said by forrestin :

I believe that the US includes a large number of Rural users. Taking this into consideration 1.5 Mbps may be close to the actual speed. I know of very few markets that 3-6 Mbps is average.

said by Tzale :

Don't get so upset if you are in the sticks and you can't get quality bandwidth.

-Tzale

said by Siryak :

Go use dial-up or satellite for a few months and then come back and say that. It is easy to say suck it up and live with it whenever you already have the best.

said by Tzale :

You can't compare us to other countries... It's as simple as that, they are densely populated, we are really spread out.

said by maartena :

First off, although 90% of Canada lives near the U.S. border, they also have only about 30 million inhabitants. Southern Ontario (the 100 miles closest to the US and Toronto Area) is pretty much the same as Pennsylvania or Ohio if you are looking at population density.

Second, it doesn't explain why there are so many large metropolitan areas in the U.S. that still have lousy broadband. In the Greater Los Angeles Area, about 0.3% of the population can actually get FIOS, although about 50% of the population are connected to Verizon, (the other half is AT&T/former SBC). If you want to go fast, Time Warner is your only option. There are no DSL2 and hardly any FIOS rollouts in the Los Angeles area.

And to compare once again to a foreign country: There are several European countries who started offering DSL2 as early as 2004 with 12 to 20 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. Three years later, you cannot get 20 Mbps ANYWHERE in the United States using DSL2 technology. Not even in dense populated cities.

Why is it that a 50 million people city like Tokyo can be fibered up for more then 50% already, and the United States can't even fiber up Manhattan?

said by Tzale :

We live in a Capitalistic FREE society... It's your problem if you're living somewhere where broadband service is unavailable or sucks. Want better service? Move or wait.

No single person or organization is responsible for this, we are all equally responsible for services that are profitable/unprofitable in this country. If it's unprofitable, don't expect a corporation to waste their time on you.

-Tzale

said by Tzale :

FIOS/FTTH is the future, Verizon is working hard on getting it rolled out. They just started a few years ago, give them time. It's not easy replacing all the copper with fiber, it will take 10-15 years for 99% of their customers to receive service, but they are quickly making progress in urban areas as we speak.

said by KUppiano :

Whether you like dial-up or satellite or not, rural internetification costs lots of money. In the city, you can run a few miles of FIOS or even get DSL to run down existing copper pairs, and get hundreds of customers.

In the sticks, you run several miles of FIOS (forget DSL) and you get maybe four or five customers. No provider in their right mind would invest in such a thing. It is very unlikely that they would break even.

It was the same with rural electrification and telephone service. It will happen eventually, but it will take longer.

said by Tzale :

The truth is that even Canada where 90% of the population is within 100 miles of the U.S. border only gets 7mbps average.
You can't compare us to other countries

said by JammerMan79 :

I've asked people before to give me a few cities in BC or AB and I'll check to see if adsl services are available there... Unless it's really, really rural chances are they can get it.

said by Siryak :

Yes, but most people don't think it should ever happen. My same argument above would have applied to electricity and telephone if they wouldn't have made a bill making it mandatory. We would not have any people to raise our food if they didn't force the electric and telephone companies to provide for us, because everyone would have moved to the city. Electricity and telephone is not required to get by, but who in their right mind would go without it. Internet is becoming the same way.

said by tamovies :

Your wrong about DSL2! I can get it in Maine!
»www.gwi.net/residential/highspeed/index.html
Don't worry, FairPoint will gladly maintain a 20 Mbps copper loop for CLECs. Heck @ $55 a month there is plenty of money to pay the coolies FairPoint will bring in.

said by KUppiano :

Wages and prices are nature's communication channel telling people the true value of goods and services. Currently, it is simply too expensive to wire the countryside with these high-tech amenities.

Many people would live in the country because they prefer the lifestyle. Without high-speed internet. Or phones. Or even electricity for that matter. Face it, we humans spent the vast bulk of our time on this planet without those things, and we flourished quite handily, thank you very much.

Even if farmers started moving to the city, it wouldn't happen overnight. The gradual reduction of the food supply would cause a gradual increase in farm prices, and we would reach a new equilibrium. Maybe farmers would make enough money that they could afford to bring high-speed internet to the country for the true cost of doing it, instead of the government forcing the city folk to pay for it whether anyone really wanted it enough to pay for it of their own free will.