A clandestine agency within the United States Department of Defense laid the foundations for the Internet way back in the 1960s. Given that, it should be pretty safe to assume that the country’s broadband infrastructure would make the rest of the world envious.
Turns out that assumption is totally off the mark.
A new report, from online content delivery service Pando Networks, notes that the U.S. now ranks 26th worldwide for Internet speed, putting it just behind Hungary. That country’s gross domestic product of $129 billion, according to the most recent data from the International Monetary Fund, makes it the 56th-largest economy in the world, sandwiched between Qatar and Bangladesh. (The U.S., the world’s largest economy, has a GDP of $14.6 trillion.)
South Korea, with a GDP of $1 trillion, has the fastest Internet speeds in the world.
Why has the U.S. — home to Silicon Valley and high-tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook — fallen so far behind, and is there anything that can be done about it?
“There’s two reasons we see the numbers that we see,” Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks, told The Daily. “One is geography: It’s easier to wire smaller and more densely populated countries. And two: Governments in these countries realized that it was important to have fast Internet speeds in order to compete in the global economy.”
But if you listen to certain commentators, government can do nothing right, so it’s best for it to just get out of the way and let the market take care of itself. A fine idea, sure, but what do you tell people in the many neighborhoods across the U.S. that have access to only one broadband provider? “Sorry, but the market has decided that your Internet connection will be worse than what you’d find in Moldova (ranked 13th), one of the last countries to throw off the yoke of Soviet dictatorship”?
And if that broadband provider is the only game in town, what incentive does it have to improve that infrastructure?
“Politically, I don’t know if anything is possible these days,” said Levitan. “The FCC has less power than it might have had 10 to 15 years ago.” That makes it hard to persuade, if not outright compel, telecommunications companies to commit to improving the nation’s creaky broadband infrastructure.
Perhaps, then, we shouldn’t be too surprised to see the world pass us by, hundreds of megabits per second at a time.
Even a cursory look at the numbers is embarrassing for a country with as proud a technological heritage as the U.S. The average South Korean can expect a download speed of 17.62 megabits per second (Mbps), followed by Web surfers in Romania (15.27 Mbps) and Bulgaria (12.89 Mbps). The average download speed in the U.S. is a paltry 4.93 Mbps, or just over a quarter as fast as the very fastest connections on the planet.
That’s the average speed, mind you, and doesn’t quite illustrate how bad it can actually be out there. If you’re unlucky enough to live in Pocatello, Idaho (population 54,255, according to the 2010 Census), the best you can expect is 251 kilobytes per second (KBps), or just under 2.0 megabits per second. (There’s 128 kilobytes in a single megabit.) In fact, Idaho has the ignoble distinction of being the slowest state in the country, with an average speed of 318 KBps, or 2.5 Mbps.
Tiny Rhode Island, the fastest state in the country, averages 894 KBps, or 6.9 Mbps.
What’s worse is that 33 states don’t even meet the Federal Communications Commission’s own definition of broadband, as set in the Seventh Broadband Progress Report that it published last May, in which broadband is defined as “a transmission service that actually enables an end user to download content at speeds of at least 4 megabits per second (Mbps) and to upload content at speeds of at least 1 Mbps over the broadband provider’s network (4 Mbps/1 Mbps).”
In other words, most people in places like Illinois, North Carolina, Texas and, of course, poor old Idaho don’t even have access to broadband.
To say the U.S. could use the broadband equivalent of an interstate highway system would be putting it gently.
While commercial concerns help these companies determine whether it’s financially viable to upgrade an area’s broadband infrastructure, Verizon’s director of external communications, Ed McFadden, told The Daily that municipalities sometimes try to extract concessions from Verizon in exchange for the rights to lay new cable — paying for the construction of a new parking lot near city hall, say, or the installation of flowers in the center of town.
Of course, that’s not to say it’s impossible to find a halfway decent Internet connection in the U.S. — provided you live in the right area or attend a major university. (The FCC’s Web site makes it easy to see what broadband providers are available in your area.) Verizon’s Fios delivers download speeds of up to 150 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 35 Mbps. Upload speed is particularly important for services like Skype that rely on peer-to-peer technology. Cablevision, Comcast and Time Warner also offer broadband plans that include download speeds of 50 Mbps and higher, while AT&T’s broadband offerings top out at 24 Mbps.
Turns out that assumption is totally off the mark.
A new report, from online content delivery service Pando Networks, notes that the U.S. now ranks 26th worldwide for Internet speed, putting it just behind Hungary. That country’s gross domestic product of $129 billion, according to the most recent data from the International Monetary Fund, makes it the 56th-largest economy in the world, sandwiched between Qatar and Bangladesh. (The U.S., the world’s largest economy, has a GDP of $14.6 trillion.)
South Korea, with a GDP of $1 trillion, has the fastest Internet speeds in the world.
Why has the U.S. — home to Silicon Valley and high-tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook — fallen so far behind, and is there anything that can be done about it?
“There’s two reasons we see the numbers that we see,” Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks, told The Daily. “One is geography: It’s easier to wire smaller and more densely populated countries. And two: Governments in these countries realized that it was important to have fast Internet speeds in order to compete in the global economy.”
But if you listen to certain commentators, government can do nothing right, so it’s best for it to just get out of the way and let the market take care of itself. A fine idea, sure, but what do you tell people in the many neighborhoods across the U.S. that have access to only one broadband provider? “Sorry, but the market has decided that your Internet connection will be worse than what you’d find in Moldova (ranked 13th), one of the last countries to throw off the yoke of Soviet dictatorship”?
And if that broadband provider is the only game in town, what incentive does it have to improve that infrastructure?
“Politically, I don’t know if anything is possible these days,” said Levitan. “The FCC has less power than it might have had 10 to 15 years ago.” That makes it hard to persuade, if not outright compel, telecommunications companies to commit to improving the nation’s creaky broadband infrastructure.
Perhaps, then, we shouldn’t be too surprised to see the world pass us by, hundreds of megabits per second at a time.
Even a cursory look at the numbers is embarrassing for a country with as proud a technological heritage as the U.S. The average South Korean can expect a download speed of 17.62 megabits per second (Mbps), followed by Web surfers in Romania (15.27 Mbps) and Bulgaria (12.89 Mbps). The average download speed in the U.S. is a paltry 4.93 Mbps, or just over a quarter as fast as the very fastest connections on the planet.
That’s the average speed, mind you, and doesn’t quite illustrate how bad it can actually be out there. If you’re unlucky enough to live in Pocatello, Idaho (population 54,255, according to the 2010 Census), the best you can expect is 251 kilobytes per second (KBps), or just under 2.0 megabits per second. (There’s 128 kilobytes in a single megabit.) In fact, Idaho has the ignoble distinction of being the slowest state in the country, with an average speed of 318 KBps, or 2.5 Mbps.
Tiny Rhode Island, the fastest state in the country, averages 894 KBps, or 6.9 Mbps.
What’s worse is that 33 states don’t even meet the Federal Communications Commission’s own definition of broadband, as set in the Seventh Broadband Progress Report that it published last May, in which broadband is defined as “a transmission service that actually enables an end user to download content at speeds of at least 4 megabits per second (Mbps) and to upload content at speeds of at least 1 Mbps over the broadband provider’s network (4 Mbps/1 Mbps).”
In other words, most people in places like Illinois, North Carolina, Texas and, of course, poor old Idaho don’t even have access to broadband.
To say the U.S. could use the broadband equivalent of an interstate highway system would be putting it gently.
While commercial concerns help these companies determine whether it’s financially viable to upgrade an area’s broadband infrastructure, Verizon’s director of external communications, Ed McFadden, told The Daily that municipalities sometimes try to extract concessions from Verizon in exchange for the rights to lay new cable — paying for the construction of a new parking lot near city hall, say, or the installation of flowers in the center of town.
Of course, that’s not to say it’s impossible to find a halfway decent Internet connection in the U.S. — provided you live in the right area or attend a major university. (The FCC’s Web site makes it easy to see what broadband providers are available in your area.) Verizon’s Fios delivers download speeds of up to 150 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 35 Mbps. Upload speed is particularly important for services like Skype that rely on peer-to-peer technology. Cablevision, Comcast and Time Warner also offer broadband plans that include download speeds of 50 Mbps and higher, while AT&T’s broadband offerings top out at 24 Mbps.
