Broadband Speeds Across the World

[TheZookie007]

The United States is at #25. We get lower broadband speeds here than in Romania. WTF is going on? Who can we blame for this? Well, according to this, it's down to the usual suspects:

"While the U.S. blindly followed a path of "deregulation," other nations in Europe and Asia beefed up their pro-competitive policies. The results are evident in our free fall from the top of almost every global measure of Internet services, availability and speed.

About this my Free Press colleague Derek Turner writes:

"By turning its back on the 1996 Act, the FCC ordered up a future of digital mediocrity and stuck American consumers with the bill. Americans pay more per month for broadband than consumers in all but seven of the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development  ... When price and speed are considered together as a measure of value, we see that Americans pay more per megabit per second than consumers in many other countries. The value of U.S. connections is some four times less than that of countries like France, and is only slightly better than the value of connections in Hungary, a country with a per capita GDP nearly two-and-a-half times lower than the United States."

The lack of competition has turned America into a broadband backwater. In the aftermath of the FCC’s decisions, powerful phone and cable companies legislated and lobbied their way to controlling 97 percent of the fixed-line residential broadband market — leaving the vast majority of consumers with two or fewer choices of land-based providers in any given market...."

[Palomine]

This has been going on for more than a decade... the steady decline of the US vs. other developed nations in terms of internet speeds (ours are lower) and access costs (ours are higher, in terms of $/data unit transmitted). Still, the FCC (and FTC?) allows telecom companies to buy each other and merge with relative impunity (the recent ATT/Tmobile kaibosh notwithstanding as it's not a done deal). Consolidation in any industry almost NEVER seems to mean anything good for consumers: whether we're talking about ISPs/cellphone providers, airlines, etc...

When Shara first told me the speed of her net connection and how little it cost, I nearly plotzed.

[pedonbio]

I've noticed that the people who are most eager to shout, "We're Number One" are also the people who are most reluctant to do nation-by-nation comparisons. Shouting, "We're Number Twenty-Five" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

[Shara]

what you mean the 500 mbit for €60/month?

[SwitcherX]

don't rub it in   

[Shara]

don't rub it in   

*takes off your shirt... rubs it in*

[TheZookie007]

Screw it! I'm moving to Sweden! Or South Korea! Or Kansas City, for that matter!

[rtpoe]

I wonder how it works out if you look at the individual states. I gather there's not much need for broadband access in much of Alaska or Nevada outside the few cities...

[solvegas]

The more compact and heavily populated a country is, the easier it is. Shara lives in the Netherlands, a country which could easily fit in Nevada several times over and has about 5 times the population. Hell, there are parts in this state so isolated they use to blow atomic bombs on its surface. So it is much harder and expensive to wire the place. Never discount geography. Yes, the regulatory regiment can definitely be improved and we need to work on that but the fact is that speeds have improved here while the costs have remained stable, at least here in Vegas. My $0.02.

[Palomine]

I dunno... I live in the second most heavily populated urban area in America and relative to other parts of the world, internet access here is both slow and expensive. I know it's forever fashionable to blame 'regulations' for everything that ails us, but I don't see how that pertains here (though undoubtedly telcos and politicians on their payrolls will swear it's the case). Lack of, insufficiently enforced, and/or lax application of regulation and oversight can be accurately be blamed for everything from Love Canal and the BP/Haliburton/Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to the recent banking crisis and collapse of the housing market... all of these fiascos (and sadly, many, many more) can be blamed in large part of companies doing what they want (in an effort to maximize profits) rather than abide by even the minimum standards of behavior that the laws require.

Sure, we could ease regulation and let every ISP and telecom giant do whatever the hell they please and hope that that would result in us all having access to fast, cheap and reliable internet access, but hard-won experience would suggest that we shouldn't hold our breath while waiting for that outcome.  

[TheZookie007]

The more compact and heavily populated a country is, the easier it is. Shara lives in the Netherlands, a country which could easily fit in Nevada several times over and has about 5 times the population.

Ah yes, the good old "our poor country is so big that we can't afford to give our citizens decent bandwidth" argument. Well, boo frickin' hoo. The #1 reason why American broadband speeds (relatively speaking) suck, is the cable Internet cartels. The same reason why if you're in New York City you can't get Comcast anywhere but you're inundated with ads for TimeWarner Cable or Optimum or RCN. They're in cahoots and have divvyied up their territories like gangs.

The solution would be for the government -- yeah, the bugaboo of the toothless, sleeping-with-their-cousins Tea Partiers -- to impose their will on these cartels and force them to provide service to anyone who wants it, anywhere they want. I shouldn't have to move from Long Island to Philadelphia just because I want Comcast (for example). If the geography excuse was entirely true, a city-state like Singapore, or a relatively small country like Romania, would have only ONE broadband provider. But they don't. The citizens of those countries have a choice which ensures that the competition keeps prices down.

[solvegas]

The goverment does not need to impose anything. It simply needs to get out of the way and allow anyone, foreign and domestic, to use either the airwaves or land or whatever and to enter where ever they wish. Right now we have essentially regulated monopolies in which require companies to bribe the right politician and regulator to build or do anything. Imagine if the computer industry was like this. The advances and deployment of technology would be glacial. Instead you have giants like IBM exiting the PC business because they are having their butts kicked by more nimble competition. We take it for granted prices will go down but they only do so due to competition. You want it better ? Get rid of the utility style thinking and regulation and let enterprenuers and out of the box thinking businesses and see what happens. This is Libertarian thinking.

[Palomine]

Not to devolve into a political argument, but the same 'free market cures all ills' thinking espoused by libertarians is also a hallmark of most Tea Partiers and the more conservative wing of the Republican party.

Given that these are the exact same people (one can comfortably presume) who'd be motivated enough to personally attend the recent Republican debates for the Presidential nomination, the fact that the audience lustily cheered Rick Perry for having approved the execution of 243 human beings (including at least one (and possibly a few more) who appears to have likely been innocent of the crimes for which he was executed) and last night actually booed a gay member of the U.S. military currently serving in Iraq, I'd be moved to question the wisdom of that point-of-view based solely on the nature of others who share it alone.

[Bad Kitty]

free market thinking, in a nutshell, is anarchy embraced.
except that it's selectively embracing it only for the merchant class, while insisting the general masses still be bound by laws, pay taxes, etc.

the removal of regulation has already occurred in massive quantities from 2000 to 2008, with obvious results. Even to the point that many republicans break ranks and balk at the idea of continuing to support the idea, except perhaps as pure spin.


do you for the most part view corporations as wanting to do the right thing but having their hands tied by red tape? or do you for the most part view corporations as attempting to get away with anything and everything they think they can profit by, without conscience? If you think the former, then i'd like to ask what business you're in, because i'd love to work for a company that isn't morally bankrupt. I've worked for numerous companies but working for one which wasn't soulless, that would be a first.


that said... the main problem with broadband in the US, is that it exists as a government sanctioned monopoly. there's no motivation to actually improve service or reduce costs, none. they charge whatever they can manage to convince local politicians is reasonable. and no one else can compete in the same market. Teddy Roosevelt would weep to see how corporations are let run roughshod over actual free competition today.

if very high bandwidth wireless like 'LTE' ever gets cheap enough, then perhaps we'll see some actual competition.