NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad

NNSquad Home Page

NNSquad Mailing List Information

 

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[ NNSquad ] Broadband speeds and rates worldwide

That's a good point. The latest OECD figures cited by Mischa have the US in a less advantaged position for lowest speed (under 2 Mbps per OECD) offerings than we used to be in, but in a better position in medium speed and average bill. What you're going to see in the next few years is a settling out of these figures according to the dominant technologies in the various nations. In the fiber nations (Sweden, Japan, and Korea) you'll see higher average speeds, inching toward 1 Gpbs advertised) at current prices. In the DOCSIS nations, you'll see pricing remaining steady, but speeds inching toward 100 Mpbs, and in the DSL nations like Germany and France, you'll probably see some price cutting but you won't see many speeds above 25 Mbps.

At the end of the day, the price and performance of broadband networks are limited by the cable in the ground, as the electronics that use the cable are uniform. Cable in the ground is dictated by population and history, not so much by policy.

The exception to all this is fiber in the layer 0 countries where telcos were essentially forced and induced to pull fiber by a combination of privatization conditions, population distribution, and regulatory constraints on the twisted pair.

In any event, Dave Burstein's claim that the US suffers from "monopoly-like pricing" doesn't hold up to scrutiny; US broadband pricing is quite normal with respect to all the speeds in all the countries with similar distances to cover. The only way broadband gets cheaper in a country like the US is if we hide the price of network upgrades in a taxpayer-supported subsidy or if we all move into high-rise apartments in big cities. This isn't magic, it's been known for a long time.

RB

PS to Lauren: Sorry if I disturbed the decorum of your list, but certain people posting here have a history, and to me tossing around bogus figures and bad data is height of rudeness. I don't care if people call me an asshole, just don't lie.

  [ Richard, if you want to call the accuracy of figures into
    question that's fine.  But don't attempt to use that as an excuse
    to pull the discussion into the gutter.  We will keep this on a
    polite level -- even your PS to me is borderline as far as family
    viewing is concerned.  In particular, I will not stand for ad
    hominem attacks, and since I run the list the judgment as to what
    falls into that category will be exclusively mine.  Nor will I
    stand for arguments (and I get plenty of these in my private
    mail) that attempt to contaminate policy issues with
    discussions of what "other" causes this or that organization or
    firm also supports (this has been used frequently to try falsely
    paint Net Neutrality as a "communist" plan, by the way).  There
    are other venues that do not operate under these kinds of rules
    of course.  I don't speak for them.

     -- Lauren Weinstein
        NNSquad Moderator ]



rb

On 8/29/2010 7:37 PM, George Ou wrote: 
The price per burst rate Mbps isn't comparable between the US and other nations because nearly all other nations have very small usage caps on their wired broadband services.  More generous usage caps (or no hard caps) translates to a higher base price so those higher base prices aren't that bad a deal when you're capped on usage.  In fact if you're a heavy user, you're getting a steal because the majority of users are paying a little more to subsidize you.

Even the controversial (but failed) usage caps proposed by Time Warner dwarfed the typical usage caps of most other nations listed by the OECD.
http://www.digitalsociety.org/files/gou/compare-bb-2.png


Ranking 9th place at lower monthly costs while offering some of the most generous usage caps is fairly respectable and certainly not the rip off that so many portrait it to be.




George

-----Original Message-----
From: nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of Mischa Beitz
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 7:17 PM
To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org
Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Unbundling rates [ +Administrivia ]

* Every responsible study of the rates US operators charge for low-end
broadband and cell calls finds that we have rates among the lowest in
the world; check OECD, Merrill Lynch, any source you want.  The carriers
give the service away at the low end and charge more for the high end,
which is as it should be.

OECD recently released their 2009 broadband data here:

http://www.oecd.org/document/54/0,3343,en_2649_34225_38690102_1_1_1_1,00.html

I've only cursorily looked at what seem to be the pertinent data
regarding Richard's claim regarding broadband. Here's what I found:

In "average monthly subscription price for very low-speed connections"
US ranks 9th out of 24 OECD nations. Not bad, but "among the lowest"?
8 out of 24, or fully 1/3 of the other nations, had less expensive
average low-end prices than the US.

In pricerange per Mbit/s, the low-end of the pricerange places the US
at 25th of 30 OECD nations, suggesting that 24 nations have less
expensive price offerings when measured in price per Mbit/s. Whether
"high-speed" or "low-speed", the OECD data certainly doesn't suggest
to me that US broadband providers are "giving the service away".

The other graphs seems to suggest a similar picture. However, that's
just from a quick glance at the graphs provided by OECD on my way to
work this morning, I'm ready to be corrected in my reading of them.

Regards,

Mischa Beitz



--
Richard Bennett
Senior Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC