Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Why U.S. Broadband Sucks

The US is falling way behind other countries in the speed and cost of broadband access because of a lack of competition. Elsewhere in the world, the company that owns the physical internet backbone must sell access to a range of independent ISPs on the wholesale market. The result is a panoply of companies competing on service, quality, and price. But, a recent Scientific American article argues, back in 2002, the FCC reclassified broadband as "information service" instead of "telecommunications service," and Mr. Local Monopoly has been partying it up ever since.

More »

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Also we are very behind in Fiber Optics. The infrastructure in tremendously behind other countries. One thing we developed new technology and installed it then. Then we or another country enhanced it all. So all the equipment, lines, etc are now out of date. The other countries never installed the first wave we did, so they are up a notch when they installed the better. So we paved the wave and it is expensive to keep up.

Anonymous said...

Fiber optics is nice but the broadband companies are limited by the FCC rules and regs.

Anonymous said...

whats broadband? from a rural somerset county resident

Anonymous said...

The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal (and the broader the band, the greater the capacity for traffic).

Anonymous said...

If Cox Communications or Time Warner ever expand and come to the Shore Verizon and Comcast will not have a chance,will lose every subscriber they have.