Why is the American internet so slow?

[MillCreek]

http://theweek.com/article/index/257404/why-is-american-internet-so-slow

Well, this is interesting.  I have to wonder just how much the de-facto monopolies have contributed to this.  Although to be fair, in some of the high-speed Net countries cited in the article, the Net infrastructure or service is a government utility.

[Sergeant Bob]

http://theweek.com/article/index/257404/why-is-american-internet-so-slow

Well, this is interesting.  I have to wonder just how much the de-facto monopolies have contributed to this.  Although to be fair, in some of the high-speed Net countries cited in the article, the Net infrastructure or service is a government utility.

That, along with the U.S. being a very large country, with less of the population concentrated in cities as it is in many other countries. Many states are the size of (or larger) than many of those countries.

I live ten miles from town and was just recently able to get DSL (1 to 3mb service only). There is no cable at my location. The population just isn't great enough for companies to be able to generate a profit.

[Ben]

So without having gone to the link which may have already addressed this, my words of wisdom... :)

Part of this could be the negative, sort of unintended consequences of us being first (plus that thing about us being a big country). We started distributing what is now old and slow infrastructure early on. It takes a lot of money to distribute wired services, then also to integrate new technology into it. I'm guessing in some cases you have to start all over again. Look at the death of Nextel and also Sprint's original 4G.

A lot of other countries got a head start in effect, by coming into things later in the game based on our early innovation. I've been to an area of Central America where the city streets were basically mud, ala 1800 USA, but everyone was walking around with a cell phone and there were high speed wireless internet cafes every damn place. A lot easier to do when you can pop up wireless towers versus running cable. In the meantime, if it wasn't for relatively recent 4G coverage out where my folks live, that would still all be dial-up country because it's not worth it apparently, for Ma Bell to pull DSL that far out of the city limits (which is actually only 15 miles).

I don't deny (unhappy as I am right now with my cable company) that there can also be effects from a monopoly-like structure of our data infrastructure.

[230RN]

Oh!  I thought it was because el Govo was intercepting all of my stuff.  Same reason my mail is slow.  I sometimes get bills 32.7 microseconds before they're due.

The idea of a regulated market being more conducive to competition may be alien to free market ideologues, but telecoms and internet is a real world example of deregulation leading to ["local"- 230RN] monopolization instead of competition in lots of markets. Op cit.

I've seen that in a lot of instances.

As soon as AT&T ("Ma Bell") had to be broken up under the monopoly court cases, I noticed a distinct drop in telephone service.

Terry

REF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

[MechAg94]

Deregulation is a buzzword that doesn't always mean what people think it means.  Some regulations aren't so bad.  Regulations that help big corporate campaign donors aren't always so good. 

Do people forget that the reason we have universal land line phone service even in the back of beyond was because the govt subsidized it for decades?

[MillCreek]

Deregulation is a buzzword that doesn't always mean what people think it means.  Some regulations aren't so bad.  Regulations that help big corporate campaign donors aren't always so good. 

Do people forget that the reason we have universal land line phone service even in the back of beyond was because the govt subsidized it for decades?

Unpossible!  Government can do nothing good!  And why should the rest of us subsidize those rural freeloaders, anyway?  I reject that premise!

[RoadKingLarry]

 


It'd probably be best for me to stay out of this one. 

[Ben]

Tangential, but interesting maps of undersea cable runs around the world:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/04/tech/gallery/internet-undersea-cables/index.html

[Tallpine]

Deregulation is a buzzword that doesn't always mean what people think it means.  Some regulations aren't so bad.  Regulations that help big corporate campaign donors aren't always so good. 

Do people forget that the reason we have universal land line phone service even in the back of beyond was because the govt subsidized it for decades?

Funny, we have phone (and also electric) because some people go together and formed cooperatives to provide service where the phone and utility companies refused to go 

Unless you consider tax-exempt status to be a "subsidy" 

[MechAg94]

Unpossible!  Government can do nothing good!  And why should the rest of us subsidize those rural freeloaders, anyway?  I reject that premise!

I sort of wonder what large sections of the rural countryside would look like now if there never was any subsidized power or phone service.  

I guess that was part of the price of having a monopoly for so long.

[MechAg94]

Funny, we have phone (and also electric) because some people go together and formed cooperatives to provide service where the phone and utility companies refused to go 

Unless you consider tax-exempt status to be a "subsidy" 

No, I was thinking that a lot of people never had to pay the full cost of running the wires out to their house and stuff.  I think my parent's still get power from a coop. 

I know the subsidy was there.  I have no idea if it was universally used.

[Tallpine]

Why is the railroad so slow after the government stole land from the Injuns and gave it to the RR companies as a subsidy???

 

[RevDisk]

Deregulation. Natural monopolies are often the only broad case where free market is substantially worse than regulated market. Why? Because the barrier to entry is so high that extremely few folks would have the capital to compete. Plus, telecoms are legally allowed to act as cartels and engage in anti-competitive manners. Basically, in most places, you have one or two choices. Generally DSL or cable. Sometimes you luck out and have a realistic third choice, but it's rare.

If you think consumer internet is slow and expensive, few folks here have the lovely experience of pricing business internet. DSL speeds can run you say, $1500 per month. That's not an unrealistic number for 10 Mbps Ethernet connection from Windstream. It buys you slightly better customer support and theoretically an SLA. 50 Mbps for an enterprise may run about $3k a month.

As other folks have mentioned, there is a very cozy relationship between telecoms and the government. Not just on illegal domestic spying programs, but also lobbyist/government revolving door.
 

[TommyGunn]

Re: Why is the American internet so slow?

It's Fistful's fault ......

[MechAg94]

Why is the railroad so slow after the government stole land from the Injuns and gave it to the RR companies as a subsidy???

 

I think the liberal answer is we never gave them enough money.  If we had only stole land and subsidies high speed trains, we might have the fastest trains out there.  They would be fastest because they would run empty. 

Free market versus monopoly gets complicated when you are looking at industries like that with huge infrastructures and huge Govt regulations.

[230RN]

FYI CO coop info/map:

http://www.crea.coop/ColoradoCoops/CoopMapofColorado.aspx

The red lines are roads, not power lines.

[Blakenzy]

Too many deep fried, bacon wrapped twinkies will make anything slow.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Comparing the US to Hong Kong or Singapore is ridiculous, the US is nothing like Hong Kong or Singapore.  We need an apples-to-apples comparison, which is admittedly difficult.  But hey, let's try anyway and see what we find.  John Aziz and The Week cite Ookla as their reference for internet speeds.  Let's use their data.

Geography and population distribution obviously play a big part in infrastructure.  The US is a large nation with dense urban areas and lots wide open empty space, so let's compare the US to other large nations with dense urban areas and lots of wide open empty areas.  Canada and Russia come to mind.  What do you know, the scores for the US (22.00),  Canada (20.46) , and Russia (21.71) are almost exactly the same.

Economic activity surely plays a role in building infrastructure.  The only "nation" with GDP comparable to the US is the European Union.  Turns out that the EU speed (23.00) is very similar to the US speed (22.00).  #3 on the GDP list is China (17.60) and we compare favorably to them.

Hmm, maybe we should compare based on economic development rather than total GDP.  Ookla provides a handy measurement of speeds for all G8 nations (21.40) and for all OECD nations (21.1).  Again, we find the US right there in the middle.

Why do Hong Kong (73.58) and Singapore (58.13) score so well?  Well, they're both dense, urban, wealthy areas with advanced technical economies.  Looking down Ookla's list, we see lots of other dense, wealthy, technical places scoring favorably.  That includes Asian nations like South Korea (52.02) and Japan (42.16) and Taiwan (37.78), and most of northern Europe (mid 30's and 40's).  So lets compare that to similar sub-parts of the US that are also small, dense, wealthy, and technical.  New York City comes to my mind first, and if you drill down into the data you find most neighborhoods of NYC scoring in the 40's or 50's.  SoCal and maybe San Fran seem to score a little lower than NYC, more in the 30's and 40's, but still quite respectable compared to the rest of the world.  

How else could we slice the data?  Eh... whatever.  I'm done.  So far as I'm concerned, US internet speeds aren't in any way substandard compared to the rest of the world, and any attempt to build up an argument around that false premises fails from the start.

[MillCreek]

^^^ Very nice analysis, HTG!

[Fly320s]

^^^ Very nice analysis, HTG!

Yes, but it took nearly two seconds to download!

[Tallpine]

Is Ookla a real place, or something from a fantasy book 

[HankB]

Is Ookla a real place, or something from a fantasy book 

Short for Ooklahoma. 

[RevDisk]

Is Ookla a real place, or something from a fantasy book 

Yes

[Brad Johnson]

Comparing the US to Hong Kong or Singapore is ridiculous, the US is nothing like Hong Kong or Singapore.  We need an apples-to-apples comparison, which is admittedly difficult.  But hey, let's try anyway and see what we find.  John Aziz and The Week cite Ookla as their reference for internet speeds.  Let's use their data.

Geography and population distribution obviously play a big part in infrastructure.  The US is a large nation with dense urban areas and lots wide open empty space, so let's compare the US to other large nations with dense urban areas and lots of wide open empty areas.  Canada and Russia come to mind.  What do you know, the scores for the US (22.00),  Canada (20.46) , and Russia (21.71) are almost exactly the same.

Economic activity surely plays a role in building infrastructure.  The only "nation" with GDP comparable to the US is the European Union.  Turns out that the EU speed (23.00) is very similar to the US speed (22.00).  #3 on the GDP list is China (17.60) and we compare favorably to them.

Hmm, maybe we should compare based on economic development rather than total GDP.  Ookla provides a handy measurement of speeds for all G8 nations (21.40) and for all OECD nations (21.1).  Again, we find the US right there in the middle.

Why do Hong Kong (73.58) and Singapore (58.13) score so well?  Well, they're both dense, urban, wealthy areas with advanced technical economies.  Looking down Ookla's list, we see lots of other dense, wealthy, technical places scoring favorably.  That includes Asian nations like South Korea (52.02) and Japan (42.16) and Taiwan (37.78), and most of northern Europe (mid 30's and 40's).  So lets compare that to similar sub-parts of the US that are also small, dense, wealthy, and technical.  New York City comes to my mind first, and if you drill down into the data you find most neighborhoods of NYC scoring in the 40's or 50's.  SoCal and maybe San Fran seem to score a little lower than NYC, more in the 30's and 40's, but still quite respectable compared to the rest of the world. 

How else could we slice the data?  Eh... whatever.  I'm done.  So far as I'm concerned, US internet speeds aren't in any way substandard compared to the rest of the world, and any attempt to build up an argument around that false premises fails from the start.

But, but, but - it can't be that because it's not a big gubbermint/big bizniss/alien/Illuminati conspiracy!! 

And I didn't see it on Facebook.  It's only true if it's on Facebook...

Brad