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1 edit | reply to jcremin
Re: They're not asking the right question. said by jcremin:That may be somewhat true, but many providers that serve metro areas also serve more rural areas, so you have to take the overall density of the entire area they serve. Rather than charging really low prices in the city and higher prices in the rural area, they quite often charge one flat rate for their tiers so they can make national advertising and promotional materials easier. B
Imagine what would happen if Comcast, Verizon or AT&T charged less to people in high population density areas vs low population density areas.
The FCC, state and local regulators wouldn't allow it, citizens would be screaming, and Karl would be leading the band marching against it.
This is a no win situation. The U.S. counts internet access differently than some parts of Europe, some countries only count people as not having internet IF they CAN have internet but choose not to. These would be houses passed by a U.S. ISP, it wouldn't measure actual broadband penetration or access by ALL citizens of the OECD nation. This means those that have no access to internet aren't counted at all in some countries outside the U.S. The result makes internet penetration look a lot better than it is. Karl doesn't like to look into those shenanigans.
In the U.S. we have many low population density counties, and serving them is costly. Large utilities who are forced to serve them must cover their costs from the higher profit urban and high density suburban areas.
Our government generally at the federal, state and local levels likes to enforce a duopoly between cable and iLEC for the last mile to customer homes. That enforced duopoly precludes competition. I don't see the FCC, states or local governments changing their belief in a duopoly anytime soon. If AT&T knew back when cable was starting that it would compete directly at all levels of service with them one day, it is doubtful we'd even have the duopoly we do today.
There is no magic in other countries, they have different cultures, and count things differently than we do. The very first thing that needs to be done is to compare apples to apples, all users in each country should be counted and considered as having or not having internet. Actual speed should be considered, not rated speed. I regularly pull down 4x my rated speed on speed tests.
I read a post by nitzan  once where he indicated great speeds in Japan, for JAPAN only traffic. Once he started to point his browser to the U.S. speeds became very slow. Gee, great speeds in country, or in region, but very slow out of the nation? Sounds more like a fast LAN with slow WAN, but Karl will ring that up every time as far superior service than we get in the U.S.
Karl read nitzan 's post here - »Re: US broadband service is costly and constipated. 100 MB/sec in Japan, even 1,000 MB/sec, but once he goes out of country, 2 MB/sec. Wow, I am so jealous (NOT).
Next caps should be considered. Is it really better to have "up to 25 MB/sec down" in France on DSL if you are in Paris and next to the CO but are capped at 5 GB, or if you live 8 blocks away and get 2 MB/sec down, does that still count if it's on the "up to 25 MB/sec down" plan?
Karl, you love to write about this stuff, but please look deeper into the basis for many of the stats you love to cite, sometimes I think you enjoy regurgitating government broadband propaganda (from every country but the U.S.). Why does the rest of the world get a free pass? How about give the same scrutiny to stats from every country that you give to the U.S.? If you were equally skeptical about all the stats you cite, I think the U.S. wouldn't look quite so bad. Though that is just a guess.
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