The embarrassment of American broadband

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: April 21, 2009 2:54:58 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The embarrassment of American broadband

The embarrassment of American broadband
In the country that invented the Internet, why is Net access so bad?
by Jonathan Seff, Macworld.com

<http://www.macworld.com/article/140109/2009/04/broadband_embarrassment.html?lsrc=rss_main 
>

The Internet was born and and raised in the United States. Yet—thanks  
to slow speeds, inconsistent availability, and bandwidth caps—we now  
lag the rest of the world when it comes to broadband Net access.

According to Point Topic (a UK-based market-research company), there  
were 79 million broadband subscribers in the U.S. at the end of 2008— 
that’s 19 percent of the world’s total, second only to China’s 83  
million. (The report defines broadband as anything faster than  
256Kbps.) However, at roughly 26 percent, the U.S. ranked 22nd out of  
113 countries in terms of broadband penetration by population.

And in a separate study, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation  
and Development (OECD) recently estimated that (as of June 2008) 25  
percent of the U.S. population had broadband access, ranking the U.S.  
15th out of the OECD’s 30 member countries.

To be fair, the U.S. has a population of more than 300 million spread  
out over more than 3.5 million square miles. That’s a lot of people  
and a lot of space to cover. But it’s pathetic that roughly three- 
quarters of the people in this country don’t have broadband Internet  
service.

The speed and price of broadband in the U.S. is shameful as well. In  
my San Francisco neighborhood, the fastest available DSL service is  
3Mbps downstream and 512Kbps upstream for $25 a month. In my previous  
SF location, which was closer to a central office, I could get 6Mbps  
down and 768Kbps up. By comparison, Macworld contributor Kirk  
McElhearn, who lives in the French Alps, gets DSL with speeds of 6Mbps  
down and close to 1Mbps up for €30 a month (about $40); that includes  
free VoIP phone service within France. If he didn’t live in a semi- 
rural area, his service would be even faster.

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