Just after paying my $145 monthly telecom bill, I noticed this Wall Street Journal story about how cities nationwide are trying to promote faster broadband Internet service.
The problem is that much of the U.S. is falling behind other industrialized economies in terms of Web access speed and cost, which potentially hinders innovation — not to mention convenience. How is it that high-speed Internet is just a quarter as costly in Japan and even Canada has faster service?
Washington in particular lags behind. See this post. Tacoma has a municipal network and this year Gov. Gregoire signed a law to begin planning broader system. But those seem like very small steps.
Several U.S. cities are investing in their own networks, against the wishes of telecom firms that nearly have a stranglehold. According to the article, telecoms seem to have two main arguments. The local projects are an unfair competitive threat, they say, and the projects will be more costly than local governments project. (Here’s the latest from Qwest.)
Should local governments here be doing more to help?
Comments
6 responses to “The best way to get more, faster Web access”
This is sad. So we theoretically have slower internet, but we still have vastly larger penetration.
You get the Government involved in this (just like the wireless cities debacle all over the country), you’ll get mediocrity and a lack of forward movement on speed.
Besides that I can promise you, on the whole in the US at least, since we’re soooo special, we’ll end up with more mediocre service with either a bombardment of people on it so it is almost unusable (like Interstates) that cost 5x as much as what we pay for directly out of pocket.
As for this statement that Japan has service for a quarter what we do, I’d like to see some facts to back that up.
I’d also like to see the penetration stats, and I’d like you to keep in mind we have 100x’s time the space to cover to get high speeds vs. Japan. So even if we made some huge effort to increase speeds, keep in mind it would easily cost multiples more than Japan.
…I hate this argument that we’re falling behind somehow based on single point numbers that compare apples and oranges vs. apples to apples.
As with transit you must bring to bear externalities, don’t ignore those same things in high speed internet access.
Externalities are generally more than the actual service or device will ever be.
This is sad. So we theoretically have slower internet, but we still have vastly larger penetration.
You get the Government involved in this (just like the wireless cities debacle all over the country), you’ll get mediocrity and a lack of forward movement on speed.
Besides that I can promise you, on the whole in the US at least, since we’re soooo special, we’ll end up with more mediocre service with either a bombardment of people on it so it is almost unusable (like Interstates) that cost 5x as much as what we pay for directly out of pocket.
As for this statement that Japan has service for a quarter what we do, I’d like to see some facts to back that up.
I’d also like to see the penetration stats, and I’d like you to keep in mind we have 100x’s time the space to cover to get high speeds vs. Japan. So even if we made some huge effort to increase speeds, keep in mind it would easily cost multiples more than Japan.
…I hate this argument that we’re falling behind somehow based on single point numbers that compare apples and oranges vs. apples to apples.
As with transit you must bring to bear externalities, don’t ignore those same things in high speed internet access.
Externalities are generally more than the actual service or device will ever be.
This is sad. So we theoretically have slower internet, but we still have vastly larger penetration.
You get the Government involved in this (just like the wireless cities debacle all over the country), you’ll get mediocrity and a lack of forward movement on speed.
Besides that I can promise you, on the whole in the US at least, since we’re soooo special, we’ll end up with more mediocre service with either a bombardment of people on it so it is almost unusable (like Interstates) that cost 5x as much as what we pay for directly out of pocket.
As for this statement that Japan has service for a quarter what we do, I’d like to see some facts to back that up.
I’d also like to see the penetration stats, and I’d like you to keep in mind we have 100x’s time the space to cover to get high speeds vs. Japan. So even if we made some huge effort to increase speeds, keep in mind it would easily cost multiples more than Japan.
…I hate this argument that we’re falling behind somehow based on single point numbers that compare apples and oranges vs. apples to apples.
As with transit you must bring to bear externalities, don’t ignore those same things in high speed internet access.
Externalities are generally more than the actual service or device will ever be.
Adron, this is so true. Nice to see an educated point of view. This is one of those issues that seems easy on the surface, but for anyone who knows anything about it, it’s not. Adron did a great job of describing it.
Adron, this is so true. Nice to see an educated point of view. This is one of those issues that seems easy on the surface, but for anyone who knows anything about it, it’s not. Adron did a great job of describing it.
Adron, this is so true. Nice to see an educated point of view. This is one of those issues that seems easy on the surface, but for anyone who knows anything about it, it’s not. Adron did a great job of describing it.