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Why?
PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 5:28 am
by Shao Feng-Li
If this is accurate, I'm moving to Japan. And I kinda figured the US wouldn't be so far down the line.
PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 6:25 am
by blkmage
There are a number of reasons. The first is that there is a lot more competition. If I recall correctly, in the States and definitely in Canada, you have maybe one or two service providers in an area. Essentially, the government of Korea encouraged competition by offering many, many incentives for up and coming telecoms at a time that Korea Telecom, a former state-owned company, served almost everyone.
The other reason is that these other governments have made aggressive goals in terms of broadband access and have built a lot of their infrastructure around the promise of broadband. Here in North America, our governments haven't really got a plan to bring broadband, and instead are just letting the service providers get around to it when they feel like it.
One last reason is geography. The US and Canada are huge countries. Korea and Japan are a lot more densely populated, so that makes rolling out fibre a lot easier and a lot cheaper.
Essentially, what we need to do for better broadband is we need to make it a priority and come up with a strategy that doesn't amount to "broadband is important, yeah."
PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:12 am
by Shao Feng-Li
That makes sense... Less wiring means it's cheaper to buy. When you live right next door to the service provider... heh.
PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 10:51 am
by Gabriel 9.0
Wow Shao Feng, you're moving to Japan, I wish you well:thumb:.
PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 11:01 am
by Kenshin17
I think she was joking...
PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 11:43 am
by Shao Feng-Li
I wish I was going XD
PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:42 pm
by Kenshin17
Welcome to the club XD
PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 6:50 pm
by Shao Feng-Li
Heh XD
PostPosted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 8:03 am
by Kaori
Let's see--right now, in Tokyo, the connection speed for the network I'm connected to is 54 Mbps, and my host family told me that their connection is a little bit slow because they're on the seventeenth floor. When I was in the US, I usually got a speed of about 10 Mbps. So yes, those figures look pretty accurate, at least for Japan and the US.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 10:53 am
by jon_jinn
ha ha! that chart's pretty funny, if you think about it...until you realize that you're in the minority...
PostPosted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 4:40 pm
by Shao Feng-Li
Dang...
PostPosted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 9:23 pm
by Mithrandir
Heh. The chart looks accurate. Let's begin our economics lesson.
The US has invested billions in getting things like regular phone and cable, which have horrid access speeds.
In many cases, the US would like to be able to do business with country A, but country A has virtually no technology infrastructure. To fix this, the US government gives lots of money to the other country to get their infrastructure in place. They install the latest technology.
It's really a question of legacy infrastructure.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 10:24 pm
by Warrior4Christ
That's AVERAGE broadband speeds too...
I assume it isn't average internet access speeds? (People on dialup..)
Fortunately, we live close enough to the telephone exchange to get about three times the speed indicated for Australia.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:21 am
by termyt
I would be interested in seeing exactly what is considered in the chart, but it appears to be business + cable broadband since it is showing us somewhere in the 5 MPS range which seems right to me.
I have Roadrunner, which Time Warner used to limit to 5-7 MPS for premium subscribers. Recently (in my area at least, perhaps everywhere) they increased the limits to 5-7 MPS for regular subscribers and up to 15 MPS for premium subscribers.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:58 am
by Shao Feng-Li
Timewarner's nice stuff. I didn't know they offered a premium thing. Oh well, we're going through Earthlink now. Saving money XD
PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:21 am
by EricTheFred
Heh. I know I may draw fire from the envious for this but...
We just switched to Verizon FIOS in my household. A package Phone, TV and Internet deal. Except for one service outage for a couple hours, a week ago, it has been sweet. Unfortunately, a little expensive. But, I'm getting Tokyo-like connection speeds, so I'm happy.
The only drawback has been on the TV side. Time-Warner had better On-Demand service (more channels, and more anime) and I gave up my ImaginAsian TV (Verizon has AZN instead.) But, I picked up the Funimation Channel, which has been pretty cool.