Posted on 08/04/2007 11:53:48 PM PDT by HAL9000
Excerpt -
~ snip ~It is very doubtful, almost impossible, that we'll catch up to those countries ahead of us in broadband penetration. They are too far ahead and our native demand is simply less because our Internet economies are developing more slowly. Absent some miracle, the game is already over.
As I wrote two weeks ago, the situation is likely to improve somewhat over the next year or two as the telephone companies sacrifice a little to lock us in before we switch to DOCSIS 3 cable modems and the cable companies, in turn, offer incentives to jump to their voice products. But these companies don't think at all in international terms and they simply don't care about international competitiveness or the growth of our economy. They should, but they don't. And they don't because they have never had to. Though they are required to operate in the public interest and to provide public services, these monopolies have never been forced to consider our place in the world.
~ snip ~
(Excerpt) Read more at pbs.org ...
Eh? Well, yea, the population density in Japan is way higher then here, hence their infrastructure costs are different.
I bet your friend in Yokahama also paid 10 times the price I paid for my house per square foot. But yeah he's got a fast ethernet connection to his house. Where's the cost savings again?
15 megs is a little under 2 megabytes per second. That's a trivial I/O load for any modern computer. I have 15mb/sec FiOS, and I routinely download podcasts and such at 1.9 megabytes per second. And the computer shows no strain whatsoever — Process Explorer barely registers a load.
However, I've also observed that not all servers can keep up, and also that some seem to throttle a download to 200K or so (I know they're throttling because, if I start multiple downloads from the same server, they all run in parallel at 200K each).
Now, if I had that 100mb/sec Japanese connection, I'd probably have to use BitTorrent to max it out.
Is that clown speaking for for “your” position?
See #16.
I have Comcast Cable and it is very fast and I do not need anything faster; and now Verizon fiber optics internet is breaking into the market which is extremely fast as well.
This article is full of twisted statistics. As I said before the Americans by far own more computers and have more internet access at home and at work than anywhere in the world.
% of Population (Penetration) using the internet:
North America: 69.5%
Oceania/Australia: 54.5%
Europe: 39.8%
Latin America/ Caribbean: 19.8%
Asia: 11.8%
Middle East:10.1%
Africa: 3.6%
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
At the end Americans have by far more access to the internet at home, at work, and at school than any other place in the world. Many Europeans and other places in the world access the internet at work or at the "internet cafes" but not at home because either they do not have computers or because they are not wired, most probably because they do not have computers.
You are fortunate to live in a town where those services are available, and I know you're doing good work with your broadband connection. Comcast is doing a good job in their service areas, and Verizon is doing a much better job that AT&T.
Unfortunately, the broadband infrastructure in many other states is primitive compared to your location. Most of the broadband availability is concentrated in urban areas, which also happen to be liberal strongholds. Many of the more conservative areas of the country do not have the same affordable access that you enjoy. The Democrats now have a big advantage in broadband, and they will use it to their advantage.
Efforts are underway to get an accurate assessment of where broadband service is and is not available in the U.S., but the telcos are doing everything in their power to prevent that information from being known.
There is no doubt that the U.S. is falling behind other industrialized countries in broadband deployment, and it is hurting our economy. It should be a top priority for our country to deploy basic broadband service as widely as possible. That doesn't mean that every place should have 10 Mbps connections, but we should aim for at least 256 Kbps of ubiquitous access.
We are in the 'boonies' and I have dialup at home and my cell phone won't work at my house! We have wireless at work, because we couldn't do our billing without it, but there was only one provider available and it was expensive to get into.
Carolyn
That it's a mistake to yank the copper?
In my case, the copper was lousy anyhow. But in the general case, I think fiber is the way to go.
Harvard Square used to have a very fancy internet cafe, Cybersmith, "Building community with technology". It opened in 1995 and went bust in 1999, a couple of years before the great .com bubble burst.
These days, an "internet cafe" is any venue with refreshments and WiFi.
I strongly disagree with your scenario that we are falling behind in the broadband internet service. According to Nielsen/Net rating report in June 21 2006 it says that 72% of US homes has broadband internet www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_060621.pdf . The link below made in 2005 shows 61% of homes in the US use the internet service and that was in 2005, http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0509/ . So with the same growth from 2005 to 2006 we can say that in August 2007 over 80% of American homes have broadband internet. Also 85% of businesses used broadband internet services and in 2005, I am sure today it is over 90% if not over 95% of businesses who have broadband internet
You may see the same percentage of broadband users in Europe and Japan as in the US but less people there have access in their homes to the internet compared to people in the US for the simple reason that more Americans own computers at home than Europeans or other people in the world.
My previous post shows the % of people accessing the internet and the US is by far number one. There is a reason internet cafes are much more popular in Europe and the world than the US, and that is because much less people in these places have computers at home to access the intenet compared to the US. This by itself make the big difference and the other statistics are secondary.
Correct. It went bust in 1999 because more people own personal computers at home and hence access to the internet. That is not the case in Europe and most of the world and thus they still go to the internet cafes to access the internet. The media paint the internet cafes in such a romantic way where in reality it is just a need for people who do not own computers and internet services.
>> Hal, I strongly disagree with your scenario that we are falling behind in the broadband internet service.
The entire media and communication spectrum should also be included in the discussions since fiber, for example, provides for a variety of communication and content.
The Nielsen report is a measurement of usage, not availability.
Nope only to the porn business
It is very clear what it says. Nearly three quarters (72%) of American homes are connected to the Broadband internet as of May 2006.
Cut and past the link to get the report, for some reason it is not working by clicking it from the post.
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