Broadband...USA vs. the World
 

OK, title says it all...

With the recent broadband mess in the states I've seen many writers state that we're behind the rest of the industrialized countries when it comes to price/bandwidth.

I've seen people in here from the UK, Taiwan, Japan, and a few others countries. What do you guys pay for broadband?

I live in San Francisco, has SBC DSL which I believe is 512 KBS...but I need to double-check. Price per month is US$29

Australia
 

ADSL 1.5MBs $43 per month

USA, KY

4.0 MB cable......30$ a month

Just for another US price point. Washington state, cable, 6 megabit down, 768kbit upstream, $60/month.

edinburgh

£35 (roughly $75) per month for

10mb uncapped

Can I move to edinburgh?

only if you bring hershey bars

In South Carolina, I have 5.0 MB cable for $39.

Here in sunny Bangkok, I subscribe to a 2.5Mb line that "might" run at 512 on a good day. I have another dsl line in a home in the deep south and that's actually the same as a dialup.

I pay 1100 Baht for the "2.5Mb" line and 700 Baht for the "unspecified" one downcountry. That's USD28 for the BKK line and USD18 for the provincial one.

I would rather pay more and have a better line but we have little choice at the mo. My iDisk syncing might be less problematic then.

Those UK (my old gaff) prices are a bit hairy but I suppose you get what you pay for, yes?

Gavin

39.99/month plus some taxes and hidden fees from time warner, ends up being about 45 to 50 dollars/month after all that

connection speed is 5Mb cable, w/ up to 1Mb upload

There is no competition that can offer that kind of bandwidth in my area. SBC offers DSL starting at 29.99 but requires a land line (i think) and is only like a max of 3mb down and 512k up, and it uses PPPoE which is not a bad thing but annoying to me sometimes.

UK

2Mb with 15GB data cap (I think - it's not strictly enforced anyway) for £15.99 a month.

Rob.

There's a broadband mess here? Huh?

It's not logical to compare pricing of any product in different countries, particularly one like broadband which requires extensive infrastructure. The geographic issues alone are going to change the costs.

Then you have taxes and government subsidies. In many countries, internet and phone services are government owned or subsidized. Taxes, of course, have to then be higher to support that. So people don't really know how much they are paying for it, but they are paying.

Agreed... Here in Canada it realy shows from province to province... In Quebec you may get cable 5mbps service for 40$/month, but in Newfoundland it may be 50$. Taxes vary alot, the the infrastructure development is not at the same stage, the customer potential is not the same, different companies, etc... So even in the same country the comparison is hard, espcially in larger countries such as the USA as well.

Then please feel free to ignore this post. I'm curious...so I started a post. Sorry Mr. Spock.

yeah, i have to admit its not the cheapest option available, but domestically (home business) probobly the best on offer in the uk.

i'm with blueyonder, and they operate a cable service through a company called telewest.

i'm sure they operate mainly down the whole east coast of the uk, and comparativly it seems to be ntl that operate the west.

blueyonder,as far as i am aware offer the highest speeds, and also seem to be the only ones without the capped downloads.

again i have friends, who have reported to have had a mere slap on the wrists for breaking said caps, this seems like you really have to push it though.

the 10mb deal is fairly recent, i was, up until december last year paying £50 for only 4mb, but they bumped everybody up with a price drop , which was pretty typical of the good service they provide.

to give an estimate i'd say my upload bandwidth is about a third of my download speed which i'd say was usual with everyone.

there seems to be so many variables with speed consistancy in the uk with so many competators, i've read a lot about say, 8mb deals, using british telecom phone lines, but speeds wholly depend upon distance from the exchange and traffic etc. so i've been happier to pay the extra for the cable connection, (and also have a good telephone deal through the same company.)

but hey! forget the uk, i hear that paris and stockholm get a standard 25mb service! anyone out there want to spill the beans on that one?!
i read a column on the bbc website, that said we were basically clapping at nothing here!

its all getting better all the time though. i really want to be still getting excited about it all in my old age! (and i plan to get old in paris!)

In the San Francisco area somebody already mentioned you can get crummy DSL for around $25.00 - 35.00 per month. There is an advertised price and there is another price that kicks in later in your contract. When SBC bought PacBell they lowered the price for the first few months and lowered the speed as well.

The cable company (Comcast) will sell you better broadband, 3-4 MBps down, 340k or so up. If you buy cable TV I think the broadband costs around $40.00. If you don't buy cable TV then broadband is $60.00 per month.

No reason not to be curious, but you have to weight the results against a lot of other factors. And I'd still like to hear why you say broadband is a "mess" here. Oh, and thanks for the Spock compliment.

I guess I should add my own figures... 9MB down, 512k up, $45/mo.

The problems with broadband have been discussed much in the media lately.

The fact that Verizon is trying to raise rates becuase certain sites are more popular than others is a shame. It's true that the lines are theirs...and they can do what they want with it...but they also must accept the consequences.

Missbehive gets 10MB for $75, where I can get 4MB for $60? Your (calvarez) price is good, not too far off hers.

I wish Google were able to publish their monthly bill for internet access. Vinton Cerf recently proposed that the telco's pass along the costs to the consumer. I think he said that in attempts to anger the consumers. If the dark fibre rumors are true, that would provide some fuel for people to ditch their ISPs for Google's.

Well based on my experience the blazing fast countries are Japan and South Korea, let's see if somebody confirms.

I have one more consideration to make: I pay $45 for cable in Connecticut, but I have been on VOIP for 2 1/2 years, so I can tell you I have saved a truckload of money using a provider that lets me call over 20 countries for free, plus unlimited calls in the USA and Canada.

I don't know if in Europe or Asia they have the same choice of maximizing your cable costs by using VOIP. If they don't, at least they enjoy amazingly fast connections in the two countries above (not to mention they can watch TV on a train that goes at 100mph on a cell phone; I would be happy with a train that goes at 60mph without breaking just to get to NY).

the skype thing is a bit of a bitch here, purely out of the fact that my associates and i treat it more like a novelty.

with our cable packages we are paying a flat rate of £30 a month for unlimited phone calls, which automatically takes the 'froogle' element out of skype, we mainly use it to pretend we are in bond etc, or say for hands free working online together etc. but mainly bond.
(really hate non mac users without mics as well, nothing more disconcerting to talk to somdody and have text responses, its just downright freaky)

i have few friends over seas, and its handy for that , but its a shame not to feel the benefit of it being free etc.

cant speak for everybody in the uk, but most people i know are reasonably cheap free call packages.

so yeah, total bill each month for calls and bb £70

and peace of mind, they offer tv, but cancelled that after i realised it had been 6 months since i used eyetv or watched anything

god bless avi files of 'curb your enthusiasm' and a 10mb connection eh!?

That's not "discussion," that's political posturing and a power-grab. Don't let government fear-mongers and the general media be your only source for the state of technology today.

The free market has done very well at fixing the problems so far. Not perfect, but good. Right now I'm working with a company that is bringing wireless broadband to rural communities throughout AZ. I was the engineer who installed dialup in most of those communities eight years ago. How time flies.

Point being, the telco is behind on delivering it and over-priced where they do have it, so the free market is filling the need. No laws needed.

The free market hasn't done squat for me.

It's great your connecting the cactii to the web, really.

My original "problem" with the state of our broadband services still stands. I feel like we're in the heart of a "technological Mesopotamia", and we should have connections as fast or faster than the rest of the world.

Lemme guess...now are you gonna argue the validity of Mesopotamia in my post. :rolleyes: or perhaps correct something else that really has nothing to do with my original post.

Why don't you just ignore my posts from now on? and I'll return the favor.

Not sure if that's quite right, I live in the North West UK and it's all Telewest around here - they operate their call centre from Liverpool's Albert Dock.

It is TeleWEST after all!

I remember being infuriated by stupid NTL marketing calls - even if I had wanted to get their services I couldn't as I live in a Telewest area! Morons.

Anyway, it'll be a moot point soon as they're merging and the UK cable network will become practically a private monopoly, as opposed to the publically owned monopoly that telecoms privatisation sought to change.

oh no! i'm knit picking!


i did say "i'm sure" and "mainly"

they aslso operate from newcastle and edinburgh, and were first opened in fife. i think the telewest thing is 'just a name'

anyway sorry!

yeah i had heard about the merger, a lot of happy people in glasgow soon as they are all ntl there.

I wasn't actually referring to Skype. I use a VOIP service that completely replaces the home phone. There are several in the US, the biggest one being Vonage which I used for a year and then I dropped for Broadvoice because of the free international calls to everybody, not just other subscribers. Having relatives in Europe Asia and Australia this for us has been amazing.

____

As for Calvarez's reference to the free market, I don't believe it's working so well. Our connections lag far behind those of other countries, and I believe that this happen because the cable deregulation has been a failure. In most places you hardly have any choice, there is always a dominant cable provider which has bought all the other smaller competitors. They are recurrently trying to interfere with VOIP services, but so far luckily they have been shamed and forced to stop. And what's about locked phones? Where else does this happen? I don't think it should not even be allowed. What's next? A car that works only on Exxon fuel? This is not free market they way I see it.

So much for the cactii, but our cellular and cable services are far from cutting edge, just read about South Korea and Japan a bit on BBC and you will realize that they are far far ahead in both.

you guys should read this article this talks about more about high speed fibre lines we should have. Also talks about how this "free market" we have...not so free if you ask me. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...er-cover_x.htm

edit: from that article
"Broadband rates in the USA are already among the highest in the world — $35 to $40 a month. And that's for relatively slow speeds of 1 to 2 megabits a second. In Japan, consumers pay about $15 a month for speeds of 30 megabits or better"

From the same article found by rj89. As you can see, the situation is of an oligopoly hell bent in forcing legislation that DECREASES competition and even prohibiting municipalities from entering the market.

Thanks to rj89 what I said about Japan (and South Korea) is confirmed: 30mps versus 6mps maximum in the USA. We are not cutting edge, far from it. We lag behind in cellular technology as well. This is inmho a very bad trend if you consider how much global competition has increased, and it is a demonstration that the big player are far from being in favor of competition.

Fact is free market require regulations to work, but in order to analyze the reasons for our situation I should start down a path which is political. I know this is not welcome in this forum, which I consider splendid but at times too rigid, because there is no way to analyze technological trends without looking at the surrounding political environment. Cactii, anyone?

Fact is free market require regulations to work, but in order to analyze the reasons for our situation I should start down a path which is political. I know this is not welcome in this forum, which I consider splendid but at times too rigid, because there is no way to analyze technological trends without looking at the surrounding political environment. Cactii, anyone?

Depends what you mean by "political environment." We have other discussions going about proposed lawsuits and the legal and ethical issues at stake. It wouldn't hurt this discussion to go into what legislation has been passed. But terms like "political environment" usually take things in a different direction where, after a couple of exchanges, we are two or more removes from the discussion topic and people are busy denouncing and defending. That's what we don't want here re. religion or politics. But if you and others can stay close to the topic, that's fine.
- e.g. what laws have been passed that relate to the topic? what considerations informed the laws (stay close to the facts)? and so forth.

http://www.cssainc.org/

I still don't know what the original problem is, but I'm assuming you can't get broadband wherever you live? There are a vast variety of reasons why that could be.

We do have connections as fast as much of the world in some places. When someone hears of a Tokyo skyrise or block having 100mb fiber, they assume that is available everywhere in Japan--it's not. Now, Japan does have more ultra-high-speed penetration than we do, but have you compared the size and population density of that island to our country? There are few places here where the density approaches theirs, and that results in basic economy of scale differences.

We have 5-10MB cable available through all the more-populated areas of Arizona, and I'm working on bringing 2-5MB wireless to places with 10,000 people and less. What more do you want? At what point would the "problem" be fixed?

Hahahahaha, funny stuff. Sorry, but I don't pay attention to who posts what, I just read the posts and reply accordingly.

There have been a number of them related to cities putting up their own systems (Tempe, neighboring my city, has just done that). It's a clear affront to the free market since they are the lawmakers, the judges, the taxation authority, and the holder of the zoning ordinances for towers and such. So the city is in a unique position of advantage. I also can't find any legal authority delegated to the cities to do this, but I'd love to read references if anyone has them.

People will argue that it's a benefit to have cities provide broadband internet. But we must remember that this country is a republic founded on a basic rule of law, and if we let politics and desires over-rule the basic laws, then we end up with a mess. The playing field should be level and defined.

Politics is discussing whether there SHOULD be regulation or government-provided service. We should stick to the facts of whether the basic laws of this country even allow it.

Currently, delivery of electricity, gas, water, sewer, phone, etc. are granted "monopoly" status, however each state has established a public utility commission of some sort to regulate the fees/profits that those utilities can make from their "regulated" aspects of their business. There are also considerations like "right of way" and burying their equipment under public property (under streets). that must be resolved.

The mayor of Philadelphia is currently putting wireless in throughout the city (via Earthlink I think). I'm not aware of how the wireless arrangement got into Philadelphia. I haven't heard any mention of the Public Utility Commission being involved, consulted, regulating, etc. Seems odd that they will be creating a monopoly and using public structures to support this private venture without any real regulation.

cpragman, I don't think the term "monopoly" applies to a city contracting with a business to provide a service. If there were only one business with which a city might contract, then that business would be a monopoly. So while Philadelphia contracts with Earthlink, Pittsburgh might use AOL or another ISP. As for regulation, you can be sure it's written into the terms of the contract.

Utilities are a little different, but even there, you'll find different utility companies operating within most states, with shifting boundaries as they continually re-negotiate their areas of coverage. The rationale for state involvement with utilities is that the services they provide are so essential for the community's infrastructure that government has an interest in overseeing their functioning.

10 meg connection for free!

Beat that!

work pay for it! :D

Well, in the US where employers monitor Internet usage at work that attitude will lead you to a very quick dismissal which would probably wipe that green grin off your face. Not a very good solution around here.

What attitude ??

Photek said "work pay for it."

Not they use it at work or abuse it either.. you have made a massive assumption.


Many people at my work get BB at home paid for by the company.

This may not be the case for Photek, but you should wait for the "attitude" you allude to,
to be expressed rather than giving attitude.

HEY!

My company certainly get their pound of flesh from me, and I am certainly worth a few hundred quid a year in BB to keep them up and running. I can remotley connect to both servers and sort out their problems on MY time!

As for monitoring me..... I am the most technical person in the company! And for those of you that reply to my idiotic posts (Raven, Phil, Calvarez, Mark and ALL the others) that should make you smirk!!

wow calm down people everyone is so feisty. lets cool those jets and go read a nice chuck norris fact and everything will all be better. :)

ps: just trying to bring some humor in this for some reason heated debate.(not trolling or spamming)

You are right, I had an attitude. I was right in my massive assumption though: and I thought that I could safely assume that 'work pays for it' meant 'I am connecting on my employer's pipe and not paying a dime for it'.

Not a good enough reason to show my attitude, for sure. But to me this was like comparing cost of living with a thief (not a personal offense Photek, it's just the only analogy I can think of) that tells me nah inflation is not a concern for me.

My point was and is: in the USA we pay more for less for cable connections compared to other advanced countries like Japan and even less developed countries like South Korea.

I do not believe the current legislature is aimed at protecting consumer but -suprise surprise- in protecting major corporations contributing millions to political parties. Verizon's piece of work quoted in the thread speaks for itself: right of first refusal over public policy?

Lastly, I strongly believe this is a crucial and strategic gap that affects our competitiveness as a nation. In this day and time, I would like the US to be at the forefront in terms of offering connectivity to its people. Friedman has developed the point quite well in his brilliant book 'The world is flat', and I believe he's completely right.

Chuck Norris

Birth name :Carlos Ray Norris

debated with myself over writing this post, especially after such fiery debating in another recent thread, however when reading again that the title of the thread reads"...usa Vs the rest of the world" coupled with this statement. i couldnt help it.

i just dont want to sound like i am picking a fight or being in any way "off"
because i totally respect nationaly shared mentality throughout the world, its a natural given, in any culture.

and i'll state again this isnt a challenge it is purely my curiousity as it baffles me a little....so here goes....

but what is it that makes most americans feel that they deserve to be the best in everything? i just cant get my head around the sense of injustice thats being expressed in this thread, like you cant fathom being behind somebody.

i get that the essence of america is, the whole 'american dream' thing.
i'm just perplexed sometimes with my experiance of americans and their expectancy etc.

when i was a student i worked part time in a cinema, i remember serving an american and his son, both were very obese, asked for large cokes, and when served what i would consider a "bucket" each, they were sooo disparagent and mocked "is THAT a large!?" without thinking, and a little annoyed i replied, "no thats why our country's children arent famed for their obesity" it was out of turn i know, but, it was a pretty typical put down, and living in edinburgh, we get a lot of american tourists, and this type of attitude is fairly common with our visitors. just very demanding, and dissatisfied.

in another forum there was a chap, harping on about how the rest of the world wants to be like america! i think during ww2 there was certainly a bit of romantic notion felt this way about everything americana, a bit exotic etc, but, i feel its slightly different now.we are now 'warned' about becoming more like america.

i guess what i am aiming at is that i cant think of another country that would admit so freely about how competative it is, as i cant actually think of why a country would feel the need to, if i were to hazard a guess at the mentality, sociologically speaking would it be anything to do with historical identity, and if america isnt the best, what is it?

i know this seems spikey and really isnt intended to be in anyway confrontational, and i also appreciate that the majority of the users here are american, so its a bit like walking into the wrong bar dressed in drag and asking for a fight!

in larry davids words "...you know?...i took a risk"

just an honest bit of awe really.

for the want of a less existential question, but... if you are so competative, wont you finish first?

but what is it that makes most americans feel that they deserve to be the best in everything? i just cant get my head around the sense of injustice thats being expressed in this thread, like you cant fathom being behind somebody.

i get that the essence of america is, the whole 'american dream' thing.
i'm just perplexed sometimes with my experiance of americans and their expectancy etc.

Let's not go there, forum. Stick as close to the topic as possible, and avoid stereotypes about the attitudes of people in a country. That will only lead to troube.

man i knew that would happen, you are right, i apologise.

i was maybe pointing the finger at fundamentals, relatively speaking.

on the other hand, back to the point then, why is it that other countries
have it sorted out, and have better connections, less beurocratic factors hindering their progress in broadband services?

by all accounts it does sound messy, from what i know over here, its really just up to the company to invest in providing the service, taxation rules everything in the uk (even sanitary products) so it doesnt really discriminate, towards services such as telecommunications etc.

a company either provides/can afford to provide, or it cant.

and other countries are doing this better than others, i'm sure it will get better.

just a quick note to say..... (as it was 4am when i last wrote!)

please feel free to respond to me privately, on matters straying from the thread, i have already engaged in some excellent discourse regarding this limb, with another member, and i am happy to continue this. as almost off topic as it was, i didnt really want to start a thread with it in an open forum either, but nevertheless a worthy disscussion.

thank you.

miss beehive 1963


....carry on then!

As I was reading yesterday's New York Times (today's is probably out there in the driveway under a foot of snow) I found a small article on the issue at hand. They quoted a new e-book "The $200 billion broadband scandal" available at Newnetworkshttp://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm.

According to the author, the Baby Bells promised to Congress in 1996 to deploy ultra-high-speed broadband via optical fiber to millions of homes. In return, they got tax breaks and other benefits in the 1996 Telecommunication Act amounting to more than $200 billions. 10 years later there isn't a single household in the USA with speeds of 45mps which was the promise they made.

Now, the good news: according to the author, the Baby Bells owe every household in the US $2,000. Sadly, he doesn't provide a form to collect but maybe that's in today's Times. I'll start digging.

$2,000 would be nice! :) Dig away.

MissBeehive, I take some of your your rant on board! And I think although The US and the UK are very close in many ways we are also very different in attitudes to alot of things... (very long drunken chats with my American cousins made me realise this!!) And whilst we are talking stereotypical.... lets not forget that Scotland have by far the highest proportion of obease people living in the UK... and what about that 11 yr old kid who collapsed in class a few weeks ago from smoking heroin! (eek)

Back to the point...

I think as far as technology goes the rest of the world are usually 3 or 4 years behind the Japanese!..

They estimate it will be about 2 years till we all have 15-20 mb connections hat will allow us all to watch live streaming TV on our computers in the UK.

I once worked in one of the sky scrapers in Canary Wharf that housed god knows how many floors full or servers (BBC, Teletext ect..) and the main guy that overseed them all had a 'bandwith' connection... I cant remember how fast it was.... but he said he could set a movie downloading off the net and by the time he had walked down the corridor to take a waz and walked back again it would of finished downloading!... and this was 5 or so years go!

eek indeed! but thats actually just glasgow! a law unto itself, and nothing to do with the rest of the world!


where was he downloading the movie from at that speed 5 years ago?

surely that could have only been LAN ?

i chatted with the last telewest engineer we had out, a year ago, and he told me that they had the cpabilities for 18-20 meg, but was pretty cagey about discussing it, but you could tell he wanted to a bit.

i'd heard a rumour about them boosting our speed during 2005 and i was just fishing for info, we got 10mb eventually, but like a said, he assured me they were capable of a lot more already.

i reckon telewest may be offering at least 15mb by the end of 2006 and all other services will be no greater than 12mb in the uk, but i'm no russell grant.

speaking of streaming though, i get full screen quicktime trailers almost instant now with no glitch, surely this is pretty much happening then?

I would take a optical connection to my house over $2000. Call me crazy...

The scary part for me is reading here or there about service providers wanting to charge per bit for content say like movie downloads etc. All that will do is drive up the price for everyone or impose download limits per month. Now I know some of you guys outside of the US already have this but I don't believe in it. With a fast connection having the potential to provide you with all services to/from your house then it should be flat rate. Verizon's FiOS.... If you got cable, phone and internet you would be paying them upwards of $180 every month already (based on Comcast rates, I'm not lucky enough to have FiOS.

As of now, I'd much rather have my modest cable (5mbps down, 368k up) with no real 'cap' than have a bandwidth limit or charge per bit/byte.

The only problem with supplying folks with a lot more bandwidth is companies that host solely web servers and other upload-bandwidth intensive items will suffer because in order to take advantage of such large bandwidth we are given, they also have to increase our upload cap. 45Mbps down and 200k up will net you nearly no gain over 4.5Mbpsdown and 200k up.

Not that I worry, I would really like to be able to host my website and games reliably on my own computer.

Yes I would also settle for my 8mb/768k then having a cap on a way faster connection. I just wish the upload speeds would be a little faster. I'm already paying I think it's $10 more a month to get the 768k up. This is with Comcast cable.

You are not going to believe it, but I found the NYT when it got caught in the snowblower. 5 minutes to get it out, and there was nothing left when finished. It was one of those days in New England, 22" of snow where I live.

Well, I guess we can wait a bit longer.

My first post addressed this; tax subsidies and population density. We can't compare a monthly broadband bill with that of another country unless we also compare their tax structure. Not to mention how much it costs to lay the infrastructure; do you think Korea Telco is forced to pay their ditch digger as much as Verizon has to pay a unionized ditch digger?

On the other hand, how much does broadband cost compared to the available income of the average citizen? Broadband is pretty damn cheap in Mexico; I can walk into an internet cafe and pay about $1.10 per hour for usage of their computers. But a typical citizen makes $10/day or something like that.

ADSL2+ if only i knew when i joined my ISP
 

Australia
ADSL 1500/256:D 10GB monthly usage down/up load counted
currently 6 month half price at $46

Other ISP plans can reach up to 24000kbps download 1000kbps depending on distance to exchange, if only i knew before i joined my ISP but only e few from around 30 ISP have ADSL2+:mad: