cost more here than anywhere else.......you know 50 years ago title loan companies were considered Loan Sharks........ but now most are legally owned by politicians! Funny how that works!

There are dozens of broadband choices, but most people don't look past their phone company and their cable company.

http://www.dslreports.com/

and cut rate whores for political representation.

Well, three if I include my mobile service provider. But that's worse service at a higher price.

My options for broadband Internet:

1) Time Warner Cable.
2) AT&T DSL
3) Other companies re-selling AT&T DSL

Don't have 4G cell service here. Even if we did, the really low caps would make it an unappealing solution. And I really have a hard time calling satellite service "broadband".

Don't have FIOS/U-Verse or other replacements for DSL. And with the relatively low speed of the DSL service, that means we get to pay Time Warner.

it severely limits your broadband choices. I looked into 9 or 10 broadband companies for my mom, and only one of those did not require a landline telephone.

There are many people who only have access to dial up - at very, very slow speeds. You can't run a business with that kind of slow access.

We are still in the pre-Tennessee Valley authority period when it comes to wired access to the internet, infrastructurewise.

We still have all that infrastructure to maintain.

FiOS - that uses fiber optic lines end to end (replacing the copper), including fiber from the street to a home's wall jack, is "older telephone lines"? Really?



(I have Comcast but one would think that something published in "Scientific American" would be umm... "scientific"?)

Monopolies aside, I think that to compare a country that has done it the "hard way" - slowly evolving the technology since the 1800s (to cross a landmass many many times the size of the countries listed) to countries that went from "nothing" to "cell towers everywhere", is a bit disingenuous.

We "Marshall Planned" so many of those same fricking countries after WWII and have spent so much of our money providing for their military during that time (while ironically, that same "military" was the source of ARPANET, the original "internet&quot , while they took the surplus and strung up tech that we developed, within their tiny borders - and then they laugh at us.

And of course now, you have Crudze holding up the FCC Chairman position. Just can't win.

and so they will not be investing in expensive repairs that they should have done long ago.

They're a rarity in the US at this point, and the telecom companies have no plans to change that. A majority of Americans still think that their Internet is "fast," mostly because the cable company tells them it's fast.

Fiber optics hasn't caught on in the US, and there's no incentive for it to catch on. Prepare for many more years of an inferior infrastructure, and certainly not fiber optic cables (unless if you're lucky enough to be the exception).

Compared to the rest of the world, Comcast's "fast" Internet is laughably slow.

Where I live fiber optic is everywhere, and all new subdividions have it. Andd I live in an area yhat many here consider a redneck wasteland.

"Verizon announced in March 2010 they were winding down their FiOS expansion, concentrating on completing their network in areas that already had FiOS franchises but were not deploying to new areas, which included the cities of Baltimore and Boston, who had not yet secured municipal franchise agreements.[12] This may violate Verizon's agreements with some municipalities and states, since Verizon has collected revenue to deploy infrastructure upgrades that never occurred.[13]"

When that SA article was written, FiOS was available to less than 18 million Americans, and in-use by less than 4 million subscribers.

That's not even 2% of all Americans.

regarding Verizon coming into each apartment this week "to check for possible FIOS hookup options".

I never expected anything from Verizon for FIOS in here. AT. ALL. (although there is conduit and comm closets where Comcast lines and telecomm bundles are run, so there's no reason why they can't do it, although it would be a bit labor intensive if they need to do it to each unit). It seems the main focus for Verizon outside of the FIOS was to replace the copper voice landlines with fiber and they have done this routinely as part of their FiOS installs. In fact, they have been pushing hard in my sister's suburban community to have residences dump the copper landlines and replace them with their fiber lines in the residence for VoIP (or whatever their equivalent is) so they can tear down the old poles and lines (that go down constantly in storms because the lines were strung along and under treelines).

However, IMHO, as an earlier poster noted, they may end up going more for wireless as a cheaper route, although they would probably still need to feed the data to a fiber infrastructure for now.

MY MIL pays 140 for TV + broadband. (we moved her to magic Jack for phone). There are all sorts of gimmicks on the bills, including taxes and equipment rentals that re simply ridiculous and make it impossible to check the bill. She is 93, so we cant mover her easily to online television, but we would if we could, frankly, because the cost is ridiculous, but there is no other choice in broadband.

We only have broadband. For the first year, we only paid $29. After one year, the discount disappears and we have to pay $49 (yikes). We have a Aereo contract at $8 a month for TV. When we called our broadband provider for TV contracts, the least expensive was $30 for a year moving to the same $49.99 after that. We said thanks but no thanks. We use magicJack for telephone as well.

I had a cousin and a sister who tried it maybe 5 years ago.
I could only hear every other word; conversation was impossible.

is considerably less expensive than Comcast or Charter.

When my MagicJack-using sister calls me on my Vonage phone, there's a lengthy delay in the conversation. Kinda like calling very, very long distance back-in-the-day.

If either one of us is using a normal phone service (ex. cell phone), then it's fine.

broadband/wireless. I think it's possible, we could share accounts and pay a tiny amount. But some would complain that "others" aren't paying their share, like those with little income.

Oh, and DEREGULATION!

The same question can be asked about cell service.

Or health insurance.

Or health care.

Or energy.

Or transportation.

Or banking.

Or, most importantly, political choice and representation.

It is a systemic problem in our society caused by the laissez faire trend which enabled the breaking up of all those anti-trust regulations that were fought so hard for long ago.

I don't have the actual executive order on this pc (using the wife's) but there were 2 orders signed by Reagan which basically gutted the anti-trust oversight and yanked the teeth out of the gov't's competitive oversight.

Those were the straws.

After that it was just a matter of time before the cable companies could define their "competition" by dividing up the herd. Ie, each company bid on a corral. And after they got the corral they got to make the rules inside it.

Communications infrastructure would work well as a public utility. But we don't have those any more.

Having the FCC head chosen by industry doesn't help much.

Kinda the same as having the treasury secretary blessed by the bankers.

Mind that prod...

If we don't address this we're just going to keep sliding downhill like we have for the last 30 years.

The RWs will tell you that this is the best way to make something work in the marketplace. Well, the free market isn't free and will cost you an arm and a leg if you let it.

In a lot of places there's at most two carriers, and they're not in direct competition.

We pay $100 a month for satellite Internet that's theoretically up to 10 Mbps but often doesn't break 1 Mbps.

hearing on wired communications---if you think things are shitty now just you wait.
Att and the other incumbent carriers want all their marbles back the the republicans are more than happy to help them.

part of the problem with broadband is just the fact that the us is just a large county.
dsl and cable and fiber require new infrastructure and to wire small towns and farms is not cheap.

think wireless is the solution--is it because att is so kind and generous.....

pay attention
If the likes of ATT gets fcc approval to abandon their wired switches (were lots of the competition co locates) it will be pre 1996 all over again. And we will be royally fucked

Unregulated, neo-monopoly capitalism capable of imposing high rents on all kinds of goods and services.

Last edited Mon Oct 28, 2013, 11:35 AM - Edit history (1)

...on telecom monopolies. Relevant interview starts at the 13:20 mark.

http://majority.fm/2013/02/26/226-susan-crawford-the-fight-against-telecom-monopolies/

I can't think of anything in my life that has the same ROI as my broadband connection and access to the internet. It also provides great educational resources and joy in life. It does need to be made available to all. It has provided so much for me over the years, I would like for those with less means to be able to use the same service that I am. I do understand that libraries can be used, but that is different than a single mother being able to use it to help look for a job after she has put her children to bed at night.

hella expensive

Same reason gas is like $10 a gallon in England, while it's about 2 cents a gallon in Venezuela. It ain't rocket science. They also pay a 20-percent sales tax (sorry, VAT... but the same basic idea) on everything. Rocket science it ain't.

Now, try buying high-end audio electronics and other goodies in England. A good guideline is both have the same numbers, but in the UK it's in pounds and the US it's in dollars (or half price).

Some of it is because we have slightly fewer people than Europe. But we are spread across many more hectares. So many more hotspots and cables/fibre's to service the same headcount.

Feel free to check this out:

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker?address=true enter Post Code of RH14 0QD, and house number 8.

BT is proud to offer you voice and dialup to this small village on the West Sussex/Surrey border. The population is fairly small but usually very well off, but still considered unprofitable . There is a wireless ISP - Kijoma - you can get "up to" 30 Mbit/sec down, and various up speeds - a "home standard" plan costs £18/mo - about $29/mo. Bandwidth is metered between 8pm and 11pm (10Gb a month) otherwise un-metered at other times.

For TV in the UK, there is a cost of £12.13 a month (about $19.40) for the TV licence. Every household needs to pay this fee to watch TV legally - so to compare a "bundle", the licence fee needs to be taken into consideration.

Someone has to pay for Wolfees 'stash.