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> Netflix has 52 million subscribers in the United States. Put another way, about five of every six Americans doesn't subscribe to Netflix. > 55% of Americans

> Netflix has 52 million subscribers in the United States. Put another way, about five of every six Americans doesn't subscribe to Netflix. > 55% of Americans watched Netflix in the last year. That article is based on a "study" whose source is an online survey (surveymonkey) with 1046 respondents. > 98% of Americans think internet speeds need to be improved. Blogspam article which cites, though does not link, to an alleged study from Cambium Networks. Cambium Networks sells WISP equipment. > Roughly 50% are 'satisfied' with their home internet speeds but this is according to the FCC, which has lied to me a lot recently. Wow, that's a serious misrepresentation. It says that 50% are "very satisfied" with their internet speeds, but you conveniently left out the line that follows: an additional 41% are "somewhat satisfied" with their internet speeds. So it's really saying that 91% are 'satisfied' with their home internet speeds. The broader point you can take from that document is that, between two different studies, only 20% of homes had respondents who were aware of their network speed... It's not a tremendous leap to assume that most people are not savvy enough to understand whether their network issues are caused by their ISP, or whether their network issues are caused by an old and flakey combo-WAP-router-modem that lacks modern developments in things like traffic shaping. A lot of hatred for ISPs probably comes from misinformed consumers cursing their ISP for network slowness that is actually due to wireless congestion or old/slow computers running a virus scan. > This is a natural result of lightly-regulated monopolies and oligopolies. It doesn't mean that their choices not to invest are somehow best for the long-term growth of the internet, in any way shape or form. Their monetary incentives are not aligned with long-term growth of the Internet. My argument is that there is no real monopoly, the average internet user has a lot of choices that meets the needs of their usage patterns-- usage patterns that seem completely alien to HN readers and reddit users.

bo1024 9y ago
I don't have time to dig deeply into sources for all these things because I'm not a lobbyist by profession, but I think your assessment is way off. Somewhat satisfied also means somewhat dissatisfied, so by your reasoning 50+% are "dissatisfied" with their internet speeds. There also have been tons of studies on the level of monopoly service, but you seem to not count those because you think 1Mbps is acceptable in 2017. You seem to be saying that we should be thrilled with this wonderful world where lots of people are "somewhat" satisfied and pay much higher prices than other countries and get 1Mbps level service. That's the status quo you want to hang on to? Is that where you want America to still be in 20 years? If we never serve people a better internet, there will be tons of opportunities they'll never get. As just one example, right now there is a huge crunch of millenials moving to big cities where the jobs are at, but that's also where housing prices are highest. If only we had the Internet service to allow large numbers of good paying jobs from home in rural areas, it would be huge for our country's economy. But I worry that the attitude you present, that most people don't need good internet anyway, will never get us there.

bo1024 9y ago

I don't have time to dig deeply into sources for all these things because I'm not a lobbyist by profession, but I think your assessment is way off. Somewhat satisfied also means somewhat dissatisfied, so by your reasoning 50+% are "dissatisfied" with their internet speeds. There also have been tons of studies on the level of monopoly service, but you seem to not count those because you think 1Mbps is acceptable in 2017. You seem to be saying that we should be thrilled with this wonderful world where lots of people are "somewhat" satisfied and pay much higher prices than other countries and get 1Mbps level service. That's the status quo you want to hang on to? Is that where you want America to still be in 20 years? If we never serve people a better internet, there will be tons of opportunities they'll never get. As just one example, right now there is a huge crunch of millenials moving to big cities where the jobs are at, but that's also where housing prices are highest. If only we had the Internet service to allow large numbers of good paying jobs from home in rural areas, it would be huge for our country's economy. But I worry that the attitude you present, that most people don't need good internet anyway, will never get us there.