Yep.   It gets to the point where groups like Time Warner Cable, and AT&T (using ALEC and even the NAACP at times) decide it's better business for them to buy legislators to stifle competition than to actually compete.  Look at how NC has banned municipal broadband, ever since Salisbury and Wilson curbstomped the private competition.

If government did things so terribly, why would they have to do that?  Or is it that big business is actually worse than big government?

Wow! I live in a relatively small town in Indiana and even we have fiber optic cable. There is absolutely no excuse why it should not be everywhere in this day and age!

I would not compare Hong Kong to the US.... you have to consider average purchasing power. There is also the issues that usually large cities have better infractructure then more rural areas.

However, the most important question is...... is there enough of a market to justify the investment costs today?

I am not so sure about that...... although being a victim of slow internet (400 Kbps until 3 years ago) there is only so much bandwidth you can reasonably use at home. Now my home village is connected to a fiber optic cable and speed has gone up to 28000 Kbps, with the option to increase to 50000Kbps.

Even with only 28000..... most Servers I know struggle to deliver just that. Now, if you have a 500000Kbps line that is awesome... but if the server keeps sending with 20000 Kbps it wont do you any good.

I dont see much of applications for such high home bandwith just yet to be honest. You already can watch full HD movies in realtime..... what more bandwidth does the average home user need?

Of course if you are one of those people who nonstop download warez, such a line might have its benefits... assuming of course you find a source that is remotly capable of delivering at this speed.

For legimate downloads, there is absolutly no reason (yet) to upgrade your line. Legimate downloads wil be usually far more limited by your income than by data rate.

For the few people willing to pay for such bandwith, the investion cost in infrastructure is not justfified imho.

Aresiv, you've missed the potential benefits of the higher speeds and cheaper costs. 

The benefits to commerce, science, etc. are obvious.

Not everyone is interested in warez.

As for not comparing Hong Kong? Why not? Look at the speed and cost. That's what this is all about: Not settling for the pony express when faster internet is not only desirable, but certainly feasable... and it will expand the job market as well.

I'm with Doc on this one. Its a case of why pay more when you can get the same thing for less. Like a dollar store......almost. lol

Seriously though, to stifle competition? Advancement in everything we do is 'based' on competition. That's like cutting your nose off to spite your face!

This is false, bandwidth needs have vastly increased over the years- look at game downloads for a legitimate use, or streaming video.  Things that weren't big even 5 years ago.   Nowadays, in places with capped internet, you do this for more than 10 minutes a month, you'll be paying $2 per gig, and plenty of high-population areas have this, such as Eastern Canada, and various parts of the US , and the caps are expanding not going away, due to deregulation.

If you don't think the broadband companies won't try to get away with this- TWC in 2008 tried to implement a 5GB/month cap in four regions, as a flat-out surcharge.  My area was one of those areas.  What stopped it from happening: threats to create a city broadband service.  How did TWC/AT&T respond- by buying state legislators in NC to ban future cities from doing this for the sake of "competition" (note: there is no competition, if anything there's collusion)

Even if your argument about it being unprofitable is correct (and with TWC admitting 95% of their revenue is going to pure profit, your argument flat-out isn't), this would justify government intervention, as this is long-term profitability.  Also look at how Kansas City is going thanks to Google Fiber, and how TWC offers better deals there than anything else in the country.

The stifling of broadband by entrenched monopolistic business interests, with the blessing of corrupt Tea-Party led governments (ALEC is hugely behind this), is the biggest consumer rights outrage in the United States today.

I agree in principle, but you can't compare the landmass size, geography, population density, etc. of Hong Kong with the USA.  You can't do that with South Korea, Japan, etc.  Different factors will massively impact infrastructure needs, and thus costs.

I'm inclined to agree with Ares IV on this, at least in regards to infrastructure...even at our current state of "slow internet", the servers I interact with are the bottleneck, not my internet speed (which while good is by no means fantastic)...

You would first need to see many servers (those tied to websites that people make large downloads frequently from) increase their own bandwidth....when the "average user" actually could benefit from have significantly faster internet than current high speed cable, that's when it's going to be worth investing in the infrastructure such as widespread fiber optics....

There are some other considerations that we need some perspective on...

The US has a lower population density that most other modernized countries...we are, in essence, much more spread out....that means any infrastructure viable for Europe or Hong Kong or [insert your favorite rich place here] will at the very least be more expensive for us...

Additionally, we need to consider that mobile devices which do not necessarily use broadband internet connections are becoming more and more common....2 years ago I did all my internet stuff on my laptop...then I got an iPhone 4, and now I only use my laptop's internet capabilities for these forums and for ICO...if I were to someday get a mobile device with a larger screen, I'd basically be using my laptops internet for gaming almost exclusively (and there you are really bottlenecked by the server, not your internet speed)...

If I was a cable company, I'd be very wary of massive investments to infrastructure...it is quite conceivable that in the near future many home users won't even need a broadband internet connection (just as many home users now are slowly doing away with landlines for phones)....certainly someone will need landlines for internet, but the demand and the market very easily could change dramatically....

My concern isn't the quality of infrastructure, but the cost....that is where our current system is really failing, and I'd be more concerned about policy changes that lower costs than those improving infrastructure....

This is also untrue, as it has been found that when you make the access, people want to and will use it.   Also, see above on 95% profit margins, what the cable companies want to do is raise rates while lowering service, when free market forces would provide lower rates and raised service (which is the case in much of the rest of the world, we're the only country where it's going backwards)

Good post Doc...bookmarked...

The Internet in Canada is generally accepted to be far worse then in the States. While Oligopolistic behavior may factor in to this because such companies are risk averse and slow to move the main reasons are more grounded in science or at least economics.

  1. Areas such as Hong Kong, which is really just one huge city, have much much higher population density then Canada or even the States. That means companies need to install a ton less cable in order to sell their product to millions of people. The profit for stringing a cable hundred of miles to a small town is extremely low.

2. Lots of Asian and European countries have huge government programs for increasing access to the internet. They pay for their internet with taxes.

3. Regulating and keeping cable companies competitive is extremely hard because those companies usually own all the cable that they have installed, and competitors would in theory have to install their own cables everywhere which is very expensive. Every new cable system would double the maintenance upkeep and halve and divide the consumer base. This is a huge barrier to entry and thus such markets are known as naturally monopolistic, and are thus not competitive markets at all. In Canada big companies have to let smaller ones rent their infrastructure for a reasonable rate but the internet service provider business is still one that naturally resists competition. 

4. Any market that is as regulated and interfered in as much as this one cannot be called anything remotely like a free market.

I advocated an effective prod - low interest, long term loans... not subsidies.

I also advocated some thinking on the topic of "too big"... if the big players aren't favored by the FCC, and are forced to break up into smaller companies (like Ma Bell) more competition might just benefit the customers. The cables in that case would be akin to the telephone lines... also, with the public monies used for that stuff via CAF and tax incentives, etc. who really owns those cables?

If this was actually the case, it would be pretty bad all-around, not massively better in Vancouver and even the boonies in Saskatchewan  than it is in Toronto and Ottawa.

Broadband needs to be regulated like the utility it is.

I feel sorry for you guys.

We have flat raet all over Croatia (Southeastern Europe) both mobile and ADSL.

As a bussiness, I can easily get 100$ monthly fixed IP, flat rate with speed of 30Mb/s DL and 4 Mb/s upload.

Houses usualy pay 24$ for flat, 4Mb/s DL, and 512Kb/s upload.

Our regulating agency raises the bar for providers every two years. We are expecting new surge to 6/1. For the same price.

Also, most caffes and hotels resturants as well as city centers have free WiFi.

Not always...

Case in point, car companies have recently released hybrid models of cars...in some cases these purchases have even been subsidized by the government....

And yet, most people are still sticking to good ol' gasoline vehicles despite hybrid cars being out for years...

For better or worse, the market decided that gasoline cars are better for the vast majority of consumers...giving people access to something does not guarantee they will want it or that it will magically become successful...

Sure, some people drive hybrid cars (just as some people have fiber optic cables)...but most don't, and it certainly isn't due to a lack of competition in the car industry....

I shall defer to my previous statement...

I have already thrown my support for finding ways to reduce costs for the consumer (more "free market" is one possible way)...

If the free market decides for better infrastructure, then so be that...but pushing for better infrastructure solely for the sake of having better infrastructure is just as silly as any other mandate from a planned economy (or heavily regulated industry)...let investors and the demand make those decisions (and don't assume you know what the market really wants)...

You can blame cable companies and the government for inflated prices, but blaming them for bad infrastructure is a much greater stretch...I'm not saying it isn't their fault, but without a free market to prove otherwise there's no guarantee the infrastructure would drastically improve in the near future just because the industry became more competitive...using a previous example, years of competition between many car companies has yielded only small improvements in fuel efficiency over the years....things like hybrid cars, electric cars, and ethanol using vehicles have not taken off despite being out there for years....

As I stated earlier, a cable company may find that widespread fiber optics isn't economical due to the current growth of mobile devices...

You can't argue free market forces are going to reduce rates, then turn around and say they should be regulated like utility companies...