USA Broadband Speeds Sloooow by comparison

[Slikkster]

Ripped from Digg:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/n...06-25-net-speeds_N.htm

61 megabits for Japan compared to our 1.97 megabit average here. State by state averages listed, too.

Note: Download speeds are what's calculated here, not upload, which many people find more important.

 

[Platypus]

They don't have to travel long distances unlike the US which is way more spread out.

 

[austin316]

I didn't know distance mattered that much.

 

[Kirby]

I think broadband availability should be a bigger issue. There's still a lot of people who don't have access to broadband, including myself. :|

 

[AmpedSilence]

I think this is a repost? But, distance makes a HUGE difference. DSL starts dropping off at like 20k feet. Having a CO every 20k feet in most areas gets damn expensive.

 

[drinkmorejava]

Originally posted by: austin316
I didn't know distance mattered that much.

they do in terms of both signal quality and cost of deployment

 

[StartingLine]

well what do you expect, europe and japan are small areas of tightly packed sardines, of course they can get faster internet when it requires a tenth of the cabling. We live in a spaced out country where people work in the city and live in the suburbs and everywhere inbetween.

 

[Homerboy]

Originally posted by: AmpedSilence
I think this is a repost? But, distance makes a HUGE difference. DSL starts dropping off at like 20k feet. Having a CO every 20k feet in most areas gets damn expensive.

yes it is a repost like 100 times,
Distance is a difference from building the infrastructure to interconnect all those houses out in the country that are a mile a part from each other.

I love when people post crap like this and are completely ignorant of what they are talking about.

 

[ggnl]

Originally posted by: austin316
I didn't know distance mattered that much.

It matters when you have to build an infrastructure to carry all that data. It costs a lot of $$$ to lay cable. A good portion of Japan's population is contained in one contiguous metropolitan area.

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: austin316
I didn't know distance mattered that much.

The issue here is infrastructure. The US is over 25x the landmass of Japan with only 2.5x the population.

There are areas of the US that will NEVER (OK, not in our lifetimes...) be profitable to cover with traditional physical infrastructure.

Wireless is really the only hope for those in rural areas.

Viper GTS

 

[Platypus]

Originally posted by: drinkmorejava
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: austin316
I didn't know distance mattered that much.</end quote></div>

they do in terms of both signal quality and cost of deployment

Yep, exactly. It's much easier to run fiber everywhere in Japan (Fiber to the curb is just becoming big here in the states). It'd be ungodly expensive to run fiber the lengths it would need to go here. This is why I hate 'tech articles' such as the one posted, they're comparing apples and oranges. Infrastructure wise there's no way the US can compete with smaller countries, it just isn't going to happen.

 

[ric1287]

and they were able to design their infrastructure a whole hell of alot better right? We had to use phone/cable lines that we set up decades ago while they can use the latest tech.

 

[Feldenak]

Originally posted by: Platypus

Originally posted by: drinkmorejava

Originally posted by: austin316
I didn't know distance mattered that much.

they do in terms of both signal quality and cost of deployment

Yep, exactly. It's much easier to run fiber everywhere in Japan (Fiber to the curb is just becoming big here in the states). It'd be ungodly expensive to run fiber the lengths it would need to go here. This is why I hate 'tech articles' such as the one posted, they're comparing apples and oranges. Infrastructure wise there's no way the US can compete with smaller countries, it just isn't going to happen.

As spread out as we are in the US, I think we've got a pretty damn good infrastructure.

 

[BigJ]

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: ric1287
and they were able to design their infrastructure a whole hell of alot better right? We had to use phone/cable lines that we set up decades ago while they can use the latest tech.</end quote></div>

You're onto a very important point that people often overlook. The US was originally the leader with broadband technology. It was extremely costly to setup and was very restricted in terms of peak performance. Because of what the US did, Asia and Europe were later to the game but laid much better initial infrastructure, reducing the costs required for ramping up speeds considerably. For the US to ramp up speeds, we're laying new infrastructure, such as the case with Verizion Fios.

 

[Slikkster]

Originally posted by: BigJ
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: ric1287
and they were able to design their infrastructure a whole hell of alot better right? We had to use phone/cable lines that we set up decades ago while they can use the latest tech.</end quote></div>

You're onto a very important point that people often overlook. The US was originally the leader with broadband technology. It was extremely costly to setup and was very restricted in terms of peak performance. Because of what the US did, Asia and Europe were later to the game but laid much better initial infrastructure, reducing the costs required for ramping up speeds considerably. For the US to ramp up speeds, we're laying new infrastructure, such as the case with Verizion Fios.

Europe? I've always heard that it's been a historical pain to lay any kind of cable, particularly in and around the older cities. That's one reason wireless is so prevalent there.

Repost? Let's see...I searched for:

Broadband
Net Access
Speed
Japan

and zippo came up. The story is datelined yesterday.
Now, whether the story itself is "news" or not vis-a-vis other countries might be a different story. The 50-state comparison is useful, though, as an indicator of how the US network is laid out. Oddly enough, California doesn't do very well in the state comparisons.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: Slikkster
begin quote>Originally posted by: BigJ

You're onto a very important point that people often overlook. The US was originally the leader with broadband technology. It was extremely costly to setup and was very restricted in terms of peak performance. Because of what the US did, Japan and Europe were later to the game but laid much better initial infrastructure, reducing the costs required for ramping up speeds considerably. For the US to ramp up speeds, we're laying new infrastructure, such as the case with Verizion Fios.</end quote></div>

Europe? I've always heard that it's been a historical pain to lay any kind of cable, particularly in and around the older cities. That's one reason wireless is so prevalent there.

Repost? Let's see...I searched for:

Broadband
Net Access
Speed
Japan

and zippo came up. The story is datelined yesterday.
Now, whether the story itself is "news" or not vis-a-vis other countries might be a different story. The 50-state comparison is useful, though, as an indicator of how the US network is laid out. Oddly enough, California doesn't do very well in the state comparisons.

Yes Europe. Where the infrastructure is laid, it has the ability to ramp up quickly and less costly.

Did you read in the article where France has an average of 17mbps?

 

[manowar821]

People say it has to do with the distance in between cities and such... I mean, we are a very spread out country.

I don't exactly believe it though. Considering how the cable providers act and treat their customers....

EDIT: Example... Does anyone know the average speed in Russia?

 

[NuclearNed]

This sounds like the foundation for Michael Moore's next movie...

 

[Quasmo]

They list Canada at 7mbps, suck it distance.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: manowar821
People say it has to do with the distance in between cities and such... I mean, we are a very spread out country.

I don't exactly believe it though. Considering how the cable providers act and treat their customers....

EDIT: Example... Does anyone know the average speed in Russia?

http://www.itif.org/files/BroadbandRankings.pdf

Not Russia, but a lot of different countries.

 

[BigJ]

Also from the link I posted above, it seems this news article is misleading. In this:
http://www.itif.org/files/BroadbandRankings.pdf

The same place where they got the Japan, France, and Korea speeds, the US is actually at almost 5mpbs. It seems like the CWA conducted their own tests in an effort to skew some numbers

 

[spidey07]

What a completely bogus and misleading article. We have some NAPs that are more powerful then the entire country.

Not once was route miles of fiber or routers mentioned.

Not only that but they are way ahead because there were late to the game and by then next generation PON chips were out.

 

[Slikkster]

Originally posted by: BigJ
Also from the link I posted above, it seems this news article is misleading. In this:
http://www.itif.org/files/BroadbandRankings.pdf

The same place where they got the Japan, France, and Korea speeds, the US is actually at almost 5mpbs. It seems like the CWA conducted their own tests in an effort to skew some numbers

Point taken on France (previous post). Good catch on the itif rankings, but I have to say that the U.S. average does seem like a misprint. I can't imagine that the average broadband (download) speed is 5 mbps here.

Edit: arstechnica.com has this snippet about CWA's numbers:

"However, the CWA's data conflicts with that of the ITIF report. ITIF claims that the average broadband speed in the US is 4.8Mbps?still lower than Canada, many western European countries, Japan, and Korea?but more than twice as fast as CWA's numbers. In fact, Cohen himself doesn't exactly claim that the CWA's data is valid. "While we don't claim that the results are scientific, we do believe this is the first national survey of Internet upload and download speeds," Cohen said in his testimony to the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. "I should point out that most people who took our speed test either use DSL or a cable modem."

 

[manowar821]

Originally posted by: BigJ
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: manowar821
People say it has to do with the distance in between cities and such... I mean, we are a very spread out country.

I don't exactly believe it though. Considering how the cable providers act and treat their customers....

EDIT: Example... Does anyone know the average speed in Russia?</end quote></div>

http://www.itif.org/files/BroadbandRankings.pdf

Not Russia, but a lot of different countries.

Very interesting... Thanks, BigJ!

 

[Acanthus]

I find it very hard to believe that cable companies cant ramp up the pathetic speeds they offer in monopolized areas.

Amazing that comcast is 12mbit in chicago, and 3 mbit outside of the city.

Or is using the exsisting cable lines expensive too