Slow broadband in the US, even slowwwer in Ireland

probe

A survey by the Communications Workers of America found that the average American has very slow broadband speeds compared with other countries in Asia and Europe – median US download speed is 1.97 Mbits/sec! One wonders what the average download speed is in Ireland under the eircom/Comreg/CommunicationsWorkersofIreland/Gov.ie go slow cartel? One suspects that it is well under 1 Mbits/sec – and if you added in all the people forced to use dial-up in Ireland (PSTN or ISDN BRA) the average is probably closer to 200 kbits/sec...

.probe


quote:


U.S. Net access not all that speedy


The USA trails other industrialized nations in high-speed Internet access and may never catch up unless quick action is taken by public-policymakers, a report commissioned by the Communications Workers of America warns.

The median U.S. download speed now is 1.97 megabits per second — a fraction of the 61 megabits per second enjoyed by consumers in Japan, says the report released Monday. Other speedy countries include South Korea (median 45 megabits), France (17 megabits) and Canada (7 megabits).

"We have pathetic speeds compared to the rest of the world," CWA President Larry Cohen says. "People don't pay attention to the fact that the country that started the commercial Internet is falling woefully behind."
Speed matters on the Internet. A 10-megabyte file takes about 15 seconds to download with a 5-megabit connection — fast for the USA. Download time with a 545-kilobit connection, about the entry-level speed in many areas: almost 2½ hours.

Broadband speed is a function of network capacity: The more capacity you have, the more speed you can deliver. Speed, in turn, allows more and better Internet applications, such as photo sharing and video streaming. Superfast speeds are imperative for critical applications such as telemedicine.

unquote

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2007-06-25-net-speeds_N.htm

towel401

the only thing they need to is make sure everybody can actually get broadband, and increase upstream bandwidth. I'm sick of these packages where there are 8 or more parts downstream for every upstream. they should make a law that says they must have at least 1/4 or 1/5th upstream.

what is wrong with a 1mbit connection anyway, for someone who just wants to make contact to the outside world and look at a few sites?

They shouldnt really be comparing US and Korea. America has a lot of isolated areas so its hard to get broadband to them. Korea is mostly mountains, and then very densely populated towns that are full of high rise apartments so broadband rollout is very easy over there. though when I was in korea I only had a 4096/640? DSL package. they consider that basic over there. In america i had 5/2mbit FTTH but that isn't available in many places. France has mostly ADSL2 systems at around 24mbits, and maybe 1mbit upstream so again that is nothing to write home about

towel401

probe wrote:

Speed matters on the Internet. A 10-megabyte file takes about 15 seconds to download with a 5-megabit connection — fast for the USA. Download time with a 545-kilobit connection, about the entry-level speed in many areas: almost 2½ hours.

more like 2½ minutes

Marlow

towel401 wrote:

the only thing they need to is make sure everybody can actually get broadband, and increase upstream bandwidth

Well .. 512kbit plenty for most, given that it is uncapped and symmetric.

ESPECIALLY, when you are used to be sitting on a pair gain line with dial-up speeds of 9600 baud

/Martin