education.
My internet connection is due to the brew platform on my cell phone. Provider has to give me access for applications that I buy and use (weather etc.) I just tether my phone to the computer via usb and pow!... Wait, not pow!; more like "Thppppt". It's slow, but not another bill, cuz I can't afford another. That's life in GWB's America.
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