Why Is American Internet So Slow?

If you look at the world map with the studies data: Download speeds by country

There isn't much of a difference.

US 21.8
UK 24.1
Russia 21.5
Netherlands 39.6
China 17.3
South Korea 52.4

All conspiracies and corporate money grubbing aside the two major influences in any infrastructure are age of said infrastructure and population density.

Lines in the US are ancient and population density is very thin so why invest the big bucks in running new equipment out into the 90% of America that is sparsely populated?

Average speeds by state: Map

New York: 26.9
Idaho 17.4


So if you want really fast Internet, the latest and greatest and best covering infrastructure, you're best bet is to live somewhere where everybody is piled on top of each other like chickens in an agri-business hen house all #ting on each others heads and preferably in a place that has had to do a complete rebuild in the last 50 or so years.

Bone75
Should we bring back regulations on the telecom industry, or should we just let the "free market" do it's thing?

edit on 7-3-2014 by Bone75 because: Added another clip

The problem is we don't have a free market and the only regulation our gov't does is to ensure that we don't.

The gov't works for the Oligopolies (in this case telecom:ATT,Verizon,Comcast) who are the highest bidders. The telecom Oligopoly creates the laws and our senators sign on the dotted line. Just like they successfully overturned net neutrality and removed themselves from FCC oversight not that they were much help anyways.

Its very simple really, our gov't works for the largest corporations and any regulations that are passed is to their benefit and not the consumer.

American internet is slow because there are too many companies and corporations shoving their thumbs into the pie.

Kinda like medical care and insurance.

I freaking hate how slow things have become..I get the beach ball quite often..Youtube..well forget it. Can't watch a simple video without refreshing about a dozen times. Hardly ever does youtube work properly anymore..sites heavy with imgs or other..takes forever to load up..and I live in town!

here is what I get on speedtest

forgot to add I pay 52.00/month through frontier comm.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


Don't try to derail this thread with facts!

Feeds his Carrier pigeon, sends it off to post this reply

reply to post by Bone75


Over the years my internet speeds have been steadily climbing.

At home I have 25mbps.
And if I wanted to get the 105mbps service I could.

Granted it's not fiber to the house. But that's just a matter of time.
Remember that european countries are tiny compared to the usa.
it's not so easy to just upgrade everyone.

Yup.. American Internet is just so slow, I feel like it's dial up again some days...



Imagine.. My college lines actually top out at a measly 100Mbps, and I'm almost 200 miles from a 'major city' as such. Just slow as molasses on a summer day, indeed.

(The media always seems to be on about something America isn't doing well enough.... -rolls eyes-)

Wrabbit2000
Imagine.. My college lines actually top out at a measly 100Mbps, and I'm almost 200 miles from a 'major city' as such. Just slow as molasses on a summer day, indeed.

Schools are often NOT always good examples which often depends on Students swamping the lines downloading 'school related' pdfs, porn, gaming, music and movies etc...

Well, you know what I meant

Go live in Ngau Tau Kok in Hong Kong Speed there is 124.87mbps

reply to post by SLAYER69


True... Schools are not usually reflective of the community. Especially with those on Internet II. However, just as a note...My residential above isn't tied to the school and it is still residential plan level. 999 Gigs monthly transfer cap too.

(Okay...I'm on the hairs edge of basic commercial for the plan..but still residential)

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Yours is a little over twice as fast as mine, and I have the highest package I could ge at about $60 a month just for the internet. When I was overseas it was a lot faster and cheaper.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I remember back in the day when 'Cable' first came to our new development my Ex and I just moved in to. We had a Node all to ourselves for like 9 months. I was serving the Original beta CS back then.

Unbelievable speeds.

Then people started hogging my interwebs

reply to post by SLAYER69


I remember the days of Beta Counter Strike SLAYER69. Some of the best gaming experiences i ever had back then

For my cable 60 mbs line and TV package that includes all Discovery channels and full kids TV (No sports or movies) cost me near on £60 pcm. I don't have a phone line connected either, Good thing about cable for me is no line rental that would cost a around £15 on top my current bill.

I have fibre into my house and get 60 Mbps down and 30 Mbps up for around $90/mo. even though the Canadian avg is around 21 Mbps down.(lower than US avg.) So higher rate are available often if you want to pay for it.

Here if you are willing to pay you can get some pretty speed

Download speed up to 200 Mbps and upload speed up to 30 Mbps.
NEW
Our Ultimate-Speed 120 and Ultimate-Speed 200 Internet plans are now available in new areas in and around Montréal.

www.videotron.com...

add 10$ for unlimited bandwith

reply to post by SLAYER69


You were running one of the original CS game servers before they went gold and published? One of these days, we need to sit down and compare notes. I was so deeply involved in the CS world back then between Clans United and Veteran Gamers Network that I have a feeling we've traded shots or shared the same digital dirt to defend a time or two and just never realized it.

It is a real blast to think back, isn't it? I believe it was 1998 or 1999 I had Hughes Satellite Internet and found the little glitch for establishing multiple downstream feeds at once. Whoa! Back then?? I was used to 8kbps being a pretty cool download speed (download ..not connection, of course) then satellite gave me 20x's that speed with the exploit. (grin) Prior to that? I distinctly recall downloading Age of Empires and waiting 20 *HOURS* for it to complete. Oh brother... it was just over 125mb as I recall.

We've come SO far!

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


remember dling with dialup at 14.4k

Dolby_X

add 10$ for unlimited bandwith

This is the way of the future soon enough.

It won't matter much if we're all getting 200 down and 100 up when bandwidth caps limit us to a couple of gigs a month unless we pay out the nose.

Between bandwidth caps and "cloud based" always on DRM style pricing plans the Internet will be ruined in no time.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


reply to post by SLAYER69



Ok, seriously. How hard would it be to arrange a CS ATS match?

reply to post by khimbar


got mine ready just send the ip !