You can get a 50M link, but if ISPs continue to throttle down connections to limit BT, ed2k and traffic as they please you are worse than China with censorship...

I think today the problem today is not bandwidth but policies, and fraudulent marketing...

Why does the U.S. need faster Internet? We're already paying a pretty penny for slow Internet. What's the incentive for the Internet companies to make it any faster?

Just like cell phone speeds, and television, we are slowly being beaten in terms of speed/quality day by day. The U.S. is no longer #1 in many things, but more like being in the lower range compared to other countries.

Woah.

Deja vu....

Don't we see at least one of these stories a month?

I have 2M right now. I can't even imagine having a 63MBps connection, kind of blows my mind to think about it.

I had 2M few years ago and its enough for one user but even at 8M for two people playing anything at the same time (games, youtube, etc) is impossible. Especially the games + youtube was not "cool".

Currently running ADSL2+ at ~18Mbps, its enough for now but i wonder how long...

Two people using youtube at the same time is too much or impossible on a 2M link? What kind of computer are you on? I was able to run several things over a 3MB connection just 4 years ago, and this was on old p3 667's. 2M is plenty for an average household. My folk's house runs on a 4M line and that supports 4 people. My wife and I run on an 8M pipe and that is OVERKILL for what we need.

This is not overkill. More and more Web2-3 application appears online. More traffic hungry media resources and technologies, .Net 3.5 and so on.

Man you just too obsolete for high-speed links :)

OMG. I did not know that there are some developed countries where the situation is worse than here, in Central Europe, which is considered as underdeveloped (my country was in the Eastern Bloc, and it is a part of the EU now). Of course, the situation varies from place to place, e.g. in the rural areas 1 mbps/256kbps for 29 bucks is considered as something standard, however, I live in a pretty large town where 20M/2M is provided for 45 dollars (if you sign up your contract for 12 months). Actually my connection is a bit faster (upload raised to 4M) and I pay less because I decided to sign for quadruple play (TV/landline phone/Internet/WiFi hotspots for free in the country within the network).

I envy people in Scandinavia and Japan. They are far developed than my region and the US.

How sad. What a bunch of dirt cheap no good companies here in the US.

EDIT: Ohh and too difficult or expensive to expand/upgrade our service....bunch of BS.

Thank the RIAA and MPAA. If they had their way we would all still be using those old 300 baud acoustic coupler modems.

Why!? What ARE you using?

The day I would trust the motive of the CWA.....
The US is indeed falling behind on the bandwidth train. Some folks are correct in mentioning the geography being one of the challenges. Having such an old cable plant is another. AT&T is spending a ton of money conditioning pairs to get VDSL2 working at >4000'. While Verizon is spending tons and tons of money on FTTx. Verizon not only had to build a new infrastructure around FTTx but hey had to train their technicians to install and test it not to mention all the new equipment cost.

The backbone definetly needs to catch up. We are lucky in that that during the tech boom tons of fiber was put in the ground. With advances in DWDM technology and 100G the backbone could be upgraded fairly easy in comparison to the last mile.

No one will update the speed in my city so the max is 1.5mbps and it's slow. My ex-girlfriend gets 6.0mbps and she doesn't need it.

Maybe for now. As soon as you fridge and oven start to be web-connected, as soon as you get HD IP-TV..... then she change the habits.

56k sucks! I hope one day it gets faster.

The average US internet user probably has no clue what their download speed is...I said AVERAGE user......

Verizon brags about the speed of FIOS, but I'll be 6 feet under before it's available. I'm paying big bucks for 750kps and that's at peak performance.

I live in Central Illinois and the nearest city which has FIOS is Fort Wayne, Indiana. You talk to them and all they have are excuses.

*laughing*

I swear all you do here is whine.

Verizon is laying down entirely new infrastructure for this. Considering that fact, you might be a bit more lenient on the timetables...

...if you weren't simply looking for more to complain about.

I say sh*t taste bad. You probably consider it a delicacy.

Yeah, because you mean that much to me....

But you'd never say that. You'd just eat it and then whine about it as though the world made you do it and we should all feel so very sorry for you.

We do.

Really.

"and even Canada, which has a median speed of 7.6 Mbps."

Even Canada. LMAO

LOL

Bad BN. Stop using Canada as a whipping boy.

lol

Besides, we *all* know...they're not our whipping boy, they're our hat. ;)

1.5mbits is considered fast here in AUS. Do something you lazy government!

I live 45 min away from the Nations Capital and i still have to use this crappy dialup......

No DSL for the next 10 years No cable

so go figure

Let's see....considering traffic, that would put you in Anacostia...

And with the rampant cable theft, fiber may be the answer...

;-)

Im in Mexico a still a "third world" country and I live miles away from my nearest neighbor, i live in one of the poorest states called oaxaca which is mostly jungle and mountains, only a dirt road to get here . .

and still i have boardband 32MBdown and 4MBup and its fairly cheap $20 american dollars per month aprox.

dont know what's wrong with ISP's in america . .

Viva Mexico! Paying $39.99 for 1.5 Down and 256 up in Minnesota.

It's not the ISPs. People accept it in the US because 97% of the Internet users don't know how far behind the US speeds really are. We bend over backwards to get connected, get a computer to do what we need it to do, etc...then we bend over forwards and pay the bill every month.

That's the truth. American corporations are allowed to get away with the lie that it would be too difficult or expensive to upgrade their systems to the standard of the rest of the world at the same pace, but in reality they just want to get as much profit out of what they already have as they can. Profit is more important than service. And those apologists, for the Reich-wing, are constantly defending this belief that is ruining America.

Paying $39.99 for 1.5 Down and 256 up in Minnesota.

Just because you're a sucker doesn't mean it's anyone's fault but your own.

I live in MN as well. I get 10Mbps. I *could* get 50, for a nice bump in costs.

this belief that is ruining America.

Dude, according to you, *everything* is ruining America.

lmao...

You're almost as bad as those "MS is Doomed!" twats.

I think you ordered the wrong keyboard. Your K and M keys are swapped.

Who is your ISP!!??? I live in Zacatecas and get 1024-128k. Real 400k and I pay 30 USD. Telmex?

Statistics, you can make the numbers say whatever you want. The US has 1) more land mass than all of the other countries mentioned combined. 2) the oldest telephone and cable TV infrastructure in the world. 3) More miles of this old cabling than all other countries combined. Verizon and Comcast will help to catch us up to the rest of the planet. Unfortunately, at&t's UVerse plan doesn't cut the mustard as a suitable next gen technology.

Not larger than Canada. Canada is the second largest nation on Earth, second to Russia. America is either third or forth now. In 1958, the CBC completed the longest television network in the world, from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia. Reportedly, the first continuous live broadcast of a breaking news story in the world was conducted by the CBC during the Springhill Mining Disaster which began on October 23 of that year.

Have you not looked at a map lately?

Most of Canada's pop is along the border. Far easier to bring the last mile. Much of the U.S. is rural.

Apparently you haven't looked at a population density map recently.

It cannot be any excuse. More than 90% of Finland are forests and a part of the country is even behind the North Pole (Santa Claus lives there :-) http://www.santaclausvillage.info ). The density of population is one of the lowest in the world. On the other hand almost 80% of the area of Japan are high mountains similar to the higher parts of the Rockies. Moreover, the Japanese have earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes and volcanoes. Not an easy place for providing the Net.

In Russia MOST of the territory is rural or better say extreme wild. But government manage to install satellite/fiber and provide connection wherever its needed. Especially focused on remote learning, tele-medicine, conferences, voip and so on.

Shame on you americans!

I'm from Portugal and I've got 24 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream ;)

Read carefully guys, MEDIAN download speed. Yes, we can get fast connections here in Canada, but you'll pay big bucks. My ISP offers 50 Mbps but there's limit (combined) of 50 GB. What's the point?! I'm still using the good old unlimited 7 Mbps.

To be honest, that's more than enough if you're an average home user (the 7Mpbs).

It's quite good but I must admit I'm a bit disappointed. Our ISPs and cell companies seem to go backwards. I've been on the 10 Mbps plan (UNLIMITED) for years and they suddenly decided to force limits. The funny thing is they used to tell me: "More than 90% customers don't download more than X GB per month". So, why the limit now? They just can't give me a straight answer. What? Suddenly, 5-10% of the customers are sucking ALL the bandwith? Whatever.

Oh, and Euros got better connections overall. They have amazing upload speeds too..

I like my ISP anyway, rock solid, practically no downtime and my download speed is very stable. I just had to get used to 815KB/s downloads, compared to 1150KB/s heh!

My provider doesn't have any limits..... Plus, when it went from 10Mbps to 15 they only raised the price by a dollar and that from 5 to 10 $5 more.

Yeah. Median. That means middle. That means statistically speaking (if this is just including HOME users) the middle of the road w/ all customers are able to get those speeds. From what it sounds, they don't include dialup either.

I personally worked at an ISP

In the US, the ISP's are all about the money. The Bandwidth is there, but they want the money for the speed.

Such a simplistic analysis.

Nevermind issues of population densities and distances, just reduce it to ISP "greed".

Here's a suggestion you will be sure to like...How about YOU shoulder the real costs of delivering the necessary infrastructure to a remote location so that you and maybe one other neighbor can benefit rather then expecting everyone else to subsidize the costs? Or, do you want to shoulder the costs of the buildout of the network sufficient to support 100% broadband? You might want to to examine some of the physical topology of the terrain as well as population densities in places such as rural New Mexico, Nevada, and other rugged sparsely populated areas.

The fact is, but virtue that the US is one of the FEW countries (especially considering size!) that is essentially fully electrified and wired for landline, 'all' have at least dialup access. But unfortunately, that is not the sole determinant for 'broadband/high speed' access!

But then someone familiar with the technological requirements of telephony and networking, in addition to the associated costs, would know that and not simply make overly simplistic attributions that lack substance or credibility.

Of course it's simplistic. It comes down to that. As far as me shouldering the expense. I already do to some extent. I've been in the business for 20+ years helping design this stuff. Mixing your overly academic viewpoint of a simple situation is to erudite for me.

Shill.

As if ISP's are some sort of public charity or utility service. They're not. They qualify as businesses so, like all businesses, they exist purely for profit. Nothing else.

In any case, back on the original topic: Many countries didn't have legacy infrastructure to deal with, so whatever they have is probably their first deployment. Let's see if they can keep up with current technology in ten years and compare it to the US.

Have you been to Europe?

Poor baby...

While you paint the picture that these companies are "just doing business", the digression that they represent in the name of money is appalling. They regularly throw money at congressmen for favors and keep the profit streams rolling.

We suck at providing to our people. Aren't we the ones that are supposed to make these decisions? Lemmings. If you don't protest, make your voice heard, all you will have is 1.5 for 24.99 with a telco, and they won't offer it for the second year or 6 Mb (and this is what the offer contrary to MB) for $45 with the cable provider, if you have one...

But if you get the triple play...

I've got 25 Mbps here in Canada (Shaw Nitro). And what's with the article saying, "Even Canada...". ****ers.

Hahahaha, I just noticed the humor in that statement!

Must be nice shaw hasn't got extreme or nitro in my area yet been waiting forever it seems.

My ISP offers 15 Mbps in part of Canada.

FIOS
20 up 20 down.

Come on over to China folks. I have a 10 MB (megabyte, not megabit) line in my complex and I pay the equivalent of $180 per YEAR with no limits of control. Sure as hell beats the numbers discussed here like I had when I still lived back home in Texas.

So all that government monitoring and blocking doesn't slow down the connection?

How, pray tell, would MONITORING slow the internet? And, for that matter, how would the inability to get to a page or two, make the internet slower ? That makes no sense.

In fact, the "great firewall" is completely bypassable. To be honest, there is very little I'm unable to see because of government intervention. The things that are banned are basically things I don't give a crrrrap about. When needing to get to something that is blocked, a simple proxy, shell, etc are entirely usable. There is no blocking of files sharing such as torrent, etc.

It's seemless for the most part

filtering pictures of the freedom square with demonstrants and texts including phrase "chinese president is a red commie pig" is much easier than decoding tons of pgped messages to look for potential terrorist threats (and oversea commercial espionage) and visual check of pictures and videos whether they do not contain kiddy porn. go figure!

Screw China.

Please read the research and test cases before mouthing off about it. In regards to firewalls, the latest filtering tests run in Australia CLEARLY demonstrated it's still slows internet access, sometimes quite significantly. Also the pages (wrongly) blocked are still far too high - even at 1%, you're talking hundreds of thousands of pages being blocked.

And as you say, filtering only works on HTTP and sometimes HTTPS. Completely waste of time and money. :P

My ISP offers 50 Mbps. I Minneapolis. Minnesota. USA.

Imagine that....

Still stuck with dial-up here in NE PA... about halfway between New York City and Philadelphia. Don't give me any population density or oldest infrastructure bull... there's absolutely no excuse. Welcome to the new Third World baby.