4 ms·
Why in the US is ADSL not more prevalent? The Australian broadband sector is very competitive and generally (unless you are very rural), there are hundreds of
by batiudrami 12y ago
Why in the US is ADSL not more prevalent? The Australian broadband sector is very competitive and generally (unless you are very rural), there are hundreds of companies competing for your business. As a result, prices have consistently come down over time (when I first got ADSL in 2004 I got 1GB of data at 256kbps for $50 (1)), now the same buys unlimited data at the fastest my phone line will allow (14MBit)*. There are also no slowdowns during peak periods - providers ensure sufficiant bandwidth is available. It seems strange to me that the US is apparently locked into cable internet where only one or two providers service entire cities.
(1) This is still fairly expensive but it is primarily because the majority of traffic is international and must come through fairly limited bandwidth undersea pipes. I would imagine the majority of traffic in the US is local and therefore cheaper.
- Aloha 12y agoADSL is quite common, but its a 1.5-20 meg pipe versus a 10-1000 meg pipe.
- sliverstorm 12y agoThere are all sorts of market reasons but I think a very important reason is the death of the landline (POTS). That is, many people have cut the POTS service, which means ADSL costs extra (have to reactivate unneeded landline service)
- Aloha 12y agoMost of the carriers now sell unbundled ADSL now (AT&T, CenturyLink and I believe Verizon in non-fios markets.) it has more to do with distance limitations having too much of a downward effect on speeds. More than less subscribers are around the 5.5kf+ (kilotfoot) range, which usually means sub 15 megabit speeds - and a limited upload (inherent to all ADSL types).
- al_bundling 12y ago> Why in the US is ADSL not more prevalent? Long line lenghts (average loop lenght 3.3km, resulting in sub-10Mbps speeds), no competition due to line sharing regulation being struck down.