Is US Stuck in Internet’s Slow Lane?
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.
In a move to get a clearer picture of where the U.S. stands, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday approved legislation that would develop an annual inventory of existing broadband services - including the types, advertised speeds and actual number of subscribers - available to households and businesses across the nation.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., is intended to provide policy makers with improved data so they can better use grants and subsidies to target areas lacking high-speed Internet access. He said in a statement last week that promoting broadband would help spur job growth, access to health care and education and promote innovation among other benefits.
The inventory wouldn’t cover other countries, but a cursory look shows the U.S. lagging behind at least some of them. In South Korea, for instance, the average apartment can get an Internet connection that’s 15 times faster than a typical U.S. connection. In Paris, a “triple play” of TV, phone and broadband service costs less than half of what it does in the U.S.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development - a 30-member club of nations - compiles the most often cited international comparison. It puts the U.S. at 15th place for broadband lines per person in 2006, down from No. 4 in 2001.
The OECD numbers have been vigorously attacked by anti-regulation think tanks for making the U.S. look exceedingly bad. They point out that the OECD is not very open about how it compiles the data. It doesn’t count people who have access to the Internet at work, or students who have access in their dorms.
“We would never base other kinds of policy on that kind of data,” said Scott Wallsten, director of communications policy studies at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank that favors deregulation over government intervention.
But the OECD numbers are in line with other international measures. Figures from the British research firm Point-Topic Ltd. put the U.S., with 55 percent of its households connected, in 17th place for adoption rates at the end of June (excluding some very small countries and territories like Macau and Hong Kong).
“We’re now in the middle of the pack of developed countries,” said Dave Burstein, telecom gadfly and the editor of the DSL Prime newsletter, during a sometimes tense debate at the Columbia Business School’s Institute for Tele-Information.
Burstein says the U.S. is lagging because of low levels of investment by the big telecom companies and regulatory failure.
Several of the European countries that are doing well have forced telephone companies to rent their lines to Internet service providers for low fees. The ISPs use them to run broadband Digital Subscriber Lines, or DSL, often at speeds much higher than those available in the U.S.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission went down this regulatory road a few years ago, but legal challenges from the phone companies forced it to back away.
In 2004, President Bush called for nationwide broadband access by 2007, to be nurtured by an absence of taxation and little regulation. The U.S. is very close to Bush’s goal, thanks to the availability of satellite broadband across the lower 48 states.
But the Internet by satellite is expensive and slow. Nearly everyone may have access to the Internet, but that doesn’t mean they’re plugging in.
Part of the problem may be that people don’t see fast Internet access as an essential part of modern life, and may need more of a push to get on. The U.S. does have wider income disparities than many of the countries that are outdoing it in broadband, and people in poverty may have other priorities for their money.
Dan Correa, research analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, believes the U.S. needs a more “proactive” broadband policy, and compares the lack of government involvement in the field with the situation in other utilities, which are mostly heavily regulated.
“In the 1930s, we recognized that electricity was essential. We’re not quite at that level in broadband,” Correa said.
An FCC chairman appointed by a Democratic president in 2009 may agree. Current Democratic Commissioner Michael J. Copps has said broadband availability could be encouraged with tax incentives and loans to rural utilities.
The United States doesn’t look set to catch up to South Korea or even Canada (with 65 percent of households connected to broadband, according to Point-Topic) by then, because broadband adoption is slowing down after an initial growth spurt.
In the last few weeks, the U.S.’s three largest Internet service providers reported adding 1.2 million subscribers in the third quarter, down from 1.54 million in the same quarter last year, according to a tally by UBS analyst John Hodulik.
But the U.S. does have a few aces up its sleeve. Apart from satellite broadband it has widespread cable networks, which provide an alternative to DSL. Cable has some technical advantages over phone lines, and a new cable modem technology called Docsis 3.0 could allow U.S. Internet speeds to leapfrog those in countries dominated by DSL in a few years.
On the phone side, the country’s second largest telecommunications company, Verizon Communications Inc., is spending $23 billion to connect homes directly with super-fast fiber optics.
“Twenty percent of the U.S. is getting a decent network,” Burstein acknowledges. The new network can match or outdo the 100 megabits per second Internet service widely available in Japan and Korea, but Verizon isn’t yet selling service at that speed.
AP Business Writer Dibya Sarkar contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.
© 2007 Associated Press
And why do we need these ultra fast internet connections, aside from big bucks to be made by the mass entertainment industry?
The most useful information-access aspects of the internet don’t require all this speed if the web pages would be designed simply without all the advertizing animations and flash-player nonsense. The most useful information is just plain text anyway - for which an ordinary phone modem suffuces.
I’d like to watch films on the internet. Some films are almost impossible to see in theatre houses and often are not carried in outlets like Block Buster
“No End in Sight” looks like a good film. It has excellant reviews and is about how the Bush administration screwed up Iraq. And its from the people who were there and part of the US teams in Iraq.
reviews here:
http://www.noendinsightmovie.com/?reviews
synopsis:
“The first film of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq’s descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality and anarchy, NO END IN SIGHT is a jaw-dropping, insider’s tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness and venality. Based on over 200 hours of footage, the film provides a candid retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials such as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad during the Spring of 2003), Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, and General Jay Garner (in charge of the occupation of Iraq through May 2003) as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, and prominent analysts. NO END IN SIGHT examines the manner in which the principal errors of U.S. policy – the use of insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, the purging of professionals from the Iraqi government, and the disbanding of the Iraqi military – largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today. How did a group of men with little or no military experience, knowledge of the Arab world or personal experience in Iraq come to make such flagrantly debilitating decisions? NO END IN SIGHT dissects the people, issues and facts behind the Bush Administration’s decisions and their consequences on the ground to provide a powerful look into how arrogance and ignorance turned a military victory into a seemingly endless and deepening nightmare of a war.”
PJD
while i respectfully agree with your sentiments against tripe, as an artist, filmmaker, musician, I must say your analysis is a bit narrow.
the technology used by artists in media, and their works, even those of the non mass marketing/profit driven type, are more easily transmitted via higher tech/speeds. high tech in it’self does not mean that the profiteers are behind it all. artists - and everyone else - often use tech to advantage, beyond the quill and ink. it is the profiteers that we must work to keep from getting their monopolies on high speed - or simple modem - access.
but i do agree that the substance is what counts!
Are you kidding me PJD? The Internet has the power it does because of its latent graphical nature - you’re never going to find a suburban housewife sitting around reading the new york times in Lynx.
If you want to be heard, you have to make yourself look appealing. That’s not just an issue for companies - the same goes for people. If commondreams were all plain text, we’d probably not be reading it. Even if we were, many others wouldn’t. People don’t realize it but those graphics help to draw your eye and keep you in your seat - and if progressives want mainsteam attention then they better pick up on that, and not think that everyone can just get by on dialup. Take it from a guy who builds websites for a living… the ones that don’t have good graphics, fail.
It would be very nice to get faster internet at home, but our dial up costs a fraction of the DSL or cable modem or wireless. Everything goes up, so we of the middle class have to cut costs somewhere and the price we pay is slower internet, I guess.
File sharing is one of the top reasons to have broadband. Over the past few years i’ve ammassed a library of almost 900 full albums which would have cost easily 10,000 dollars if bought them in stores.
The U.S. ruling crass decided that bad schools are not sufficient to keep us dumb and malleable. The Internet could become their biggest threat or their greatest source of income. Meanwhile, they aren’t taking any chances.
jove said:
“If you want to be heard, you have to make yourself look appealing.”
Dana Perino
PJD,
The revolution is going on in the high speed connection for the most part though 5 or 6 years ago I would not have known any better myself until a younger person insisted I get it.
Access to all information - not merely limited to textual info - is beginning to find it’s way into through the high speed lines. With high speed you can educate yourself as well as if you had traveled to the best library or the finest educational facility on the planet, just for the price of the connection - a lot less than the cost of an institutional education or the travel it would take to get there. You can reference texts, photos, films old and new, college lectures, just about anything.
I think file sharing for music is in part just an addiction, is that library of albums really essential? However, freedom of education is something that is going on which is extremely vital and it’s no wonder the authorities would want to stop it. You might ask instead, is being educated really worth it? Maybe not without a knowledge of life and living.
Dial up will only let you part way in. You need to get in touch with college students and they’ll show you the door, then it only depends how far down you want to go.
I prefer to use tax dollars to pay for higher speed connections
over tax dollars for cluster bomb technology.
then again, I prefer having better competition available for the end user.
In the current broadband market available in my area, there is hardly
but 5-7% difference in cost. All the cable or TEL wire is under but two
companies. Yes, I can find a smaller provider who leases wire from one
of the two giants, but at a higher price. Perhaps when wireless speeds
compete with broadband speeds, we’ll see a better price break for the consumer.
but, I’m not going to hold my breath. Right now, wireless
phone internet packages for roughly 400-600 speeds is going
to run an additional $40/mo on top of one’s regular monthly
celphone fees. broadband and dsl offer $37 to $45 for speeds
around 1.5. It’s a total rip off especially for those with less
money to toss around.
No competition equals price mark up and poor people are left out
of the loop and stuck with dial up as their only option. aaa
Re:ezeflyers comment “…make yourself look appealing”
another wise sage once said,
“everything’s for sale, even revolutions. or was it,
everything has a market value in a capitalist society?
heh.
later days, pote.
EZflyer,
“The U.S. ruling crass decided that bad schools are not sufficient to keep us dumb and malleable.”
Bad schools? As compared to what?
THE CABLE-DSL DUOPOLY PUT THE U.S. IN THE SLOW LANE
AND WILL KEEP IT THERE FOR SOME TIME
The stranglehold on the political process by cable and DSL has been sufficiently powerful to fend off serious competition, to the point that 95% of broadband users still depend on these two sources for serious, sustained, uninterrupted broadband service - despite the high prices and low speeds compared to other countries.
Wireless broadband is not yet a serious competitor to the duopoly beyond a few, selected areas of concentrated population. Satellite and cellphone versions of broadband have yet to match the speed, quality and price of the landline duopoly. Many areas have only a DSL or cable monopoly available for broadband.
What Google does early next year in regard to purchasing spectrum in the FCC’s auction for the last serious range of spectrum available could be essential to providing a third, alternative provider of widespread broadband to the landline duopoly.
The market plan of the duopoly is to prevent and undermine the net neutrality that exists now, the only real offset to their monopoly and duopoly power.
The idea is to charge even more for what customers get today, the “everything package”, then like Cable TV, set up lower quality tiers below that for lower prices. Current prices could easily double or triple for a “fast lane, everything” package.
Some areas may experience what happened recently with electric prices. Public relation firms have learned to tell their clients in such cases, it’s better just to get it over with through one big price shock rather than stringing it out in increments which enrages customers even more.
For example, as Verizon expands fiber to the curb (FIOS), it is cutting the copper cable behind them so customers cannot get DSL broadband service or traditional voice grade telephone service. This is similar to what Cable TV does when it degrades basic service in order to force customers up the tier to the more expensive service packages.
The only “competition” going on is between the duopolies, as when the phone companies recently won the legal right to provide digital movies over DSL lines in competition with cable.
The particular tactic of cutting the copper cable by Verizon deserves special attention: Verizon’s FIOS depends on general electricity service at the premises while the old-fashioned copper line has its own small supply of electric current.
How stunningly stupid can this be in light of the unending stream of warnings of security threats from all sides, including earthquakes and bad weather. With only FIOS, when the electricity goes out so do the communications that depend on FIOS. If the copper wire were left intact, it would provide a reliable source of communication independent of electrical outages.
So while Homeland Security uses the phone company to spy on you, it stands idly by as it cuts a perfectly good back-up line for emergency communication service available at a ZERO COST to Verizon and the customer because it’s already there.
American internet providers will continue to squeeze the hell out of consumers and make them pay top dollar until the internet slows to a halt.
AT&T and Verizon should be forced to pay every American a $2000 refund for the tax-payer money they pocketed, for a fiber-optic network in American cities they never delivered.
http://www.muniwireless.com/article/articleview/5011
If cheap broadband was widely available (not just downstream, but upstream), you’d see much more innovation on the web. Software developers work with the constraints they are given, and a lack of bandwidth is a huge constraint.
If everywhere had fiber, you’d see a tons of new apps that utilize it. For starters, there would be free video-teleconferencing services, VoIP would actually be a lot cheaper allowing real competition with cellphones and land-lines, games and other media could use the bandwidth for more interactive experiences, and people would be able to use the increased upstream to share live-video with their peers (independent media like Commondreams could benefit by doing things like live-sharing of independent news reports etc.)
The possibilities are endless, and haven’t even been imagined yet because it’s widely accepted that everyone everywhere (not just America) will always have low-speed internet. Every country seems to subscribe to the belief that a major Telecom should control the infrastructure and have a natural monopoly on communication lines. The only exception is the U.S. takes this to the extreme by giving hand-outs and subsidies while simultaneously deregulating until no one can afford even reasonable speeds. If it wasn’t for politics we’d be living in a technological utopia.
In my area- central Iowa, cable modem access has cost $60/month for several years now. The good news is that speed and reliability have been steadily increasing over time.
When I first got a cable modem in the late 90’s, I could get download speeds of about 30-50k/second. Now, I get download speeds of 400-700k/second.
Still, it would be nice if it were cheaper.