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> Comcast spent... Absolute dollars isn't as interesting as a trend. According to the National Cable Telecommunications Association, expenditure on broadband i

> Comcast spent... Absolute dollars isn't as interesting as a trend. According to the National Cable Telecommunications Association, expenditure on broadband infrastructure has declined over the past 5 years. http://www.vox.com/2014/5/12/5711082/big-cable-says-broadband-investment-is-flourishing-but-their-own-data http://www.vox.com/2014/5/12/5711082/big-cable-says-broadban... > We compare quite favorably to countries like Canada and Australia. According to a 2013 report by Ookla, US ranks 31st in download speeds. http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/26/america-falls-a-dismal-31st-on-ranking-of-consumer-download-speeds-report/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/26/america-falls-a-dismal-31s... > You don't, because when public dollars are involved, you get "lowest common denominator" levels of investment. That must explain why Comcast and other monopoly providers fight municipalities tooth and nail against local broadband projects. I respect your opinion, but I disagree that communication infrastructure is not a public good.

rayiner 12y ago
And Canada ranks #37, and Australia #55. The average speed on Ookla's test for the U.S. was 24.34 megabits. Germany was at 25.38 and the UK at 27.01. It's insane to compare a country like the U.S. to a country like Belgium that is more than ten times more dense. If you look at the northeastern states, which have densities closer to Europe (500-1000 per square mile versus 90 per square mile which is the U.S. average), average speeds range from 30-38 megabits, well ahead of the U.K. and Germany which are comparable dense, and on par with countries like Belgium, etc.
- politician 12y ago
  That's true; I would have loved to have found a source that provided speed by municipality rather than country which as you point out here (and earlier) is subject to density. Barring additional evidence, I concede the point.
danielweber 12y ago
> We compare quite favorably to countries like Canada and Australia. According to a 2013 report by Ookla, US ranks 31st in download speeds. You know you didn't disagree with him at all, right? Your source shows the US beating out Canada comfortably, and Australia overwhelmingly. The US is not going to match the #1 and #2 on your list, Hong Kong and Singapore, ever, because it is trivial to wire up a single dense city with weak democratic red tape. I can't say this with 100% (I may have missed one comparing lists from different sources), but it looks like there's no country within an order of magnitude of America's land area that has higher download speeds on Ookla's list. EDIT Yep, confirmed. It looks like the biggest country that is faster than the US is France, which is 547,000 sqkm, while the lower US's land-only area is over 7.6 million sqkm.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > The US is not going to match the #1 and #2 on your list, Hong Kong and Singapore, ever, because it is trivial to wire up a single dense city with weak democratic red tape. But even the most densely populated areas in the US have terrible Internet access. A small portion of New York City has FiOS, but the vast majority has Comcast or Time Warner, and those are about$60 for 20Mbps advertised[0]. I'm willing to give Singapore the fact that it's a smaller government[1], but the bottleneck in providing better Internet access in NYC is not the NYC government. [0] I am in midtown Manhattan, probably the most densely populated area in the country, and I am getting 700 KB/s as I type this, so I'm not even getting anything close to what's advertised. [1] And the population is about 2/3 the size of NYC
  - rayiner 12y ago
    At the state level, on Ookla's data, New York performs pretty comparably to France and Belgium. It may be that there are cities in France and Belgium that have faster internet service. But they have better subways, etc, too. Most Americans cities are terribly managed. While Verizon is trying to deploy FIOS in New York, De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government!
    - chimeracoder 12y ago
      > At the state level, on Ookla's data, New York performs pretty comparably to France and Belgium. Because they're including Weill Cornell Medical College and Digital Ocean in the data (those are the top ISPs in NYC, on their map). It's not very meaningful unless we (A) can separate out consumer ISPs from business ISPs[0], (B) Know what speeds everyone is paying for and has available (currently this is all lumped together), and (C) knows how much everyone is paying for that service. > While Verizon is trying to deploy FIOS in New York, De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government! As someone who actually lives in NYC and has tried to get FiOS installed in multiple buildings, there are two problems. One is that buildings have exclusive agreements to provide television service through either Time Warner or Comcast (usually because the superintendant and/or owner gets free cable as a result of this agreement), and that Verizon refuses to provide FiOS Internet unless they can also provide television service. Verizon is fully aware of this problem, and they've framed it in a way that allows them conveniently to point the finger at another entity. Verizon is "trying" to deploy FiOS in New York, but they're not really interested in expanding their coverage. > De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government This would only be relevant if the NYC government were the ones actively blocking people who can afford to pay for FiOS from having it installed, but as explained above, that's not the case.

rayiner 12y ago

And Canada ranks #37, and Australia #55. The average speed on Ookla's test for the U.S. was 24.34 megabits. Germany was at 25.38 and the UK at 27.01. It's insane to compare a country like the U.S. to a country like Belgium that is more than ten times more dense. If you look at the northeastern states, which have densities closer to Europe (500-1000 per square mile versus 90 per square mile which is the U.S. average), average speeds range from 30-38 megabits, well ahead of the U.K. and Germany which are comparable dense, and on par with countries like Belgium, etc.

politician 12y ago
That's true; I would have loved to have found a source that provided speed by municipality rather than country which as you point out here (and earlier) is subject to density. Barring additional evidence, I concede the point.

danielweber 12y ago

> We compare quite favorably to countries like Canada and Australia. According to a 2013 report by Ookla, US ranks 31st in download speeds. You know you didn't disagree with him at all, right? Your source shows the US beating out Canada comfortably, and Australia overwhelmingly. The US is not going to match the #1 and #2 on your list, Hong Kong and Singapore, ever, because it is trivial to wire up a single dense city with weak democratic red tape. I can't say this with 100% (I may have missed one comparing lists from different sources), but it looks like there's no country within an order of magnitude of America's land area that has higher download speeds on Ookla's list. EDIT Yep, confirmed. It looks like the biggest country that is faster than the US is France, which is 547,000 sqkm, while the lower US's land-only area is over 7.6 million sqkm.

chimeracoder 12y ago
> The US is not going to match the #1 and #2 on your list, Hong Kong and Singapore, ever, because it is trivial to wire up a single dense city with weak democratic red tape. But even the most densely populated areas in the US have terrible Internet access. A small portion of New York City has FiOS, but the vast majority has Comcast or Time Warner, and those are about$60 for 20Mbps advertised[0]. I'm willing to give Singapore the fact that it's a smaller government[1], but the bottleneck in providing better Internet access in NYC is not the NYC government. [0] I am in midtown Manhattan, probably the most densely populated area in the country, and I am getting 700 KB/s as I type this, so I'm not even getting anything close to what's advertised. [1] And the population is about 2/3 the size of NYC
- rayiner 12y ago
  At the state level, on Ookla's data, New York performs pretty comparably to France and Belgium. It may be that there are cities in France and Belgium that have faster internet service. But they have better subways, etc, too. Most Americans cities are terribly managed. While Verizon is trying to deploy FIOS in New York, De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government!
  - chimeracoder 12y ago
    > At the state level, on Ookla's data, New York performs pretty comparably to France and Belgium. Because they're including Weill Cornell Medical College and Digital Ocean in the data (those are the top ISPs in NYC, on their map). It's not very meaningful unless we (A) can separate out consumer ISPs from business ISPs[0], (B) Know what speeds everyone is paying for and has available (currently this is all lumped together), and (C) knows how much everyone is paying for that service. > While Verizon is trying to deploy FIOS in New York, De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government! As someone who actually lives in NYC and has tried to get FiOS installed in multiple buildings, there are two problems. One is that buildings have exclusive agreements to provide television service through either Time Warner or Comcast (usually because the superintendant and/or owner gets free cable as a result of this agreement), and that Verizon refuses to provide FiOS Internet unless they can also provide television service. Verizon is fully aware of this problem, and they've framed it in a way that allows them conveniently to point the finger at another entity. Verizon is "trying" to deploy FiOS in New York, but they're not really interested in expanding their coverage. > De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government This would only be relevant if the NYC government were the ones actively blocking people who can afford to pay for FiOS from having it installed, but as explained above, that's not the case.