5 Reasons Internet Access in America is a Disaster
Right now, I'm typing this column from a friend's shed. At 1:30 a.m. -- it's 100 degrees inside. There is no bathroom. It smells like oil and gasoline from the lawnmower behind me. Why? Because Internet access in a large part of America is kind of fucked.
When you hear people complain about it -- say, when somebody jokes about how jealous they are of their Korean friend's 50 MB/s connection -- everybody assumes they're complaining about how long it takes to torrent an HD movie or whining about a latency disadvantage in Call of Duty.
FUCK!
But that's not the real problem. First of all, I work on the Internet -- it's my full-time job, my employer's office is 2,000 miles away. And second, there are big chunks of the USA where, if you moved there right now, you can't get broadband Internet access at all, no matter who you offered to blow for it. So for all of you out there who are having to pause periodically so more words will load, let's run down all of the ways that Internet access in the USA is shit.
#5.
Some of Us Just Plain Can't Get It
The reason I'm having to access this article from a makeshift connection in a tool shed is that last month I finally moved out of my old apartment that would have been classified as a war crime if POWs were held there. I got to the new place, called up my friendly ISP to have the connection set up and heard them say that service was unavailable there. Not that particular hour or day -- but unavailable, period. Keep in mind this apartment isn't in the middle of the Sahara, it's located right in the middle of a small town in the USA. Fine, I called another ISP. They said the same thing. This was a problem because it means I could not fucking telecommute to work until a friend finally felt sorry for me and ran a line out to a corner of a building he owns.
Photos.com
The computer is made of beetle droppings.
I'm not an isolated case -- up to 10 percent of the country can't even get basic broadband. That may not sound like a lot if you're among the people who can get it, but in rural areas of the country, there are huge stretches of Internet dead zones (take Nebraska for instance -- the FCC recently reported that more than 300,000 people -- almost 20 percent of the state -- can't get even low-end broadband).
So in my case, I live in a town in the Midwest with about 2,000 people and was told by the area's DSL provider that they are currently "maxed out" on connections -- if I wanted one, I had to wait for some meth-head to go to jail so that his connection frees up and I can take his spot.
Getty
He's right there in the weeds, officer! Get him!
It is, of course, about money -- to them, upgrading their capacity isn't worth it if there aren't enough potential non-meth head subscribers to pay for it (here's a tech for one provider citing $750,000 as the cost to add a new terminal to carry additional DSL lines).
Photos.com
It's made out of this.
America has been through all of this before, by the way -- the exact same situation played itself out in the early days of telephone service, when it was too expensive to run a line out to a smattering of customers in some rural farming community (this was back when such communities had only moonshine to entertain themselves, before advances in meth technology rendered it obsolete). Those people didn't get service until the government forced AT& T to do it.
#4.
Often There are No Real Options for Service (and No Competition)
"Now wait a minute," some of you are saying. "Even in a small town like yours, if DSL providers are dropping the ball, the free market should introduce alternatives to compete for all of that money generated by methamphetamine sales."
Hey, sure enough, I got a flier from the cable company offering service. I called and the woman on the phone told me that this service was more of an optimistic hypothetical than an actual "service" you could "buy," but that I should call back every day until it became available. I actually tried that, for 31 days, told each time to try again later while she presumably masturbated at the thought of my pain. The last call I made, another woman said, "It should be very soon because they're physically laying the lines now. I'd call back in a month and a half."
Photos.com
I know, that's what I thought, too!
A motherfucking month and a cockshitting half? "Very soon" doesn't mean what she thinks it means. If it does, I wonder how she'll react when I tell her I'll pay my bill "very soon."
OK, maybe you've seen those ads for satellite Internet (like HughesNet, which specifically advertises their service to places that have lots of corn fields). Even if I was fine with the price and speeds (it's about 400 percent more expensive than DSL, and gets about a third of the speed), when I called I didn't even get that far -- I was informed that they have a 200-meg limit on downloads per day (you can get that boosted to 400 megs for the low, low price of $90 a month). Let me break that down for you: My last Windows security update was 300 megs. That's auto-updating, which means it happens in the background without me noticing.
Their solution? Don't download shit.
Photos.com
"Thanks for your business. You can't eat any of this.
By the way, that's from their announcement page. And on that page, they give us great news! They're currently increasing the cap! By 25 megs. In my job, I'll use that in about 20 minutes. Again, I'm not complaining that this, for instance, eliminates services like Netflix. My work requires me to download dozens of large files (high res images and video) per project, every day, seven days a week. When Brockway talked about bandwidth caps a little while back, it scared the shit out of me. I had no idea how fast I'd run into it.
Just to emphasize that I exhausted every possibility, I found out that DIRECTV and my local electric company both offer a wireless connection called Blue Sky. If you don't have a direct line of sight to their tower (a tree or another house is in the way), you can't get it. OK, a half an hour with a chainsaw later, I had that shit covered. What's the next step?
Photos.com
I mean besides breaking it to the landlord that I didn't cut the tree.
Their representative did some quick figures and said that after installation, equipment and startup fees are all added, I'd be paying about $600 cock-shrinking dollars just to get it going. And that's not counting the $90 per month to use their "just above dialup" speeds, which is not fast enough to stream even a low quality YouTube video. Oh, and it's an 18-month contract -- with no early termination. If I decide their service is too horrible to use a few months later, the $90 bill keeps coming every month until the 18 months are over.
#3.
Those Who Have Access Still Lag Behind the Rest of the World
But I only use my situation as an example. I don't want you to think that my message here is, "Don't move to small town America unless you hate the Internet as much as you love meth!" This is a nationwide problem. You'll hear politicians talk about improving broadband infrastructure and if you're happy with your own service, you may not understand what the big deal is.
Getty
These guys certainly don't.
Beyond people in my situation, there's just the overall speed of the system as a whole. For instance, if cable Internet had been real rather than a cruel psychological experiment, the fastest speed they offer is 15 megs-per-second. I'd be paying roughly $70 a month for that.
Now compare that to other countries like South Korea, where the average user boasts 15 megs-per-second -- nearly quadruple the speed of the average user in the USA (which I would still kill for, compared to my current 0.0 Mbps download rate). The USA barely ranks in the top 20 in Internet speed worldwide, behind countries like Romania and Iceland.
Photos.com
Don't celebrate, assholes. Your Internet sucks, too.
Oh, and next year, Korea is implementing a 1,000-meg connection. Japan already has one -- for the same $70 per month my cable company charges for their fictional service. Korea claims that theirs won't be anywhere near that expensive.
But don't be discouraged. Chattanooga, Tennessee is working on one themselves. It'll cost around $350 per month.
Photos.com
Oh well, at least they'll probably have it.
I've lived in and driven through Nebraska many times. It does not surprise me one bit to hear that information about the state and internet access in some areas.
ReplyAlso have to nod my head at this:
"the machine told me to see the cashier, who then told me that their Internet connection was down."
We've had some days at the store I work at where I come in to find out that the computer system is down. It's all I can do to avoid turning around and walking right back out of the store. That severely limits the stuff we're able to do during the day, so we're often just standing around killing time, which may sound fun, but gets boring as s**t really fast. And then we have to deal with customers who can't seem to grasp that our computer is acting up on top of it all. I've lost count of the amount of people who get irritated at best, furious at worst, when we've had to ask for specific information that we don't need to ask for as much, or in as great of detail, when our computer is working.
Ditto on the online retail thing, too. Sorry I don't live in a big city that allows me to have a lot more access to various stores and products. The variety in my town isn't that great, so online buying is very helpful.
Ouch, I had a look at the 'speed ranking' for Australia, and damn, we're down at 46. That's hardly the 'first world'. What is the Republic of Moldova and the Faroe Islands doing with faster internet speed than us? I've never even heard of them!
ReplySadly, data caps are something we've had since the dawn of the internet. The coveted 'unlimited' plan is basically nonexistent - the one or two independent places that have offered it quickly got swarmed and lost all their bandwidth, so your 'unlimited' data was practically capped to about six megabytes a month with everyone else sharing the pipes.
A big part of it was the Federal Government's sale of the government-owned telecommunications network, Telstra. In return for a bit of fast cash, consumers got shafted - higher prices, lower speeds, lower caps, worse all around. How the government could talk about 'improving efficiency' and 'fostering competition' is beyond me. If the taxpayers had directly paid to give everyone free unlimited internet, it would probably have been cheaper for the consumers overall, rather than the practical monopoly Telstra and Optus have.
They're building a National Broadband Network now (mired in controversy over idiots who don't understand how important fast speeds are to hospitals, big business, and yes, the average person), but they had to pay billions to Telstra (who they used to own) for the Privilege...of competing with them. How competetive. Chances are they'll end up selling it again, naturally.
So saddening.
Socialism sounds practically /perfect/ at this point. So often you hear stuff about 'cutting government spending' and the '$X billion dollar budget blowout black hole deficit' and 'government bloat/inefficiency/bueraucracy', but I am 100% certain we the people would be better off if the government (technically working on our behalf) was selling us this crap, rather than a corporation (legally working on the behalf of a chosen few, literally working /against/ their consumers to squeeze every dollar).
So many times I have wished that the government could just say 'fuck you, you failed at this' to Telstra, issue some sort of Federal Writ and take it over. Come on, just a little bit of China-esque federal totalitarianism. They /really/ deserve it, and then you can go back to being benign again. Pleaase!
And do you guys know WHY all these foreigners get such FAST and CHEAP Internet access? GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES! As Mr. Cheese stated above, the only reason phone lines are ubiquitous in America is because the government had to ORDER them to do it! So, does socialism sound so bad NOW, bi+ches?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesYes.
Government regulations KILL jobs! Have you ever heard of this phone company that was forced to serve more people, AT& something. Of course not! Government interference obviously forced them into bankruptcy!
Uhh, zzzyzxxx, not sure if you're joking about the AT&T bankruptcy thing or not, but as of 2011, Forbes ranked them as the 14th biggest company in the world by market value.
What he says about Nebraska is true. My parents live in East Jesus Nowhere, Nebraska, where cows outnumber people 3:1 (easily). To get internet, they can either pay $90/month for slow-speed internet, or go through Verizon and get internet for a small startup cost of $200 and monthly charges of $150. My parents own their own business--they are contractors. Luckily, the communities they conduct their business can be done by phone. However, they are aware that in order to be able to actually advertise, post before-and-after pictures of their work, or even have a functioning Facebook page for it they will need internet.
ReplyIn the UK with (advertised as) 30 Mbps broadband, but usually much lower than that in SpeedTest (usually under 10 Mbps). Had 50 Mbps (SpeedTest regulalry gave me a speed of under 15 Mbps download speed), but difference wasn't noticable enough to justify the price.
ReplySo yeah... Our infrasturcture perhaps isn't quite as bad as yours, but our ISPs still rip us off. They advertise the maximum speed that you can possibly get if saturn and mercury align on the night of a full moon on the 29th of February... And it's perfectly legal.
Scrap that... The US scores better than us for average download speeds on the link you gave. My area must just be particularly well connected, but still rip-offy.
I live in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and s**t you guys are f*cked... Student housing in Rotterdam offers 30 Mbps up / 30 Mbps down fiberoptic connection for $10 a month. Cable speeds are up to 120 Mbps for $60 a month. And we are still complaining here... I feel sorry for you guys...
ReplyI have unlimited 12Mb/s for 27$... in Serbia.
ReplyThis article and the comments shook me up a bit from my drooling sleep of ignorance .
ReplyI live in Romania and recently i had thoughts about downgrading my internet connection because it seemed too expensive .That is downgrading from a 100 Mb/s unlimited connection for which im paying a whooping 13 bucks a month ! The company im hooked to provides me with this internet service and a tv-cable deal which includes Hbo max-pack , Hbo HD and a 24/7 HD porn channel , both internet + tv summing up at around 27 $.
I can understand (in some way) why high speeds may be unavailable or very expensive in the US , because although i live in a shittier part of EU , we had zero internet infrastructure until very recently , so the companies stormed in directly with fiber-optic ( same thing happened all around eastern Europe so that could be a reason of why you see countries like Romania , Lithuania or Moldova in top 10 + being poor allows you for very little forms of entertainment so cheap tv and internet is a must when you cant spend your weekends skying in the Alps ). What is unexplainable however is why rental of digital devices is somewhat expensive there , when here all the gadgets that i have make for a total of 3 bucks / month (this amount is included in the total 27 $ i mentioned earlier).
In conclusion , this is not a EU vs Us rant in any way , but rather a "epiphany" that instead of looking for the cheapest out of the good , i should be content with the good out of the cheapest.
I mean this in the most peaceful and polite way but f**k YOU!!!Even when I had access to cable it was still $70 a month for 12mbs speed, now due to having to move due to the economy is $50 a month for maximum 3mbs(never get faster than 250kbs download speed) neighborhood shared wifi
I have my stuff packed.
So where the f**k is Romania?
The comments on this page read as; "Welcome to the internet, we feel your pain. Feel it on our tongue as we lick the tears off your cheek and tell you how better we have it."
ReplyI love it.
I have 100 Mbit/s, unlimited and included in the rent, in Sweden.
Replyf**k you.
also my speed is ulimited 10 megabites a second and im only paying 60 bucks a month in australia queensland, also only had to pay for the modem, which i got for 60 bucks.
ReplyAlso f**k you. I'm in Canberra with a s****y average of 154kbps for downloading direct. I pay 100 dollars for this "privilege".
I'm in Qld Australia and get 100mbps cable with 1 terrabyte a month for $129 a month. The government is attempting to build a ftth network (after 20 years of inaction/non investment in infrastructure is it any wonder) and still some people don't understand why we need fibre - let the free market do it (as if!). It's like the u.s and Australia (and England in some cases) has some 1st world infrastructure, but telecommunications isn't one of these!
second page doesent work, link is correct and google shows it but both just give me cracked home page
Replywow, that town has a lot of meth going on
ReplyIn Singapore since the whole country is only about 3.5 times the size of your capital, most of these issues do not apply.
Reply"the fastest speed they offer is 15 megs-per-second. I'd be paying roughly $70 a month for that."
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesWhere I live (Lebanon) We'd have to pay 300$ for unlimited internet at a speed of less than 8 megaBITS, not megaBITES, megaBITS (a megabite is 8 megabits). I have limited internet (2GB per month) for 60$ a month.
Lebanon generates so little traffic that we aren't even on the list of countries with internet access anymore.
I think the Internet Access here is worse than in the U.S.
*Megabits per second
you're missing the part about america being a world power and having a very high standard of living.
Byte, not bite.
@JosephMichaelMiller : True, the U.S. does have a very high standard of living but it's not like everybody in Lebanon is living in huts either.
Yeah, the Japanese fast connections though are usually only found in Universities etc... in fact, I barely knew anyone that used their computer much and when they did they used dial up. I was stuck with the only option of dial up in the dormitory and it was the worst dial up ever... 14 freakking k. What is this, 1994? In the US at least I can watch my Netflix in HD and play MMOS. I don't download anything except free to play games and free programs, all of which don't take too long to download. So, I don't see any reason to have faster internet since I'm not going to be downloading the Bluray of Waterworld any time soon.
ReplyWhy in all that is holy and held sacred did they re-release Waterworld of all movies? And on Blu-ray of all things. Do they think that people are just going to forget that it was bad?
I am a student in the UK, so consequently I have no money. I am still able to afford a 30Mb connection for my student house.
ReplyWE HAVE TO HAVE INTERNET FOR MY SONS SCHOOL, AND ITS CRAPPY CABLE.
ReplyI'm on Hughesnet right now and it suck when you have to stay up to 1 in the morning to download or watch videos, and with it's ping time xbox live is impossible.
ReplyI was on HughesNet for over a year until I just happened to drive by a van for a local WiFi company, I cant tell you how happy I was to drop that P.O.S. service. Dialup was better than HughesNet and for those that dont know IM NOT JOKING!
wow i'm pretty lucky with my hunderd megabytes/second, and I only pay like 50 euro's a month.
Replyi hate you :(