Game Over: The U.S. is unlikely to ever regain its broadband leadership.

I, Cringely ^ | August 3, 2007 | Robert X. Cringely

[HAL9000]

Excerpt -

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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.

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[DB]

He can get broadband now if he was willing to pay for it.

[DB]

Germany has about a quarter of the population of the US all in area about the size of Montana.

[elli1]

China is larger and even more rural. They passed us in broadband deployment last year -

They also have a lot more bicycles than the US does.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Somebody please explain this to me. I hear a lot about the US "falling behind" because we don't have 100mbit lines to the house. Why is this exactly?

This is analogous to someone who has never had access to electricity in the home wondering what all the fuss is about. High speed data access throughout the US would mean a better, more powerful data infrastructure for future applications to be built on. Such future applications might include a replacement for our current telephone system with a visual communication system, real-time remote examinations by medical experts that a patient can't get to, home automation capable of reacting intelligently to emergency weather broadcasts, and a thousand other ideas we can't envision now that would be the seeds of future business successes, wealth creation, and the overall betterment of our lives.

Is downloading pirated movies and music faster really that necessary to the economy?

I can envision someone asking if obscene phone calls were really necessary to the economy when the idea of wiring homes for telephone was first tossed out.

[USS Alaska]

I've had DSL for years and when I was in business it was the computer business so I'm familiar with the business benefits of high speed communications. An article like this generalizes too much and as usual there is too much "gloom and doom".

It's just another America {bad, slow, dumb, greedy, doomed, stupid, hated.... pick your own adjective} article. Ho-hum.

[6SJ7]

Hmmm. Sounds like the usual editorial doom and gloom. About 10+ years ago I heard complaints of there being a lack of content on the internet. Then there was the worry that popular sites on the internet would be saturated with requests causing them to shut down. Then there was the worry about... And on it goes.

[Dave Elias]

“China is larger and even more rural. They passed us in broadband deployment last year - “

BS..Much of China outside the cities is immeasurably poor, They’d be lucky if they’d seen a computer let alone have broadband.

[garyhope]

I don’t know about the movies and music, but trading stocks and currencies online requires a good fast broadband or cable connection. Speed is good.

I wish there were fibre optic lines everywhere. Try getting a good internet connection out in the boonies.

I use Verizon for my cell phone and out in the sticks, it stinks.

Europe has better cell phone systems. I don’t know about their internet connections.

There’s no reason why America shouldn’t be as modern, up to date or better than the rest of the world in communications.

[theBuckwheat]

Other nations have made broadband national initiatives, but what we don’t see are the economic dislocations they cause. Our telecom infrastructure was built out without any government funding. People put their own money at risk to build the facilities they thought would be economically viable. Other nations, almost none of which have a higher per-capita income, decided to take money out of the pockets of everyone and they directed a network to be built that some committee decided was what the nation needed. Well, it doesn’t work that way very well in the long run.

The Left, who loves to scold the rest of us about ‘sustainability’ cannot understand how commercial projects must have sustainable economics. That means the value of their services must exceed on average the cost of providing them. The private telecom infrastructure in the US is sustainable. A project in some other country may have high bandwidth, but it also probably has high tax subsidies.

This is like ethanol, which appears to be about equal to gasoline in price at the pump, but only because government taxes all of us so it can subsidize the price by about 50 cents per gallon. Peple who love ethanol cheer the fuel, but they are willingly ignorant of the economic damage it is doing elsewhere and they will fight tooth and nail to keep the subsidy, despite how many bridges we could repair with the billions we are spending on it every year.

We have similar ignorant laments from time to time about passenger rail. Look at other nations! Aren’t they so advanced in their rail service? We are so behind. Yes, indeed, we never hear how much it costs and how much of the taxes of the $6/gallon gasoline goes to pay for such a great rail system.

Lastly, these high speed links are not all they are cracked up to be when used for net access. If you run traceroute on any connection, you will find a connection goes through many routers and links, and the dirty secret of a high speed connection is this: the speed of your end-to-end connection is the speed of the slowest route segment.

[bert]

itto... what’s the problem? so what?

[Mark was here]

For millions of Americans, the only Internet service available is dial-up telephone service - often at speeds of 15-to-20 kilobits-per-second.

I live in a suburban city, I have several high speed options, Comcast, WOW, Sprint, ... and I have to pay for them. I should not have to pay a higher rate so those in the boonies can have the same choices.

Those living out in the middle of nowhere, have other advantages, like a quieter country side, and the ability to keep chickens in the back yard. Should people in the sticks be taxed extra to provide services to city dwellers?

No. People are free to live where they want, they just have to set their priorities.

[DB]

Europe has good cell phone systems because their wired phone service is terrible. Cell was the first alternative they had and they siezed it.

America has a large part of its populaton in the “boonies” where Europe does not. That’s the difference and the reason we have many more roads and cars than Europe does.

[Erik Latranyi]

Here’s the secret about telecom costs. The telecom company is going to charge as much as you are willing to pay.

That applies to EVERY price. If a company does not try to maximize the price it charges, it will probably not exist very long.

[bert]

I had a wireless connection like this in a Canadian Campground and it was great .......except when a train went by. The line of sight was so flat, a nearby elevated track interferred.

[Calpernia]

Just my opinion, from my ebusiness experience, the net capabilities aren’t used to their fullest capabilities due to the lack of skill and knowledge of the common user.

Hardware and services are available if the business needs it. Small to medium businesses don’t fully utilize the internet due to lack of personal to run emarketing for them. The customer base isn’t as high as it should be due to lack of computer skills.

[Calpernia]

Oh great. More spam to clean up.

/sarc

[Erik Latranyi]

The United States will catch up with WiMax and 3G wireless services.

Running wires to every house is soooooooo 1950.

[DB]

We’ll see.

For example there’s many areas of the country that are not flat...

Wireless gets pretty difficult once you lose line of sight. Not to mention there isn’t enough radio spectrum to supply everyone with broadband in densely populated areas.

[mo]

More liberal shorts wringing....the game is almost over for ATT and Verizon.......mash here

http://www.meshlinx.com/

[sphinx]

The real issue here is enabling BUSINESS to do business faster and better with high speed connectivity.

Agreed.

International business operations should not be built in podunk.

Here we differ.

70 years ago there were undoubtedly people who said rural areas didn't need electricity because, by golly, the farms had never had electricity, that was just the way it was, and if you wanted modern conveniences you should move to the city.

We decided, correctly IMHO, that electricity is so fundamental to modernity that affordable access should be provided more-or-less universally. One can debate whether the rural electric cooperatives were the way to do it -- most of the world simply turned the job over to a state-run utility system -- but we retained an essentially privatized system through the REC's. One way or another, however, we got it done.

Today broadband has become essential for business development in many sectors. Areas without it will be redlined. Many rural areas have significant competitive advantages -- lower land costs, lower taxes, low-to-non-existent crime, no congestion, short commutes, a high quality workforce, etc. This isn't a new story; a fair share of branch plants, service centers, distribution hubs, etc. have been moving to rural areas for years. But today, they need broadband. Many rural areas will also attract folks who can and would prefer to work from home, provided they can get linked.

Do we really want to walk away from all that potential simply because Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T -- whoever owns the local metro hub (very often the county seat town) -- doesn't want to bother with providing service out to the county?

I can tell you what the political answer will be. Rural broadband is already a political issue. To this point, the political pressure has been contained. If most rural areas don't get served pretty quickly, however, the cable and phone companies are going to be looking at universal service requirements. That's more heavy-handed than the feds have been willing to be to this point, but it's the next step if the companies don't get off the dime and get it done.