Demand Super-Fast Broadband in the US

Offbeat / March 6 by JD Rucker

Demand Super-Fast Broadband in the US

An article in the NY Times yesterday really upset me. If you live in the US, it should upset you as well.

Hong Kong has a broadband service that costs less than $26 a month. This option for its fiber-to-the-home service offers a speed of 1,000 megabits a second. A gig. To put that into perspective, Verizon offers the “fastest” broadband in the country for $145. It’s speed: 50 megabits down, 20 megabits up.

“Why doesn’t Verizon offer gigabit service?” Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic.net asks. “Because it doesn’t have to.”

We are sheep. We need an Apple 1984 moment. Someone needs to throw a sledgehammer through somebody’s screen to wake us up.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? The Internet is not an option that people can boycott. We can’t turn it off. We need our broadband. As such, it will take a bold company to produce the demand. We need a company that is willing to push the limits, building the infrastructure, and supply the speeds that will force the rest of the ISPs to respond.

Will it be Google? Verizon? The US Government? There are so many possibilities out there, but nobody is stepping up yet.

If you are “in the know” about a company that needs support, please tell us. We will help get the word out through social media. We will blast it out there for the masses to see. Slow Internet is no longer an option. We need someone to step up today.

Who will it be?

THE AUTHOR

+JD Rucker is Editor at Soshable, a Social Media Marketing Blog and Director of New Media at KPA. Find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

22 Comments »

#1

Chris Moguel

March 6th, 2011 at 3:09 pm

Imagine being in a country where the fastest bandwidth available for home use is a 4MB connection and cost about US$275/mth and then you will really know how it feels to be angry. I agree with the comment Jasper gave… “they don’t offer more because the don’t have to” but they could if they wanted to… but why give away more for the same price when people can be forced to pay more for less if you restrict their options.

I think it has to be a choie for people to want to give more to the consumer, but unfortunately most companies only give MORE when they FORCED to do so and HAVE TO!

#2

Wierpann

March 18th, 2011 at 5:55 am

I have 50Mbps in Kansas, I’m only paying $69.99 a month.

#3

strack

March 18th, 2011 at 10:47 am

I’m from Romania,we have a gig of velocity at 25 euro’s a month,and if they are trying to upload the price,we are moving to another Internet Service Provider,they are planty of those….

#4

March 18th, 2011 at 6:27 pm

Under-educated, Yankee Doodle Hilly Billies, want their porn at high speed?

#5

Suppleej

March 18th, 2011 at 6:33 pm

Also keep in mind, that in order for the entire US to be restructured for fios is extremely costly considering the sheer size. Hong Kong is a much smaller place to rewire than us, but also keep in mind a majority of their speed only works within Hong Kong, it is most likely bottlenecked when a connection leaves the country. I do remember an article about google working on this kind of thing for us now, small scale networking two cities together, but I think in the future we can see google taking big steps to making the US have lightning fast internet.

#6

Supernova1992

March 19th, 2011 at 1:46 am

i still have dial up.

#7

Roybatty

March 20th, 2011 at 2:18 am

VERIZON is not even close to fastest. Mediacom 105

#8

March 21st, 2011 at 2:23 am

I pay about 30$ for a 1Mbit/s connection, is the best you can get in vzla :/

#9

Jerm

March 21st, 2011 at 7:34 pm

You know, the government already gave the ISP’s $50 million to upgrade their infrastructure. They wasted it and didn’t upgrade anything. Now they are asking for more…..

I know $50 million isn’t much when you’re talking about upgrading across the entire country. But we can all see where this is heading. Give us money to upgrade, steal that money and don’t upgrade anything, give us more money to upgrade, steal money, do nothing, etc. etc.

#10

Jerm

March 21st, 2011 at 7:41 pm

They want $7.2 billion now. If we don’t get upgrades after that then the government should take them over, like they have with so many other private industries in the last few years.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9132419/Of_subways_government_subsidies_and_broadband

#11

stuff

March 25th, 2011 at 4:19 am

and they still want to use data caps?

#12

NecroArcher

March 25th, 2011 at 8:01 am

I live really close to Google and there is rumor going around that they are laying down Fiber Optic cables for residents of Mountain View and surrounding areas. It’s said that it will be more reasonably priced than (Comcast’s?) 50 mbps down and 20 up, which actually clocks in at 65 down and 27 up for me right now… Curious to know what you believe we need that much speed for though, because there is little I have to wait for with just what I do have.

#13

ANess33

March 28th, 2011 at 6:45 pm

Faster is always better. And why shouldn’t we have faster speeds if we’re such a “great and leading nation?” China, one of our communist doucher counterparts is ahead of us, obviously, by a long shot. And for FAR cheaper. “Curious” as to why you don’t think we should be able to get those speeds in America….

#14

March 25th, 2011 at 2:17 pm

Luckily, some of us have better options. The Electric Power Board in Chattanooga, TN offers fiber in speeds of 30, 50, 100 and 1000 Mbps.

#15

Sleeko1

March 25th, 2011 at 7:22 pm

If the government get’s involved, it’ll all go to hell. and Wall Street can’t be trusted to it, because they want to control it, for profit. Change will have to come from off shore. We’re screwed.

#16

Jimmer is better

March 27th, 2011 at 7:34 am

I like how you require that this has to be done by someone for no profit. You know…buy land, build infrastructure, get licenses, pay employees, spend 5 years setting up some sort of base network, NOT get bought out by one of the bigger companies, deal with government regulation.

For no profit.

Good luck with that.

#17

Faba2

March 27th, 2011 at 6:15 pm

Google already offers free gigabit service in their hometown

#18

egasz

March 29th, 2011 at 12:20 am

I work for a ISP in portugal and I thought our prices were high… guess not! 35€ for a 12Mbps service with cable TV and phone, or 40€ for a 30Mbps and TV….or 250€ for a 1Gbps service with TV!

#19

JMitchell

March 29th, 2011 at 11:00 pm

Expand the infrastructure needs for Honk Kong, an island city of 426 square miles, to the United States, the third largest country in the world with over 3,794,101 sq mi… That’s why we don’t have it.

#20

April 1st, 2011 at 2:52 pm

And I thought helping the 20 million uninsured who die every year was important, but holy shit our web pages take a whole 4 seconds to load, Barrack Obama, we need change!

#21

Sythios

April 4th, 2011 at 4:14 am

Well, to put it into perspective, the reason it’s an entire gigabyte for only 26 US a month is that your sharing it with HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of other people. So, it’s more like 7 Megabytes at most. The reason I know all this, I live in Hong Kong

#22

Pete

April 11th, 2011 at 9:50 pm

You are ignorant. Did you do ANY research before you wrote this? You need to learn a little about the ‘last mile’, then ask yourself “What is the difference between the United Sates and Hong Kong?”. If a U.S. internet provider could profitably offer even 100 mb/s service for $30 per month to every home in the country, they would do it in a heartbeat. They would immediately take 100% of the ISP market and their shareholders would see unimaginable gains.

If you are so sure that the Hong Kong model can be directly applied to the U.S, then put your money where your mouth is. Go to any bank or even the most high risk taking venture capitalist and tell them that you think you can build or buy a network that can offer 100 mb/s to nearly every home in the country. Then tell them that you plan to pay for that network by charging customers $30 per month. Once you have done this, please write a new article describing their reaction and tell us exactly how long it took for them to stop laughing. LOL