Posted on 08/29/2009 9:34:46 AM PDT by libh8er
A report on Internet speed in the United States says the country isn’t likely to catch world leader South Korea for 15 years.
Or for much longer — at current growth rates, the United States will only reach South Korea’s speed today in 15 years.
The report, by the Communications Workers of America, details Internet download and upload speeds all over the United States and some of its affiliated territories. In the last year, the average upload speed in the United States “barely changed,” the report said, and download speed only grew a little, from 4.2 megabits per second in 2008 to 5.1 megabits per second in 2009.
In South Korea, average download speed is four times faster — 20.4 megabits per second. The United States also lags Japan (15.8 mbps), Sweden (12.8 mbps), the Netherlands (11 mbps) and 24 other countries.
At average U.S. speed it takes about 35 minutes to download 100 family vacation photos, and four hours to upload them.
The report said U.S. speeds aren’t sufficient for the needs of in-home medical monitoring, distance learning programs, or to run a modern business from home.
“People in Japan can upload a high-definition video in 12 minutes, compared to a grueling 2.5 hours” at the average U.S. speed, the report said.
California improved its position to No. 11 in download speed among U.S. states and territories in 2009. Last year it ranked No. 22.
Locally, the fastest download speed in San Francisco County was in Zip code 94131, at 14.7 mbps, though that area had slower upload speed than some other bits of the county.
Several Alameda County Zip codes rivalled that speed, and San Leandro’s 94579 area blew them out of the water at a download speed of 60.6 mbps.
The report calls for more investment in the nation’s Internet infrastructure. It also suggests shifting the outdated universal service payments that support voice telephone service over to pay for better and cheaper high-speed Internet service for everyone.
> you are probably being paid by soros to post this here.
Don’t be insolent as well as ignorant.
> we are not falling for you socialists, who want government to own companies. this is called facism.
No, it is called an effective use of resource. When your country is small it is not effective to try to introduce competition into every business endeavor. That invariably leads to collusion, corruption, inefficiency and higher prices.
Sometimes it really is best to let the Government run things.
> you need to be educated probably. new mexico is a bad state, went obama for a reason, no wonder your phones dont work.
Maybe you need to be educated properly: after all, we managed to elect a Conservative government last November, and you managed to elect a Socialist.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Around here, it's usually the government activities that lead to collusion, corruption, inefficiency and higher prices. The Kelo decision is a good example.
> Around here, it’s usually the government activities that lead to collusion, corruption, inefficiency and higher prices. The Kelo decision is a good example.
Government corruption does happen in NZ, but it tends to be small-time stuff by lone operators and usually not at a senior level.
The really mind-blowingly astonishing corruption is usually orchestrated and driven by the private sector here, and may also involve some hi-level governmental protection.
Probably the best known (and certainly not the only) example of this was the “Winebox Affair”, a conspiracy to defraud the revenues of Nations around the globe using fraudulent tax receipts from the Cook Islands, a NZ Protectorate.
Amazingly, tho’ the conspiracy was blown wide open, no convictions were ever entered — leaving little doubt of hi-level protection from somewhere.
How much money was ultimately defrauded is any man’s guess.
Which makes it government corruption, in my opinion.
The mind-blowing astonishing corruption around here can be seen in:
And that's true at the state level as well. Generally, only the scams with government protection get to be of much size at all.
> Which makes it government corruption, in my opinion.
More likely the connexion would be Rugby Tie or School Tie. The government thing would be incidental.
it looks like another natural advantage that these rice civilizations have (from their high population densities)...
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