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... how can Japan have 100 mbps with 40 gb daily caps, while in the United States the average speed is around 5 mbps with 10 gb monthly caps? I thought de-regulation and the end of line sharing was supposed to propel us ahead of other countries. Instead, we are at the same level of some recently industrialized nations.

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20E a month here in Bulgaria and I get 40mbit fiber uncapped, with 100mbit connection to peers within Bulgaria :)

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Believe it or not, the much maligned 1996 Telecommunications Act was designed to foster consumer choice among many competing Internet services. But in the 13 years since it was passed, the FCC and the courts have torn down the Act’s basic competitive framework, as a powerful phone and cable lobby pressured regulators to pass rules that handed them control of the marketplace.

...

We see the results today. Their broadband Internet markets have blossom, while ours have withered. At the turn of the century, the United States was ranked fifth among the world’s nations in broadband penetration. But just a few short years later, we had dropped precipitously to 22nd place. Consumers in countries that maintained policies that were committed to competition, such as South Korea and Japan, are today able to access broadband with symmetrical speeds reaching 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) for less than the monthly price a U.S. consumer would pay for service that’s 100 times slower.

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In the aftermath of the 1996 Act, the average American consumer had access to more than a dozen ISPs; today, our broadband market is a stagnant duopoly. Nationwide, incumbent phone and cable companies control 97 percent of the fixed-line residential broadband market. When complementary (and slow and expensive) mobile data connections are factored in, the incumbent phone and cable companies’ nationwide market share stands at 95 percent.

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ORIGINAL: litfire2000

It is ironic that companies tout free enterprise and deregulation until it affects their competition and bottom line then they are all for government intervention.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize

an update on the issue.

Broadband Stimulus Plan Keeps Looking Worse And Worse

Chances are the government will waste all this money on advancing broadband and it will hardly accomplish anything. Then the government will throw more money at it and when the infrastructure is finally built (via tax dollars) the government will grant the same monopolies on the new tax funded infrastructure that the government already grants on the existing tax funded infrastructure.

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ORIGINAL: rlj

That's pretty pathetic when a backwards almost but not quite third world Eastern European nation in Bulgaria has better Broadband than we do. Next they'll be telling us that people in nations like Morocco and Chile have better health care than us.

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ORIGINAL: litfire2000

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ORIGINAL: rlj

That's pretty pathetic when a backwards almost but not quite third world Eastern European nation in Bulgaria has better Broadband than we do. Next they'll be telling us that people in nations like Morocco and Chile have better health care than us.

I don't know about Morocco and Chile, but if I remember correctly the World Health Organization puts U.S. healthcare on a par with Serbia.

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ORIGINAL: rlj

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ORIGINAL: litfire2000

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ORIGINAL: rlj

That's pretty pathetic when a backwards almost but not quite third world Eastern European nation in Bulgaria has better Broadband than we do. Next they'll be telling us that people in nations like Morocco and Chile have better health care than us.

I don't know about Morocco and Chile, but if I remember correctly the World Health Organization puts U.S. healthcare on a par with Serbia.

I'm more dissappointed with having my internet be slower than ... Bulgaria?

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ORIGINAL: litfire2000
Methinks there is room for improvement.

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The FCC continues to hold "workshops" to discuss the direction and scope of the national broadband plan.
...
There are 51 panelists attending the latest 8 workshops. Out of those 51, there are just five people not directly associated with a company: Dave Burstein, Craig Moffett, George Ford, Victor Frost and Henning Schulzrinne. Moffett is a stock jock who's positions (such as upgrades are unnecessary and consumers should be paying more money) are clearly not going to serve anyone but investors. Ford works at the Phoenix Center, an AT&T-funded "think tank," who's job is to parrot AT&T policy positions.

Of the remaining three, only Burstein, a long-time telecom beat reporter, will likely ask any hard questions -- and then again his job is to get scoops, not to represent the public interest. Zero of the originally scheduled attendees acted as public interest witnesses. After complaints by consumer groups, Dr. Mark Cooper from the Consumer Federation Of America was added at the last second, but the fact that this was an afterthought raises questions about how "transparent and inclusive" this process really is.

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It's amazing what a little competition can do. Apparently, up in Canada, cable company Shaw started running a promotion a few months ago where they dropped the price of 15Mbps broadband, 200 channels of TV, or voice service to about $10. However, apparently, this was (conveniently) only done in places where Shaw was going head to head with competitor Novus.

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with plans to boost that to 100Mb by the end of 2015.

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Last week, the FCC held what was ostensibly a panel discussion about the National Broadband Plan

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ORIGINAL: tacitus

The cheaper broadband prices in other countries have been brought about mainly because of tighter regulation of the free market. In Britain, British Telecom -- by far the largest infrastructure provider in the UK -- has been required, by law, to provide access to it's telephone lines (i.e. DSL) at cost (or only very slightly above it) to competing ISPs in order to encourage open competition.

My parents now have free nationwide phone service, DSL broadband, *and* unlimited free phone calls to the USA (i.e. me!), for just over $30/month. I pay double that for broadband and more limited nationwide phone service (and no free transatlantic calls) here in Texas.

The result has been thriving ISP business competition where the best providers can made money and the consumer has benefited far more than under the far less regulated free market that exists in the USA. Only after 10 long years of being a local monopoly is Time Warner Austin beginning to feel the pressure of competition and has finally reduced it's broadband rates by $5 -- but only if you call them and demand that they give you the new standard rate. Otherwise they reward us loyal customers by continuing to charge us $5 more than people who just signed up with them. And now they want to start capping the bandwidth....

Grrrr!!