A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband? | Hacker News Reader

A cure for America’s lame and costly broadband?

economist.com

16 pointsHSO20 comments

These articles never take into account the cost of laying fiber, equipment, etc, etc to move those bits. The US has some incredibly sparse population in certain areas. Compare to the population densities of Europe/Asia.

Of course, my father, living on a farm 18 miles from the closest grocery store just had fiber turned up (connected).

There are many gov't programs set up to pay for this. Check you bill sometime (cell, phone, internet) those taxes go to equal access, etc.

Obama and congress have an additional program to subsidize broadband to under served areas. http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/More-Details-On-Obama-6-B...

And yes, we are mapping are fiber, trying to figure out where it all is. The gov't wants to find out how much capacity is out there so they have a base to figure out the improvement in capacity.

*Disclosure: I work for a telecom (of sorts).

I also wonder what the overbuild in the late 90's/early 00's did to the broadband market.

Agreed, they never do. When my sister got DSL, it involved running a mile of underground cable through a swamp, just for her. This doesn't come cheap. Comparisons to Russia, China, Australia, etc would be of value.

Though that doesn't really explain crappy broadband in NYC or why my ISP, who installed fiber to my home, only lets me pull 6 megabit over it.

Why didn't she get a Clear Wire type service?

Most likely because dsl was the cheapest option I live in a place where you basically have 3 semi-useful options for broadband service:

* DSL at 60 a month

* Satellite at PRICE a month (to be honest I don't want the latency so I never looked into it)

and

* Wireless broadband at 300 dollars a month before any equipment rental or purchase.

Even for urban areas, sometimes the options are less than thrilling.

A perfect example is Boston. Since Mayor Menino won't give Verizon a significant tax break, Verizon refuses to consider a FIOS deployment. Surrounding cities such as Cambridge and Somerville (which are next door), Quincy, Watertown, Waltham, Newton, etc... they all have FIOS. In Boston your options are the incumbent Comcast or being limited to DSL via Verizon. We're the hole in the fiber donut (ferrule). http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/boston-a-cop...

It's probably not as bad for students since the number of well-regarded schools here is very significant, and all of which have far superior options. However to live in one of the bigger tech hubs in the country and to deal with these sorts of limitations is nothing short of ridiculous.

_Over the past year, hopes have risen among Americans that something might finally be done about the third-world quality of their internet access._

As a third-world citizen, the author doesn't have any idea about the network quality their. I live in North Africa and it's only few weeks ago that we got a new 3G operator (Orange) in the country and it's only powering main cities. The fastest connection you can get is 8 MegaBit (whatever place you live in) and it's only recently that it was boosted from the 4M speed.

The quality is hilarious, you get sometimes a 3 days down time. You probably never reach the promised speed and in rush hours, you can do a coffee with friends instead. The 8MB connection costs around $60 a month; 3G promises 1MB speed at around $20 a month.

I live in a smallish city in Indiana, pay $56 a month for < 5Mb cable and it's often down for hours at a time, and from my own experience is better than the alternative DSL in available in the area. The reliability has improved over time, in the past we've had occasions where it would indeed be down for days at a time. Wireless/Cable => apple/oranges maybe, but doesn't sound vastly different from North Africa from where I'm standing.

I think part of the problem is that there aren't enough people who want a really fast internet connection. Verizon's FiOS subscription rate is about 10% even though it's significantly faster in both directions than almost all alternatives. If the subscription rate were high enough Verizon would definitely lay more fiber, but right now there doesn't seem to be enough demand.

tl;dr: The US is behind because the regulatory environment encourages duopolies instead of fierce competition like in Europe or Asia.

Or lack thereof. The article posits that the lack of government interference has caused the duopolies: the cost of entering a market is so high that only two bother, after that it's not worth it. The alternative is a system where the government pays the costs itself, or has the telecoms share the cost, thus reducing cost of entry and encouraging competition.

The way you word it makes it sound as if the government is regulating where it shouldn't be, but that's not what the article says at all.

It wasn't my intention to say that "regulations" cause the problem, just that OUR regulation, as they stand, contribute. But it's not even my point, I'm just summarizing the article 8)

> "Others have achieved something similar by having an independent authority build and maintain the network and then leasing access to all and sundry."

Brigham City, Utah (about an hour north of Salt Lake) recently voted for this in their community. The city is building fiber to every home, and broadband providers can compete for customers while leasing the infrastructure from the city.

Monticello, Minnesota attempted to build fiber to provide 50Mbps service to the city, but was sued by the regional telecom for unfair competition. The telecom then built up the infrastructure while the lawsuits went on.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/want-50mbps-...

Broadband in the US may not be as awesome as it is elsewhere, but to call it third-world quality? It's a big stretch.

What on earth does someone do with a 100 megabit connection? (Answer: For one thing, to avoid bankrupting the provider, you don't use it.) I remember going from a modem to 768 kbs and thinking, "That's as fast as you could possibly need." As a heavy user, comparing that with faster connections, I know I was right.

It's actually latency that counts, and that runs up against the speed of light.

I have a ~1.2 Mbs connection precisely because of latency. It's the best DSL connection I can get in my crappy apartment (because of the wiring) and when I had cable it was maddening to try to get work done over that connection. I chose 1.2Mbs down / 768kbs up and consistent latency over 8Mbs down / 1.5Mbs up with variable, often very noticeable latency.

However, you're wrong that such a connection is ample for all purposes. Streaming video sucks; I often have to let things buffer for a while before I let them start. Streaming Netflix is completely out of the question.

As for competition, if you live in an apartment where I live, your choices are cable or crappy DSL. I'd love to have U-verse, but only half the people I know in my area can get it at home. I don't know anybody who can get it in an apartment. The limitations of my slow DSL connection are so frustrating that I may switch back to cable and see if the latency is better these days (or give up on logging in remotely.) It's ridiculous that the local cable provider has a monopoly on broadband in most households where I live. (Even with good wires, I think the local DSL tops out at 3Mbs, which isn't broadband in my book.) In places where U-verse is available, the competition is between two giant companies who see competition as an annoyance -- I wonder how keenly they compete against each other? Unfortunately, in the United States, people still think the government can only hinder competition, never enable it.

[Edit: My DSL connection is not really 1.2 kbs down / 768 kbs up as I originally stated.]

Sorry, 1.2 kilobits per second? DSL that's 47 times slower than dial up?

Just wanted to clarify.

Corrected; thanks for catching that.

For me it's the lack of uplink speed that drives me insane. As heavily data driven as we've become with 22megapixel digital cameras, HD video cameras, and then just our normal backup requirements, I would be happy with 100mbps up, and 2mbps down.

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