US 27th In Broadband Speeds? Slower Than Kyrgyzstan
from the technology-leadership dept
A few folks have sent over the stats pages that Ookla released concerning the internet speeds that users in various countries have been able to get on their broadband connections. For those of us in the US, we're ranked 27th in download speeds, and in upload speeds as well (as of this posting). The data is constantly changing, so I've seen the US bounce around a bit, but generally we're in that 25 to 30 range. That puts us behind the tech superpowers of Kyrgyzstan. Nothing against Kyrgyzstan, of course (I hear it's lovely), but you don't often think of it as being at the top of the list of tech powerhouses. In case you were wondering, South Korea tops both lists, and the Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania do quite well as well.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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You are aware that our being behind on the technology curve isn't exactly new aren't you?
Maybe you can help explain something semi-related ... why did it take forever to get even metropolitan 3G networks in the U.S.? We did not get it until it was already obsolete in Japan and the EU.
The disparities and the causes just "may" be related.
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The big difference is that some countries took a difference approach that works better and are ahead of the curve.
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Actually, the Internet began in the US, which has now gone from number 1 to number 27 and is continuing downward.
The big difference is that some countries took a difference approach that works better and are ahead of the curve.
Because the US approach sure isn't working very well.
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The future is fiber, the more the U.S. drag is feet in deploying it, the more other countries will get ahead of the U.S. and start building things that will enable them to not only be more secure(i.e. Harder to DDoS and Quantum Encryption) but more productive i.e. tele-medicine, tele-commuting(some jobs are coming back to the U.S. because of virtual space).
It is not just speed for the sake of speed, other countries are planning right now 40gbits/s to enable things you can't imagine, that will impact everyone, can you imagine people consulting with doctors in Tokyo and paying them instead of doctors in the U.S.? Engineers can teach other engineers from home and make money, but U.S. engineers wont be able to do so because they don't have the tool to do it, so other countries will be making money.
I don't think you appreciate the situation in a very forward looking manner.
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The future is fiber, the more the U.S. drag is feet in deploying it, the more other countries will get ahead of the U.S. and start building things that will enable them to not only be more secure(i.e. Harder to DDoS and Quantum Encryption) but more productive i.e. tele-medicine, tele-commuting(some jobs are coming back to the U.S. because of virtual space).
It is not just speed for the sake of speed, other countries are planning right now 40gbits/s to enable things you can't imagine, that will impact everyone, can you imagine people consulting with doctors in Tokyo and paying them instead of doctors in the U.S.? Engineers can teach other engineers from home and make money, but U.S. engineers wont be able to do so because they don't have the tool to do it, so other countries will be making money.
I don't think you appreciate the situation in a very forward looking manner.
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Right. Kyrgyzstan is basically Coruscant: one big nationwide city....
Okay, a little digging around the CIA World Factbook reveals that 48% of their total labor force works in agriculture. That makes for a lot of their land being used by farms, otherwise known as "remote places" which have a higher probability of not having quality broadband providers.
In other words, try again....
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For instance, not all of the measurements from Kyrgyzstan were taken in the city of Bishkek - which is immediately obvious because the city's rate is 13.88 Mbps while the country overall's is 12.55. Using the ratio of Bishkek's IPs used to the total number, I calculated that the rate for the rest is about 3.2 Mbps. There, I've done something useful with the link provided in this post instead of merely whining and bitching about it.
On a broader note, this is pretty interesting. You can make any number of conclusions from this site, but I do think that the ranking Mike mentions is a good indicator that the per capita internet speed is around 25-30, which is what's really important. That is, unless there was some other method of determining which IPs were used and in what ratios, which can be gleaned from a slightly deeper look at the raw data they provided.
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/us-20th-in-broadband-penetration-trails- s-korea-estonia.ars
and we're twentieth place.
Also, the fact that the U.S. may have more internet access per capita than Kyrgyzstan is balanced by the fact that we pay more for broadband per capita as well.
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Yeah. They are way ahead of the tech curve there.
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Lies, Damned Lies, Et Cetera
It would be nice to see how good South Korea is once you get 50 miles into farm country.
You can get to a lot of places by car that is not likely to have any fiber nearby.
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Re: Lies, Damned Lies, Et Cetera
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Do you work for the telcom industry or somnething?
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The problem is that you've essentially said, if you build any infrastructure to provide connectivity to people, you have to allow others to use it at a price that you probably won't be able to control. It puts a downward pressure on companies doing that. So the only one who probably would, is the government. Do you really want the government doing this?
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Start here.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100625/1617489965.shtml
The fact that the govt neither allows you to compete on existing cableco infrastructure not to build your own new infrastructure. That's nonsense, you should either allow one or the other but not both.
"It makes sense that we don't need 10 different cables on our utility poles and entering our homes to provide internet"
So the admission here is that the natural monopoly argument is false, that just because investment costs money and those who invest don't want to compete doesn't mean people won't invest. Despite having to tolerate competition, people are willing to invest into infrastructure but the only problem is that the govt won't allow them to. Otherwise, why should the govt restrict new competitors from building infrastructure.
"if you build any infrastructure to provide connectivity to people, you have to allow others to use it at a price that you probably won't be able to control."
and what's wrong with that? Either they allow anyone to build new infrastructure or they allow anyone to compete on existing infrastructure. If it's true that forcing newcomers who enter the market to allow anyone to compete on the infrastructure they build would prevent anyone from building new infrastructure then why is the government that's the one that's preventing newcomers from building new infrastructure under this fake natural monopoly pretext? You said it yourself, we don't need ten wires going across the poles, implying that newcomers are perfectly willing to build new infrastructure and compete even in the face of competition, negating the whole natural monopoly argument.
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(from the above link).
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and those places that are pulling ahead on broadband tend to allow for more competitors.
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If the market will support it, why not? I sounds to me like you just don't like any competition.
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The comment you're replying to wasn't made to you. Try switching to threaded view.
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"Nearly every community in the United States allows only a single cable company to operate within its borders. Since the Boulder decision [4] in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that municipalities may be subject to antitrust liability for anticompetitive acts, most cable franchises have been nominally nonexclusive but in fact do operate to preclude all competitors. The legal rationale for municipal regulation is that cable uses city-owned streets and rights-of-way; the economic rationale is the assumption that cable is a "natural monopoly." "
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa034.html
and this is what we're against.
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Why should the government be subsidizing the incumbent providers and providing them with monopolies?
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How many times must one pay for the same thing ... and still not get what you paid for?
Everyone with a phone has been subsidising the telcos for decades, but rural connections are still lacking.
Telcos were given right of way without cost, would you call this a subsidy? Who paid for all that?
A community decides thay would like to "subsidize" themselves and create their own network which connects to the telco. What is the typical response?
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You keep posting but you only seem capable of sputtering irrelevancies and red herrings.
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NTT in Japan is covering 90% of the territory with 100mb or higher.
In South Korea this may shed some light:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/korea.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03 /31/broadband.south.korea/index.html
Both Countries planed their infra-structure decades before, look at what NTT envisions for the future and how it is planning to get there, now look at how the U.S. is doing it.
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The US is in the crapper because their information infrastructure is pathetic. 10mb/s is impressive? Bah.
I suggest you direct your outrage at your crappy internet providers and not at people that try to put these discrepancies in context.
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I will property direct my outrage at our pathetic government that does everything in its power to limit competition for the sake of acquiring campaign contributions from existing monopolists.
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Still, though, this is kinda sad.
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To be fair, I would expect a smaller country to have fewer resources, like a small town compared to a large city. That "Kyrgyzstan is smaller than the US" just makes it even worse.
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We have the best network our laws will allow...
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Woo!
(Statistics is fun--you can make bad things sound ok and not horrible things sound drastically horrible.)
; P
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Re: Woo!
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Actually, the US is *number 1* (of those countries coming in at 27th and below). U S A ! NUMBER 1!
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But doesn't this actually make sense?
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Re: But doesn't this actually make sense?
Imagine your bandwidth as a drain pipe, and data flowing through it is like water draining.
When the pipe is empty, any water you toss towards the drain goes as fast as gravity and the width of the pipe will take it.
If you're using a 1/4 inch internal diameter pipe, an 8 oz glass of water will use the whole thing for a short while--and if a rain storm is draining through that pipe then your yard is going to flood.
If you're using a 2 foot internal diameter pipe, an 8 oz glass of water may as well be a drop--out it goes while barely touching one side. That rain storm? It drains out quickly too.
Bandwidth is like a drain pipe. Your perceived 'drain speed' being dependent upon both how much data (water) and the size of your potential bandwidth (pipe diameter).
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http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-12-2006/headlines---internet
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Whomever...
The big tards. (I mean the tards in congress.)
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Show me a truly even playing field with lots of players, and I'll show you low prices. It will work out that way every time. Lets not be so hasty to toss out the publicly funded farce for once. Christ, they always run to the government...
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It'll be the same as it is the with Wireless companies. We have a decent number of them, and AT&T and Verizon always follow each other in price, whereas sprint and tmobile have cheaper plans, but nobody wants their crap coverage.
Limited resources should never be exploited by capitalism, but should instead be regulated for ALL to use
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If they increase our speeds...
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Stats
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Wonderful...
This means that the place where the Bears have their training camp has better speed than where they play their games on Sundays. Ah, Chicago, the most corrupt city in the States....
And I also note that Zion, a tiny remote suburb, also has better speeds. Funny, somehow I knew I'd be able to blame Zionists for this....
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See how the Japanese view the thing, they are building the infra-structure to support more than just LoLCats.
https://www.ntt-review.jp/archive/ntttechnical.php?contents=ntr201004sf1.html
South Korea has a plan too even CNN know that.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/31/broadband.south.korea/index.html
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It ceratinly does not hold water.
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Korean Telecom
Biggest ISP
http://internet.qook.co.kr/top/index.php
I can't read those pages through a proxy so I can't find information on them, maybe someone want to look those to see what they have.
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at least usa people dont live in canada
from almost everyone having unlimited to about 30-60GB caps almost a 1600-2000GB drop in what a user can potentially do.
never mind upload speeds....where we are a dismal 52nd
OMG USA is 27th.....
we used to rock ten years ago
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Re: at least usa people dont live in canada
After all, you forgot that Rogers runs the country via the Tories :)
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P.S. RUSSIA is kicking USA butt
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Try to get on track
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still russia is big country
HOW CAN THIS BE? a country that almost became a third world nation after its communist collapse.....
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Density excuse are BS
Unless your going to address the following:
- USF
- Right of Way
- Tax breaks\incentives
- Telecom Act
- Bailout funds.
- Franchise Fees
- Use\Service taxes\fees
I mean it is a great point until you factor in the above at which point its importance is effectively nullified.
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Re: Density excuse are BS
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I cant wait to hear your excuses for the other seven issues brought up by Clueby4.
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This data IS worthless
Everyone knows that a lot of the major cable companies that provide high speed internet have issues with throttling the connection. Hell I personally know that if you are connecting to the internet with Charter through a wireless router that is not theirs, they throttle the internet speed. They push their own wireless router/modem combo device and won't even give you support if you have trouble with speeds through your own router. They say that they can't tell if you're connecting through a wireless router or straight through to the modem which is total BS. A laptop/desktop NIC's MAC address is formatted differently than a router which is routers let you clone your system's MAC address to it.
If I connect to speedtest.net while connected straight into the modem I get about a 24MB download speed. Going through my router (or any other router besides charter's) I get anywhere between 9mb and 16mb down.
Besides all of this, who cares how fast Korea's internet is if you can't even do what you want to do on it. I'd rather have MY internet with access to youtube and any other site I want, than have their internet with access only to what they think is ok.
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Re: This data IS worthless
Second, please think before you write.
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27th... we DREAM of 27th
*sigh*
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Report Not True
However, the conclusion that the U.S. does not have the fastest internet in the world is true. Many second and third world countries built up their high speed internet infrastructure as part of an effort to globalize and make more money. Since the U.S. broadband technology is still using phone lines that are decades old, it isn't hard to see why we are further down on the list than countries who spent the money to build a whole new high speed grid from scratch.
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I'm from South Korea
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By the way...
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