Average US download speeds are faster but still subpar

jarlmaster

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So I was curious today as to how the National Broadband Plan has been coming along and it's really improved. 33.9 mpbs in 2014 which is up from a pathetic 10 mpbs in 2010. That's a DRAMATIC improvement, regardless of the fact that ISP's have increased their maximum speeds by a large margin since 2010 as well, which skews the data a bit. I would assume that, much like the wealth in the US, its top heavy, with a small percentage of people with very fast internet speeds shifting the average. Regardless, it's progress, but its still behind many other developed countries.

The issue is the ridiculous cost of internet in the US given how cheap it is to provide. I've seen costs from .01 cents to a cent per gig of bandwith. I consume roughly 400gb of data a month, perhaps more. At most that costs the ISP (Comcast in this case) 4 dollars a month and at the least 4 cents... Now obviously there are operating costs involved which the company leverages on the consumer, which is why I pay more than 4 dollars a month for internet. I get 150mpbs down speeds and I pay roughly 60 bucks a month for that. That's 15 times the maximum cost of the internet itself. Now consider that for the 2015 fiscal year, Comcast brought in 74.5 billion dollars in revenue and after all was said and done, netted 8.1 billion dollars. That's an insane amount of money. Operating costs were 35 billion last year. So Comcast is essentially charging more than double what their operating costs are. That's ridiculous.

Google Fiber costs 70 dollars a month for a 1 gpbs connection. 10 dollars more for 6.6 times faster internet. They also provide free broadband at 20-30 mpbs for other users after they pay a 300 fee. So what gives? Google is a profit hungry company just like Comcast. They could make so much more money but they don't. This just highlights that Comcast, as well as other ISP's, are price gouging.

The internet should be a government provided service in my opinion. Or at the very least, companies should be heavily regulated with absurd prices like this reduced.
 
Believe me, you don't want the government involved with providing anything.

That said, there does need to be something to stop the gouging. All ISPs in the US are guilty of it.
 
Nice to see over in the US that the internet speed is improving whereas over here in Australia it's just going down as the Government continues to rollout its FTTN copper NBN which ultimately failing, instead of using superior fibre and rolling it to the premises. Sorry if I derailed your post..
 
No you didn't derail it BK. Sucks that the government of Oz is screwing you over like that. Weird that they would use copper over fiber optics. How much does your internet cost? Or is it free and paid for by taxes. The US government needs to regulate ISP prices. The price gouging is just foul and it really hurts the country. Japan and South Korea, as well as many Scandinavian countries, have excellent and affordable internet. I wish we emulated them.
 
Because the people doing it have no knowledge of technology and are just stupid politicians. The man responsible for it who was the Communications Minister is now the Prime Minister and it's entirely his fault as there is cost, construction/build/rollout delays, blowouts like for example $44M was spent on copper last year by the company created (NBNCo) by the Labor Government in 2007-2009. They are acquiring the copper network that they sold off in the 90's/2000's to Telstra (Which was previously government owned) and HFC/Cable networks which is not fit for purpose. Our federal election is coming up in 2 weeks so I am keeping a close tab on it all.

I could go on and on about how I am angry but I won't.

No our internet isn't free, we pay for it month by month fit that's what you mean.
 
Because the people doing it have no knowledge of technology and are just stupid politicians. The man responsible for it who was the Communications Minister is now the Prime Minister and it's entirely his fault as there is cost, construction/build/rollout delays, blowouts like for example $44M was spent on copper last year by the company created (NBNCo) by the Labor Government in 2007-2009. They are acquiring the copper network that they sold off in the 90's/2000's to Telstra (Which was previously government owned) and HFC/Cable networks which is not fit for purpose. Our federal election is coming up in 2 weeks so I am keeping a close tab on it all.

I could go on and on about how I am angry but I won't.

No our internet isn't free, we pay for it month by month fit that's what you mean.

Eyes roll. That all sounds very unpleasant. At least we have fiber optics here in the US, even if we have to pay a ton to use it :rofl:
 
In my area of the US we have charter. I pay $60 for 60mpbs down and 4 mpbs up. I consider myself lucky since they offer unlimited bandwidth and I haven't had to deal with anything like the horror stories I've heard about comcast and time warner. They have decent customer service, too. But that puny upload speed is the killer. It really puts a damper on the kinds of things I like to run.
 
Upload speeds are always garbage smh. I get 15 up I think. Perhaps a bit more. I don't put it to good use though.
 
I've had Comcast for about a year now and don't understand what others complain about. Their Customer Service is significantly better than any other ISP I've used over the past 20 years or more.

I get around 6Mbps upload and am perfectly happy with that as I don't upload much at all. Not sure why you would need faster uploads speeds other than if you use a Cloud based backup service.
 
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