[funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)

Tue Mar 13 18:09:27 UTC 2007

On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Todd Vierling wrote:
> Critical mass is approaching.  There's only so long that North
> American consumers can be held back from bandwidth-hogging
> applications and downloads while parts of the world have long since
> upgraded to 10Mbit/s bidirectional (and beyond) consumer-grade access
> speeds.

There is the "advertised speed" and then the "*" fine print conditions. 
Providers in some countries have high advertised speeds, but low usage 
caps, fair use policies, low actual speeds to different destinations,
expensive measured telephone usage charges (i.e. dialup) and various 
other things which aren't always included in the comparisons.

The advertised speeds vary widely around the world in different markets.
The actual average consumer speeds are more interesting.  Nevertheless, 
the US is still behind.

If many of US consumers were already buying the biggest pipe and were 
willing to pay even more for even higher speeds; would we be having
this discussion?  Or is the reality that US consumers are buying lower 
priced services even when bigger services are available.

Several US Providers are very happy to sell 1Gbps and even 10Gbps to 
anyone in major (i.e. NFL/top 30) cities, but not at $14.95/month.  45Mbps 
symetrical is readily available from most COs in the US, but again not at 
$14.95/month.

I don't know of any US provider who wants to turn away profitable 
business.  The question is how to make it profitable.