U.S. Internet speed, Ranked 15th in the world

Discussion in 'Tech Talk' started by aroton, Aug 13, 2008.

  1. aroton
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    http://www.tomsguide.com/us/broadband-Internet,news-2326.html


    Alright, this article just personally pisses me off. Yes, I live in the U.S. and this basically confirms that all the cable talk of metering and throttling is BS.

    I mean the very fact japan has a median of 6 megaBYTE a second and we have a average of 2.5 megabit a second is outrageous. Pair that with all the throttling/metering talk going on right now in the U.S. its absolutely ludicrous.

    Everyday I find more and more reason to leave the states. Which is really depressing since we are suppose to be one of the "greatest" nations in the world.
     
  2. Jeb
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    the page doesn't load for me, but id guess the 6 megabyte connections are fiber connections.
    In Japan where things are very condensed, running fiber to the door is very likly very easy to do. In NA where things are more spread out... not so easy, and much more expensive. Some of our business installs for fiber for example cost thousands of dollars to do. The odds of an ISP spending that on a residential customer that may or may not cancel after a few months is very low.
    Although some ISPs are doing fiber to the door, they only do it in certain areas... my guess is the number of potential customers in an area decides that.
     
  3. Gruune
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    Bye .... can we have your stuff and gold ?
     
  4. Zarash
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    Yea Canada more than 3x faster than the US, now if I didn't have a wireless network I might actually do things faster
     
  5. Look at the bright side, you can blow up anyone you want!
     
  6. Tribat
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    I think that the fact that a good part of the US is either rural farming land so still on dialup or cheap ass bastards that are also still on dialup contributes to our internet speed delinquency. But I don't think that means the US sucks. My internet is plenty fast.
     
  7. EF2
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    No the cable and phone companies just suck. Verizon has spent billions and have nothing to show for it. Comcast just sucks.
     
  8. aroton
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    Ya,

    Well its not just the internet thing, its the threat of the I-patriot act, the patriot act, failing economy, legislative people that only care about the people lobbying them. I mean, the way our country is set up now, it is doomed to fail eventually.

    I guess I am just disheartened right now. But hey, thats why we have games right? To escape reality.
     
  9. EF2
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  10. Capitalism has a positive flaw. It regresses when it gets out of whack. Reason takes over for a bit and you'll go rocket past your problems in no time.

    Europe has capitalism, democracy and constitutional monarchies. There's a lot more checks and monitoring so lows aren't as bad but peaks aren't as high either. Take a look at Belgium/France/Germany/Netherlands. Capitalism is going nuts, the politicians all bought their way into places and now it's all falling apart.
    France has Bling Bling Sarkozy.
    Germany has big boobs Angela without a clue.
    The Netherlands have weird hair.
    Belgium hasn't had a real government for like a year and a half because they can't decide about something that concerns only a few people who don't give a crap anyway and the king is perma-sadfaced because nobody respects him anymore.

    France: No way in hell are people voting for bling bling again, unless his opponent is extreme-right
    Germany: They all want Schröder back. He had long term plans that were kina bleh but Angela has like no plan whatsoever
    Netherlands: people usually get shot there so nvm
    Belgium: They're starting to resign. They're also wondering why the hell they need 6 different governments to manage a country that has less people than the city of New York. X.x

    So you see, it probably works out X.x
     
  11. Calypso
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    There are a quite a few things wrong at the moment. The big one is that in a lot of places, there's these damn exclusive contracts with the cable/phone company or availability issues, so it's either comcast or dialup.

    More so, our infrastructure is in desperate need of an upgrade. Of course, if the telecoms had actually done this like they promised some 10-15 years ago ... (this riles me up more than anything).

    http://www.newnetworks.com/BroadbandScandalIntro.htm

    To top it off, they have the nerve now to ask for more money ...
    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/pos...band-100-billion-for-fiber-to-every-home.html
     
  12. EpyonNext
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    Meh. I get 22mb down and 2mb up in my Barracks room in Savannah(And this is through Comcast). Speedtest.net says that's faster then 95% of the world. I'd rather go off where MY net connection stands in the greater scheme of things as opposed to where my country stands. I mean, if the dude in NY has a shit connection, it doesn't bother me much...unless I'm downloading from him directly, but when does that ever happen?(Talking single user to user).
     
  13. Calypso
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    That's because of Comcast powerboost. It allocates a lot of bandwidth for the first 20MB or so, then drops off significantly, so speedtest doesn't really mean much.
     
  14. What does the weird hair have to do with anything?

    Also, people dont get shot here that often, and we dont have events a-la Virginia Tech

    And yes, I know, totally offtopic, but wth :p
     
  15. Gruune
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    yes, but you do have lots of bad metal bands
     
  16. aroton
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    That's like saying, I'm rich! Why should I care if anyone else in my country/world is poor?

    And while you may be getting your 22mb a sec, japan is getting over 100mb a sec. So even your "good" connection sucks.
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2008
  17. Elegy
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    Our prime minister, JP Balkenende looks like he has a Lego haircut. And Geert Wilders, one of the Chambermembers (don't really know the political equivalent for other countries) has a haircut that looks like he took a shower with a toaster.

    About the people who got shot, we have had to more or less political murders the last few years: Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh. Fortuyn (who was aiming for seats in our parliament) was openly gay, pretty extravagant, a little populistic and leaning slightly to the right. He was shot by a radical left wing tree hugger. Theo van Gogh (no, not a far far nephew of the painter) was stabbed to death by a muslim terrorist. Van Gogh was very critical about the islam but did not held any political position. He made the movie Obsession and some other ones.

    Back ontopic: I feel sorry four you guys, here I have this nifty 20mbit line for just €19,99 a month. Which rocks :D
    But why does your country has such a bad/slow network? To think that is was kind of a US invention. Is it the providers who squeeze your pipeline? Or is the network just not capable enough?

    Anyway, think about the people in Belgium, they pay a lot more (like three times my fee or more) and the have limits. 10Gb a month and such. Now that really suck, having a fast connection but after watching some youtube movies and playing some games, tadaa, your bandwith is squeezed down...
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 14, 2008
  18. Off topic: http://images.google.com/images?hl=...jN6&q=geert wilders&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

    On topic: Sorry for going off topic, I have this thing with lateral thinking and weird connections and links. Psychiatrists call me a miracle!

    You guys have the capacity but not the speed, we have the speed but not the capacity.

    Hmm, if you guys are 15th, that means there's about 200 countries which are slower than you =D
     
  19. Grumble
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    Something to consider.

    Countries like Japan and S. Korea who have very fast median connections are also very small in area and have a very high population density. This means less infrastructure per person (i.e. fibre connections) because the people who use it are physically closer together. More people can share the same connections and bandwidth requirements can be distributed more effectively.

    Compare that to a country like the USA (or Canada), and the cost to provide fast internet service to an individual is probably much higher on average. Perhaps exponentially so. It costs MUCH more to put the same bandwidth fibre line between New York and Los Angeles than it would between Toyko and Osaka.

    So much of this disparity may simply be a result of geography.
     
  20. SamHamwich
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    my internet connections sucks, im moving into another country with better internet!