US Copyright Group Caught Red Handed Copying Competitor's Website

US 27th In Broadband Speeds? Slower Than Kyrgyzstan

from the technology-leadership dept

Fri, Jul 30th 2010 12:33pm — Mike Masnick

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.

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Filed Under: broadband, speeds

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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 12:48pm

Instead of confirming your own bias (that American broadband is bad), shouldn't this make you wonder about the accuracy of these measurements? I have no problem believing that South Korea has the best broadband in the world, but what is the market penetration of these other countries? Maybe they don't have nearly as many remote places with broadband?
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Zacqary Adam Green (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 12:49pm

To be fair, Kyrgyzstan is smaller than the US, so it's probably easier to get fast Internet connections to a greater percentage of their country than it is here.

Still, though, this is kinda sad.
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Jeff (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 12:53pm

We have the best network our laws will allow...
this is surprising because???
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Michael Brutsch, 30 Jul 2010 @ 12:54pm

I bet the US companies make more money, though. That's what's important in America.
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 12:56pm

Woo!
27th of 160 puts us in the top 17% WOOO!!
(Statistics is fun--you can make bad things sound ok and not horrible things sound drastically horrible.)

; P
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 12:57pm

Re:
And after looking at some of the charts, there is a ton of movement on a lot of these. South Korea looks like it went from about 1 Mbps upload to 18 in the span of 2 days. As if a bunch of people in South Korea noticed they weren't #1 in upload speed and started hitting Speedtest from machines with large upload bandwidth.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:01pm

This data is useless. Contrary to my fellow Anonymous Coward above, I'm not worried about your bias, just annoyed with the irrelevance of this piece. This is just clutter to my feed reader.
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Hephaestus (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:05pm

Re: Woo!
yeah!!!! we are better than the country still using Morse Code over cloth covered wires.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:05pm

Never could reach the 'up to' speed my ISP claims, not even close, ever.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:05pm

Re:
And the much maligned Kyrgyzstan has a total of one site collecting data. Where as the US has thousands of sites collecting data. This ranking is worthless.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:06pm

Re:
Yes, after looking at it more I now agree with you.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:10pm

Re:
"Maybe they don't have nearly as many remote places with broadband?"

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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Ragaboo (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:12pm

But doesn't this actually make sense?
I'm no expert on broadband, but this info doesn't seem surprising or concerning to me. I thought speeds were largely based on how many users were online. In a less affluent country, fewer users would be using the Internet, and they'd use it less often. That means speeds would be faster for everyone using it. Am I wrong?
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:15pm

Re: Re:
I don't have to. Look at what they recorded. One city. That's all. No remote places at all. One city. Where 1/5 of their entire population lives.
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interval (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:15pm

Whomever...
...has believed that a monopoly business model is good for consumers simply needs to realize that is what we have regarding broadband AND cable TV access here. And its obviously worked simply marvelously.

The big tards. (I mean the tards in congress.)
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Don (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:17pm

You forget that the US is capitalistic, profits above all. The countries with the faster speeds are most likely government subsidized.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:21pm

Re:
Again, via the CIA World Factbook, Kyrgyzstan is a republic with a capitalistic economy....
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:21pm

Re: Re:
But look, Wasilla has the best broadband in Alaska! Go Sarah Palin!
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:21pm

Re: But doesn't this actually make sense?
You are half right.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:22pm

If they increase our speeds...
It would make it harder to screw us out of money.
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Thomasj106, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:27pm

Stats
As I understand it, nearly 43.75% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
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abc gum, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:29pm

Re:
Wow dude, what's your problem ?
Do you work for the telcom industry or somnething?
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:30pm

Re: Re: But doesn't this actually make sense?
Just let the expert explain it:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-12-2006/headlines---internet
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imbrucy (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:30pm

Re:
The US network was heavily subsidized too. Unfortunately, for some reason we decide we should pay to build the network and then let AT&T own it.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:30pm

Wonderful...
Clicking through the report on the USA into IL, I note that Chicago isn't even in the top 50 list for speed. Yet Bourbonais is....

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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interval (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:31pm

Re:
Wow, substitute a private monopoly with a public one. Never saw that coming. >:/

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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abc gum, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:32pm

Just another of many indicators showing that the good old us of a is becoming a third world country.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:33pm

It's fun to see the leftists here display their ignorance with respect to capitalism. Just like many industries in the US, there is a ton of government involvement with the broadband industry. What you are railing at is really the centrally planned and run society that you think you want.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:38pm

Re: Wonderful...
And you fail to look at the data here. If you open up Chicago you'll see it has some questionable data in it. Cricket Communications is a WIRELESS network. And despite only have 239 or so IPs in the data, there are 1,994 or so datapoints coming from these 239 IPs. Compare that to Comcast, which has 25,000 data points from 100,000 IPs.
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Ryan, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:39pm

Re: Re: Re:
Instead of just calling this worthless, why don't you acknowledge that this is a very valuable amalgamation of data? The ranking is simply a statistical representation of the data, but if you weren't such a lazy fatass you could take a cursory glance at the data and make some further extrapolations from it.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:44pm

Re: Re:
Yea, US is slow because all internet data gets ran through Big Brother via all of AT&T's back bones.
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Free Capitalist (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:47pm

Re: Re:
This ranking is worthless.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:47pm

Re:
but it's not smaller than some U.S. states so much, so then which U.S. State has decent broadband?
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Hephaestus (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:49pm

Re: Re:
Don't you just love the CIA fact book :) its one of my favorite references.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:49pm

Re:
https://www.ntt-review.jp/archive/ntttechnical.php?contents=ntr201004sf1.html

NTT in Japan is covering 90% of the territory with 100mb or higher.

In South Korea this may shed some light:

And the numbers are impressive — South Korea has the highest per capita broadband penetration in the world. Slightly more than half of its households have high-bandwidth connections, compared to less than 10 percent in the US. The growth in broadband has surged in the last three years from a few hundred thousand subscribers to 8.5 million.

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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Dark Helmet (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 1:53pm

Re: Re: Re:
Mine too. Funny, using a site for reference that's built and maintained by professional liars....
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kryptonianjorel (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 2:02pm

Re: Re:
Or, the ISPs worth subscribing will always charge the same as the other, and will usually charge a decently high price, and the shitty ISPs will charge a lot less to try to attract customers, but the customers will become frustrated with them, and move to the big ISPs.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 2:03pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'll admit there's some neat data in here, but I don't think you know what per capita is. America has some 75% of people with access to the internet according to the World Bank. Kyrgyzstan has 16%. So the amount of bandwidth per head (which is what per capita means) in the US is much higher than in Kyrgyzstan.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 2:09pm

Re:
In the case of South Korea and Japan it worked wonders for broadband, both countries do have a plan and act upon it.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 2:19pm

Re: Re:
No, but I do disagree that broadband in the US is as bad as many people make it seem to be. Maybe it's because I'm old enough to remember using 300 baud modems so when I hear people whine about their 10 MBit/s connection being too slow, it sets me off.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 2:22pm

Korean Telecom
http://www.kt.com/eng/main.jsp

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 2:52pm

Re: Re: Re:
If there's one thing that local cities and towns have control over, it's zoning. Plus a lot of large American cities modernized quite a bit earlier than their Asian counterparts. So we've got a lot of "legacy" infrastructure. We also didn't get a lot of our cities pounded into gravel like many European and Asian cities did back in WWII.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 2:54pm

Re: Re: Re:
The fact that technology progress in no way justifies a slower progression due to government imposed restrictions on competition. We are whining because we should whine and the only problem I see here is that we don't whine enough (and that we don't march to congress in the millions and force them to remove all government imposed competitive restrictions).
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 3:11pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
That is no excuse, this is brand new technology, and everyone started in equal foot here.

The big difference is that some countries took a difference approach that works better and are ahead of the curve.
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abc gum, 30 Jul 2010 @ 3:27pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
And that answers the question how ?
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abc gum, 30 Jul 2010 @ 3:35pm

Re:
Care to explain your statement?
It ceratinly does not hold water.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 3:48pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
There is just one simple truth here.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 3:54pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
There is just one simple truth here.

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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NAMELESS.ONE, 30 Jul 2010 @ 3:57pm

at least usa people dont live in canada
31st yet what this donest show you is that capacity has also nose dived
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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NAMELESS.ONE, 30 Jul 2010 @ 3:58pm

P.S. RUSSIA is kicking USA butt
haha
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Brian Hayes, 30 Jul 2010 @ 3:58pm

Try to get on track
What?! Splitting hairs about a poorly performing US infrastructure and marketplace? Nuts. Skewed details in these statistics cannot hide that we can and should do better. Where's the cranky vigor for that?
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GO RUSSIA, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:01pm

still russia is big country
bigger then the usa and it kicks the usa in upload speeds nd beets on avg download speeds

HOW CAN THIS BE? a country that almost became a third world nation after its communist collapse.....
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Dementia (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:02pm

Re: Re: Re:
Bite me! I remember 300 baud modems too, and guess what, where I'm at, I'm lucky if my dsl hits 512k. So I really don't care what you opinion is in this instance. The telcos need to get off their collective asses and invest in upgrading our infrastructure. There is absolutely no reason why they couldn't upgrade to fiber, they simply don't want to reduce their enormous profits.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:07pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
The fact that technology progresses *
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:10pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
What restrictions are you referring to? I'm not being flip here, I'm curious what these restrictions are. Because this is always where I think there's a disconnect between what we want and what we think we want. It makes sense that we don't need 10 different cables on our utility poles and entering our homes to provide internet service from 10 different companies. So forcing companies who control that last mile to open it up makes sense, at first.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:11pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
There's more to laying cable than just the cable.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:12pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
In the U.S. the broadband penetration per household is 60 percent.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:15pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
So exactly who should be subsidizing your broadband? Taxpayers? The teleco shareholders?
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JEDIDIAH, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:22pm

Lies, Damned Lies, Et Cetera
Something like this would be much more useful if it broke down data by State and city. My own numbers are on par with the averages for South Korea and higher than the averages reported for my own ISP.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:25pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"What restrictions are you referring to? "

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:26pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"And then telecoms sue the cities -- as they did in the case of Monticello, Minneapolis, and run to state legislators to write laws outlawing citizens from organizing their own networks as Time Warner Cable did in the case of Wilson, North Caroline, which set up its own fiber network known as Greenlight."

(from the above link).
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:27pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The fact that the govt neither allows you to compete on existing cableco infrastructure nor to build your own new infrastructure. *

and those places that are pulling ahead on broadband tend to allow for more competitors.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:28pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That's nonsense, you should either allow one or the other (or both) but not disallow both. *
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:39pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Nobody said anything about subsidizing anyone's broadband, what we're saying is that we don't want the government to subsidize incumbents with laws that restrict competition.

"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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:40pm

Re:
Dude, I live in a tiny country with a crap economy. My country does not compare to America in any way, yet, I have 24mb/s download and 512kb/s upload. I have an "unlimited" monthly traffic allowance of around 400GB (hardly ever enforced). And I'm just in the "middle" of the spectrum. The top notch connections around here are fiber-optic connections with 200mb/s download and 2mb/s upload. Granted I doubt they'll ever get that (they'll be lucky if they hit 50mb/s), but still impressive, and the reliability is improving over time. Also notice that there are virtually no traffic limits.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:41pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
sp/balanced/offset *
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:48pm

Re: Re:
"I suggest you direct your outrage at your crappy internet providers and not at people that try to put these discrepancies in context."

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 4:48pm

Re: Re: Re:
properly *
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 7:00pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That is no excuse, this is brand new technology, and everyone started in equal foot here.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 7:07pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
It makes sense that we don't need 10 different cables on our utility poles and entering our homes to provide internet service from 10 different companies.

If the market will support it, why not? I sounds to me like you just don't like any competition.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 7:10pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
So exactly who should be subsidizing your broadband? Taxpayers? The teleco shareholders?

Why should the government be subsidizing the incumbent providers and providing them with monopolies?
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 7:15pm

Re:
To be fair, Kyrgyzstan is smaller than the US, so it's probably easier to get fast Internet connections to a greater percentage of their country than it is here.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 7:20pm

Re: Woo!
27th of 160 puts us in the top 17% WOOO!!

Actually, the US is *number 1* (of those countries coming in at 27th and below). U S A ! NUMBER 1!
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Clueby4, 30 Jul 2010 @ 7:22pm

Density excuse are BS
Please refrain from spewing density nonsense.

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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Phillip Vector (profile), 30 Jul 2010 @ 9:51pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Really? Arstechnica? The same people who said we were stealing from them because of Ad-Blocking?

Yeah. They are way ahead of the tech curve there.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 10:26pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Never said they were ahead of the tech curve. Perhaps what I should have said was partly offset.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 10:28pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I have no problem with it actually. If the market will support 10 cables I see no problems with it. The only people with a problem with it is incumbent industries that benefit from the lack of competition. I was just pointing out that his ten cable alleged problem implies that a natural monopoly is not a good argument to restrict competition.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 10:31pm

Re: Density excuse are BS
Density arguments are nonsense because we have states that are just as populated as various countries with faster broadband speeds. So then what accounts for that?
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2010 @ 10:47pm

Re: Re: Re:
Yes, telecom speeds used to be slower than they are today. What exactly does that have to do with the veracity of the study? What does it have to do with the comparison of US progression in that area versus other countries?

You keep posting but you only seem capable of sputtering irrelevancies and red herrings.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2010 @ 4:08am

Re: Re: Re:
I personnally remember my old 2400 baud modem... Staring at those shiny LEDs for hours to get a 1MB file felt like being part of some high-tech utopia... Those were the days, man !!! :)
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2010 @ 5:18am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I have no problem with it actually.

The comment you're replying to wasn't made to you. Try switching to threaded view.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2010 @ 7:39am

Once I heard a guy saying the U.S. networks were second to none in the world, suddenly I was overwhelmed by laughter.
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abc gum, 31 Jul 2010 @ 10:29am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"So exactly who should be subsidizing your broadband? Taxpayers? The teleco shareholders?"

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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abc gum, 31 Jul 2010 @ 10:38am

Re: Re: Density excuse are BS
Seems you missed a few items there.

I cant wait to hear your excuses for the other seven issues brought up by Clueby4.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2010 @ 12:16pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I was in threaded view but threaded view gets so convoluted I lost track of who said what.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2010 @ 12:20pm

Re: Re: Re: Density excuse are BS
I'm agreeing that the density argument is garbage. I'm just disagreeing on the reason.
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TtfnJohn (profile), 1 Aug 2010 @ 7:25pm

Re: at least usa people dont live in canada
Subscribe to the not so friendly folks at Rogers do you? :)

After all, you forgot that Rogers runs the country via the Tories :)
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Mikael (profile), 1 Aug 2010 @ 11:34pm

This data IS worthless
I think this data is worthless as so many others have said. It was gathered by Speedtest.net which means that people have to be going to the site and running tests for them to get data. If you don't test your connection, they don't have data. Maybe it's just the people in the US with slower internet speeds checking to see just how slow theirs are, or to check on connection issues. That's the only reason I use the site is for speed related issues.

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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Qyiet (profile), 2 Aug 2010 @ 9:20pm

27th... we DREAM of 27th
New Zealand is 43rd.. behind (insert profanity of your choice) Kazakstan! http://twitpic.com/2b56hf

*sigh*
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Michael, 3 Aug 2010 @ 12:32am

Report Not True
So, I just got back from Kyrgyzstan after a few month stay, and the internet can sometimes get up to dial up speeds. The country is working on getting the infrastructure in place for broadband, but it is still several years away from full scale implementation. I would have to conclude that the ranking system is a little bogus.

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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Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2010 @ 2:37am

Re: This data IS worthless
First, South Korea doesn't restrict their citizens. If your trying to look for a country that does restrict their citizens from being able to see what the denizens want to see on the internet, then please, look straight forward at China.

Second, please think before you write.
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Goodfield, 14 Apr 2014 @ 2:20am

I'm from South Korea
The average house uses 90Mbps Upload/DOwnload connection. I live on campus, and although my campus has unusually high speed internet, it goes up to 240Mbps early in the morning.
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Goodfield, 14 Apr 2014 @ 2:23am

By the way...
It has been at least 8 years since the average household bandwidth reached 90Mbps Up/Down.
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Goodfield, 14 Apr 2014 @ 3:44am

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, Et Cetera
My uncle lives approx. 40 miles into farm country, yet he has fiber optic installed to his house. And half his neighbourhood does that.
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