Comments on: Is the U.S. really so terribly behind in broadband?

Critics say one way to find out is to change the way federal regulators measure broadband penetration rates. Some refinements may soon be on the way.

[john55440]

No Qwest DSL in Urban Area

In spite of the fact that I live in a highly populated urban/suburban area, I can't get Qwest DSL. Qwest could solve the problem by installing fiber-fed remote DSL stations, but they don't.

The end result - Comcast has a monopoly on high speed internet service here. So much for the "competitive marketplace".

[dr.pep]

Where Qwest is going

Qwest does not know what its long term business strategy yet. As a result, they are holding back capital expenditures. My neighborhood is a 15 year old establishment. Nonetheless, my DSL service quality was so bad that I am willing to pay Comcast twice the money for the better service. Qwest is in a real bind. They are losing wireline phone revenues without other products to compensate the losses. They are afraid of investing the DSL because it is too restricting for the future. They are reluctant to do wide scale fiber because it costs too much for the population density. I would bet that they will wind up selling pieces of its properties to other service providers. AT&T and Verizon may be interested in the metro areas and rural areas can be sold to smaller operators that specialized in rural areas.

[perfectblue97]

Unequal comparisions

When you get right down to it you simply cannot expect the US to be able to keep up with countries like Korea. America would have to spend many times more just to get the same level of coverage.

Korea has a very dense population and has extremely dense urban zones, while America has a much higher suburban population and a higher level of towns that are geographically dispersed.

This means that in Korea you can serve far more people with far less cable. You could supply a population of a million Koreans with the same infrastructure that it would take to supply 100,000 people in the US because in the US that infrastructure would need to cover not only people's homes but also the distance between those home, even the distance between 2 or three small towns.

It's not the difference between providing internet access to a rich and a not so rich country, its the difference between wiring up a high rise for web access, and wiring up an entire neighborhood.

America also has a lot of legacy infrastructure that needs to be upgrades, plus more local phone companies and ISPs who aren't so good at cooperating with other companies in order ot build a single unified network.

[amadensor]

Wires are not always the answer

Where I live, it can be miles (yes, plural) between houses, but I have 5Mbps using point to point 802.11 with a directional antenna pointing at a tower.

Thankfully, this is privately done, and profitable. No government intervention needed. I have a choice of three service providers even.

Different infrastructures make sense in different areas.

[volterwd]

They could compare major metro areas

That would be fair... and the US will surely still fall short.

[kgsbca]

then what about the dense US cities?

why don't they have higher speeds? It wouldn't require new copper or fiber, just new DSLAMs and new modems. And they don't cost a lot, the typical cost to upgrade to 15 Mbps DSL is probably under $150, which they would get back in a few months.

No, the US phone companies, who were dragged kicking and screaming into offering DSL by the now-defunct CLECs (which they drove out of business), just don't want to spend anything. Their managers, like the execs of most large US companies, don't understand technology and its' implications, and have no clue what to do. Kind of like our government.

[kgsbca]

Ms. Broache, please stop drinking the ATT kool-aid.

Only a lazy, out of touch phone company executive would equate 3 Mbps with "broadband". The phone companies want to get 30 years out of every investment, but communications technology becomes obsolete long before they want to depreciate it. the question about how far behind the US is in broadband is not the penetration, but what should be considered high speed access.

Our current pathetic internet infrastructure is preventing the deployment of new services. 3 Mbps is not fast enough, and it doesn't cost a lot more for phone companies to upgrade to 15mbps, they just don't want to spend the money.

OK, Verizon is making an attempt to move into the 21st century with FIOS, but it's just Verizon and it's not a very broad deployment. If the phone companies would stop worrying about how to make money on content that traverses their networks, and focus on selling the best possible communications, everyone would be better off.

[AnneBroache]

Not my label

Forgive me if I gave the wrong impression, but I'm not personally trying to define what constitutes "broadband." This article is merely designed to tell readers like you about the FCC's definitions--and, as the case may be, attempts at redefinitions in response to criticism. It's clearly a matter that continues to be ripe for discussion, as evidenced by these comments here.

[ferretboy88]

everyone else needs the faster service

Other countries need the faster service so they can steal all of the movies and music.

[ivorycruncher]

Uh, yeah, try considering the facts please

Um, apparently you have no idea what you're talking about. Phone companies can easily upgrade to 15Mbit? Dream on. I happen to work in the IT department for a mid-sized phone company, and have talked to some of the technicians at length about our infrastructure. Right now we are attempting to push up to 6Mbit DSL as well as digital TV services (including some basic HD content) over copper pairs, and we are having QoS issues with the TV streams because of it. A lot of the buried wires are not capable of handling such high bandwidth. The cost for digging up all the copper wire and start laying fiber optic cable everywhere is astronomical, so currently only new housing developments are receiving buried fiber.

It will happen eventually, but don't think it is economically feasible for telecoms to completely redesign their infrastructure every few years. Remember that due to cell phone and VoIP services becoming largely popular, we are losing phone customers left and right, which is definitely hurting the bottom line. Fortunately my company had the foresight to invest heavily in wholesale and transport services, along with residential DSL and digital TV services, which are growing faster than we are losing phone services.

Don't just assume that all telecom companies are evil and have tons of money and can't wait to cheat their customers out of even more. Obviously I am a bit biased, but at the same time, I'd like to think I offer some inside perspective. After all, I'm a consumer too, and I don't like to see people get burned by bad deals, high rates, and poor service. The fact remains that fiber and wireless services are the wave of the future, and until the telecoms can afford to invest in those new mediums, it will be difficult for broadband speeds to pick up.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the US has tons of rural areas that require significant infrastructure investment with very little return. Penetrating those areas doesn't really make good business sense in the grand scheme of things. Cities in countries like China and Japan have tons of people packed into small spaces, so laying in fiber to one distribution point can serve lots and lots of customers. In rural areas, one distribution point may only reach a handful of people, and not every one is guaranteed to subscribe to services from it. It really is a difficult situation, and for many areas, there simply is no good solution at this time. Unless mandated by law, no ISP is going to put tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into miles and miles of fiber installation for just a handful of customers. And honestly, I don't blame them.

[kgsbca]

Here are some facts

I'm guessing that since you work for a mid-sized phone company and not one of the three giants that you are not located in a major city, where the distances between the CO or remote cabinet and the subscribers is usually less than 6000 feet. In those cases, the cheap, 1999-era ADSL DSLAM can be swapped out with a 2005 model VDSL DSLAM, which will provide at least 15 mbps of downstream bandwidth (and some DSL equipment vendors claim they will work at those speeds or higher over longer wire lengths). the cost of this equipment is not exorbitant, and certainly affordable.

Rural areas, and some suburbs, are a different situation, and will require more investment. But so what? Fiber can be amortized over 20 or 30 years, as it will last that long (if done right), and the equipment that connects to it will stay economically viable for 10 years. DSL is a huge money-maker right now for phone companies, the cost to provision a user is just a few months worth of subscriber revenue. That means that the equipment pays for itself very quickly.

I don't think phone companies are evil (ok, maybe ATT is, they have no problems giving copies of emails or recording of phone calls to the government), they're just run by a bunch of stupid (or at least uninformed and shortsighted) executives. I think the smaller phone companies tend to be less so, because they don't have the economic power the large telcos do.

I don't understand why people defend their politicians so much - politicians are supposed to serve people, and the executives of giant publicly owned corporations are no different than politicians, other than they make a lot more money. Unfortunately, neither the public nor the private politicians are held accountable, and we end up with 2nd world service, whether it's phone calls (yeah, those mobile calls are cheap, but the bit rate must be very low, as the voice quality is horrible), internet access, health care, or anything else we depend on large institutions for. Why is everybody so willing to accept mediocrity, especially from people who get paid so much?

[vaporland]

Bell System = Universal Service

In the days before Judge Greene broke up the Bell System, their operating mantra was 'universal service'.

Say what you will about regulated monopolies, but their service was excellent. They were customer focused because complaints to the local State Corporation Commission were taken into account at rate evaluation time.

It was a given fact that city dwellers subsidized the universal service of the rural areas. This was the idea of universal service - the same standard of service for everyone.

The Bell System was broken up, ironically enough, so that AT&T could compete in the business of selling computers without subsidizing it from revenue earned by the regulated monopoly.

NCR was acquired in September 1991 by AT&T for $7.4 billion. After losing billions, NCR was spun off from AT&T in January 1997 for $3.9 billion - about half of what AT&T paid for it in 1991.

As the Bell System has been slowly reassembled as the "New AT&T", the standards of quality and service have dramatically diminished.

If the FCC wants to begin to move telcos back towards the concept of universal service, and if it would bring back accountability, then I am all for it.

[sjsobol]

Facts?

I'll agree with some of what you said. I am aware that telcos are losing tons of landline revenue. I also agree that major infrastructure changes take a lot of time to implement.

As far as not being evil? Ha. Telcos DO only exist to screw over their customers. Ask me about my experiences with SBC (former Ohio Bell/Ameritech) DSL in 2002. They (accidentally) put a bridge tap on my DSL line which generated so much noise I couldn't even make a phone call. Obviously, the DSL was unusable too. Took 2 months to get it fixed and a complaint filed with the Ohio Public Utilities commission to get the DSL and POTS charges credited back to my account. They refused to credit more than $5 because I had dialtone (I DID, technically, but the lines were still unusable).

And I was lucky. The only reason PUCO could even do anything was because the complaint involved telephone service; DSL is not regulated in Ohio.

During this time, I had an SBC employee tell me flat-out that it seemed like the company would rather ignore problems until complaints were filed, rather than fix them. I believe it. Many consumers have no idea that they have rights and can get problems fixed.

And remember, all of the phone companies wanted to sit on their 50-year-old physical plant, just making more and more money off the copper phone lines that they didn't need to spend tons of bucks on, rather than roll out new services.

Don't tell me the phone companies aren't evil.

[PhilxBefore]

TYPO

"But do the latest statistics.."

Should be DUE not DO.

[PhilxBefore]

Disregard

Thought it was a statement not a question.

[cshsieh]

wiring?

try WiMAX

[bobcode]

I want slower

Broadband is fast enough I'd buy something cheaper (and slower) to save money. Few sites can saturate 8Mbps. Apple.com/trailers can if Comcast can handle it.

[groink_hi]

Valid point actually...

Most people who subscribe to dial-up do it by choice. Because a high percentage of active C-Net readers are tech savvy, you would assume based on the comments that the whole world downloads crap loads of videos and Flash movies everyday.

But no, that is not the case for most Internet users. The most popular communication services include IM, email and social networks. None of these services require the 15Mbps bandwidth. Matter of fact, IM and email can be done just fine at 56kbps.

IMHO, bandwidth is like cheap RAM and primary storage for PCs. Because RAM and hard disk are cheap, it allows software developers get away with writing bloated software, instead of working on optimizing their code. Same thing with bandwidth - many of these web sites "assume" you have the bandwidth and pack its sites with Flash videos and large-sized images. I think the bloatedness of these web sites is due to a chip on the web designer's shoulders. All it demonstrates is expertise in Flash but fail at good static web page design. If web pages were designed with good design concepts and are small in size, you could surf these sites with any bandwidth you have.

Instead of focusing only on the pipe, focus on better optimization of the technologies that make up the content.

[ewelch]

Oh please

Like the Bush administration could possibly be trusted to tell the
truth about their dismal efforts - especially by their lapdogs at
the FCC.

It's like the Rhinoceros party in Canada. They proposed to
devalue gold to $1 an ounce and then once everyone buys a
bunch, they're re-value it to the previous price. Thus making
everyone rich. Or doing away with unemployment in Canada by
closing the government office "Statistics Canada."

Only the Bush Administration isn't a parody of a political party
(somewhat).