Americans Abandoning Wired Home Internet, Shows Study (seattletimes.com) 352
An anonymous reader writes: Americans as a whole are growing less likely than before to have residential broadband, according to new data on a sample of 53,000 Americans. In plain English, they're abandoning their wired Internet for a mobile-data-only diet -- and if the trend continues, it could reflect a huge shift in the way we experience the Web. The study, conducted for the Commerce Department by the U.S. Census Bureau, partly upholds what we already knew. Low-income Americans are still one of the biggest demographics to rely solely on their phones to get online. Today nearly a third of households earning less than $25,000 a year exclusively use mobile Internet to browse the Web. That's up from 16 percent in 2013. They're often cited as evidence of a digital divide; families with little money to afford a home Internet subscription must resort to free Wi-Fi at libraries and even McDonald's to do homework, look for jobs and find information. But people with higher incomes are ditching their wired Internet access at similar or even faster rates. In 2013, 8 percent of households making between $50,000 and $75,000 a year were mobile-only. Fast-forward a couple of years, and that figure is 18 percent. Seventeen percent of households making between $75,000 and $100,000 are mobile-only now, compared with 8 percent two years ago. And 15âpercent of households earning more than $100,000 are mobile-only, versus 6 percent in 2013.
Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm kind of curious about the non-cell-carrier wireless ISP usage data.
For instance, I use Sat. Internet (because the ISPs are too cheap/lazy to run broadband to my rural-as-hell property).
I also have used, and know that folks still use wireless ISPs (wherein a unidirectional antenna is bolted to the roof of the house and pointed to a distant tower). I last used it from 2000-2005 by way of Sprint Broadband, and got T1 speeds up and down - from a tower 35 miles away. Wasn't perfect for FPS gaming, but was quite usable in spite of that. Pretty sure that speeds have gone up since then.
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:4, Informative)
I have had three different WISPs, without moving. The first one used WiFi gear and was bought out by the second one which used something based on cellular technology. They were being lames so I switched to another WISP which is, sadly, also very lame. They just instituted caps so now I'm paying $80 for 200GB/mo and 7.5 Mbps down, and I can pay more for more cap but I can't get more bandwidth. I was originally paying $50 for no cap and 5 Mbps down. The WISP which bought out that WISP charged $50 and provided 4-5 Mbps down, and then later wanted to institute a 90GB cap which is when I left.
My ping is usually pretty good except at peak times. Netflix buffers pretty hard during some peaks, other times it's fine. Gaming is usually pretty good. Sometimes during the winter they fail hard, but I think that's mostly related to their crap antique equipment. I have recently been upgraded to something slightly more modern, but I haven't had much inclement weather since so I don't know how things have changed.
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Well, European sat based Internet (Astra) you can get 20mbit/4mbit unlimited usage for around €70-80 per month.
(It depends upon the reseller, as Astra is not selling to customers directly, and there are cheaper packages too, but these DO have data caps.)
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:5, Interesting)
My home is almost exactly 24 miles from the *center* of the village and about another 68 miles to the center of a reasonable sized town. I had to pay for a CO and the physical wire for the upgrade. The teleco put the lines in at their expense for labor. A neighbor chipped in and paid for a mile's worth of line beyond my place - so that they could connect.
Of the six residencies that wanted the service, we all now have reasonably speedy DSL. I had it done as the house was being built - I retired there in 2008, I was in the new house for Christmas. I could have gone with cable, believe it or not. The price would actually have been about the same. I opted for DSL for some fairly obvious reasons.
It's the telephone line, they have to keep it maintained. I can use any provider I want, I'm only limited to those who are willing to provide service - so I can use any ISP that I feel like and I have switched when I wanted to. There are a number of legislative protections, a public utility commission, and an active consumer protections body that care about phone lines in very rural Maine.
The list goes on.
Anyhow, cable would have been about the same price to install and would have been faster. Though, I now get faster speeds on DSL than cable had said I'd get back in 2007 when I was doing the leg work. I pay for 10/.75 and get 14.5/1.5 and have three disparate connections, each gets that speed. I'm told that they're actually (they've gotta look good on paper - and I know several of the actual engineers personally now) running fiber out by the end of this year. I will not be switching to fiber. I will order fiber but I'll retain at least one of the DSL pipes.
Why? I've had the copper wires on the ground, in snowbanks, with trees on top of it, *plowed by the plow truck* into the snowbank after getting knocked down, and still had reasonable connectivity speeds. Fiber will not do that. They'll be hanging the fiber from the poles and not trenching it. So, I'll be keeping my DSL.
It wasn't all that expensive to have the lines brought in. It was a one time cost and was just about $30,000, in 2008 dollars. That might sound like a lot but I've used dial-up and the dial-up in the area was actually usually less than 14. kb/sec 4 in true throughput. I feel that it was worth every penny. Given the magnitudes of the differences between those speeds and that I consider my time worth money, I might even be able to say that it has exceeded paying off the investment. Even if the measurement is sheer joy, it has paid itself off - tenfold or more.
I'm not sure my pricing is all that accurate. It's accurate in that it is what I paid but they were also doing upgrades in the area at that time. They were already buying the stuff and I personally negotiated the deal with some input from a friend in the business. I'm given to understand that I paid *only* for the lines that were replaced and the CO ("central office" which is really just a big metal box) and, I think, a couple of things that amplify the signal - they put some small boxes on some of the poles. Obviously, this is not my forte.
But, I'm told that I paid *only* for the cost of material and that I paid the same price they paid for said material. The labor was not charged on the bill, not itemized at least, and that was part of the agreement because I was able to get others to commit to signing up. The folks who wanted internet service were more than happy to agree to sign up when they found out that I'd be doing the investing. They're actually good people but i didn't really know them then. It's a very, very small sub-community with those six residencies spread out over about a 2-3 mile stretch of road. The last one out is not interested in phone, 'net, or even mains electricity so the wires stop before they get to his house - as do the electrical wires.
At any rate, that was one of the wisest purchases that I ever made. I know others who have paid quite a bit more but they just took the quoted price and paid that. I actually went into the
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They have been paid billions of tax dollars to cover the cost of running cable in rural locations. Instead of getting free cable out and making money starting at day 1 they pocketed it as a windfall.
Just because no prosecutor has taken the corporate overlords to task does not negate their actions.
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Because they're looking for a fast return for each customer, which is retarded.
Yes, you will have customers which won't pay you back the full sum you invested in them. On the other hand, that's more than covered by densely inhabited areas where you invest 1-5% of the amount you're getting out each year.
Sadly, corporate overlords are looking for profit coming from 100% of their customer base.
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I typed that phrase mostly in jest, but I sincerely doubt you would have a 100-year ROI...
It would definitely take a few more years to get a return on the investment, yes, but consider that broadband wireless has a much faster ROI, and covers more people more quickly. For example, a local wireless provider (and a quite decent one) is Coho [coho.net], which does a rather decent job of it considering the mountainous terrain they cover.
Now - in my current case, I do not expect cable or DSL - no worries there. I moved to
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:4, Informative)
They have a monopoly
Where is this said? In many countries ISPs were forced to allow 3rd parties to piggy back off their network at a reasonable price determined by the cost of upkeep and expansion.
get subsidised to install lines and have a captive audience
Although I know there are states and provinces that have offered subsidies for expansion in less dense areas, these areas still end up last on the list to handle. I worked closely with a large Canadian ISP (Telus) and installations in rural areas are often far more complicated than just putting equipment in closed boxes. For one, until about 2006, DSL modems didn't too well in ranges exceeding 5km. Even 3km runs could be difficult to tune properly. Cable modems had a bit more range but I'm not sure how much more.
Where in hell are you getting a 100+year ROI? Are you dense?
In Canada rural areas are defined as having 150 people per square kilometer. This means a DSL system that covers 5KM can handle about 25 SQKM. This means a population of 3750. If you assume at least 3 people (right from census Canada) live in one household. That leaves you with a potential of 1250 connections. If you get 50% of these house holds to connect that leaves you with 625 connections.
The cost alone to bring fiber to the service center to serve those 25 SQKM is between $300k and $500k. Add $100k for the hardware and general setup. If we base it at $400k total install, it's $6400 per household. This means it will take almost 14 years just to pay for the initial installations at $40/month. Now if add maintenance cost, home installation cost (which is usually amortized in the monthly), tech support and running cost you are at least looking at 20 years before you make profit.
This is assuming cost/month doesn't go down because that will drive up the number of years to break even. Additionally the numbers we used are probably too optimistic since not all rural areas will have the maximum of 150 / SQKM.
His figure of 100 is exaggerated but his point was valid. The ROI isn't appealing by any means which is why government often subsidies the installation and makes it mandatory for installations to occur within a set period.
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Naturally, because the corporation, all by itself, without any help from the local government, keeps competitors out with patrols of militiamen who shoot-on-site any contractor coming out to lay cable.
They don't have to - the city effectively does it for them (by way of fining any company dumb enough to try, then forcibly removing the offending infrastructure).
Caps are bad for bulk downloads (Score:5, Insightful)
My phone is 3 to 4 times faster than my basic cable (15/0.8) at home.
But how fast would it complete, say, a 30 GB download of a game purchased on Steam? Cable at 15 Mbps completes it in 5 hours; cellular Internet would take months because of the much smaller cap that most cellular ISPs enforce.
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but unless the usage is very large, it's generally cheaper to just buy the mobile data plan and not also have a home ISP.
Usage doesn't have to be that large. One hour of HD video is about 1.2 GB of data. Even a standard YouTube video at 480p is 400 MB for an hour of video. Removing wired Internet access will probably save around $50 per month, which could pay for an extra 10 GB or so from a mobile data provider like Verizon. That is only 8 hours of full HD video or 25 hours of low-res YouTube video per month. Neither of those would be considered excessive.
I can understand why a large number of people have switched to mobile data only over the past few years. That only recently became a serious option. But I have a hard time believing this trend will continue. Mobile data providers would have to start offering closer to 10x the current data volumes for the same price before it could handle the amount of content viewing needs of the average household (which if you believe YouTube marketing watch on average of 25+ hours of YouTube per month).
My wife for instance would never be considered a mobile power user, but when we had problems with our WiFi equipment she went through over 3 GB of data in a single weekend. That was almost entirely YouTube, Netflix, and Snapchat.
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How did you reach that 1.2GB/h figure? It is dead wrong. One hour of Netflix HD video is 8GB, one hour of Amazon prime HD video is 9.8GB.
Are you a Verizon shill lying through your teeth?
Just from the first website that came from a google search (source [tomshardware.com]). I didn't research any further, mostly because even at those figures I was able to show it doesn't take much data to fill my Verizon data plan. If your numbers are more accurate, it even further validates my contention that it doesn't take much usage to max out a standard mobile data plan.
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Do you like to use any of those streaming video services?
If so, then mobile internet is out. You will blow through your cap in an evening.
Keeping the wired broadband makes a lot of sense if you're not so poor that you have to do without Netflix, Amazon Prime, or HBO Now. On the other hand, cheap wired internet is still going to be cheaper than any mobile plan.
I would tend to attribute the mobile fixation of poor people on innumeracy and stupidity.
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Due to a mixup, I was without regular wired internet for about a month and used my cellphone as a hotspot. It cost an arm, a leg, and a few internal organs. Definitely not feasible long-term!
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I would tend to attribute the mobile fixation of poor people on innumeracy and stupidity.
You need to take into account that these people need a phone of some type for emergency calls and job opportunities so they will be paying for a phone regardless. Straighttalk offers 5gb or 10gb of 4g data with unlimited 2g, unlimited text, and unlimited calling inside the US for $45/m or $55/m you will not be getting an internet connection and a phone especially with unlimited calling inside the US for that price.
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Oh, no! Not... the middle class! What a fat-cat.
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In addition, mobile providers sometimes exempt common high-data services like Netflix and Pandora from data caps.
Also it's worth noting that a lot of people in urban areas are pooling their wired internet. (There are a lot of cord cutters who either schmooze, steal or pay a few $ a month to ride on their neighbor's WiFi.)
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:5, Insightful)
I get Unlimited (2GB at 4G speeds, rest at 2G speeds) for $39.99/mo.
Cheaper than Comcast's home internet offerings.
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:5, Interesting)
In Nordic Countries it's 25–35 EUR for unlimited data at maximum LTE speeds. People often say this is because these countries are smaller, but I don't really buy that argument as smaller scale also more often than not means more expensive, not to mention the excessive telcom regulations. 100/100Mbps to 1Gbps land connections often range from 10–50 EUR.
Now that I think of it, maybe it's the regulations that keep the prices down. Antitrust laws are quite strict.
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:4, Informative)
Hey, US antitrust laws are quite strict as well. We just don't enforce them.
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't think so. You can get good coverage in Europe in thinly populated places too. It's the competition, plus strict rules, e.g. you have to provide service to 99% of the population 3 years after you get your frequency slot license, or you loose it and forfeit the billions you paid for the license.
And yes, nordic countries like Norway (14 humans/sq km) Sweden (24 h/sqkm) and Finland (18h/sqkm) do have better mobile coverage and prices, while having a lower population density than the US (35h/sqkm).
Finland is half as dense as USA (Score:5, Informative)
There is almost no place in the world which is populated which has population densities as low as the USA.
Finland's population density according to World Bank's population density table [worldbank.org] is half that of the United States, with Sweden between them. Yet I'm told Sweden and Finland have better home Internet connectivity than the United States.
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It is a little misleading to compare the population density of the entire US to other countries simply because the US is so incredibly big.
Compare your densely populated areas; I'm thinking New York, San Francisco, other big cities like that, and then ask yourself why it's not feasible to at least roll out fiber or 100% 4-bar cell coverage just in those areas.
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting tired of this argument. The ISP's and telco's have been subsidized to the tune of billions by taxpayers, for no benefit. The only times that service seems to improve is when someone like google or the local government says that they are start offering fiber to an area, then every ISP/telco/local monoploy starts suing and claiming that they are going to upgrade. If the locals drop the project due to lawsuits, then the telcos drop their improvements as well. It's not a metter of size of the US. It's a matter of pure greed.
How expensive is Comcast's home internet? (Score:3)
I currently have the cheapest available broadband connection I know of in Mexico — I pay MX$390 a month, which is a bit over US$20. My connection is 5MBps. Of course, we have much bigger data plans... I am just happy with 5. Can't you get such prices in the USA?
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I don't even have a smartphone, let alone pay for a dataplan. I have yet to find a justifiable enough reason to have one, based on the cost of dataplans, the speed, the monthly cap on data, the cost of the damned phone itself
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand how or why someone who is living below the poverty line would even have a smartphone and pay for a dataplan, it really sounds like poor prioritization skills to me.
This is exactly why a lot of poor remain poor.
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2GB is nothing. Netflix will blow through that in an hour or two. Anyone who is a cord cutter or a gamer will not be able to use such little internet. That's basically just enough to check email and read websites.
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That seems optimistic. Last vacation I took, I blew thew a 1 GB data plan in less than a week with nothing but basic web browsing (no youtube or other video sites) even though I was browsing a lot less than normal since I was spending time at the beach or in the local restaurants.
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have to choose between a cell phone and a home Internet connection, which are you going to choose?
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Internet, of course -- I can make voice calls using a myriad of apps and devices that way. Besides, there isn't any cell coverage here.
Re: Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:2)
If I lose my home Internet I lose my television. I'd probably go with home Internet. It's a tough choice, but unlimited data plans for streaming to mobile would never work for this purpose.
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...except you don't "need" the single most expensive option. You only need a working option. If you are genuinely poor, then you pick the cheapest acceptable solution. Rather you should. If you don't then you shouldn't get any sympathy from bleeding hearts with no clue.
This stupid shit is how people don't have money for unexpected emergencies.
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Depends...
Like Sibling, cell coverage is nonexistent out at my house, but I can get home Internet.
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Internet, hands down. It's pretty easy. Cell phones are an expensive luxury.
You would think that members of the peanut gallery were poor-ish at least when they were first on their own and should have SOME experience with making those kinds of choices.
Relating to this stuff shouldn't require growing up in the hood or a ghetto.
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I chose a pay-as-you-go data plan from Ting as a middle ground option. I almost never use data on my phone, but I can enable it when there is a need and pay for what I use. We average $35 a month for 2 phones for everything, and my wife uses a modest amount of data every month (still cheaper than a divorce attorney). I find this to be a good compromise for not having two sizeable internet data bills every month.
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Some truth, but also some myths here.
Yes a cable is cool. So DSL is SO great. Not when your neighbor activates his DSL, and your condo's DSL bandwidth drops from 16mbit/s to 6mbit/s (fucking 2mbit/s with the settop box turned on). Just because the phone cables are together in one trunk, and interfere with each other, ...
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Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:4, Insightful)
More likely it's "we don't have any competition on your street."
Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes it is. But Wireless is more convenient. And most of us have some sort of wireless data plans on our devices anyways, so even though broadband is cheaper and faster. It would be a redundant expense for some people.
Myself I have a cheap data plan, enough for a few google searches and the occasional youtube video while I am waiting. And I do most of my browsing off of Broadband. But I keep an eye on the rates, Performance and coverage. I wouldn't mind dropping broadband for my home, if I got a good enough data plan wirelessly.
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Re:Isn't that -more- expensive? (Score:5, Insightful)
> you still need a phone.
You don't need a smart phone.
You don't need a mobile phone either.
It's just a luxury you've grown accustomed to.
You don't "need" the single most expensive option available both in terms of service costs and the price of equipment.
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Are you trying to imply that a landline would be a good choice vs. home Internet service? A landline is more expensive these days!
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Syrian refugees are using smart phones to keep in your with relatives, help find routes out of the danger zones, Etc
It is allowing people who would lose everything including contact with loved ones, to lose their belongs but still remain in contact. That is making all the difference in the world.
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It depends on your carrier. I pay a flat $42 for my cell phone, and that's unlimited everything including data. My internet bill for the computers is $50.
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There (shockingly!!) seem to be a lot of childless and spouseless people on /.
The cost of buying four smartphones adds up quickly, as does the monthly service. And you can't all sit in the living room and watch a streaming moving without turning one person's phone into a hot spot.
Wired is a flat fee no matter how many people use it.
There is also a quality gap (Score:3)
I use my mobile data very seldom, so I have little experience on this. Also, I am in Mexico, which might have somewhat inferior infrastructure — although I understand that, in major cities at least, it is very close to what you get in the USA.
I don't like mobile networking. It is quite laggier, and its quality variance (both in bandwidth and in latency) is much higher than wired Internet. Of course, it can be easily explained with many people walking into or out of my cell, with the antennas having to
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Theoretically... per gigabyte, cellular data is certainly much more expensive.
But in practice, you can get a lower per-month fee, if your usage is limited, with cellular plans. Services like FreedomPop even give you a small but completely free monthly allowance of data, if you are careful to avoid their hidden fees. Obviously no wired internet services are similarly FREE.
For some context, US cellular carriers are in a nasty fight right no
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Services like FreedomPop even give you a small but completely free monthly allowance of data, if you are careful to avoid their hidden fees.
Companies like FreedomPop upsell you devices they don't have in stock, fraudulently claiming that they do have them in stock, then fail to cancel your order before it has shipped a week later and you've already got a phone elsewhere because you couldn't wait. And they don't put their name on the box, so it's difficult to tell which package to refuse. Fuck FreedomPop in the ear.
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I have a grandfathered, truly unlimited mobile data plan that includes a limited hotspot feature. I'm pretty sure I can subvert that and run a third-party hotspot and go totally unlimited, risking a TOS violation.
Yes, they want to upgrade me to something not unlimited. No, I am never throttled. Yes, they warn me when I use a LOT of data (20+GB/mo) in their estimation, and I see WiFi turned on when i reboot my phone 'cause the carrier really, really wants to minimize my usage, for obvious and not necessari
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Yes, but one big benefit, unlimited usage, of fixed lines is missing in the US, as most ISPs do cap data usage also on fixed lines.
Probably it is on par, but with much higher speeds (Score:2)
Coz wired connections in US are expensive and slow amongst the large group of people who're switching.
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I expect by Wireless we mean Data from Cell Services. Not your local Wi-Fi router plugged into a wired connection.
Most of us haven't ever created a full wired network in our house. We just plug our Wi-Fi router in and good to go. But it is still wired as there is a Cable Connection, Fiber Optic, Or Lanline connecting to our house.
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In situation like this it often helps to use the SMTP of your ISP as smart host.
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In situation like this it often helps to use the SMTP of your ISP as smart host.
Which becomes difficult if you use your laptop, tablet, or smartphone on more than one ISP, such as your home ISP and your cellular ISP, or your home ISP and public Wi-Fi. It can also complicate the SPF policy that you declare for your domain. Or do most ISPs' SMTP servers support roaming access?
It's a utility, you idiots.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Internet is a utility. You can have it at home, expect it when you travel around, and so on. So why is the government letting ISPs scam us?
It is mostly crap, when you can get it (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't even get wired home internet. All I can get is a WISP which charges $80/mo for 200GB at 7.5 Mbps peak (supposed to be up to 10 Mbps, but... fail)
DSL is hot garbage, cable companies overcharge and try to bone you at every opportunity...
Maybe if we could get some fair laws surrounding internet access? But our government is currently only concerned with making sure they can spy on us.
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The problem is the government is not considering it part of our needed infrastructure.
In some ways I wish there was internet available for everyone for the common good.
However there is a lot of innovation going on in this area. So a Government Internet will soon be slow and out of date.
Even if they were forward thinking imagine late 1990's giving everyone a T1 line (Faster than what most people could ever use, much like gigabit fiber today). But even after a few years the T1 line is slower than what we can
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I wouldn't call a good solid DSL connection "hot garbage". It may not be the most high-capacity option available, but it's low latency and downright reliable on good infrastructure. Newer/better technologies may displace older/less capable tech, but that doesn't make the older stuff unusable. I happen to know the space program ran on mostly serial data until the end of the shuttle program - partially because it's "cleaner" than packet based communications and near instantaneous where packeted interfaces
So much video (Score:3)
Is this gonna work, with hundreds of people in an area watching YouTube and Netflix over mobile? This isn't WiFi, but pure phone.
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The people who do this are the subset of people that only do light web browsing, who don't have Netflix and don't watch random YouTube videos.
Comcast (Score:5, Insightful)
Well certainly not in my Area... (Score:2)
In Canada anyhow, wired Internet is both tremendously faster and cheaper too especially in my area with FIOS and unlimited packages. All mobile packages are expensive and charged per MByte. A good workaround is to connect to your friend's wifi points or to the numerous free wifi points found all over the city. While in theory I could afford mobile Internet why waste the price of home Internet for extremely limited service.
Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
100% the fault of cable companies and shit ISP's.
They want to keep the USA as a third world country as far as internet connectivity goes.
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh? The USA has third world connectivity? Who told you that?
It's not quite true, but it's very close to true. There are cities in the third world as connected as any in the USA, and in terms of overall broadband penetration and speeds the USA is only a few percentage points above its nearest third-world neighbor (in terms of chart position.)
It's true that population densities are very low here, and that it is more difficult to connect everyone up as a result. However, it's also true that we could be doing a lot more in that regard.
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Informative)
It's true that population densities are very low here, and that it is more difficult to connect everyone up as a result. However, it's also true that we could be doing a lot more in that regard.
I see you are responding (in advance) to the lame excuse routinely offered by apologists for "Whatever the Corporations Give Us Must Be the Best in The World! Because FREEDOM!"
The poor average Internet service in the U.S., both in wired broadband penetration and internet connection speeds (and metrics like cost per bandwidth), cannot be explained (or even correlated with) population density. The U.S. is 82.4% urbanized for one thing, which means that this entire urban population lives in a small area at high densities and should have data service comparable or better than the rest of the world, especially in light of the relatively high U.S. average income. The population density in U.S. urban areas is 2400 people per square mile, far higher than the average population density of the nations with the best Internet service (like South Korea), and are in addition highly regionalized (i.e. are in effect huge megacities) so that they do form population and wealth concentrations similar to those top Internet nations.
Instead we are far behind such very low density countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland in all BB metrics (our urbanization rate is not much different from these countries, BTW). Canada, with a lower rate of urbanization that the U.S., and a population density about 1/10 that of the U.S. does better in broadband access, and has nearly identical data rates.
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I think it's both true and untrue. I think it is more expensive to wire up the US because we have a lot of land area and people sprinkled through it fairly liberally. I think it's bullshit because telecom execs have collected piles of bonus money while failing to meet broadband penetration targets [sfgate.com], after we paid them to do so [newnetworks.com]. That is to say, it is more expensive, but we could clearly have accomplished it, and we did not because of fraud.
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Its America, big country, no reason to run cable everywhere.
Well, I can think of two good reasons. One, the wireless just plain isn't as good as decent wired. Two, we want to think we're so fucking great, but we invented the internet and yet our internet access is crap. If we want to think we're great, we should fix our internet access (among so many other things.)
The sad thing is that I live within a bowshot of where you can get cable internet, but there's no last mile solution to get me hooked up.
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Plus I dont want them to run wire everywhere. we ALREADY have fiber everywhere and it's just sitting there dark. They need to freaking utilize the damned fiber that is already in place and give us real bandwidth
The problem is ISP's and others refuse to upgrade their equipment. Comcast is still running 5 to 10 year old gear in their headends and refuses to upgrade. Many places the MAX a customer can get is really 25mbps but they gladly sell plans higher than that even though the customer will not get wh
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Plus I dont want them to run wire everywhere. we ALREADY have fiber everywhere and it's just sitting there dark.
It's easy to say that, but it's not necessarily true everywhere. In the sticks, if you set aside the towns which have been used for some kind of pilot program, there is a substantial dearth of fiber. My neighborhood is running on copper so old the first signals it carried were dit-dah, dit-dah-dit. I exaggerate slightly, but we really are literally on copper which persists from the Pacific Bell generation, and which has been spliced and re-spliced beyond all sense. The only fiber running through town comes
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we ALREADY have fiber everywhere and it's just sitting there dark.
NONE of that is last-mile. None of it. The reason it's sitting dark is that we don't need more capacity there.
I want to know the questions (Score:5, Insightful)
If the average user is being asked if they use wired broadband, but use wifi they'll say no even though their wifi router is being fed by it.
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I really hate news stories that cite a poll, survey, or scientific paper and don't give a reference so I can see what was actually asked in the poll or survey or actually stated in the paper, rather than something filtered through the kidneys of the person writing the story.
If the data came from the American Community Survey [census.gov], then the questions were probably something like these questions from the 2016 American Community Survey [census.gov], and the options, each one offering "yes" or "no", are:
Makes sense, sort of (Score:3)
For the low end -- Maybe this can be chalked up as another "cost of being poor." Mobile carriers charge an arm and a leg for data now since they're not making money on calls or SMS anymore, plus low income people are less likely to have a service contract and have to do pay as you go rates. So, if you can't afford a cable bill and a mobile phone, the phone wins out. These costs of being poor really suck, and include things like having to rely on check cashing places to do your banking or buying expensive unhealthy packaged food because your neighborhood lacks access to fresh food.
Not sure about the high end though, It would seem to me that the average high income household would have 20 devices installed, several XBoxes for the kids, etc. That kind of hardware requires a wired service of some kind to power its Internet consumption. I can see lots of people cutting out TV, especially high income folks who don't have time to watch it, but not Internet service.
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These costs of being poor really suck, and include things like having to rely on check cashing places to do your banking or buying expensive unhealthy packaged food because your neighborhood lacks access to fresh food.
What neighborhoods are these? I lived in a really bad area in college. less than 100 yards from a neighborhood called "Crack Lane". In that neighborhood I could walk to a grocery store with fresh foods in 10 minutes. I had to walk through Crack Lane to get there, too. If I didn't want to go thru Crack Lane, I could walk the other way and find a Walmart with fresh groceries. That route was only marginally better. I have never seen a neighborhood so bad that it didn't have at least one grocery store.
i predict denial. (Score:2, Funny)
There's no doubt that there is a huge shift taking place towards mobile. The problem is that normal people never wanted to be sys-admins. They were forced into that for a little while because it was the only way to get online, but it was a disaster to try to make them be that, and so they are rapidly changing to mobile now to avoid that mess. People are sick to death of dealing with traditional PCs, the update nightmares, the malware nightmares, overly complex interfaces they don't understand, being blam
VR Streaming (Score:3)
VR Streaming will bring back the home broadband.
There is a delicate balance between "Most convenient connection..." and "...which allows the best porn commonly available."
Comment removed (Score:3)
Abandoning? (Score:2)
Really? If we only had cars and suddenly motorcycles and pickup trucks were introduced, would we say people are "abandoning" cars when car sales suddenly take a drop? I hear everyone is abandoning PCs for tablets too. And abandoning still photography for video. And abandoning butter for margarine (...now I dating myself).
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Really? If we only had cars and suddenly motorcycles and pickup trucks were introduced, would we say people are "abandoning" cars when car sales suddenly take a drop?
Yes. We would say that [some] people are abandoning cars for other vehicles, assuming that was what was actually happening (and not people just keeping their cars longer, so that they have money to spend on an additional vehicle in the form of a motorcycle or pickup truck.)
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You're making my point (by inserting the "some").
Words like that are commonly omitted from headlines. The headline does not say "All Americans" or "Majority of Americans" so it remains true, if misleading.
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May be the trend with light users (Score:3)
I personally cannot stand surfing the web with a phone. Tablets are only slightly better, but as a married father of 2 boys under 5 and a geek. Being able to stream netflix, or purchased and ripped videos, movies and other content is invaluable. I'm currently on the tail end of a retrofit project where I have 47 cat6 ethernet drops, 17 POTS (cat6 as well and easily changeable for VOIP) phone lines and Century Link is currently laying fiber for a FTTH deployment in Denver. And a business class 1200ac WAP.
I have multiple runs of quad shielded rg6 and cat6 to my DMARC's, all my rooms and even attic for future home automation/surveillance purposes and have multiple attic mounted antennas in my attic (thanks to previous owners) the only thing that I have done is changed/updated the baluns and upgraded wiring to said quad shielded rg6 from rg5(8/9) and home run everything to my furnace room.
I say let the peasants have wireless.
I have seen massive response improvement's in my roku3, and multiple RPI's running openelec/retropie. In fact the only place I haven't seen a noticeable improvement from going wired is the shitty Blue-ray player that we use for netflix/amazon in the Living room. Even if the uplink to my house is comcast shitty basic. The rest of my house massively benefits from having wires. When I get FTTH I pity the fools using wireless for their PS4/xbox setups.
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Hah! Got a chuckle out of that. thanks. I have to admit, that really the only time I have to myself is after the kids/wife go to bed. but at that point I revel is all the wired glory the house has to offer. Whether they appreciate the fact that all our movies, music and entertainment is available at the touch of a button at absurd speeds is left as an exercise to the imagination.... The wife's still a bit salty because of all the holes I've put into the house during the project but haven't patched up yet.
So, over 80 percent are still using it, right? (Score:3)
For what definition of "using the Internet"? (Score:2)
...and for what definition of "Americans"?
I can totally see a young person on a limited budget for whom "using the Internet" amounts to social media sites, clickbait news sites, and cat videos not bothering with any kind of wired broadband.
For them, there's nothing wired broadband gives them that they're not getting on their phone or tablet or tethered to their laptop.
Then there's living arrangements. I can remember more than one circus around getting and keeping a phone line in a shared house situation.
The US is a big place (Score:3, Interesting)
If you've never traveled across it (not flown across -- traveled across) or you've never been to the US at all and just know what LA looks like from the movies, do yourself a favor and take a look at a map first, and compare the scale to $your_country. The US is huge. And especially the western half of the country, where most areas with residents were built in the last 100 years, and most of the rest is completely open land.
"Internet access" for the downtown core of a major city, for the suburbs and residential areas outside of dense urban zones, for small towns, and for rural areas 3 miles from your nearest neighbor mean *vastly* different things. Infrastructure investment and wired vs wireless communications in some areas carry tradeoffs involving public safety, reliability, access, and available technology.
So before you comment, take that into account. Thanks.
Faster/Cheaper (Score:3)
Prior to the gigabit rollout in my neighborhood which just happened this year, I had honestly considered the same. Cell phone internet in my area is cheaper than wired internet. The cell easily pulls 80mbps and an unlimited plan which supports tethering is well under $100/mo, whereas cable internet at 30/6mbps was $99/mo. Why honestly pay for both!? This is similar to why POTS systems are mostly dead, because why have one when you have a cell, too? (yes, there are a couple reasons that could be debated, but for the majority of people and situations, those corner cases are hardly a concern)
The IoT (Internet of Things) (Score:2)
I think the IoT will change this trend for higher income households. I was just recently lamenting that both my 8-port switch upstairs and my 4-port WiFi router downstairs are full and I have so many wireless devices I have lost count. I have a DIY security system, home automation (temp and lights), and remote video surveillance all accessed and controlled from my phone when I am away from home. All of that, and my wife and I combined barely make over the $100k threshold. I would hate to give up either
wired internet is REALLY EXPENSIVE (Score:3)
The cheapest low-speed Comcast plan I can get is $70/month all-up, about $850/year.
If I were making $50k/year, spending $45k on basic necessities like housing, food, clothes and school stuff for my kids -- then no way would Comcast be a good use of 20% of my disposable income. No way!
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You say "$50k/year" as though that's a low figure. That's about twice the median personal income. Half of Americans make half or less than that.
Which I guess makes your point even stronger, but still.
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Even though gaming is a big industry, the % of the population who plays latency-sensitive games is very small. Most gaming is mobile Candy Crush style games, that can tolerate high latency connections, or also online but non-realtime freemium games.
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I called my option "realistic" because I don't usually count on living 100 years.
But I envy your optimism.
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Hey now I only used 170GB last month. If I could get wired service for less than the $190/mo I'm paying verizon wireless now I'd have gotten it long ago.
But no one will bring wired out here and a t1 is both too slow and out of my budget.
A second wisp has started up in town this year I can only hope they bother to cover my house.