American Broadband: Outclassed

I'm saying this for long time...

Perhaps if less attention was paid to corporate greed, outsourcing resources to foreign countries, the Middle East and the lame Space program, then maybe more companies would have the sense to participate in more realistic projects such as alternative fuels and network developments, such as high speed broadband. Nah, makes too much sense, would never work in the US and, at a minimum, would require massive amounts of regulations and political kickbacks.

..have their way, decisions will be made for the best interests of companies and not citizens. Campaign finance reform needs to happen, and funding from lobbying groups needs to be cut down to a quarter of what it is now. These special interest groups for the telcos will encourage our politicians to only slow our advances in the broadband market by passing asinine laws on preventing municipal broadband. This article clearly shows how that small town in Indiana saved itself from economic collapse by taking matters into their own hands. I can't fault broadband companies for not laying in areas if their is no profit to be made, but if they won't do it, local governments should have the right to..

Sessions also needs to take a seat and shut his soup-cooler. If he wants to ban municipalities from deploying broadband at the cost of the taxpayer/private bonds then he can do that all he wants....in his own state. Passing Federal regulations such as the one he is trying to pass only creates a bigger bureaucratic Federal government, something Republicans are supposed to be against. The issue of local broadband should be up to the local and county governments, not the Federal and Sessions needs to keep his special interest in SBC out of the Federal government...

They are stealing our grammar as well!

Bastards...

I guess MIT,Harvard,Yale,Northwestern etc... are all runing on dialup. Wake me up when Japan or S. Korea have a greater GDP than USA .

Especially if we are immmigrants, of course...

Which has nothing to do with the original post. Thank you for your contriubution.Ummm what GDP has to do with taking the technological edge?
Wake me up when you've posted something meaningful...

The point is that broadband availability and technological availability are unrelated to GDP.

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The per capita GDP of the USA(#4) is far above that of Japan(#22) and South Korea(#51). Japan and SK both have had better broadband options (and a more direct availability of things "higher tech") than the USA for awhile, but this has not resulted in either country overtaking the USA in per capita GDP.

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The total GDP of the USA is also greater than... well... everyone

Article states that lack of universal broadband will basically hurt financially. I have no idea how old you are but I've been hearing that Asians countries are going to eat us up for the last 20 years. Hasn't happened. Yea mega speeds at low price would be nice but it is not the end of the world if everyone in the US doesn't have the option of getting cheap, ultra broadband service. The reason I stated some Universities is because that is where a lot of breakthroughs happen and most of these schools are running on the so called Internet 2 with super dooper speeds. Hope that helps.

edited for spelling

I'm with you I've been saying this for "MANY" years now.

I think the author's assumptions of economic ramifications are incorrect since not having broadband access in rural areas probably doesn't impact development of applications, products, services and {insert buzzword here }. The fact is you can get broadband in most urban and suburban areas in the US. These are the high tech centers. There are some folks (especially in rural areas) that will probably never want broadband in their lifetimes, unless cable and/or telephony goes 100% IP. If and when that happens, it will be the telcos and cable companies that will by default deliver some form of broadband as its the underlying transport of the service.

I think the hand-wringing over broadband coverage in regards to international competition is unfounded and overstated. The applications will drive broadband into un-served areas in the US, not the other way around.

sure u can!

I'm sure there was a group that was dismissive of asian auto manufacturers EVER being the equals of the U.S. auto industry.

And now, asian automakers are poised to overtake the U.S. industry, if they haven't already.

The decline of US auto industry has more to do with unions and high health care cost than asian car makers.

Since apparently it's ok to rehashthe exact same story over and over again, I'm going to continue giving the same answer:

Wake me when any of these countries that are "ahead" of the U.S. have anywhere near the deployment challenges to deal with. Not the surface area, not the lack of population density, and not the pre-existing networks and conditions (in many of these other areas worldwide, they simply rolled out fiber form the get-go because they were behind at the time).

Then we'll talk.

Until then, please shut up and stop whining just because you don't have a T3 directly to your desktop yet so you be l33t h0rd3 on WoW. Nobody cares.

Those are pretty strong assumptions made by someone from a fairly rural area of PA themselves. Ever think about the impact on education of the area's children? Think any of those kids will end up in a tech field, or are they all destined to drive a forklift or work in a coal mine for the rest of their lives. Yeah, screw the rural areas, like the Judge said in Caddyshack, "the world needs ditch diggers too". I personally would like my kids to have the same opportunities to be whatever they want to be when they grow up and not technologically oppressed since we don't make the profit margin list for the local monopoly.

My rural area was the first to force Verizon to deploy DSL with over 15% of consumers signing up for 1 year of DSL service through the BFRR. That is with no guarantee of the cost, there are hundreds waiting for it to be deployed to keep their options open. All areas have SOME people who will never sign up, it is unfair to assume that urbanites are more willing to adopt broadband than everyone in a rural area though.

Since this seems to be AT LEAST a weekly news article, why not just save some time and create a front page "sticky" with the title "Latest Article Why America is Loosing the Broadband Race". You could also put an "Ignore" button, too.

The US GDP might be high right now, but beware... America's ability to outproduce may very well suffer in the future if the country's last mile networks stay at their current subpar level. Not that its a bad thing, but its something to keep in mind.

I think you are missing the point of the article. The author argues that broadband is a utility because more and more services will be delivered over broadband connections in coming years. This isn't about having the fastest connection so you won't lag in CS. In other words its not about having superior connections to Japan etc, its the fact that there are many people in the US who have no access to broadband at all. (And no, Direcway is NOT broadband!)

Do you have any studies or proof to back this up? Please provide evidence to this, white papers, publications, peer reviewed journals, anything?
Then compare this to the next generation communications that are rolling out right now and their impact on "last mile" penetration. (EVDO, 1/2/3xRTT, Fios)
Then balance that versus the US population density per square kilometer against the target countries.
I await your response.

Edit: Sorry to single you out amongst the many who are claiming basically the same thing.

1. There are no studies on this topic yet... The last mile network problem hasn't become a major issue yet.

2. READ what I posted... "America's ability to outproduce may very well suffer..." That's not a statement that says it WILL suffer, but that our anemic last mile networks may affect the next generation of services and tools that haven't come out. Strange factors have affected the economic progress of nations in the past before.

Which still has nothing to do with the more advanced technological standpoint. yes.

OTOH you can have better GDP yet piss-poor people with not enough job etc etc. GDP proves nothing here, FYI.

Since the U.S has very many neighbourhoods which have houses far apart, and many different networks its virturally impossible to keep up with japan and its dense population. They are all close to the co's and most likely on one network this insures no slow routers and extremly high bandwidth. Its not that these extremely fast networks are not available to americans its the distance, money and density of population and also the ammount of different networks. If you are pinging from canada to the us you are sure to hit a slow router vise versa. Thats why japans net, sweedens and other countrys with blisteringly fast net dont have as much problems. There is one network, not 50 different networks spanned across a large area.

Well, if one watches the technology that's in the works, like IPTV, home automation, etc and realizes that those technologies, in combinations with the emergence of VoIP and IPTV, are going to need some hefty connections, one can see how the last mile network's condition may affect the marketability of those technologies down the line. If it doesn't work, people aren't ging to buy it until it does.While I admit there is some conjecture on my part, its an educated and informed observation... I'm merely taking a look at what the future in technology holds, like outlined above, and being a system/network admin, I'm aware that bandwidth needs are going to starting to grow. You put them together and you have a problem where available bandwidth prevents the development of new services and markets.

Ummm. By the time Japan or S. Korea are beating the US in GDP, it'll be way too late to do anything about it. If you don't act before it happens, then you're screwed.

Take a look at China, for example--imagine where they will be in 10 years compared to the US.

For the most part i disagree, yes that is a contributing factor, but not all. the companies have not been stuck in a rut, with same old same old just to move cars.

ROFL, EVDO as somthing advanced thing? LOL... Compare it to Europe: even former Commie countries have similar speeds available for long time - in some you can already order 10-20Mbit ADSL2+ or cable connections, unlike here.

Generally speaking US is clearly behind most of the developed world (ie West EU, Japan, Korea) - if somebody don't see this, he's living in denial. : we have an awkward, anti-competitive monopoly in most of the US markets and that's why we are waaaay behind.
Heck, there's no other country where a corporation would dare to try to openly block muni developments, not to mention no state legislation would block competition by law... and let's not get into the totally rotten and corrupt big business-employee, the FCC's actions...This is probably the most ridiculous excuse and pro-corporate, pro-monopoly guys love to post it.
To shortly rebuke this idiocy, two things:
1. according to 2004 census daTA, over 80% of US population live in metropolitan areas which are the perfect places for en masse broadband deployment
2. look at Canada

I await your response... FYI: I expect you to prove me somehow magically that 80% already have *real* broadband (real = not the artifically inflated, laughable broadband definition of FCC)Sorry to single you out amongst the many who are claiming basically the same false crap.

The main reason that I don't agree with this assessment is that there are many areas like inner cities, certain poor rural areas and the like which do have high speed Internet access but are still in the same wretched economic state that they were in prior to getting broadband.

Broadband is being sold as some sort of panacea for every little problem out there when it really isn't.

Canada is ahead of the states in terms of broadband deployment.

So poor quality, bland styling and lackluster performance has to do with unions and health care costs?

American car makers are even getting kicked in the teeth in the TRUCK market, where they supposedly would NEVER be touched.