Broadband state in USA

[impar]

Greetings!

Seems to be a hot topic in the USA:
Broadband: other countries do it better, but how?
...
But multiple reports show that countries around the world are beating us at broadband, and we're putting our economy and technological leadership at risk through a truly stunning failure to cast a national vision. Other countries are doing better at this, and they're doing it through a combination of financing, fear (competition), and federal mandates.

[daglesj]

I think the US is doing itself down.

A lot of the countries at the top are much smaller and also probably have geography that is more condusive to country wide standardised infrastructure. Plus many would probably still have a centralised teleco.

However, a lot of countries are now feeling the pinch in that their old copper networks that worked fine off a 'all you can eat' 512k-1Mb services just dont cut it now that folks (well some) want 16mb+ speeds that other places can get.

Upgrades are happening but not at the speed that some consumers are eating it up at. Take Comcast and their 250Gb cap, a small chunk of their customers are moaning that is too small and that they get through that in a couple of weeks. Most of them have said they are walking. To be honest I would say thats just what Comcast wants. They then get rid of the 2% that were using 98% of the bandwidth. Plus they go to their competitors and screw their bandwidth. Win win.
If as a domestic customer you are getting through over 250Gb of LEGITIMATE data in a month you should be on a commercial contract or just go outside for a bit.

The days of all you can eat broadband will soon be over I reckon. If not they will be available only on commercial or high premium tariffs.

I'll get back to using my 40Gb a month limit.

[impar]

Greetings!

Cold, dark countries whipping US in broadband usage
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As the chart above makes clear (the red line is population density, the blue is broadband usage), Canada, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Iceland all have lower population densities and yet are managing to beat us in broadband penetration.

Come to think of it, all five of them are also quite cold and dark for long periods of time; perhaps huddling inside around a monitor all winter provides more impetus to meet up with friends, shop, and search for entertainment online.

[Seawolf]

The US is suffering if anything from an overabundance of confusion. We want monopolies, we don't want monopolies, we want monopolies, we don't want monopolies, whatever. If we'd had less destructive changes to our telco providers we may have better services, since even without the monopolies we still need government mandates to them to get anything done.

Improved long-range wireless is about the only solution that makes sense anymore. That will take a long time to deploy though, and yet again nobody is agreeing on a standard (with Sprint going to WiMax but most cell carriers going to LTE)...of course, since LTE is an evolution of stuff that's already fairly heavily used, it does make sense for many that will use it.

I would hedge my bets that the WiMax will make the most sense for country-wide coverage, but hey, I lose nothing if I'm wrong.