Broadband: other countries do it better, but how?
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Also, why is it automatically assumed that more broadband is better? How much more productive is broadband going to make a farmer or a welder (over 56K or ISDN?).
This is just as bad as thinking more education is always better. A doctor with 20 years of school may be more productive than one with 14, but would a mechanic with 20 years of school be that much better than one with 14? (Note: I'm talking about formal in-school education. Both doctors and mechanics have considerable on-the-job training in addition to their schooling).
Broadband in a rural area means that the area is more appealing to business, leading to development of the area and economic improvement.
This can be seen happening in various European countries. Some of the farms outside of the city where I live have been able to convert some of their land into serviced offices, making them a pretty penny since broadband access was mandated.
We need to break these monopolies and allow any company to build infrastructure. Then we will see competition increase and prices go down.
Not mentioned in the article is the UK, which has exactly the system I am proposing - one with almost no government regulation - and is at least on par with all the countries listed in the article, if not doing better. This example goes to show that socialist infrastructure and regulation is not the essential factor that makes broadband access better.
24Mbps down? Only if you're sitting directly on top of the exchange! From Be*, I get around 13-14Mbps down and 1.3Mbps up with the option to move to Annex M to increase my upload speed to around 2.3Mbps, for an equivalent (or greater) drop in download speed.
However, a very good thing about unbundling is the ability to combine several SDSL lines from different providers to give a leased-line-like connection for a fraction of the cost.