Why Is American Internet So Slow?

Not to get too far off topic, semi-related.

To this day I still don't know how CS caught on. Beta 1 sucked.

Left handed *No offense to lefties but Minh Le "Gooseman" was a lefty, not sure about Jess Cliffe "Ham sandwich/Turkey sandwich" I played against them quite a few times all through many revisions. It was a much much smaller community then. It's what got me into the Gaming industry.

The rest is private

Wrabbit2000

(The media always seems to be on about something America isn't doing well enough.... -rolls eyes-)

Its not that it isn't doing it well enough , its that the telecom oligopoly is purposely manipulating the market and freely raping the consumer as it desires. They are nickeling and dimeing you to death for every bit and angle they can think of. BTW i'm OK with that in a free market as I have a choice , but we don't have much of a choice and the Telecom Oligopoly (ATT,Comcast,Verizon) lobbies hundreds of millions to keep it that way. In essence they are dictating the market to the consumer instead of the consumer dictating the market.

At the hint of some major competition from Google fiber there first response was to act with gov't regulations to prevent google from doing what its doing. In the few markets where google fiber was implemented all the sudden the Oligopoly in place comes out and says oh yeah we can provide those speeds too and without raising your rates.

Keep in mind that Comcr@ptisc is one of the biggest and most profitable ISP in the nation, all the while consistently being ranked among the top hated corporation by its customers. That is typically due to lack of competition. You can't be successful business in a free market , if your customers consistently hate you.

The only free market and competition we get is when Oligopoly industries collide ( in this case: Telecom vs online tech companies).

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I would nearly kill for those speeds Wrabbit. Living in a rural area in KY, I get speeds so fast a turtle looks like a top fuel dragster in comparison...

reply to post by CellDamage420


I'm actually just happy to have finally gotten them. We've had the 100mpbs business fiber plans for only a year or so in a way that could be ordered outside pre-installed buildings. 50mbps has been available a bit longer, but not by much. We were playing 5mbps cable and a DSL which couldn't even meet that low expectation until quite recently in terms of national roll out.

Now I look at what some others are enjoying with FIOS and wish.... Oh, some day.

BTW.. Exede is a new satellite service you might want to look at and I've just starting hearing about. It's not really 'new' I guess for tech or some of the corporate players, but the service name and plans are something I hadn't seen until recently.

The days of cable internet is gone.

The new kid on the block is wireless.

The Comcast's, and the Time Warners are akin to the days of 'Ma' Bell.

The future is the 'Verizons' wireless service.

Hell go to Verizons cell coverage webpage.

Look at how much of the country is covered.

reply to post by Diisenchanted


This is why every American should build their own computers. Either that, or know someone that can build a computer for them. Laptops and tablets would be highly suspicious since there aren't many people out there able to build their own.

Regarding the internet, there was a story a while back about Japan and their internet speeds and how cheap it was.

Think about it, what's the infrastructure difference between 20Mbps and 100Mbps? Nothing.

The only thing that I would believe that they are charging people for are amount downloaded. With the obvious logic that if you had a faster internet speed then you would download more stuff. Even that's a fallacy. There is no real cost to bandwidth usage. They are creating a commodity out of nothing just like our paper money!

It's all a lie based on the American principle of ego. It's ego that wants the faster car. It's ego that wants the faster motorcycle. It's ego that wants the faster internet speed. And because of ego people will pay for it and dumb enough to pay it.

Sort of like how bank ATM machines started nickel and diming people from other banks using their ATMs. It's obviously a scheme because most Credit Unions don't charge. If the little guys don't need to charge then you know the big guys are just f^@king us in the arse because they can!

reply to post by Bone75


Another important factor to not forget is that many Americans in rural areas do not have access to highspeed internet and are still using dial-up. And that is something that is unlikely to change because like the phone lines and electric lines there isn't enough profit in it for private business to undertake on their own.

reply to post by Bone75


My Windows 7 PC, Windows 7 laptop, Windows 7 work-PC and my WiFI Kindle are all as "quick as a click". Is it just me?

Im in Michigan and I only wait about 4-5 seconds when even downloading vids etc.....

Probably because a hand full of companies control a monopoly on the service all while claiming to be free market? Or in other words, there's no competition to drive innovation (or higher cost).