nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD
 ·Comcast
| reply to Dogfather
Re: first of many?
said by Dogfather  :Sure, competition has done nothing...only doubled and tripled speeds in a lot of markets. Price increases suck but you think you would be seeing Powerboost is not for fiber competition? You think you would see VZ rolling out 20-50Mb tiers if not for new DOCSIS3 rollouts and cable ramping up their own speeds? You think that price increases would have come much faster? If you guess no, you're clueless! Yes, we do have duopoly competition in some markets and this has finally resulted in some improvements in consumer broadband. However, it is about 5 years too late and the US has gone from a broadband leader to a broadband has-been.
Verizon (actually, the previous corporate incarnations, Bell Atlantic, etc.) sat on it's ass for so long it allowed the cable companies to dominate broadband in many markets. This, combined with them having their landline lunch be eaten by wireless and VOIP, caused them to finally wake up and drag themselves into the 21st century. I give them props for going with FTTH (as opposed to ATT's pitiful U-Verse) and wish they would hurry up and get to my house.
that being said, the market now seems to be comfortably settling into a duopoly market, with incremental improvements that are just enough to keep even with any competition. As things settle, we start to see Verizon raising their TV rates, along with the perennial cable increases in TV rates. Now we are seeing rate increases in broadband as well.
of course, all these 'improvements' will be offset by the rush to throttle "bandwidth hogs", cap everyone and use deep packet inspection to disable/cripple P2P applications.
so, my bad for pointing out the downside to our wonderful, robustly competitive, world-leading broadband market. |
|
Dogfather
Premium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA | Americans shop price. Even when offered fat tiers people are rarely choosing them. They want $20 slow service, not $50 fast service. |
|
nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD
·Comcast
| said by Dogfather :Americans shop price. Even when offered fat tiers people are rarely choosing them. They want $20 slow service, not $50 fast service. they could also want $20 fast service, but won't get it. Fast, of course, is a relative term meaning somewhat less in the U.S. as opposed to other developed countries.
apparently, for a lot of people, even the $20 for slow service is too much money (assuming their choice of one, maybe two providers offers a "slow" tier) - even dialup prices are increasing, which just blows my mind.
Let's face it: when it comes to speed and price of broadband, the U.S. is at best mediocre and won't get any better anytime soon. |
|
Dogfather
Premium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA | Looking at Speedtest.net global rankings, we're in the middle of the pack. |
|
nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD | well, that may satisfy you, but I prefer to be on the leading edge.
on the other hand, the incumbents are probably very satisfied with middle of the pack. |
|
Dogfather
Premium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA
·Cox HSI
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·Cox VOIP
·ViaTalk
·RoadRunner Cable
 ·MegaPath
·Verizon west (ex G..
·Time Warner VOIP
1 edit | Then move to a fiber deployed town and get your 50Mb+ service. It's not like these other countries you tout have universal 100Mb service. Just like here, some high rises have the great cheap service we all dream about while in the sticks it's slower than snot.
Meanwhile, Americans by and large, don't give a shit about speed. They buy on price so even if 50Mb service were universally available, that doesn't mean people will buy it.
I had 50/20 with VZ and downgraded to 20/5. I'd downgrade to 3/.768 if it were cheap enough and avail. over fiber. |
|
