How fast is your broadband Internet connection? (Do you even have a broadband Internet connection?) A quick trip to Speedtest.net shows that I’m on a 13mbps/1.7mbps connection. That’s not bad, but in places like Japan, where you can buy a 150 mbps for $60 per month, little kids playing Quake would laugh at my puny connection speed. See, in other parts of the world, for any number of reasons, broadband speeds make American broadband speeds look like pure garbage.
So says Bits, at least, which has a little THE STATE OF BROADBAND series going on. First up: why is broadband so much faster in, say, South Korea and Japan than it is here in the U.S., formerly the most advanced country in the world?
We already know some of the reasons: many of these countries have insane population densities, which make it easier for telecommunication companies to wire up tons of people at a time, all within a small geographic area. How much sense does it may for AT&T’s bottom line to wire your single house that’s in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming?
In London, of all places, you can buy an 8 mbps connection for $9, whereas in New York, you’re looking at $20 for 1 mbps.
But, as Bits cautions, red-blooded Americans shouldn’t be too upset, since speeds here are getting faster. Things like Verizon’s FiOS, which, as we all know, is a fiber to the home scheme, should satiate your broadband appetite. Then there’s AT&T’s U-Verse. So, it’s not like Americans will be screwed out of a proper broadband experience for much longer!
I don’t even know what I’d do with something like FiOS. I’d be on hdbits all day long, limited only by my hard drive storage.
hahaha!!
Be grateful man! I live in Brazil. In my city you pay around $30 for 300kbps and it’s almost the best you can achieve.
In the Capital the situation is different and you can get broader bands for cheaper prices, but I live in the countryside. It’s the best we have for now.
Vitor HP couldn’t be more right. Here in Brazil the “broadband” connection REALLY stinks and you pay a fortune for it.
You can get faster connections than the one he mentioned if you pay something about $100, but it’s only 2mbps and you have a low bandwidth limit per month, so yes, it also sucks.
I’m in the US and I pay $20 a month for about 40kbps…. Have no access to anything better
I’m in a rural area, and we pay $10 per month for, oh, around 20kbps. Our only other options are Mobile Broadband or Satellite, which we haven’t sprung for yet. Darn you Verizon!
I am on FiOS with 20mbps, I thought that was fast until I read about other countries.
FiOS has the capability of offering households with up to 100 mbps without any equipment changes but I fear when they do, they will charge an arm and a leg for it. The price I pay now is competitive with cable, but still high compared to the rest of the world.
I’m in Sweden, I pay $27/month for 100 Mbps. No traffic cap either.
It’s a sparsely populated country, there’s room for you too.
My goodness… a non-xenophobic response? I’m SHOCKED! I’m going to consider the move. And I’m not joking.
Bandwidth for the most part is cheap and easy. The marketing of ISP’s slowly turned it into some precious commodity to charge us with — typical businessman mentality. In reality, for a lot of places with the correct cabling, it would probably cost very little to give you more bandwidth. Lucky for us they’re saving those upgrades for when they want to charge you even more.
But Sweden is cooooooooldddddddddd :( yet blondes are HOT.
I was listening to the radio the other day and they were interviewing a cell phone store owner asking him if the economy keeps on going under if he would sell the blackberry storm for 100 bucks, his response was hell yeah, i can still make a profit.
Then why do you sell it at a higher price? they asked.
“BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO PAY THAT PRICE”
Same goes for almost EVERYTHING we consume.
Wow, I thought our ADSL broadband was one of the slowest @ 4Mb/512K for $40 and $7/1GB of shaped traffic used here in South Africa.
Just goes to show you that speed is a relative term.
Higher rates are coming with Docsis 3.0 from the cable companies. 160 Mbps with 4 TV channels used for data, and 320 Mbps with 8 TV channels. The cable companies will have to give up some of their video channels, but there are several on my system that I would give up for higher bandwidth from my cable modem.