The embarrassment of American broadband

[onehandle]

The Internet was born and and raised in the United States. Yet—thanks to slow speeds, inconsistent availability, and bandwidth caps—we now lag the rest of the world when it comes to broadband Net access.

According to Point Topic (a UK-based market-research company), there were 79 million broadband subscribers in the U.S. at the end of 2008—that’s 19 percent of the world’s total, second only to China’s 83 million. (The report defines broadband as anything faster than 256Kbps.) However, at roughly 26 percent, the U.S. ranked 22nd out of 113 countries in terms of broadband penetration by population.

And in a separate study, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) recently estimated that (as of June 2008) 25 percent of the U.S. population had broadband access, ranking the U.S. 15th out of the OECD’s 30 member countries.

To be fair, the U.S. has a population of more than 300 million spread out over more than 3.5 million square miles. That’s a lot of people and a lot of space to cover. But it’s pathetic that roughly three-quarters of the people in this country don’t have broadband Internet service.

http://www.macworld.com/article/140109/2009/04/broadband_embarrassment.html

[izquierdista]

1. To be fair

Only the top 1% actually NEED broadband; the peasants can be satisfied with dial-up.

[HereSince1628]

2. The Peasants in rural areas are lucky to have electricity. Thank-you FDR

If it wasn't for FDR we'd be looking at wind-powered battery backed up low voltage in rural America.

[Warpy]

3. Either that or holes drilled in the roof for pop bottle lights

the way they do it in shantytown Brazil.

[HereSince1628]

5. A link to that? We may need them in our rural survivor kits...

I'm not aware of what those would be.

Everyone around my farm expects regular outages during thunderstorm season. We've all got back-up kerosene or oil lamps bcaking up our gasoline powered generators.

Very few of the old farmstead windmills turn anymore and no one I know has a bank of batteries as would have existed back in the 1930's.

[Warpy]

6. Here ya go

http://www.videosift.com/video/DIY-lights-from-2-liter-soda-bottles-with-NO-electricity

There are also a couple of other good hacks at the site, well worth exploring.

I love this stuff.

Actually, your survival kit should include one of these: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=petzl+headlamp&x=0&y=0

They're also great for rummaging in cabinets and closets and fixing the puter. It's one of those things you didn't know you needed until you got it.

[HereSince1628]

9. tnx

[HereSince1628]

12. 2 liter bottles as skylights filled with water to scatter light to the sides is a clever idea.

I'll put that in the things I learned to day file.

[pnutbutr]

4. I live within about a mile of fios and cable lines on the main road

but can get neither. The road I live on does not meet the house per mile requirement to run lines down it and never will with the zoning restrictions of my county in place. That's fine, I like my privacy and the open country. What is really pissing me off is the county has requested stimulus money for broadband expansion in the county and will be planning to spend it on stupid ass radio towers that a half assed company has setup to provide LINE OF SIGHT service in the f'ing mountains. Since it's line of sight it would require tons of towers to meet the line of sight and distance restrictions. Even then, the proposal from the company would still not be able to provide service to about 25% of the county residents.

Maybe I'll win the lottery, run fiber througout the county and start my own ISP then charge verizon to use my lines. (I wish there were a maniacal laugh smilie)

[Canuckistanian]

8. Similar situation for me

I'm about 5km too far away for DSL, no cable and just on the fringe zone for a wireless system.

Satellite is too expensive and I don't like the idea of the latency delay.

So, I use a combination of dialup and the modem in my cell phone (5X faster than dialup).

What pisses me off is that I can get a semi-fast connection with this jerry-rigged cell phone, but the same company (Rogers) WON'T offer me a broadband connection from the telecom antenna towers that I can see from out my window.

[Tesha]

13. Are you sure you can't get wireless broadband from Rogers?

http://www.teleclick.ca/2006/11/rogers-wireless-brings-hsdpa-mobile-broadband-to-ontario/

And if that doesn't work, soon 3G cell-phones will be
able to act as portable WiFi hotspots:

http://gizmodo.com/353384/turn-a-nokia-into-a-3g-wi+fi-hotspot-with-joikuspot

http://www.3gtethering.com/

Tesha

[Canuckistanian]

14. Thanks for the links

But they're still no solution for me. I live in a rural area about 40 miles from Ottawa.

And I'm already doing "tethering" with my Nokia phone at about 64 KBps.

What I want is a 256+ home-based system. I'd love the "experimental" system like they have in the "Golden Horseshoe" (Toronto to Niagara Falls) area.

But nobody's offering it to ME.

[JuniperLea]

10. My house moved itself...

And is now too far away from the main junction... that is the excuse I'm getting for why I used to get really fast service and now, I don't. I'm too far away. My address didn't change, but now, I'm mysteriously too far away.

Ain't technology grand?

[dkofos]

7. What did you expect with the corporations running the show??

[Sebastian Doyle]

11. The problem is huge pseudo-monopolies with no competition.

In this area, you have exactly two choices for reasonable internet access. Qwest DSL or Comca$t Cable. Both suck. Comca$t sucks slightly less and doesn't require a ridiculous deposit to get it installed. There are no other cable companies or DSL providers in the region (apart from a couple old broadband companies that are trying desperately to hold on and rebrand the qwest DSL as their own product and charge even more for the shitty service.)

Because they have no competition, they have no pressure to make their service better. And so they don't. The only reason Comca$t supposedly "doubled" their speed recently (still haven't noticed any difference yet here) is because on a national level, they have to compete with FIOS in some markets. Not here, unfortunately.