Demand Super-Fast Broadband in the US
An article in the NY Times yesterday really upset me. If you live in the US, it should upset you as well.
Hong Kong has a broadband service that costs less than $26 a month. This option for its fiber-to-the-home service offers a speed of 1,000 megabits a second. A gig. To put that into perspective, Verizon offers the “fastest” broadband in the country for $145. It’s speed: 50 megabits down, 20 megabits up.
“Why doesn’t Verizon offer gigabit service?” Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic.net asks. “Because it doesn’t have to.”
We are sheep. We need an Apple 1984 moment. Someone needs to throw a sledgehammer through somebody’s screen to wake us up.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? The Internet is not an option that people can boycott. We can’t turn it off. We need our broadband. As such, it will take a bold company to produce the demand. We need a company that is willing to push the limits, building the infrastructure, and supply the speeds that will force the rest of the ISPs to respond.
Will it be Google? Verizon? The US Government? There are so many possibilities out there, but nobody is stepping up yet.
If you are “in the know” about a company that needs support, please tell us. We will help get the word out through social media. We will blast it out there for the masses to see. Slow Internet is no longer an option. We need someone to step up today.
Who will it be?
Also keep in mind, that in order for the entire US to be restructured for fios is extremely costly considering the sheer size. Hong Kong is a much smaller place to rewire than us, but also keep in mind a majority of their speed only works within Hong Kong, it is most likely bottlenecked when a connection leaves the country. I do remember an article about google working on this kind of thing for us now, small scale networking two cities together, but I think in the future we can see google taking big steps to making the US have lightning fast internet.
Under-educated, Yankee Doodle Hilly Billies, want their porn at high speed?
I’m from Romania,we have a gig of velocity at 25 euro’s a month,and if they are trying to upload the price,we are moving to another Internet Service Provider,they are planty of those….
I have 50Mbps in Kansas, I’m only paying $69.99 a month.
Imagine being in a country where the fastest bandwidth available for home use is a 4MB connection and cost about US$275/mth and then you will really know how it feels to be angry. I agree with the comment Jasper gave… “they don’t offer more because the don’t have to” but they could if they wanted to… but why give away more for the same price when people can be forced to pay more for less if you restrict their options.
I think it has to be a choie for people to want to give more to the consumer, but unfortunately most companies only give MORE when they FORCED to do so and HAVE TO!