en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·DSL EXTREME
1 edit | What he meant was..
quote:
In speaking about FiOS expansion, the president of Verizon recently said that the United States telecom industry leads the world in mobile and broadband in “all the ways that count”.
Which means we lead in profit making from world mobile and broadband, if I'm not mistaken.
It is also difficult to compare rural areas in 2006-2007 with countries like Japan and South Korea, that have some of the highest population densities in the world.
One point to pick at in the study... this was primarily residential DSL/Cable lines used for the test (or target audience), yet they point out that 341kbps is not enough bandwidth for patient monitoring or transferring medical records.
1. Who would put their patient monitor on a non-SLA DSL or Cable line ? If you're performing mission critical monitoring, you'd better have a T1 or better with SLA. I would expect nothing less out of a hospital.
2. You actually can do real-time monitoring on 300kbps... just don't use it for anything else.
Look who the source is:
© 2008 Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC.
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Canada = Hollywood North |
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wifi4milez
Big Russ, 1918 to 2008. Rest in Peace
join:2004-08-07
New York, NY
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·RoadRunner Cable
 ·BroadVoice
| Open wide, here comes some more propaganda
Regardless of how you feel about the state of the US broadband industry, no rational person can argue that this report isnt extremely biased. As such, its not worth the paper its printed on and should be completely ignored. There is nothing to see here folks, please move along. |
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ironweasel
Weezy
join:2000-09-13
Belen, NM
| Rhode Island #1.
The smallest state in the union is ranked #1 for both download & upload speed.
Wonder why. 
Slowest state for both download & upload is South Dakota.
Incidentally, New Mexico ranked 27th in download, but 18th in upload. 
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TKJunkMail
Enjoy the sun
Premium
join:2002-03-03
Avalon, NJ
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·Comcast
1 edit |  Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt
Much of the data is based on studies done in 2006 and even their most recent data is from over a year ago(May 2007). And the study is created by the Communications Workers of America who have a long run hate relationship with cable and telco because the companies have outsourced many of their jobs to non-union shops. So take the study for what it is worth - very little.
SpeedMatters is nothing but a sock puppet for the CWA.
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N O Y B
St. John 3.16
join:2005-12-15
Forest Grove, OR
| reply to en102
Re: What he meant was..
said by en102  :1. Who would put their patient monitor on a non-SLA DSL or Cable line ? If you're performing mission critical monitoring, you'd better have a T1 or better with SLA. I would expect nothing less out of a hospital.
I don't think home medical monitoring would be considered mission critical, it is convenience and efficiency, not ICU.
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NetAdmin
CCNA
join:2008-05-22
| reply to TKJunkMail
Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt
said by TKJunkMail :So take the study for what it is worth - very little. Actually, the raw number data is actually worth something. It might be outdated, but it is, by far, the most comprehensive dataset out there for speeds in given areas. |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
·Comcast
·Qwest.net
·magicjack.com
·BeeCreek Communica..
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| reply to TKJunkMail
Agreed on the fact that the data is pretty old. The better hting to do would be to look up the results on Speedtest.net, where many, many more people are registering in fo access.
And yes, the comparison of a huge country like the US to anyone but Canada (and I'm not even sure about the Canada numbers they threw out) is like throwing Rhode Island in on the map speed-wise. You can easily wire GigE in big cities to everyone at a low cost, particularly if they're in a small coutry and that sort of thing. Whereas the US is a huge area to cover, with actually rural areas, that you don't find really anymore in Japan and Korea.
So yeah, it's biased. And the form-letter pages that they had for each state wre just plain annoying. But it does point out one thing: American broadband is slower than molasses in midwinter compared to a lot of places. |
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battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000
| reply to wifi4milez
Re: Open wide, here comes some more propaganda
Is this data collected from their speed test on their website? If so I call 100% BS. I ran the test from two locations, one on the east coast, on on the west coast. The west coast location has 300Mb in that datacenter the east coast has 50mb in that datacenter. Their site's test results were way off. When this site first appeared on DSLR I tested from both locations and neither site reached the 10Mb their test claims to support.
I've just retested from both sites
The 45Mb site tested at 6517kbps/4850kbps.
The 300Mb site tested at 1904kbps/1569kbps.
How about a real, accurate test. |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
·Comcast
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| reply to NetAdmin
Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt
Speedtest.net is more comprehensive...they've conducted about 9000X more tests than SpeedMatters.
Check out their national graphs. The US appears to be on top with a 5425 kb/s average for download and is second to the Bahamas (but not by a huge amount, just about 10%) with 936 kbps upload averages.
Of course, most of the people using SpeedTest have high speed connections...
Interesting how SOuth America's average speeds by country are more in line with the US's average speeds with the SPeedMatters test. That is to say, the top 10 countries ranged from 955-1484 on connection speeds. Uploads are 250-530. Ech. On the other hand, even 250 is good for my connection right now.
In Europe, the US wouldn't even make it into the top 10 onconnection speeds, but Sweden tops out at 8870 kbps down, 2956 kbps up. Still fast but not what they were claiming, Uploads in Europe's top 10 range from 1806 to 4529 kbps. Again, faster than any North American average. But North America has bigger countries.
Australia is fastest in that part of the world, with 4191 kbps down, 464 kbps up. IOW we shouldn't be complaining about our internet by those standards, right? They're also capped the heck out of over there :/
In Asia the lowest "top 10" country is superseded in speed by the highest one by a factor of about 10. Japan is 14777 kbps down, Korea is 6783. Not as smoking as you'd think but still respectable. These are real-world speeds, remember  Hong Kong is actually second place when it comes to uploads, but anyway Japan takes the cake at 6886 kbps, faster than the US's download average. Impressive. Korea is 3416 kbps on upload. Respectable, but not as crazy as you might see on the whitepaper these guys put out.
Africa is just sad, with speeds ranging from 535 to 1358 kbps...as their top 10! Uploads on the top 10 range from 185 to 314 kbps. See, we don't have it that bad 
Just sayin'. At any rate, check out speedtest.net for a more accurate picture of internet speeds by country, continent, state and city. These guys' results are sort of bunk. Especially since RCN's speeds on Speedtest.net exceed anything on Asia's top 10, ISP wise.
Heh, just sayin' |
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Rob_
@rcn.com
| reply to iansltx
Sorry there are multiple other countries with lower population densities than the US that have higher broadband speeds. (Checkout Norway) They have governments or state run companies that are pushing broadband forward as fast as they can. We are just plain dumb.
We get the worst of both worlds. No real competition and no organized approach to getting everybody broadband. Some places have 3 complete infrastructures (rich zipcodes) and some none (rural zipcodes). We would have been better off building one and leasing it to all takers.
Minimizing infrastructure duplication enable upgrades to be done quickly Three is not as bad as cellular that built 5 different wireless infrastructures and is still worse than all of Europe, Japan, Korea and many third world countries
(The US bought Analog, CDMA, GSM, TDMA and Nextel wireless infrastructures). At least with LTE, we may be done buying wireless infrastructures (if WiMax dies).
The best approach is build one infrastructure, upgrade it as often as you can and treat it like a national highway system open to all.
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NetAdmin
CCNA
join:2008-05-22
| reply to iansltx
said by iansltx :At any rate, check out speedtest.net for a more accurate picture of internet speeds by country, continent, state and city. Their location data is suspect because they use GeoIP-like methods for guessing where a given host is located.
These guys' results are sort of bunk. Especially since RCN's speeds on Speedtest.net exceed anything on Asia's top 10, ISP wise. Speedtest users can shop servers, going from server to server getting the best results. So Speedtest.net is not even close to scientific or much better than the Speedmatters tests.
Most providers, including RCN, are nowhere near the speed of some of the other providers in other nations. |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
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| reply to Rob_
Call me hypercapitalist but I don't want MY tax dollars paying for a system that may well fail, not be upgraded to support demand or supply, etc.
We've seen what has happened to muni wireless. The only "success story" cost taxpayers $5 million and serves only city employees. These employees could likely have been better served by a private entity...pay the entity $40 a month per wireless line and you give that company enough money tuo upgrade their infrastructure. With such a large customer, the wireless companies would compete and thus have a better network for everyone.
Last I checked, competition is good for the economy, and all that. The problem is that there is no competition, or very little int the internet market, not that there isn't a government-run network. I'd rather pay $50 a month for internet access to a private company than pay $55 a month extra in taxes to the government, who would then contract a private ompany to build a network. Uh, no thanks.
Also, the whole "one network" thing doesn't work. Fiber will only reach so far before the cost becomes prohibitive, or at least more prohibitive than a wireless setup. By the way, WiMax is here right now and LTE isn't, and WiMax can support 70 Mbps symmetric, so what's the big push to kill it off? LTE I'm sure can adapt their standard to be compatible...
If you want government-subsidized internet, move to a country that has it. Then realize that you're paying extra in taxes for this subsidy. Disconnect, anyone?
Though on a slightly different angle the government would do well to foster any competitors, especially small ones, that look to have a working product as far as 'net access goes, to keep the megacorps in check. Sort of like how Grande Communications provides cable competition in areas near (60 miles away or more) me.
Also, I have no problem with calling 768 kbps internet broadband. Everyone can agree that it's not great speed and all but you can watch online video, use VoIP and do gaming over such a conection, provided it has decent latency. Oh, and 256 kbps upload speed is broadband too, I'd say. Or if you want to be picky make it 384. Though everyone agrees that 200 kbps is NOT.
Another problem with the 2/1 broadband requirement is that it would mean a T1 connection isn't broadband. Which is a load of baloney.
Also, the US didn't buy ANY wireless infrastructures that you spoke of, Rob_. That was the wireless carriers. At the beginning of things there was actually one standard, AMPS. Then features were added and CDMA came out. GSM followed later and had more features, but at the same time CDMA got some upgrades. Now we're down to two networks. Sure they're incompatible, but so are cable and DSL. People can compete with proprietary technologies as long as those technologies allow access to the same types of (unfettered) service: voice, video and internet data.
So please by all means let the government come in and stir up competition by fostering new internet service providers opening up for inexpensive license wireless bands to take backhaul out of the hands of the LECs. But I don't want to pay extra taxes just so my internet *might* be faster.
Then again, I plan to solve the internet problem in my area, so I guess that's why I don't like armchair debate. |
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expert007
join:2006-01-10
Buffalo, NY | Facts are whatever you want them to be
Most of the people that read that report will nod their head in unison, happy that the US is AGAIN first in EVERYTHING. It will never even cross the sheeps mind that the report is biased and probably just plain wrong. |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
·Comcast
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| reply to NetAdmin
Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt
Interesting, because they do a decent job of locating me: in the city I live near.
Also, shopping servers is fine. To get a true speed test result ou pick the server with the most capacity possible. I'm guessing that's why Speedtest.net doesn't put latency in the graphs
They also keep track of the IP doing the speed test, so they can do some normalization.
Additionally, is there really a better alternative than Speedtest.net's stats? Theirs is a TON more scientific than SpeedMatters. On the one hand you have 400+ million tests, and on the other 40,000, a number that isn't even statistically significant given the number of people using the internet in the US. Granted, Speedtest.net isn't US-only but I'm betting 100+ million of its results are. So yes, it is much mroe scientific to look at their results than Speedmatters'.
About RCN vs. other providers, I noticed when I looked at Europe that they had a lot of ISPs over there testing in the (real world) 40 Mbit range. That's cool. FiOS can do that too.
Responding to another post, Norway probably can't get ultra high speed access everywhere, and if it does, I'd hate to see how much is going from taxpayers' pockets to subsidize the access. |
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en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA | reply to N O Y B
Re: What he meant was..
Depends on what's being monitored.
Either way, even a heart monitor could function across a 300kbps line... you just wouldn't want to.
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Canada = Hollywood North |
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en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA
·RoadRunner Cable
·DSL EXTREME
| reply to battleop
Re: Open wide, here comes some more propaganda
There's tons of B.S. on these stats.
Even if 10-20Mbps was available (again, this was 2006-2007 data), who says that everyone (or anyone) on the highest tiers participated in many areas? There's a real flaw in their measurements.
Actual service available vs. actual service purchased and run against their site.
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Canada = Hollywood North |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ | reply to en102
Re: What he meant was..
Rofl! if you have a doctor monitoring you, you'd better hope your provider isnt comcast/cox.
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N O Y B
St. John 3.16
join:2005-12-15
Forest Grove, OR
4 edits | reply to en102
Whatever is being monitored, if it is that critical then you would not be at home. And if you are then you either need to get a different doctor or give someone else power of attorney because you've just demonstrated your incompetence.
Remote (home) monitoring is not for life support. If life, limb, etc. would be endangered by temporary, or even longer term, outage then it is not an appropriate use even with an SLA from ISP.
Think about it, it's not like your doctor is going to be glued to your monitor stream all day and night. That is what ICU is for.
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insomniac84
join:2002-01-03
Schererville, IN
1 edit | Terrible report and data
I took their speed test and they said my download speed was about 60% of what it is on speakeasy testing with a chicago server. But upload was the same. If they aren't testing each person with multiple locations, this data is actually trash. They should have asked people to declare their download and upload speeds and tested the connection from multiple locations from around the country. Then took the fastest speeds and compared them to what the advertised speeds were. They could have made 3 different maps: advertised speeds, actual speeds, and average speed to multiple locations. It would have been much more useful data. And since America is physically bigger the data in smaller countries is probably going to have less variance from advertised speeds since the data is traveling less distance through less systems though less chances of intermediate bottlenecks.
Edit:
I would also like to add that considering we are hearing a lot of news about canadian ISPs setting download caps, they should have also asked if the user knew if they had download caps and if so what they were. Again, another huge factor in the state of broadband. A 100mbit speed test is meaningless if the connection has a 40gb download cap. |
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Doctor Four
My other vehicle is a TARDIS
Premium
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX
·AT&T U-Verse
| reply to ironweasel
Re: Rhode Island #1.
said by ironweasel :The smallest state in the union is ranked #1 for both download & upload speed. Wonder why. Probably for the same reason that Japan and South Korea are
on the top of the list for download/upload speeds worldwide -
both countries have a fairly high population density - IOW
much less sprawl.
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"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)
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