America's top anti-tech orgs
4. Verizon, AT&T, Progress and Freedom FoundationLink
Issue: Broadband PenetrationJust as railroads and highways did in the past, broadband and mobile communications can dramatically increase the productivity and efficiency of the economy. The U.S. government has taken a largely deregulatory approach to the broadband ISP market, based on a belief that competition will compel large ISPs like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast to sell broadband at the speeds and price points that consumers want.
But this hands-off approach is being called into question. The reason is this: Back in the 1990s the U.S. led the world in broadband penetration and speeds, but today the U.S. has fallen to 15th among the world's developed countries in terms of broadband penetration, according to data collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
A study by the Communication Workers of America finds that the average download speed of Internet connections in the U.S. is 1.9 megabits per second. The cost of DSL or cable connections in the U.S. ranges from $15 to $40 per month. Meanwhile, Tokyo residents can buy a 100-mbps connection for the equivalent of $10 per month.
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I think this and other examples points to the results of the idea that the economy grows through consumption rather than production. The same idea causes us to have a huge trade deficit, and not produce anything in the US anymore.
Deregulation in the utilities industry results in higher costs whenever those costs are not expected to greatly affect consumption (also in the oil industry), contrary to the consequentialist arguments of deregulation proponents. The same thing is happening in the communications sector.
I find arguments comparing one country's internet access prices and speeds to those in the US very frustrating - it assumes that everything else in the equation is the same, and it's not.
Japan is 375 Thousand square kilometers (a bit smaller than California) and has 127 Million residents while the United States is just over 9 Million square kilometers (continental US) with just over 300 Million residents - let's see that makes the US about 25 times larger with just under twice as many residents. Yeah, that's a fair comparison.
In a Dollars per month per megabyte download speed the USA is in the top ten according to a recent assessment.
An interesting article in the Washington Post said:
It also discusses how increased federal regulation in Japan has helped the situation, while in the US the ISPs were being forced to open up their physical plants to their competitors. So what will it be, will we all move closer together or should we bomb our infrastructure to force replacement.
Note: There was an error on my previous post - the US has just over twice as many residents.
Also, a note to the Boing Boing Overlords I'm confused about the preview function on submissions, I don't see any way to commit my post once I preview it (This is on WinXP Pro SP2 with IE 7).
I wonder if slower pace in the development in US isn't to a certain extent due to amount of population and population density. Though I have no details for such countries as China or Russia, so I can't be sure if there's any correlation.
For comparison, what's the average cost and speed in NYC?
Well, the fastest common connection seems to be with FiOS from Verizon; you can get 30Mbps for $140 a month. I'm not sure how you could get an equivalent residential connection here.
@Ken Hansen
Why isn't internet cheaper in the denser parts of the United States then? I have internet from a mostly urban cable provider in DC and it is more expensive than what my mother pays to a locally owned provider in rural Arkansas. Free market means companies with access to limited resources (communication lines, oil, etc) can charge what the market will bear, which doesn't necessarily reflect their cost at all.
Population density of Tokyo: about 5800/km².
Population density of Cambridge, MA: about 6000/km².
At-home Internet options in Cambridge: Comcast cable, Verizon or Covad-over-Verizon-copper DSL. No FiOS.
It's not as if Cambridge is some Luddite stronghold, either.
Re: lower ISP fees in denser areas
Simply put, the ISPs that own their facilities and infrastructures are regulated on a per-state basis, and costs are established that way.
Verizon, for example, can't set different rates within a regulated area.
If you think you can do it cheaper, go out, negotiate peering arrangements with other ISPs at a local access point, run regulated wires along your own right-of-ways, and drop pedestals (or, WiMax Access points) around your service area and provide 24x7, 365 service. It is not trivial to offer broadband in the US, nor is it cheap.
I get between 4 and 8 Megs download speed from Comcast for about $50 (including all taxes and fees, IIRC). I don't complain about that rate, except by comparison to the FiOS my neighbors in the next town get...
If americans *demanded* faster internet access, it would be rolled out, but (and this may be hard for many here to wrap their brains around), for most people, 4-8 Mb/sec is really fast, and $50 isn't too high a price (IMHO).
CKD,
The numbers you are using for Tokyo include a huge rural area, in essence you are comparing a 'state' to a 'city'.
The population density (as of 2003) of urban Tokyo is 13,416/km^2, about 2x the density of Cambridge, MA.
The tallest building in Cambridge is on the MIT campus and it's NOT a residence. Tokyo is a huge, crowded, bustling, urban city. Cambridge is a small, quiet, college town with a big bio-tech industry and a traffic problem.
Please review your 'statistics'.
I'll leave the broadband penetration argument to the census geeks, but I did want to comment at how utterly silly this article as a whole is.
I expect alarmist titles like "The Most Anti-Tech Organizations in America" from the likes of the always editorially-rigorous Slashdot, but I'm rather surprised to see it come from PCW, which I consider a less overtly biased source.
Regardless of one's opinion on the issue (and I freely admit that there are many, and reasonable minds have, and do disagree), to call telcos, ISPs, and big pharma "anti-tech" is equivalent to calling a Democratic candidate "Unamerican."
Each of these industries contributes heavily towards the development of new technologies and innovations (look at their patent portfolios if you don't agree with me). Moreover, just because a company or an industry represents corporate interests, it does not mean that the group is espousing an "anti-tech" or Luddite platform.
Plenty of pro-technology folks out there support reasoned IP and tech policy reforms, without necessarily jumping on the respective Creative Commons-4-Evah, or all patents = evil bandwagons. That Mr. Sullivan doesn't seem to get it, proves only that he needs a bit more clue in his diet.
@ken hansen
The infrastructure of the United States is aging, and needs replaced. We have old bridges and decaying roads. We have power grid on the east coast that's pretty much the same one that Tesla installed. We have a railroad system that James Howard Kunstler put it at TED, "that Romania would be ashamed of." Yeah, it's incredibly expensive, but that's not a reason not to do it.
This whole idea that somehow the US has unique issues when it comes to broadband penetration is facetious. In WaPo article, Canada was listed as having an average speed of four times more than the US. Canada is also spread out. What's the excuse there? Finland, Norway, Sweden, they all beat the US.
The population density issue is a red herring. You don't have to wire up the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains at the same density as the coasts. You only have to wire up the people.
Your comment that people aren't clamoring for more speed is dead on though. However, I believe people aren't because of the mistaken belief that they're getting the best possible service at the best possible price. Most people also believe that the US cellular network is state of the art. It's not. We have horrible phones, and slow data rates compared to... well pretty much every place else on the planet. Our broadband is slower and more expensive as well.
So we've reached a point where the major broadband companies won't invest in infrastructure and continue to raise prices. Japan had leadership and policies to encourage innovation and competition. The United States, notably doesn't. Thus, we've fallen behind.
I Only have a high school understanding of economics, so I don't want to say anyone is wrong here, but Hansen, aren't you proving poster's point by arguing that the deregulated market forces us to put up with what the market equilibrium has handed us? However, obviously the US economy is a different story than the Japanese economy, I don't know whether this means we are comparing apples and oranges, but I can be pretty sure there are other factors than regulations.
"The U.S. government has taken a largely deregulatory approach to the broadband ISP market, based on a belief that competition will compel large ISPs like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast to sell broadband at the speeds and price points that consumers want."
I thought the idea was that you had to regulate in order to GET competition? Who's operating on this strange idea that large vendors compete in the absence of regulation?
C1Josh: Based on their comments in this 2005 article, Cambridge is likely too dense with too many multi-unit residences for Verizon to roll out FiOS.
I don't remember too many high-rise apartments in Bedford.