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So I came across this article:quote:The U.S. has its fare share of issues when it comes to the Internet, between the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance and the ongoing battle over net neutrality. With so many entities threatening the fundamental nature of the Internet, improving the quality of America’s Internet has, for the most part, fallen off the radar. http://www.dailydot.com/politics/us-broadband-speed-cost-infographic/ Now I know that the U.S. has had pretty lovely broadband for the longest time, but I wasn't too familiar with the exact reasons for why that was the case. Is it cause of the government stopped investing heavily into improving our infrastructure? Is it cause we have mostly oligopolies to deal with? And what can we do about it?
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Jun 2, 2014 00:51
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The US is 181st in population density so it sounds like we're actually doing pretty well all things considered.
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Jun 2, 2014 00:56
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Density doesn't have poo poo to do with the fact that there is almost no competition in most actual dense spaces that should have good speeds at competitive prices compared to rural folks and the companies who in said dense/urban spaces don't give a gently caress about infrastructure upgrades versus profits.
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Jun 2, 2014 01:11
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Encourage people to move out of the suburbs and into more rural enclaves where subsidized broadband deployments are delivering 100mbps+ in the range of $1 per megabit?
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Jun 2, 2014 01:11
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Bel Shazar posted:Encourage people to move out of the suburbs and into more rural enclaves where subsidized broadband deployments are delivering 100mbps+ in the range of $1 per megabit?
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Jun 2, 2014 01:15
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It seems like google fiber is the biggest thing in that direction right now. I don't think Google wants to become an actual nationwide ISP, but they are encouraging more cities to set up their own municipal wifi. Frankly, given the nature of US politics, there's no better ally in this situation than a multinational corporation whose bottom line is improved by feeding people as much data as possible at every second.
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Jun 2, 2014 01:17
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jeeves posted:Density doesn't have poo poo to do with the fact that there is almost no competition in most actual dense spaces that should have good speeds at competitive prices compared to rural folks
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Jun 2, 2014 01:18
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jeeves posted:Density doesn't have poo poo to do with the fact that there is almost no competition in most actual dense spaces that should have good speeds at competitive prices compared to rural folks and the companies who in said dense/urban spaces don't give a gently caress about infrastructure upgrades versus profits. Anecdotal but theres not much competition in the sticks, either. In my area most cable lines are owned by either comcast or charter, and you are forced into one or the other depending on where you live. Sure, we have centurylink / satellite, but theyre actually worse in terms of raw bandwidth for the buck.
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Jun 2, 2014 01:24
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This isn't a topic I'm terribly familiar with so these topics are really just my general impressions. Also, it'd be helpful to see the comparison between, say, New York or Chicago's broadband speeds and prices vs. those of Hong Kong or Tallinn. Still, it sure seems like Americans, and perhaps North Americans more generally, get much worse broadband service than large parts of Asia and Europe. If anyone knows more about that and wants to share their knowledge it'd be good for the thread. I think part of it may be that North America seems to increasingly get the worst of both worlds when it comes to the regulation of industries like finance or communications or energy extraction. We've got an incredibly permissive economy that gives a lot of leeway and support to corporate interests, but we don't have effective measures to prevent monopolies or oligopolies from forming and then cornering markets and capturing the political process. So I suspect that this problem largely comes down to politics. Lack of density and other factors like having older infrastructure might be part of it but I imagine the foremost issue is just that we're too used to letting our corporations extract large rents from the economy.
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Jun 2, 2014 01:31
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computer parts posted:The US is 181st in population density so it sounds like we're actually doing pretty well all things considered. Australia is 235th and we had a really good plan to give everyone Fiber to the Home or fast satellite/wireless speeds for the extremely small and extremely rural populations. The government would buy off and sell the old, slow wiring and build the new infrastructure, which private companies can sell plans for. Since the service would have clearly been used by such a large amount of Australians, the total cost of the service was planned to be $0, since private companies could have bought the company in control of the infrastructure for the remaining cost, or if we lost our hard-on for privatization it could have been a net benefit to the government's coffers. Now that the conservatives are in control however, it will cost $5000 to have your home hooked up to this system, which completely ruins the 'service being used by everyone' thing and will make it ridiculously expensive for no real benefit so unless your conservatives have become economically rational since the last time I checked it probably wouldn't work there either. Just worth noting there are ways to make the density not matter too much.
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Jun 2, 2014 01:54
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You can come to Australia for a bit and then go back to the USA and stop complaining.Gentleman Baller posted:Australia is 235th and we had a really good plan to give everyone Fiber to the Home or fast satellite/wireless speeds for the extremely small and extremely rural populations. The government would buy off and sell the old, slow wiring and build the new infrastructure, which private companies can sell plans for. Since the service would have clearly been used by such a large amount of Australians, the total cost of the service was planned to be $0, since private companies could have bought the company in control of the infrastructure for the remaining cost, or if we lost our hard-on for privatization it could have been a net benefit to the government's coffers. I take issue with the $0 cost of service. The wholesale prices for proper FTTH started from $25 per month - $24 for Class IV AVC + $1.00 for an allocation of 1Mbs-1 CVC. That pricing assumed contention ratios exploded from the current c 40:1 to around 250:1. Also buried in the fine print was the fact that the $43bn was not going to cover "the drop" which was the line from the last splitter to the Network Termination Unit on the outside of the premises being connected. That and other such issues only contributed to the dog's breakfast it was. Also the plan with Telstra was fked from the outset - they weren't buying anything from Telstra other than really traffic and lead in conduit from the kerb to the home. The copper would be deprecated and left to rot (which is why Telstra cut back on maintenance) and they were only leasing duct space. That plus the financing mechanisms for NBN Co meant the rollout procedure was doomed from the start - ie not the Conservative's fault. Also it didn't help their connection numbers when Telstra never got the chance to shut down exchanges and actually do a whole area cutover to NBN. Gentleman Baller posted:Now that the conservatives are in control however, it will cost $5000 to have your home hooked up to this system, which completely ruins the 'service being used by everyone' thing and will make it ridiculously expensive for no real benefit so unless your conservatives have become economically rational since the last time I checked it probably wouldn't work there either. Just worth noting there are ways to make the density not matter too much. Well it was originally budgeted to cost $43bn to cover 12m premises. In that $43bn there was the '$11bn' Telstra agreement which was really around $22bn of actual cost bringing a cost to around $54bn or $4,500. Then it was definitely behind schedule and over budget so arguably it was $5,000 or more per premises from the outset. Totally agree that FTTN is ridiculous though. New Zealand and UK are doing FTTH properly. The NZ approach is using some of the same contractors as NBN Co too - and they are around 75% done. Biggest issue is that now the whole NBN debate confuses the business model and cost benefit analysis for the network as a whole with arguments over the process of delivering it. Delivery is screwed, but the business case is there; and because of the issues with the process for delivering it, the architecture was changed to FTTN - leaving the procedural issues alone dooming FTTN too.
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Jun 2, 2014 02:32
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It's fascinating to see other countries catch up to the US. During a year in Nigeria, I had four SIM cards with three different companies, two used for a USB 3G modem. 350kb/sec on good days, and they were even putting up 4G, though I didn't spring for it and can't vouch for speeds. Data consumption is pricey, but for 10gb data a month I could download whatever shows I was missing for about $55 a month. There's no physical infrastructure anywhere, and it works. For reference, I'm pulling 550kb a sec here in Texas right now, and that's for $50 a month and unlimited data. Not too much better.
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Jun 2, 2014 02:54
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TheBalor posted:It seems like google fiber is the biggest thing in that direction right now. I don't think Google wants to become an actual nationwide ISP, but they are encouraging more cities to set up their own municipal wifi. I'm guessing that as soon as they've got the US competitive again they'll want to get out of that market, similar to how they sold Motorola once they got the cell phone industry back on track. I hope they sell to the Post Office.
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Jun 2, 2014 03:12
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I'm guessing that as soon as they've got the US competitive again they'll want to get out of that market, similar to how they sold Motorola once they got the cell phone industry back on track. Google sold Motorola because it was hemorrhaging money and it did a grand total of nothing to put the cell phone industry "back on track".
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Jun 2, 2014 03:48
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Helsing posted:This isn't a topic I'm terribly familiar with so these topics are really just my general impressions. NYC Time Warner: 100/5 - $70 30/5 - $60 20/5 - $50 15/5 - $40 3/1 - $30 2/1 - $15 All require +$6/mo for modem lease (unless you provide your own). There are introductory prices (expect them to jump +$20/mo after first 18-24 months). NYC Verizon FiOS: 75/35 - $70 then $90 50/25 - $60 then $80 15/5 - $50 then $70 Also requires modem and equipment lease. First listed price is 12 month introductory only. Certain luxury buildings will also install local wifi carriers, but they are total garbage in larger apartments because of signal saturation and cost about the same. And these are the only two carriers than most of NYC has access to, although Verizon has failed on its commitment to cover NYC and only covers less than 60% of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Bronx, and has claimed it will no longer build out in NYC. That means large sections only have access to Time Warner. Edit: Compare that to my hometown in MS of 14k people that is about to get 1Gb/100 for $80/mo and $300 one time installation fee (waved for existing CSpire customers). archangelwar fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 04:06
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I always though it was kind of related with how big the US is. Just like Canada for example. Taking the average when you have to count the people out of the main city where the architecture is still lacking. Why big city speed don't skyrocket is odd tho. Might be related to providers trying to cover more territory instead of upgrading what they already have. I'm not familiar with the US providers offering but here, it's the same company who offers most TV services, internet services and cellular phone services. Maybe they are just stuck with too much territory to finish covering before they can kick the already built place into a higher gear.
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Jun 2, 2014 04:49
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supersnowman posted:I always though it was kind of related with how big the US is. Just like Canada for example. Taking the average when you have to count the people out of the main city where the architecture is still lacking. Why big city speed don't skyrocket is odd tho. Might be related to providers trying to cover more territory instead of upgrading what they already have. I'm not familiar with the US providers offering but here, it's the same company who offers most TV services, internet services and cellular phone services. Maybe they are just stuck with too much territory to finish covering before they can kick the already built place into a higher gear. It's mainly driven by typical US corporate fuckery and monopolies more than anything else. For example a town in North Carolina built and offered muni high speed internet at good prices, leading certain business interests to ban other towns from doing the same thing use state level legislation.
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Jun 2, 2014 04:55
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The article is making a bunch of hay over speed differences that are fairly insignificant to the user- most people really won't notice a difference between 15 mbps and 50 because unless you are downloading large files it doesn't matter - netflix isn't going to stream any faster. supersnowman posted:I always though it was kind of related with how big the US is. Yep, almost every other country isn't spread out like the US is. The US is rare in that it is both big yet still has a lot of people that can afford internet access that don't live near major cities. Gentleman Baller posted:Australia is 235th Australia has basically no one living in 90% of the country. It's not like the middle of Aus is sparsely populated like the US - it's like basically no one lives there at all. If all the US had to do was the coasts it would be pretty easy too. This is why raw numbers like "population density" are utterly worthless for the conversation. We have lots of people living in areas like the Rockies where infrastructure is very expensive relatively. Pretty much every country that beats us is either the size of a shoebox or has large areas of land where either no-one lives or no-one can afford access. enbot fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 05:21
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The thing about the internet is that it loving sucks, by and large. There would be way less posting at 56k. Like I would have to buy a lot more DVD's, but the relief from posting, how can you put a price on it. Less internet, not more.
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Jun 2, 2014 05:39
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Nope, pretty sure it's just your monopoly/cartel situation loving with you. Bust up the cartels, split those big rear end companies up (again) and maybe you'll be able to catch up (for awhile). So stop blaming some towns out in the mid-west for lovely internet on the East Coast.
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Jun 2, 2014 05:41
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I don't think more companies would solve this issue by itself. It's absurdly expensive to lay down new line and build the infrastructure, so it's just not worth it for most of these companies to compete and smaller companies don't stand a chance. One idea I've heard that seems like a good idea is changing the regulation so that companies have to let competitors use pre-existing infrastructure/lines, which would probably help to drive down prices.
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Jun 2, 2014 05:51
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Pimpmust posted:Nope, pretty sure it's just your monopoly/cartel situation loving with you. This would not solve anything unless you also make sure there won't be any way for them to just prevent others from building infrastructure on the other's territory. Large country are also a PITA to deal with with newcomers on the market because you can never really get started because of the insanely large network you will need before you can actually provide service worth anything. You can't be competitive if your start up has to rent bandwidth from your already well established competitor. I can totally see the company from one state trying to get bigger and going to costumer in other states : We'll charge you money so we can pay our competitor in your state so he let us hook you up on their network.
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Jun 2, 2014 06:00
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Hypation posted:stuff about Australia's system This is all true, there has been problems from the get go, but it's more related to rushed and outright dishonest planning. enbot posted:Australia has basically no one living in 90% of the country. It's not like the middle of Aus is sparsely populated like the US - it's like basically no one lives there at all. If all the US had to do was the coasts it would be pretty easy too. This is why raw numbers like "population density" are utterly worthless for the conversation. We have lots of people living in areas like the Rockies where infrastructure is very expensive relatively. Pretty much every country that beats us is either the size of a shoebox or has large areas of land where either no-one lives or no-one can afford access. While what you're saying about the middle of Australia is mostly true, Australia still is pretty sparsely populated, 40% of our people live in 2 cities, the rest is spread through the rest of the (livable) country. "basically" no one is actually very important since we're talking about providing it to everyone. The closest adjusted figure I can find gives Australia around 1/3rd the amount of people per km2 of arable land. It's not perfect but do you have any better figures?
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Jun 2, 2014 06:29
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What can we do about terrible U.S. broadband speeds with high prices? Well we don't have terrible broadband speeds and we don't have high prices. So nothing. Xandu posted:I don't think more companies would solve this issue by itself. It's absurdly expensive to lay down new line and build the infrastructure, so it's just not worth it for most of these companies to compete and smaller companies don't stand a chance. As a matter of fact we tried having more companies, it was the 90s and 2000s and there was minimal benefit from it. Significant improvements in actual accessibility and speeds have happened around the same time periods that the myriads of local companies got bought up by one larger company or another.
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Jun 2, 2014 06:35
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Nintendo Kid posted:What can we do about terrible U.S. broadband speeds with high prices?  Monopolies are never good as shown by the recent net neutrality fiasco and how companies like Comcast can start holding innovative companies like Netflix hostage
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Jun 2, 2014 06:41
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etalian posted:
This is a horrible chart and super vague about any of its data. Netflix isn't being held hostage by anyone besides Netflix, stop repeating lies.
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Jun 2, 2014 06:56
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Have the federal government put down fiber everywhere and charge ISPs based on upkeep costs of the infrastructure. Of course this could never happen in the US thanks to lobbying, so actually go pound sand y'all. 
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Jun 2, 2014 06:58
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AVeryLargeRadish posted:Have the federal government put down fiber everywhere and charge ISPs based on upkeep costs of the infrastructure. Of course this could never happen in the US thanks to lobbying, so actually go pound sand y'all. they already sort of did it which led to the telecom boom in the late 90s even though it didn't exactly change the status quo
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Jun 2, 2014 07:23
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People who believe in competition as a source of meaningful reductions in prices for utility services don't even understand the capitalism they're attempting to tout.
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Jun 2, 2014 07:27
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AVeryLargeRadish posted:Have the federal government put down fiber everywhere and charge ISPs based on upkeep costs of the infrastructure. Of course this could never happen in the US thanks to lobbying, so actually go pound sand y'all. Small correction: thanks to the premier lobbyist being appointed head of the FCC. Contact the FCC, you can call or leave online commentary but I'm pretty sure we're hosed entirely here.
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Jun 2, 2014 08:06
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enbot posted:The article is making a bunch of hay over speed differences that are fairly insignificant to the user- most people really won't notice a difference between 15 mbps and 50 because unless you are downloading large files it doesn't matter - netflix isn't going to stream any faster.
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Jun 2, 2014 08:22
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Nintendo Kid posted:This is a horrible chart and super vague about any of its data. You seem really hostile about this.
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Jun 2, 2014 08:50
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Nintendo Kid posted:This is a horrible chart and super vague about any of its data. Well at least he has something to argue with. What have you got, besides a bad attitude?
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Jun 2, 2014 09:52
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Arglebargle III posted:You seem really hostile about this. I mean, it's hard not to be. Netflix is straight up lying about what net neutrality is and does, in what ought to be a transparent attempt to extort services for free. But it fits nicely into the narrative that big corporations suck (if for some reason you don't count Netflix as a big corporation), so people are just uncritically buying it. It's not etalian's fault, but this is at least the third time I've personally seen Nintendo Kid have to offer a correction on this issue. It gets frustrating.
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Jun 2, 2014 10:02
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You guys want a real laugh, try and find an ISP besides TW/Comcast/Verizon/ATT. There is literally nothing else at any affordable cost/download. Satellite is a joke, a 15 GB monthly cap with a 6/2 MB speed for $100. Oh wait, ATT just bought the biggest sat provider in the US, so forget that.Amarkov posted:I mean, it's hard not to be. Netflix is straight up lying about what net neutrality is and does, in what ought to be a transparent attempt to extort services from ISPs for free. But it fits nicely into the narrative that big corporations suck (if for some reason you don't count Netflix as a big corporation), so people are just uncritically buying it. All the infrastructure for cable/broadband was free for the ISP's since the government owns the lines. Also, Netflix as a big corporation? Their revenue is $4-5 billion, with a net income of $112 million, making them a really small corporation by "big business" standards. pentyne fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 10:03
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Sweden has even lower population density than the US and internet is cheap here, even in rural areas. In cities you can get fiber in a lot of places for really cheap, but outside the big cities it's mostly DSL everywhere. It's cheap because the infrastructure is already in place (copper cables for the plain old telephone network) and the old phone monopoly (that is no longer a monopoly) is required by law to provide access to it at the same rate for any ISP. Hence there's decent competition on the DSL market even in a country with a population of about 9 million.
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Jun 2, 2014 11:20
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Amarkov posted:I mean, it's hard not to be. Netflix is straight up lying about what net neutrality is and does, in what ought to be a transparent attempt to extort services for free. But it fits nicely into the narrative that big corporations suck (if for some reason you don't count Netflix as a big corporation), so people are just uncritically buying it. You claim it is not his fault, yet you offer no factual basis for your own claim. It is polite to at least offer a counter factual rather than just calling someone a liar so that debate can be had on the subject. Fishmech has a tendency to source his claims to his own fictitious anecdotes. Don't be fishmech.
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Jun 2, 2014 13:31
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archangelwar posted:You claim it is not his fault, yet you offer no factual basis for your own claim. It is polite to at least offer a counter factual rather than just calling someone a liar so that debate can be had on the subject. Fishmech has a tendency to source his claims to his own fictitious anecdotes. Don't be fishmech. Because literally every time this song and dance goes around you have to post a million articles to get people to understand the basics of the argument, like "peering" and so forth. It's the internet equivalent of having to explain to a libertarian about how the minimum wage doesn't actually cost jobs.
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Jun 2, 2014 13:38
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computer parts posted:Because literally every time this song and dance goes around you have to post a million articles to get people to understand the basics of the argument, like "peering" and so forth. And yet we do this in threads that appear all the time in D&D and it is educational (primarily for interested onlookers). Then, if someone obstinately clings to a position we call them out for it. I don't see a net neutrality thread on the front page of D&D, and it certainly seems germane to this one, so why not give it a shot rather than just calling someone a liar?
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Jun 2, 2014 13:46
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archangelwar posted:And yet we do this in threads that appear all the time in D&D and it is educational (primarily for interested onlookers). Then, if someone obstinately clings to a position we call them out for it. I don't see a net neutrality thread on the front page of D&D, and it certainly seems germane to this one, so why not give it a shot rather than just calling someone a liar? Like Fishmech, you're technically right - it's on The Top of the Second page.
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Jun 2, 2014 13:49
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