Jun 10 2011
The Morning Link: American Internet is a Disaster
This graph says it all, but there’s a whole article over at Cracked that details just exactly how and why our internet situation in the US of A sucks so much ass.
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You should feel lucky. Try living in Australia. U.S. internet still pretty much doubles ours. Not to mentions that most servers for things that Aussies play are located in America
Ehh, the problem i have with these numbers is that it doesn’t take into account that, besides canada, all of the other counties have less than a third of the area that the u.s. has, so in those countries it’s easier and cheaper to reach more people for ip’s. canada is the odd one though because it has a higher area, but i beleive that a good portion of northern cana is very sparse population wise, not 100% sure on that though.
Also this graph is showing the MEDIAN of each country, not the average. So for all we know in South korea they could have a ton of low speed connections, no medium connections, and then another ton of high speed connections.
This graph would have a lot more meaning if it had the mean and the mode of each country as well, where as the way it’s presented (and titled) it’s just meant to make the u.s. look bad.
i’ll have to actually read the cracked article when i get home
I have to agree with David. I’m Canadian, and while our speed is faster (in cities; it’s still dial-up if you live in smaller communities), we have a much smaller population, as do most of the other countries listed. Japan, while it has a high population, also has an extremely high population density (slightly higher than 1/3 U.S. pop, with 872/mi², compared to the U.S.’s 83/mi²).
That’s a lot of cable laying to cover all the gaps between population centers. When India or China start passing the U.S., then it’d be time to start feeling concerned.
It’s definitely a city/density issue for most places. I”m out in the country, but we still have plenty of people living close to each other. We have dense wooded areas, but maybe 100ft between house in some areas. So we get access to 60Mbs because of the cable company.
Now, a friend that lives in another state can only get wireless internet (something like the old style TV antenna on the roof.) He’s in an area that has no cable because it’s not worth the expense of laying the line for so few homes spaced far apart. That or dial-up is the option.
Sure the cost of investment is higher, but at the same time you can have more customers too. You guys claim to be the richest country on earth. There is no excuse.
Your electricity network seems pretty miserable aswell, one often comes across pictures of some wooden pole with some scruffy dodgy wiring on it. Stuff here is mostly underground, except in VERY rural areas….
Sweden and Finland both have very low population density. If they were states in the US then they would be ranked below 46th, between North Dakota and Montana. Or for Canadians, similar pop density as Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. It is a matter of political will that keeps the US from improving. States like Georgia which have more than 100x the population density and relatively easy geography have large swatches without access to real broadband, not to mention that the broadband that is available in those states is more expensive and slower than that found in other developed nations.
That should be 10x, not 100x the population density.
i think better than Indonesia. You would be shocked if you know internet connection in Indonesia
Would really like to know the details of this graph and the methods for which this data is gathered. Anyone can make up numbers and build a graph, cracked isn’t exactly known for their detailed surveying skills and stellar fact checking. I live in rural Iowa(very low population density in the middle of the country) and enjoy a 20mbit internet connection from a widely available cable provider. I’m not talking a rare local coop which offers extremely awesome broadband to a small number of people(they do exist around iowa), just a big box cable company and I pay a $30 a month. Now, while I do admit I do not have Cracked caliber research skills, I can come up with a quick estimate which is very plausible and proves this wrong. According to the 2000 census(http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census_issues/metropolitan_planning/cps2k.cfm) 58% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas with a population of 200k or more, and another 10% live in areas of 50-199k population. I would say that it would be extremely uncommon that an urban area with 200k people does not have at least 10mbit broadband available(i challenge people to find them if they exist), and most of the urban areas of 50-199k have at least 5mbit available. Urban areas aside, you also have to include a growing number of rural areas that have broadband available, such as where i live, and the odd coop here and there. We can easily see that an estimate of 60-70% of our population has more than the 3.9mbit connection available to them, which makes even a median of 3.9 highly unlikely. There is a difference between having internet available and actual utilization of the available broadband. It is my theory that in some instances these numbers are based on availability, in others it’s based on what people are actually using(it’s there choice not to use better broadband service), and in some it’s a mixture.
Additionally, all the countries listed are much smaller than the U.S., including Canada, which is virtually smaller because most of it’s population lives within 100 miles or so of the U.S. border. Also, with the exception of maybe Japan, the U.S. was on the cutting end of the technological revolution, meaning we have a very large and aged infrastructure that has to remain usable and, in many cases, backwards compatible while it is being updated. This preexisting infrastructure adds considerable cost and time to the upgrading process and can sometimes be a complete order of magnitude more than just building from scratch. Plus we didn’t have the added convenience of observing other peoples successes and mistakes. To prove how much of an advantage this is, look at China. China is huge and literally a couple decades ago was way behind most of the world. Their meteoric rise has come from their ability to take what every other country produces, reverse engineer it, and then reproduce it at considerably less cost because they can avoid R&D costs and also learn from others mistakes.
While I do believe our government should step in and start setting up deadlines and subsidizing advancements in our infrastructure, I do not believe we are at any great disadvantage. The broadband is available to most of those who want it and with wireless 4G LTE networks beginning to take shape the areas that do not have access will soon shrink or become almost non existent.
I should also add where I live, in eastern Iowa, we have had at least 5mbit broadband for more than a decade and 20mbit for around 5 years, so it’s not like it’s just now hitting the more rural areas, and again I am probably underestimating its rate of proliferation.
lucky enough
try live in China.. we even need a special software to get over the firewall .
How is it possible, I can not believe, even India and China are not listed in the above list, whenever they utilizes more than the other countries. US should on top, because many reliable hosting servers are in USA and people purchased them, provide them traffic.
I have to say the 5 months I was in South Korea I was in high speed heaven. I could connect to sites in the US faster from there than if I was actually in the US. I got up/download speeds there that I would probably pay more than $70 a month here for a fraction of that price.
Tell The U.S. gov to stop censoring and monitoring shit. Only then it will be faster!
Still better than most.