{"id":7429,"date":"2014-01-18T10:13:39","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T15:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7429"},"modified":"2014-01-18T10:14:45","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T15:14:45","slug":"u-s-58-out-of-90-in-broadband-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/u-s-58-out-of-90-in-broadband-cost.html","title":{"rendered":"U.S. #58 out of 90 in broadband cost"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nStacey Higginbotham wrote for GigaOm 16 January 2014,\r\n\r\nTwo charts that show how crappy U.S. broadband is<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nDespite the deployments of a few gigabit networks by Google and the\r\nspread of faster cable technology, U.S. broadband is falling behind.\r\nIt’s expensive both as a monthly bill and on a per-megabit basis\r\nwhen compared to the rest of the world. For example, at $89 per\r\nmonth on average, U.S. residents pay more for broadband than\r\nresidents in 57 other countries including Canada, Bulgaria, Colombia\r\nand the U.K. That’s right, the\r\n\r\nU.S. ranks 58 out of 90 countries<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe research, from research firm Point Topic concludes that the\r\nhigher broadband prices are “caused by lower investment in\r\ninfrastructure as well as lower take-up which prevents them from\r\nbenefiting from economies of scale.” To get the above data the\r\nfirm compared the prices paid for residential broadband and includes\r\nstandalone and bundled services offered over DSL, fiber and cable\r\nbroadband in the fourth quarter of 2013.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nPer-country comparisons like this are hard to act on, but even at the\r\ncountry level\r\nwe know many things not<\/em> to do, including\r\nthe Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)<\/a>\r\nthat would make it even easier for the telco and cableco incumbents\r\nto keep gouging us for inferior product.\r\nSusan Crawford has previously pointed out\r\n\r\nsome other things we can do<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nPoint Topic does have\r\nsome more detail<\/a>, such as that DSL is the most expensive\r\nway to provide Internet service.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWe already know that\r\n\r\nrural broadband adoption improves rural economic health<\/a>.\r\nThat’s causality.\r\nAnd we also know\r\n\r\nBroadband fiber correlates with increased house prices<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWe could do something about that, such as try to attract Google Fiber,\r\nwhich caused \r\nAT&T to suddenly discover how to do high speed Internet in Austin, Texas<\/a>.\r\nOr propose to do metropolitan-area 4G LTE, which might get\r\n\r\nVZ and T<\/a>\r\noff their duffs for affordable pricing.\r\n

\r\nOh, wait, I forgot:\r\n\r\n“We have broadband,”<\/a>\r\nasserted County Chairman Bill Slaughter.\r\nSo it’s OK to be an Internet backwater in a country that’s\r\n#58 out of 90 in broadband cost.\r\nAll righty, then.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stacey Higginbotham wrote for GigaOm 16 January 2014, Two charts that show how crappy U.S. broadband is, Despite the deployments of a few gigabit networks by Google and the spread of faster cable technology, U.S. broadband is falling behind. It’s expensive both as a monthly bill and on a per-megabit basis when compared to the […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,19,132],"tags":[517,506,1530,8704,8701,7394,8709,8741,8702,12,7,7393,6],"class_list":["post-7429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-history","category-internet-access-speed","tag-4g-lte","tag-broadband","tag-dsl","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-gigaom","tag-history","tag-internet-access-speed","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-point-topic","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1VP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7431,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7429\/revisions\/7431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}