Scientific American: U.S. Broadband 'Awful' Because Comcast and AT&T run your government Scientific American jumps head first into the broadband discussion and has published a new editorial from this month's issue that's just been posted online entitled "Why Broadband Service in the U.S. Is So Awful." In it, the magazine correctly notes how U.S. consumers pay more money for lower quality service than a significant number of countries, largely thanks to the monopoly/duopoly strangle hold carriers have in most markets (aka limited competition). That's of course not news to our readers. An FCC study concluded that one way to fix this problem was to embrace open access policies, or embrace a central shared network resource over which multiple carriers compete. According to the study, countries that have an independent, healthy regulatory body (aka, not one beholden to the largest operators) and open access policies see lower prices and better service. Scientific American wonders why the FCC is willing to partially classify carriers for neutrality sake, but isn't tackling competition: quote: Genachowski has said that although he regards the Internet as a telecommunications service, he does not want to bring in third-party competition. This move may have been intended to avoid criticism from policy makers, both Republican and Democrat, who have aligned themselves with large Internet providers such as AT&T and Comcast that stand to suffer when their local monopolies are broken. It is frustrating, however, to see Gena�chowski acknowledge that the U.S. has fallen behind so many other countries in its communications infrastructure and then rule out the most effective way to reverse the decline. We call on the FCC to take this important step and free the Internet. As we've noted repeatedly, you need less regulation (and you might not even need neutrality rules) if there were real competition keeping companies in line. But as the FCC created their national broadband plan, they made the choice to only pay lip service to competition, and As we've noted repeatedly, you need less regulation (and you might not even need neutrality rules) if there were real competition keeping companies in line. But as the FCC created their national broadband plan, they made the choice to only pay lip service to competition, and avoid open access for fear of upsetting the largest carriers Some (like plan architect Blair Levin) will tell you the FCC simply didn't want a legal battle and that the die had already been cast. On the other hand, Levin and company didn't even bother to try. When a company like AT&T is not only the biggest campaign contributor in any sector and an integral part of your country's sometimes legal intelligence gathering operations, there's not a lot of people in DC rushing to stand up to them. Scientific American beats over and around the point. U.S. broadband suffers because the government doesn't embrace real competition. And the government doesn't embrace real competition because that would hurt major carrier profits. These mega carriers not only purchase influence wherever possible, they write many of our telecom laws (hey, ask Scientific American beats over and around the point. U.S. broadband suffers because the government doesn't embrace real competition. And the government doesn't embrace real competition because that would hurt major carrier profits. These mega carriers not only purchase influence wherever possible, they write many of our telecom laws (hey, ask Google CEO Eric Schmidt ) and are grafted to the United States intelligence skeletal system. It's no wonder why the government doesn't create real competition, though you do often wonder where exactly government ends and these companies begin.







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tiger72

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Saint Louis, MO 2 edits 2 recommendations tiger72 Premium Member Germany Hrmm. They have a company (Deutsche Telekom) which owns almost all of the lines in the country, have open access, and yet somehow their speeds are slower than in the United States. And they charge per minute for calls to cell phones. And that's in a country with a higher population density than ours, thus they should actually have *faster* speeds than us.

The UK has caps, bundling requirements, high line access fees, and high billing statement charges.

France only has pockets of fast access.



Only South Korea and Japan are actually better than the US when it comes to fees, speed, AND pricing. And that's because their small size and extremely high population densities lend themselves to buildouts. It's a LOT easier to get your money back in Japan where a mile of fiber can hit 1,000 people, rather than the US where the same mile of fiber will net you about 80 people.



Factor in purchasing price parity and exchange rate differences, as well as the quick progress of HSPA+, LTE, and WiMax deployments (which is where US broadband is heading), and suddenly things don't look so horrible for the ol US of A.



So yeah, I'm gonna go with "they cherry-picked what they licked and ignored the bad once again".