Capping the Future - Future of Broadband in the US

http://overclockers.com/tips01282/

The price of internet is ridiculous in the US, getting "8 Mbps" down from Comcastrophe for $70/mo, whereas you get 100Mbps fiber in Sweden for $50/mo. Verizon FiOS is Good News, but they've been a bit slow getting it out.

As Ed says, providers are just lazy and they know the government won't regulate. So us, the consumers, lose. And how about the lack of broadband to the poorer people? I think the $10 or $15 crappy DSL that AT&T makes a pain to sign up for (yet mandated by the FTC because of their acquisition of Bellsouth) should be made free, or at least to the more financially burdened.

How do we change the state of broadband in the US? Seems like consumers can't do anything to spur change. Maybe the market will pick up once more people have fiber... although that won't be until several years.

sadly, it doesn't seem like there is a whole lot the general consumer can do to help fix this problem. at least, not in my area.

in most area's, alot of places are stuck with a choice of one ISP, or no internet.

in alot of other places, you have the pick of two ISP's. When you have the choice between either one, or only one other...thats not enough competition to force the companies to do anything.

and especially in my area, where there isn't as many people...even if my entire area dropped one specific ISP, its only our small area. we arn't even a dot on their radar.

its not like a choice between the different type of goods you can find at walmart. Hell, in alot of area's, you can find quite a few alternatives to walmart itself!

But when it comes down to ISP's...the consumer is sh*t out of luck, unless you have verision offering Fiber Optic to your area. which as you said, is a pretty small group of people, considering the total population of the USA. and the growth rate is pretty slow.

More than meets the eye to this story....

I work for a company that installs underground telephone systems. We have been installing fiber to the home for the last 3 years. Before that we we doing hybrid fiber/copper DSL systems.


To give you an idea of the costs and times involved, We recently did the small town of Menagha, MN and it's outlying areas. The town has a population of rougly 1000 people and there were about 600 homes involved in town and 300 or so outlying. We placed almost 100 miles of cable for this one job alone. Most of that(roughly 70 miles) was drops to the houses. This one job took almost 6 months to complete. Keep inmind that this area is all sand, which is some of the best soil to work in(as opposed to rock or heavy clays, which are most common.)We had a 17 man crew on this job. I believe the total cost rolled in at close to $3 million.When I hear people bitching about the cost and complaining about how long it's taking...I gotta laugh. People always want the best stuff for free.

Op said something about the govt won't regulate. I thought that was the problem all along.
I know in my area they govt has regulated us to one cable provider and knocked out competition.
Looks like they need to de-regulate.

mystfied said:

http://overclockers.com/tips01282/

The price of internet is ridiculous in the US, getting "8 Mbps" down from Comcastrophe for $70/mo, whereas you get 100Mbps fiber in Sweden for $50/mo. Verizon FiOS is Good News, but they've been a bit slow getting it out.

As Ed says, providers are just lazy and they know the government won't regulate. So us, the consumers, lose. And how about the lack of broadband to the poorer people? I think the $10 or $15 crappy DSL that AT&T makes a pain to sign up for (yet mandated by the FTC because of their acquisition of Bellsouth) should be made free, or at least to the more financially burdened.

How do we change the state of broadband in the US? Seems like consumers can't do anything to spur change. Maybe the market will pick up once more people have fiber... although that won't be until several years.

Click to expand...

Do you realize how much in taxes european country members pay a year? Well I'll tell you that is SIGNIFICANTLY more than anyone in the US pays, I'm surprised they aren't getting their internet for free.

Secondly, do you know how much infrastructure would be needed to wire the US compared to a tiny european country like sweden?

You have to think of the big picture, providers aren't trying on purpose to rip people off.

70$ is also a ripoff, I get 15mbps down and 4mbps up from comcast for 50$ where I live.

We have an Older infrastructure, as far a comunications go. It takes Time and money to replace aging technology.

that's not to say the various providers aren't out to make a buck, and milk you for all you are worth.

Jas said:

We have an Older infrastructure, as far a comunications go. It takes Time and money to replace aging technology.

that's not to say the various providers aren't out to make a buck, and milk you for all you are worth.

Click to expand...

They are in business to make money after all.

We have an older infrastructure because we were the first to HAVE an infrastructure, unfortunately.. And ours is large, and costly to update..
And Big Business still runs America.. prolly always will.. and we will forever be at the mercy of their bottom line..

Age of infrastructure is not the entire picture. Population density and distance also play a major factor.

Take a look at South Korea, which currently leads the world in broadband penetration. Their population centers, like many in Asia, are incredibly dense, so it takes far less materials and labor to connect huge numbers of paying customers.

The Northern Marianas is a clear example of the opposite; a tiny population 4,000 miles away from the nearest continent means we pay US$85 per month for ADSL with 1024Kbps Downstream and 384Kbps Upstream and are happy about it.

From a business standpoint, caps are a really poor method for recouping the costs of infrastructure development, as they will slow the development of the market. Bandwidth limitation in the context of structured plans is a much better option, as it will act as an incentive, rather than a disincentive.

I believe part of the problem is lack of demand.

The average household is perfectly happy on 1 meg download speed, and therefore they do not ask for more from their provider.

I asked for 3 meg download and was told it was not available, needed new wiring to deliver that speed. A few weeks later they flipped the switch (without rewiring my neighborhood) and gave us 5 meg down. Since then they boosted to 10 meg down (on that same coax wiring) and are now plannign 16 meg.

Personally I believe the solution is an end to the cable tv company monopoly, and bring in some serious competition. Verison FIOS is more than welcome to come sign me up for their service.

I used to work for Americast (The cable division of Ameritech) which was then bought out by Wide Open West (WOW). I worked in the contruction department. Deadbot_1973 is right... The costs of developing a new neighborhood are enourmous! It's one of the man reasons why these companies get bought out or sold every year.

Americast paid approimately 980 Million dollars for developing just a few neighborhoods in Chicago. That was just too much for even a company like Ameritech to absorb so when SBC bought the telephone network, they passed on the cable portion and sold Americast to WOW for just 110 Million.

You can't beleive how much the fiber costs for the backbone, or how much the towns charge to get you permits (Chicago is notorious for 'backdoor' payments). Technicians, trucks, supplies, head end, hub sites, ISP providers, network technicians, office personelle... If these companies didn't charge at least $50 a month for broadband, they would go out of business.

Yay caps on my downloads I'd love that.

Surely I don't do nearly as much downloading as I use to in the past transfering files between friends and I. But even at 40Gig limit, heck I know that just a few demo's could be saying bye bye to your bandwidth that month. Not to mention that VOIP, while sure its a small amount of bandwidth, surely that will eat up a semi noticble amount per month for someone that does alot of talking on the phone.

Another interesting fact is that just this year laptop sales are starting to pass desktop sales and I doubt desktops will ever catch back up.

In order to facilitate this trend, massive effort is being done to improve wireless infrastructure. Wireless infrastructure also benefits telephones (iphone grabbing 20% of the smartphone market in 1 year with over 20 million phones), not just laptops. I think that is the main direction the US is going in infrastructure and broadband.

Shiggity said:

Another interesting fact is that just this year laptop sales are starting to pass desktop sales and I doubt desktops will ever catch back up.

In order to facilitate this trend, massive effort is being done to improve wireless infrastructure. Wireless infrastructure also benefits telephones (iphone grabbing 20% of the smartphone market in 1 year with over 20 million phones), not just laptops. I think that is the main direction the US is going in infrastructure and broadband.

Click to expand...

In that regard the US would be following the lead of countries such as Thailand, where nearly 90% of the population has a cell phone and only about 20% has a land line. The trend of the "invisible computer revolution" indicates that mobile internet will likely overtake "conventional" networking in terms of sheer numbers worldwide in the near future.

One of our local ISPs is making noises about rolling out WCDMA @ 1.5Mb/s this year. If they do so, I'll certainly be an early adopter.

Does anyone want to discuss this on the podcast?

PM me or reply to this post if you're interested... I'll try to get Ed on the show to talk about his article.

Let me know!

Jordan Drake
Producer and Host
The OCF Podcast

Deadbot1_1973 said:

I work for a company that installs underground telephone systems. We have been installing fiber to the home for the last 3 years. Before that we we doing hybrid fiber/copper DSL systems.


To give you an idea of the costs and times involved, We recently did the small town of Menagha, MN and it's outlying areas. The town has a population of rougly 1000 people and there were about 600 homes involved in town and 300 or so outlying. We placed almost 100 miles of cable for this one job alone. Most of that(roughly 70 miles) was drops to the houses. This one job took almost 6 months to complete. Keep inmind that this area is all sand, which is some of the best soil to work in(as opposed to rock or heavy clays, which are most common.)We had a 17 man crew on this job. I believe the total cost rolled in at close to $3 million.When I hear people bitching about the cost and complaining about how long it's taking...I gotta laugh. People always want the best stuff for free.

Click to expand...

I used to do the same work, I agree that the cost is high BUT the Telcos/Cablecos have held back for as long as they could without doing upgrades and they didnt plan for upgrades either.

Metropolitan cities should NOT have the same issue as Podunk, N. Dakota with regards to speed, latency or connections. Yes there is more infrastructure to deal with in the ground but again if the Telcos had done what they should have done and laid conduit for the copper, there would be minimal issue with upgrades. Instead you have to lay the conduit foot by foot(hand dig OR directional boreing) AFTER you hand dig to locate the nearby utilities and then cover it back up.

Regardless the Telcos/Cablecos both are not hurting for cash in any way. All of them raise rates every year or so and at least with me in the DC area, I have not seen a SINGLE improvement in my cable.

Adragontattoo said:

I used to do the same work, I agree that the cost is high BUT the Telcos/Cablecos have held back for as long as they could without doing upgrades and they didnt plan for upgrades either.

Metropolitan cities should NOT have the same issue as Podunk, N. Dakota with regards to speed, latency or connections. Yes there is more infrastructure to deal with in the ground but again if the Telcos had done what they should have done and laid conduit for the copper, there would be minimal issue with upgrades. Instead you have to lay the conduit foot by foot(hand dig OR directional boreing) AFTER you hand dig to locate the nearby utilities and then cover it back up.

Regardless the Telcos/Cablecos both are not hurting for cash in any way. All of them raise rates every year or so and at least with me in the DC area, I have not seen a SINGLE improvement in my cable.

Click to expand...

Adragontattoo, you are correct and wrong at the same time. They have held back. However it was hard for them to plan in advance for a technology that didn't exist when the systems were placed. In all fairness, many of the lines in big metro areas were placed in the 60's. Hell, in some areas I've seen old lead pulp covering cables still in use. This stuff hails from the 40's. The internet and fiber optics weren't even a gleam in an eyeball yet. Even into the last 10 years(since I started with our company) the tech has advanced faster than anyone could believe. I remember talking to an engineer on a job once. He can be quoted as saying " no one will ever use up 144 fibers." Foresight < Hindsight. We routinely place 288 fiber cables all the time now. 10 years ago a 144 was a HUGE fiber, now it is only a mediocre trunk line. We place 4 fiber cables to homes now. 10 years ago, placing A fiber to the home was unthought of. Most business's couldn't get a fiber until 6 years ago, in my area at least. You have to remember...there is a much lower percentage of people like you and me who will want and appreciate the fiber. Most people are satisfied with what they have...until someone like you or me tells them there is better. Then the keep up with the Jones effect kicks in and they start screaming for more. Most older folks(our grandparents for example) are immune to this effect, and thus don't ask for the faster stuff.

The problem indeed stems from the older infrastructure....the fact that we have one. Taiwan, China, most of Asia, and Europe have a younger, more up to date infracture. In ten years...maybe twenty, the situations will reverse again. our systems will be up to date and the companies over there will be justifying keeping the old as long as they can.

True we will eventually catch up, assuming that the telcos stop looking at their wallets NOW and look at what their wallets WILL BE.

Paying with proper planning will net you a much larger ROI vs. looking only at the present.

Then again with the way technology is going , how does anybody know if there will even be much need for wires 20 years out, everything could be wireless by then.
I know people could give me a bunch of reasons why that won't/can't work but who really knows.

Well, I always thought that we got it bad here in Israel but seeing this makes me feel a bit better. The prices are broadband here are DIRT cheap in comparison, for example I'm paying around 40$ for a 3M/378K connection and thats both for the ISP and the cable internet connection.

P.S
I work at a computer store and I'm always helping the local Beduin deploy long range WiFi networks because they lack the infrastructure for a land line