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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 12 - 27 Jul 2010 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| | | American Broadband Speeds Are Second Rate
In Japan, broadband service is available at speeds up to 150 Mbps for only $60 a month. In the U.S., the fastest commercially available broadband is 50 Mbps and it costs $90-150 a month. In London, 8 Mbps speed can be bought for $9 dollars a month, whereas in New York 1 Mbps speed costs over twice that much. The average broadband speed in Japan is 16.7 Mbps. The average in Sweden was 8.8 Mbps. The average in the United States was a relatively snail-paced 5.2 Mbps.
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<
< | So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an large geographic area like U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia. | >
> | So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an large geographic area like U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia. | | | American Broadband Is A Ripoff
Even more troublesome than our lack of bandwidth speed, however, is the price we pay for our second rate bandwidth. As seen in the section above, a small portion of the difference can be explained by the population density problem the United States faces. However, the true culprit for the United States’ overpriced bandwidth is, of course, the lack of competition that exists in the United States as opposed to Europe. | | | The results of this abandonment are exactly as one might expect. While Europe experienced a decline in average revenue per broadband connection between 2006 and 2007, the average revenue per connection in the United States continued to increase. This increase was directly the result of the typical duopoly in the United States comprised of the local cable operators and local phone operators. Such existence of a duopoly allows for minimal competition in the United States and places American broadband companies in a position that makes it far easier to maintain or increase prices than it is for their European counterparts. | |
>
> | This is not a
sufficient explanation. You don't have the technology right
underneath (no one can provide 50Mbps using DSL, for example, and you
don't explain the difference between asymmetric and symmetric
bandwidth, which is crucial) and your explanation of the regulatory
and market situations is too glancing to provide real insight.
| | | The Potential of an Accessible and Affordable Pipeline
Ultimately, unless the United States government makes a massive overhaul of the current telecommunications regulation infrastructure, the existing duopolies will continue to crush any sense of actual competition within the United States. Until very recently, courts have been all too willing to continue this regime of dominance. In April 2010, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals held that federal regulators power was limited and that Comcast was free to block or slow users' access to certain websites and possibly even charge users to get content more quickly from bandwidth intensive sites such as YouTube? . However, even more recently, the FCC has responded by outlining an internet regulatory scheme that splits access from content, a move that helps push the U.S. towards the mythical "network neutrality" (for those who believe in such a thing). While this is a small step for a broken system that will require many steps to fix, it is at least a step in the right direction. | |
>
> | This is not a coherent
explanation of what's going on. Not having explained why "network
neutrality" is mythical, you haven't explained what the FCC's
regulatory outlook now actually is. You didn't identify the
preceding duopoly theory correctly, or explain what limitations the
FCC faces in moving away from it. Your exposition of European
regulatory structure is too limited to be more than fanciful, and you
don't explain Korean or Japanese regulatory or market settings at
all. So we've got some observations about end results, some
confusion about technology, some incommensurable observations on
regulatory and market situations in the US, Europe, Korea and Japan,
with hardly any real information about the latter two societies, and
a generally accurate tone of pessimism overall.
Part of the difficulty here is that even a sophisticated explanation
that was based entirely on studying and thinking about the bandwidth
industries would be missing important context. That the US is a
society of private wealth and public squalor is hardly news, at least
since the publication of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society
in 1958. American infrastructure in all areas including
transportation, energy production, education, health care, and
telecommunications is poor compared to that in less rich and powerful
societies. The bandwidth revolution is happening at a time when that
discrepancy is accelerating.
Bandwidth distribution is inefficient under conditions of social
inequality, like health care distribution. Using public resources to
defeat inequality is not easy to arrange in an aristocracy, which the
US has become. Trying to explain what is happening without reference
to the larger context is hardly impossible: most social policy
discussion in the US proceeds without any reference to the change in
social systems spurred by rising economic inequality. But if you
want to be clear about something complex in 1,000 words, using the
large context to align the intermediate concepts and the evidentiary
details helps.
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 11 - 10 May 2010 - Main.EdwardBontkowski
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< | WORK IN PROGRESS | >
> | | | | The United States: First World Country, Third World Broadband | | |
The Potential of an Accessible and Affordable Pipeline | |
<
< | Ultimately, unless the United States government makes a massive overhaul of the current telecommunications regulation infrastructure, the existing duopolies will continue to crush any sense of actual competition within the United States. We will continue to fall even further behind to Europe and Asia with respect to speed, cost, and penetration. The effect that a regulation overhaul would have is enormous. Currently in the United States, over 10 million homes remain unserved, another 50 million are able to subscribe but choose not to because of cost concerns or speed concerns, and the 50 million that are subscribed are stuck with only duopoly choices. With proper regulation, affordable internet connections could reach millions of children, resulting in millions of brains, previously on the other side of the digital divide, to be reached and finally be given one of the greatest learning tools on the planet. Anarchistic distribution channels would become far more efficient and numerous. Broadband penetration would become so high that ideas like high speed wireless networks built solely from personal Wi-Fi connections could become a reality and rid us of the need for giant telecommunication companies to provide our cell phone service.
Once we make the internet affordable (and hopefully eventually free) for every person in the United States, the walls of capitalism will begin to crumble and the changes we have discussed in class will come like a freight train. It all starts with making the pipeline free and accessible. | >
> | Ultimately, unless the United States government makes a massive overhaul of the current telecommunications regulation infrastructure, the existing duopolies will continue to crush any sense of actual competition within the United States. Until very recently, courts have been all too willing to continue this regime of dominance. In April 2010, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals held that federal regulators power was limited and that Comcast was free to block or slow users' access to certain websites and possibly even charge users to get content more quickly from bandwidth intensive sites such as YouTube? . However, even more recently, the FCC has responded by outlining an internet regulatory scheme that splits access from content, a move that helps push the U.S. towards the mythical "network neutrality" (for those who believe in such a thing). While this is a small step for a broken system that will require many steps to fix, it is at least a step in the right direction. |
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 10 - 20 Jan 2010 - Main.EdwardBontkowski
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>
> | WORK IN PROGRESS | | | The United States: First World Country, Third World Broadband | | | American Broadband Speeds Are Second Rate
In Japan, broadband service is available at speeds up to 150 Mbps for only $60 a month. In the U.S., the fastest commercially available broadband is 50 Mbps and it costs $90-150 a month. In London, 8 Mbps speed can be bought for $9 dollars a month, whereas in New York 1 Mbps speed costs over twice that much. The average broadband speed in Japan is 16.7 Mbps. The average in Sweden was 8.8 Mbps. The average in the United States was a relatively snail-paced 5.2 Mbps.
| |
<
< | So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an incredibly large geographic area like U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen incredibly capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia. | >
> | So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an large geographic area like U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia. | | | | |
<
< |
- You are overusing the word "incredibly." In fact, you shouldn't need at it all. Ever.
| | | American Broadband Is A Ripoff
Even more troublesome than our lack of bandwidth speed, however, is the price we pay for our second rate bandwidth. As seen in the section above, a small portion of the difference can be explained by the population density problem the United States faces. However, the true culprit for the United States’ overpriced bandwidth is, of course, the lack of competition that exists in the United States as opposed to Europe. | | | Ultimately, unless the United States government makes a massive overhaul of the current telecommunications regulation infrastructure, the existing duopolies will continue to crush any sense of actual competition within the United States. We will continue to fall even further behind to Europe and Asia with respect to speed, cost, and penetration. The effect that a regulation overhaul would have is enormous. Currently in the United States, over 10 million homes remain unserved, another 50 million are able to subscribe but choose not to because of cost concerns or speed concerns, and the 50 million that are subscribed are stuck with only duopoly choices. With proper regulation, affordable internet connections could reach millions of children, resulting in millions of brains, previously on the other side of the digital divide, to be reached and finally be given one of the greatest learning tools on the planet. Anarchistic distribution channels would become far more efficient and numerous. Broadband penetration would become so high that ideas like high speed wireless networks built solely from personal Wi-Fi connections could become a reality and rid us of the need for giant telecommunication companies to provide our cell phone service.
Once we make the internet affordable (and hopefully eventually free) for every person in the United States, the walls of capitalism will begin to crumble and the changes we have discussed in class will come like a freight train. It all starts with making the pipeline free and accessible. | |
<
< |
- Well, no. Actually, it has to end there. Given the hold of the oligopolists on US political outcomes, the impoverishment of the US public sphere as a result of the collapse of 2008, the alliance of right-wing populism with concentrated media, and a number of other systemic and contingent factors, there is no reason to expect the political realignment of forces necessary to create a social-welfare priority in the provision of bandwidth. Like health care, this is an area in which Americans are going to be lied to by everybody about whether their deal is good or not, and they're going to be shown too little of the non-US possibilities to get the wrong idea.
- One group of people has decided to make government at least responsible for inhibiting unreasonably anticompetitive substantive network operation, which is what "network neutrality" turns out to mean once you get rid of all the ignorance and bullshit. Another is continuing to work at the replacement of unfree technology by free technology in the operational structures of everything, with the intention of building first the technical followed by the political platform for a movement in the direction of free bandwidth along with other benefits of a social-welfare priority in the development of digital technology. (This eventually yields a program more or less like the one presented in The dotCommunist Manifesto.) Other positions, too, have their occupants, and the political interrelations are too complicated to set out in a paragraph, but the important point is that I don't know anyone working for these outcomes who thinks the telecomm oligopolists are going to implode peacefully to make way for socialism, or that they can be beaten using our existing resources, or that they're only a problem in the US.
- I think a revision that went beyond where I went in class, and which avoided mere speculative triumphalism about how all the prisons are going to burst and turn into clouds of yellow butterflies would be very helpful.
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 9 - 17 Jan 2010 - Main.EbenMoglen
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<
< | READY FOR REVIEW. COMMENTS WELCOMED! | >
> | | | | The United States: First World Country, Third World Broadband | | |
American Broadband Speeds Are Second Rate | |
<
< | In Japan, broadband service is available at speeds up to 150 Mbps for only $60 a month. In the U.S., the fastest commercially available broadband is 50 Mbps and it costs $90-150 a month. In London, 8 Mbps speed can be bought for $9 dollars a month, whereas in New York 1 Mbps speed costs over twice that much. The average broadband speed in Japan is 16.7 Mbps. The average in Sweden was 8.8 Mbps. The average in the United States was a relatively snail-paced 5.2 Mbps. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/the-broadband-gap-why-is-theirs-faster/ | >
> | In Japan, broadband service is available at speeds up to 150 Mbps for only $60 a month. In the U.S., the fastest commercially available broadband is 50 Mbps and it costs $90-150 a month. In London, 8 Mbps speed can be bought for $9 dollars a month, whereas in New York 1 Mbps speed costs over twice that much. The average broadband speed in Japan is 16.7 Mbps. The average in Sweden was 8.8 Mbps. The average in the United States was a relatively snail-paced 5.2 Mbps. | | |
So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an incredibly large geographic area like U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen incredibly capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia. | |
>
> |
- You are overusing the word "incredibly." In fact, you shouldn't need at it all. Ever.
| | | American Broadband Is A Ripoff
Even more troublesome than our lack of bandwidth speed, however, is the price we pay for our second rate bandwidth. As seen in the section above, a small portion of the difference can be explained by the population density problem the United States faces. However, the true culprit for the United States’ overpriced bandwidth is, of course, the lack of competition that exists in the United States as opposed to Europe. | | | Ultimately, unless the United States government makes a massive overhaul of the current telecommunications regulation infrastructure, the existing duopolies will continue to crush any sense of actual competition within the United States. We will continue to fall even further behind to Europe and Asia with respect to speed, cost, and penetration. The effect that a regulation overhaul would have is enormous. Currently in the United States, over 10 million homes remain unserved, another 50 million are able to subscribe but choose not to because of cost concerns or speed concerns, and the 50 million that are subscribed are stuck with only duopoly choices. With proper regulation, affordable internet connections could reach millions of children, resulting in millions of brains, previously on the other side of the digital divide, to be reached and finally be given one of the greatest learning tools on the planet. Anarchistic distribution channels would become far more efficient and numerous. Broadband penetration would become so high that ideas like high speed wireless networks built solely from personal Wi-Fi connections could become a reality and rid us of the need for giant telecommunication companies to provide our cell phone service.
Once we make the internet affordable (and hopefully eventually free) for every person in the United States, the walls of capitalism will begin to crumble and the changes we have discussed in class will come like a freight train. It all starts with making the pipeline free and accessible. | |
<
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< | # * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, EdwardBontkowski
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> |
- Well, no. Actually, it has to end there. Given the hold of the oligopolists on US political outcomes, the impoverishment of the US public sphere as a result of the collapse of 2008, the alliance of right-wing populism with concentrated media, and a number of other systemic and contingent factors, there is no reason to expect the political realignment of forces necessary to create a social-welfare priority in the provision of bandwidth. Like health care, this is an area in which Americans are going to be lied to by everybody about whether their deal is good or not, and they're going to be shown too little of the non-US possibilities to get the wrong idea.
- One group of people has decided to make government at least responsible for inhibiting unreasonably anticompetitive substantive network operation, which is what "network neutrality" turns out to mean once you get rid of all the ignorance and bullshit. Another is continuing to work at the replacement of unfree technology by free technology in the operational structures of everything, with the intention of building first the technical followed by the political platform for a movement in the direction of free bandwidth along with other benefits of a social-welfare priority in the development of digital technology. (This eventually yields a program more or less like the one presented in The dotCommunist Manifesto.) Other positions, too, have their occupants, and the political interrelations are too complicated to set out in a paragraph, but the important point is that I don't know anyone working for these outcomes who thinks the telecomm oligopolists are going to implode peacefully to make way for socialism, or that they can be beaten using our existing resources, or that they're only a problem in the US.
- I think a revision that went beyond where I went in class, and which avoided mere speculative triumphalism about how all the prisons are going to burst and turn into clouds of yellow butterflies would be very helpful.
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 8 - 15 Jan 2010 - Main.EdwardBontkowski
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READY FOR REVIEW. COMMENTS WELCOMED! | | | A Disturbing Revelation
Back when I was in middle school, I was an avid online video game player, playing mostly MMORPG’s and first-person shooters. Playing online games on a dial-up connection was mostly an exercise in futility. However, in 1998 cable broadband internet became available in our neighborhood. After a few years with cable internet, I started to notice something rather disturbing. My bandwidth speeds weren’t getting any faster, yet the bandwidth speeds of online friends (that I had met through gaming) from Europe (especially Scandinavian countries) and Korea had home access to bandwidth speeds that put mine to shame. And to top it all off, they were paying a fraction of what I was paying. | |
<
< | When I attended college in 2003, I finally had access to similar speed broadband that my European and Korean friends had been having delivered to their homes for the past 2 years. In an ironic twist of fate, though, I learned that my university was imposing a cumulative upload and download limit of a paltry 500MB per day. In any case, I was in the same situation I was in before—bandwidth that significantly lagged behind my European and Asian friends. | >
> | When I attended college in 2003, I finally had access to similar speed broadband that my European and Korean friends had been having delivered to their homes for the past 2 years. In an ironic twist of fate, though, I learned that my university was imposing a cumulative upload and download limit of a paltry 500MB per day (they said that that was all the bandwidth they could provide, but I'm pretty sure it was music industry reps pressuring them). In any case, I was in the same situation I was in before—bandwidth that significantly lagged behind my European and Asian friends. | | |
American Broadband Speeds Are Second Rate |
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 7 - 03 Dec 2009 - Main.EdwardBontkowski
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READY FOR REVIEW. COMMENTS WELCOMED! | | | The Potential of an Accessible and Affordable Pipeline
Ultimately, unless the United States government makes a massive overhaul of the current telecommunications regulation infrastructure, the existing duopolies will continue to crush any sense of actual competition within the United States. We will continue to fall even further behind to Europe and Asia with respect to speed, cost, and penetration. The effect that a regulation overhaul would have is enormous. Currently in the United States, over 10 million homes remain unserved, another 50 million are able to subscribe but choose not to because of cost concerns or speed concerns, and the 50 million that are subscribed are stuck with only duopoly choices. With proper regulation, affordable internet connections could reach millions of children, resulting in millions of brains, previously on the other side of the digital divide, to be reached and finally be given one of the greatest learning tools on the planet. Anarchistic distribution channels would become far more efficient and numerous. Broadband penetration would become so high that ideas like high speed wireless networks built solely from personal Wi-Fi connections could become a reality and rid us of the need for giant telecommunication companies to provide our cell phone service. | |
<
< | Once we make the internet affordable (and hopefully eventually free) to every person in the United States, the walls of capitalism will begin to crumble and the changes we have discussed in class will come like a freight train. It all starts with making the pipeline free and accessible. | >
> | Once we make the internet affordable (and hopefully eventually free) for every person in the United States, the walls of capitalism will begin to crumble and the changes we have discussed in class will come like a freight train. It all starts with making the pipeline free and accessible. | | |
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 6 - 03 Dec 2009 - Main.EdwardBontkowski
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< | NOT FINISHED YET. NOT READY FOR REVIEW | >
> | READY FOR REVIEW. COMMENTS WELCOMED! | | | The United States: First World Country, Third World Broadband
-- By EdwardBontkowski - 12 Nov 2009
A Disturbing Revelation | |
<
< | Back when I was in middle school, I was an avid online video game player, playing mostly MMORPG’s and first-person shooters. Playing online games on a dial-up connection was mostly an exercise in futility, but one day in early 1998, I came across a PC magazine article describing something called “high-speed internet”, available via either digital subscriber line or through a cable line. It claimed that with high-speed internet you could download entire movies within minutes, play online games with sub-250ms pings, and download web pages almost instantly. After reading the article, I quickly became excited and started searching online to see if such bandwidth capabilities were available in my area. Sure enough, there was a company called “@home” (which eventually was consumed by Comcast) that was planning to bring cable internet to my area within a few months. While the speeds never came even close to what was advertised, it was definitely an amazing upgrade over dial-up. | >
> | Back when I was in middle school, I was an avid online video game player, playing mostly MMORPG’s and first-person shooters. Playing online games on a dial-up connection was mostly an exercise in futility. However, in 1998 cable broadband internet became available in our neighborhood. After a few years with cable internet, I started to notice something rather disturbing. My bandwidth speeds weren’t getting any faster, yet the bandwidth speeds of online friends (that I had met through gaming) from Europe (especially Scandinavian countries) and Korea had home access to bandwidth speeds that put mine to shame. And to top it all off, they were paying a fraction of what I was paying. | | | | |
<
< | After a few years with cable internet, however, I started to notice rather disturbing. My bandwidth speeds weren’t getting any faster, yet the bandwidth speeds of online friends (that I had met through gaming) from Europe (especially Scandinavian countries) and Korea had home access to bandwidth speeds that put mine to shame. And to top it all off, they were paying a fraction of what I was paying. | >
> | When I attended college in 2003, I finally had access to similar speed broadband that my European and Korean friends had been having delivered to their homes for the past 2 years. In an ironic twist of fate, though, I learned that my university was imposing a cumulative upload and download limit of a paltry 500MB per day. In any case, I was in the same situation I was in before—bandwidth that significantly lagged behind my European and Asian friends. | | | | |
<
< | When I attended the University of Illinois in 2003, I finally had access to similar speed broadband that my European and Korean friends had been having delivered to their homes for the past 2 years. In an ironic twist of fate, though, I learned that the university was imposing a cumulative upload and download limit of a paltry 500MB per day (which was later generously upgraded to a whopping 750MB at the start of my junior year). I suspected that this limitation was brought about by a good deal of lobbying by the recording industries towards the university, as well as the ISP providing the university’s bandwidth. This suspicion was confirmed when I learned that the university and their ISP traced the IP addresses of students who were “illegally” downloading media, and then shared these IP addresses with various recording industries who then threatened to take legal action against the students who had been caught. In any case, I was in the same situation I was in before—bandwidth that significantly lagged behind my European and Asian friends. | | | American Broadband Speeds Are Second Rate | |
<
< | In Japan, broadband service is available at speeds up to 150 Mbps for only $60 a month. In the U.S., the fastest commercially available broadband is 50 Mbps and it costs $90-150 a month. In London, 8 Mbps speed can be bought for $9 dollars a month, whereas in New York 1 Mbps speed costs over twice that much. The average broadband speed in Japan is 16.7 Mbps. The average in Sweden was 8.8 Mbps. The average in the United States was a relatively snail-paced 5.2 Mbps. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/the-broadband-gap-why-is-theirs-faster/ | >
> | In Japan, broadband service is available at speeds up to 150 Mbps for only $60 a month. In the U.S., the fastest commercially available broadband is 50 Mbps and it costs $90-150 a month. In London, 8 Mbps speed can be bought for $9 dollars a month, whereas in New York 1 Mbps speed costs over twice that much. The average broadband speed in Japan is 16.7 Mbps. The average in Sweden was 8.8 Mbps. The average in the United States was a relatively snail-paced 5.2 Mbps. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/the-broadband-gap-why-is-theirs-faster/ | | |
So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an incredibly large geographic area like U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen incredibly capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia.
American Broadband Is A Ripoff | |
>
> | Even more troublesome than our lack of bandwidth speed, however, is the price we pay for our second rate bandwidth. As seen in the section above, a small portion of the difference can be explained by the population density problem the United States faces. However, the true culprit for the United States’ overpriced bandwidth is, of course, the lack of competition that exists in the United States as opposed to Europe.
While the majority of broadband in Europe is provided via DSL which are owned by telephone monopolies, various European countries have essentially forced competition by requiring these monopolies to share lines and provide local loop unbundling. Ironically enough, this is very similar to the type of regulation structure seemingly intended by the United States Telecommunications Act of 1996, but which never came to fruition because of certain rules that never really allowed competitive wholesale prices to exist in the first place. While Europe diligently maintained the regulation of these telecoms, the United States quickly abandoned any true intentions of competition within the broadband market.
The results of this abandonment are exactly as one might expect. While Europe experienced a decline in average revenue per broadband connection between 2006 and 2007, the average revenue per connection in the United States continued to increase. This increase was directly the result of the typical duopoly in the United States comprised of the local cable operators and local phone operators. Such existence of a duopoly allows for minimal competition in the United States and places American broadband companies in a position that makes it far easier to maintain or increase prices than it is for their European counterparts. | | | | |
<
< | | | | | |
>
> | The Potential of an Accessible and Affordable Pipeline
Ultimately, unless the United States government makes a massive overhaul of the current telecommunications regulation infrastructure, the existing duopolies will continue to crush any sense of actual competition within the United States. We will continue to fall even further behind to Europe and Asia with respect to speed, cost, and penetration. The effect that a regulation overhaul would have is enormous. Currently in the United States, over 10 million homes remain unserved, another 50 million are able to subscribe but choose not to because of cost concerns or speed concerns, and the 50 million that are subscribed are stuck with only duopoly choices. With proper regulation, affordable internet connections could reach millions of children, resulting in millions of brains, previously on the other side of the digital divide, to be reached and finally be given one of the greatest learning tools on the planet. Anarchistic distribution channels would become far more efficient and numerous. Broadband penetration would become so high that ideas like high speed wireless networks built solely from personal Wi-Fi connections could become a reality and rid us of the need for giant telecommunication companies to provide our cell phone service. | | | | |
>
> | Once we make the internet affordable (and hopefully eventually free) to every person in the United States, the walls of capitalism will begin to crumble and the changes we have discussed in class will come like a freight train. It all starts with making the pipeline free and accessible. | | |
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<
< | You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" on the next line: | | | # * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, EdwardBontkowski | |
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 5 - 19 Nov 2009 - Main.EdwardBontkowski
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NOT FINISHED YET. NOT READY FOR REVIEW | | | A Disturbing Revelation
Back when I was in middle school, I was an avid online video game player, playing mostly MMORPG’s and first-person shooters. Playing online games on a dial-up connection was mostly an exercise in futility, but one day in early 1998, I came across a PC magazine article describing something called “high-speed internet”, available via either digital subscriber line or through a cable line. It claimed that with high-speed internet you could download entire movies within minutes, play online games with sub-250ms pings, and download web pages almost instantly. After reading the article, I quickly became excited and started searching online to see if such bandwidth capabilities were available in my area. Sure enough, there was a company called “@home” (which eventually was consumed by Comcast) that was planning to bring cable internet to my area within a few months. While the speeds never came even close to what was advertised, it was definitely an amazing upgrade over dial-up. | |
<
< | After a few years with cable internet, however, I started to notice something rather disturbing. My bandwidth speeds weren’t getting any faster, yet the bandwidth speeds of online friends (that I had met through gaming) from Europe (especially Scandinavian countries) and Korea had home access to bandwidth speeds that put mine to shame. And to top it all off, they were paying a fraction of what I was paying. | >
> | After a few years with cable internet, however, I started to notice rather disturbing. My bandwidth speeds weren’t getting any faster, yet the bandwidth speeds of online friends (that I had met through gaming) from Europe (especially Scandinavian countries) and Korea had home access to bandwidth speeds that put mine to shame. And to top it all off, they were paying a fraction of what I was paying. | | | When I attended the University of Illinois in 2003, I finally had access to similar speed broadband that my European and Korean friends had been having delivered to their homes for the past 2 years. In an ironic twist of fate, though, I learned that the university was imposing a cumulative upload and download limit of a paltry 500MB per day (which was later generously upgraded to a whopping 750MB at the start of my junior year). I suspected that this limitation was brought about by a good deal of lobbying by the recording industries towards the university, as well as the ISP providing the university’s bandwidth. This suspicion was confirmed when I learned that the university and their ISP traced the IP addresses of students who were “illegally” downloading media, and then shared these IP addresses with various recording industries who then threatened to take legal action against the students who had been caught. In any case, I was in the same situation I was in before—bandwidth that significantly lagged behind my European and Asian friends.
American Broadband Speeds Are Second Rate
In Japan, broadband service is available at speeds up to 150 Mbps for only $60 a month. In the U.S., the fastest commercially available broadband is 50 Mbps and it costs $90-150 a month. In London, 8 Mbps speed can be bought for $9 dollars a month, whereas in New York 1 Mbps speed costs over twice that much. The average broadband speed in Japan is 16.7 Mbps. The average in Sweden was 8.8 Mbps. The average in the United States was a relatively snail-paced 5.2 Mbps. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/the-broadband-gap-why-is-theirs-faster/
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<
< | So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an incredibly large geographic area like the U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen incredibly capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia. Until our government chooses to appropriately regulate the telecommunications industry, the United States will find itself perpetually behind Europe and Asia with respect to broadband speed and overall penetration. | >
> | So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an incredibly large geographic area like U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen incredibly capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia. | | |
American Broadband Is A Ripoff |
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 4 - 19 Nov 2009 - Main.EdwardBontkowski
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
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NOT FINISHED YET. NOT READY FOR REVIEW | | | A Disturbing Revelation
Back when I was in middle school, I was an avid online video game player, playing mostly MMORPG’s and first-person shooters. Playing online games on a dial-up connection was mostly an exercise in futility, but one day in early 1998, I came across a PC magazine article describing something called “high-speed internet”, available via either digital subscriber line or through a cable line. It claimed that with high-speed internet you could download entire movies within minutes, play online games with sub-250ms pings, and download web pages almost instantly. After reading the article, I quickly became excited and started searching online to see if such bandwidth capabilities were available in my area. Sure enough, there was a company called “@home” (which eventually was consumed by Comcast) that was planning to bring cable internet to my area within a few months. While the speeds never came even close to what was advertised, it was definitely an amazing upgrade over dial-up. | |
<
< | After a few years with cable internet, however, I started to notice rather disturbing. My bandwidth speeds weren’t getting any faster, yet the bandwidth speeds of online friends (that I had met through gaming) from Europe (especially Scandinavian countries) and Korea had home access to bandwidth speeds that put mine to shame. And to top it all off, they were paying a fraction of what I was paying. | >
> | After a few years with cable internet, however, I started to notice something rather disturbing. My bandwidth speeds weren’t getting any faster, yet the bandwidth speeds of online friends (that I had met through gaming) from Europe (especially Scandinavian countries) and Korea had home access to bandwidth speeds that put mine to shame. And to top it all off, they were paying a fraction of what I was paying. | | | When I attended the University of Illinois in 2003, I finally had access to similar speed broadband that my European and Korean friends had been having delivered to their homes for the past 2 years. In an ironic twist of fate, though, I learned that the university was imposing a cumulative upload and download limit of a paltry 500MB per day (which was later generously upgraded to a whopping 750MB at the start of my junior year). I suspected that this limitation was brought about by a good deal of lobbying by the recording industries towards the university, as well as the ISP providing the university’s bandwidth. This suspicion was confirmed when I learned that the university and their ISP traced the IP addresses of students who were “illegally” downloading media, and then shared these IP addresses with various recording industries who then threatened to take legal action against the students who had been caught. In any case, I was in the same situation I was in before—bandwidth that significantly lagged behind my European and Asian friends.
American Broadband Speeds Are Second Rate
In Japan, broadband service is available at speeds up to 150 Mbps for only $60 a month. In the U.S., the fastest commercially available broadband is 50 Mbps and it costs $90-150 a month. In London, 8 Mbps speed can be bought for $9 dollars a month, whereas in New York 1 Mbps speed costs over twice that much. The average broadband speed in Japan is 16.7 Mbps. The average in Sweden was 8.8 Mbps. The average in the United States was a relatively snail-paced 5.2 Mbps. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/the-broadband-gap-why-is-theirs-faster/
| |
<
< | So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an incredibly large geographic area like U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen incredibly capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia. Until our government chooses to appropriately regulate the telecommunications industry, the United States will find itself perpetually behind Europe and Asia with respect to broadband speed and overall penetration. | >
> | So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an incredibly large geographic area like the U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen incredibly capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia. Until our government chooses to appropriately regulate the telecommunications industry, the United States will find itself perpetually behind Europe and Asia with respect to broadband speed and overall penetration. | | |
American Broadband Is A Ripoff |
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 3 - 19 Nov 2009 - Main.EdwardBontkowski
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
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<
< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | >
> | NOT FINISHED YET. NOT READY FOR REVIEW | | | The United States: First World Country, Third World Broadband
-- By EdwardBontkowski - 12 Nov 2009 | |
<
< | Section I
Subsection A
Subsub 1
Subsection B
Subsub 1 | >
> | A Disturbing Revelation
Back when I was in middle school, I was an avid online video game player, playing mostly MMORPG’s and first-person shooters. Playing online games on a dial-up connection was mostly an exercise in futility, but one day in early 1998, I came across a PC magazine article describing something called “high-speed internet”, available via either digital subscriber line or through a cable line. It claimed that with high-speed internet you could download entire movies within minutes, play online games with sub-250ms pings, and download web pages almost instantly. After reading the article, I quickly became excited and started searching online to see if such bandwidth capabilities were available in my area. Sure enough, there was a company called “@home” (which eventually was consumed by Comcast) that was planning to bring cable internet to my area within a few months. While the speeds never came even close to what was advertised, it was definitely an amazing upgrade over dial-up. | | | | |
>
> | After a few years with cable internet, however, I started to notice rather disturbing. My bandwidth speeds weren’t getting any faster, yet the bandwidth speeds of online friends (that I had met through gaming) from Europe (especially Scandinavian countries) and Korea had home access to bandwidth speeds that put mine to shame. And to top it all off, they were paying a fraction of what I was paying. | | | | |
<
< | Subsub 2 | >
> | When I attended the University of Illinois in 2003, I finally had access to similar speed broadband that my European and Korean friends had been having delivered to their homes for the past 2 years. In an ironic twist of fate, though, I learned that the university was imposing a cumulative upload and download limit of a paltry 500MB per day (which was later generously upgraded to a whopping 750MB at the start of my junior year). I suspected that this limitation was brought about by a good deal of lobbying by the recording industries towards the university, as well as the ISP providing the university’s bandwidth. This suspicion was confirmed when I learned that the university and their ISP traced the IP addresses of students who were “illegally” downloading media, and then shared these IP addresses with various recording industries who then threatened to take legal action against the students who had been caught. In any case, I was in the same situation I was in before—bandwidth that significantly lagged behind my European and Asian friends. | | | | |
>
> | American Broadband Speeds Are Second Rate
In Japan, broadband service is available at speeds up to 150 Mbps for only $60 a month. In the U.S., the fastest commercially available broadband is 50 Mbps and it costs $90-150 a month. In London, 8 Mbps speed can be bought for $9 dollars a month, whereas in New York 1 Mbps speed costs over twice that much. The average broadband speed in Japan is 16.7 Mbps. The average in Sweden was 8.8 Mbps. The average in the United States was a relatively snail-paced 5.2 Mbps. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/the-broadband-gap-why-is-theirs-faster/ | | | | |
>
> | So how is it that the United States, a country once at the forefront of the high-speed internet movement, has fallen so far behind the rest of the world? For sure, one significant factor that explains the speed disparity is population density. With over half of Korea’s population living in incredibly dense apartment complexes, Korean ISPs do not have to provide connections to an incredibly large geographic area like U.S. ISPs have to. However, as big of a factor as population density may be, it does not account for the lack of Japanese-equivalent speeds in population dense areas of the United States such as New York City. The real reason we don’t have such types of speed is because our government is unwilling to engage in the amount of public investment towards broadband infrastructure that European countries have engaged in. Instead, the government has chosen incredibly capitalistic regulatory policies (purportedly to create “open competition” which have definitely failed in that respect) which result in diseconomies of scale and disincentives to create infrastructures similar to those that exist in Europe and Asia. Until our government chooses to appropriately regulate the telecommunications industry, the United States will find itself perpetually behind Europe and Asia with respect to broadband speed and overall penetration. | | | | |
<
< | Section II | | | | |
<
< | Subsection A | >
> | American Broadband Is A Ripoff | | | | |
<
< | Subsection B | >
> | | | |
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 2 - 19 Nov 2009 - Main.EdwardBontkowski
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | |
<
< | Verizon "Client"less and VoIP? : Can You Fear Me Now? | >
> | The United States: First World Country, Third World Broadband | | | -- By EdwardBontkowski - 12 Nov 2009 |
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EdwardBontkowskiFirstPaper 1 - 12 Nov 2009 - Main.EdwardBontkowski
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>
> |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Verizon "Client"less and VoIP? : Can You Fear Me Now?
-- By EdwardBontkowski - 12 Nov 2009
Section I
Subsection A
Subsub 1
Subsection B
Subsub 1
Subsub 2
Section II
Subsection A
Subsection B
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" on the next line:
# * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, EdwardBontkowski
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of that line. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated list |
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This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
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