The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007) | Hacker News Reader

The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

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241 pointsbane237 comments

It took fierce competition to even get broadband companies to advertise what they are offering. I had to deal with a very small local monopoly in Western Maryland that just advertised "faster than dial up," had typical pings of over 200. It was thick on the local board, had a deal with local government as the sole authorized supplier in the county.

Now I'm in a different part of the country, can get FiOS, but while Verizon's service always delivers over 50 Mbps on speedtest sites, it often chokes on Youtube or Netflix. When that happens, there's no simple way to determine if it's the provider or some random provisioner in the middle. This is the future of getting screwed by telecoms: worthless metrics and plausible deniability for service degradation.

I happened to get a deal by calling all the providers in the area, then playing their offers off of each other. I recommend everyone does this every few months. But the fact that was so easy doesn't really make me feel very comfortable. If they can haggle, it just signals how much rent they're charging from all the unwary customers.

lol at calling all the providers. the free market fails if left alone, under shady regulations it is almost a joke.

i found a aDSL number for ATT that was not advertised (and you reached a person on the first minute!) that was the result of some obscure regulation that they had to provide dsl without charging for a phone line if so i wanted. it was a very good service. as i was next door to their trunk.

i moved, less than 20miles, but another city. called att to transfer service, the rep read something and the burst out a sad "ah, sorry, this is verizon territory".

and that is exactly what i get here. verizon. nothing else. the 2nd or 3rd biggest city in los angeles, and i can choose, verizon.

Sonic.net provides their "Fusion DSL" service in LA through resellers. It's worth to check if you are in the service area at http://www.dslextreme.com/ . I ended up signing up through another company, Omsoft, because they were very down to earth.

Yeah, the advertised throughput is a bit slower being ADSL2+, especially on the upload (although you can bond two channels for a simple twice the cost. and if you really need upload, inquire to see if they've got "Annex M" support yet). But it's fast enough, very predictable, and you won't be giving your money to assholes.

Also FWIW, Speakeasy is also still around, they've just renamed to Megapath and raised their rates a bit.

Eastern Europe, especially Bulgaria and Romania, would beg to differ about the "free market fails if left alone". Between 2000 and 2010 it was basically a free-for-all for ISPs and each city had almost dozens of them running wires on poles, on apartment building facades, on... trees.

And today you can get a 1 Gbps connection (in reality it works at 900 mbps in Europe and at around 300 mbps across the Atlantic) for less than $20 per month.

How could you call the banning of new infrastructure (through an insane ammount of regulation) by local authorities in the USA as Free Market?

Something like this happened in Russian cities too. Broadband is cheap, fast, lot's of competition, cables hanging between apartment buildings etc.

Recently there have been some troubling signs when (government) monopolies started to buy smaller private ISPs. Internet is still cheap and fast, but who knows what will happen…

>had

Bulgaria here. We still have them - smaller ISPs who don't run proper cabling, it's just the major ones don't run their cables through trees any longer. And I want to note - even when they did ran them through trees and a storm would cut the cables or fry the routers, replacements would be put up within an hour. The only downside to me, as a consumer, is that during a storm, a lightning bolt might hit a cable and fry my pc, but that's a very very low probability and I just run the cable through a surge protector.

+1 to the other comments here -- it's the enforced monopolies through local government/provider agreements that has failed in this case, as with other systems often considered failures of the free market.

There is nothing about what you described that was ever free market. Were Verizon not have been granted what I'm sure was exclusive rights for laying cable in your town, there'd be many providers vying for your business.

I pay $15/month for 3Mbps download but I have to switch company every year to keep this rate (ATT->Comcast->ATT->Comcast->etc...). This special price if often fairly difficult to find on their website. Also, I can play Youtube 720p.

I live literally across the street from the Univ of Illinois, in a fairly big college town (150k), and Comcast is my only option. No competition at all. ATT used to provide DSL here, but they weren't interested in upgrading so they just let it become obsolete.

Garrett or Allegany?

http://www.dslreports.com/reviews/2501

> Now I'm in a different part of the country, can get FiOS, but while Verizon's service always delivers over 50 Mbps on speedtest sites, it often chokes on Youtube or Netflix. When that happens, there's no simple way to determine if it's the provider or some random provisioner in the middle.

If you have shell access to a Linux machine in a College of Engineering attached to some university somewhere [0], try this:

1) Use youtube-dl to get the actual URL of the video that Youtube is sending to your machine that's slow as balls. [1]

2a) Wget that url on your home machine.

2b) Wget that url on the machine attached to that university.

3) Notice the discrepancy between download speeds of those two machines. In particular, notice if your home download starts at full speed, but is throttled to super slow speeds after a couple minutes of video have been downloaded.

4) Run a traceroute (I love using mtr for this) to ensure that the route to Youtube from your home machine goes directly from your ISP's network to Google's network. If this is the case, then there's noone to blame for poor performance other than your ISP and Youtube.

Comcast used to severely throttle Youtube videos downloaded on my connection here in SF. Using the method outlined above, I discovered that:

* I had a direct path from Comcast to Youtube at both my house and at the university.

* At my house, the first minute or two of the video file was fetched at full link speed (~6MB/s), the remainder of the video (even when downloading a 1080p MP4) was fetched at ~100KB/s.

* The very same file when downloaded at a university across the country was fetched at full link speed (14MB/s) and never slowed down.

[0] To lessen the chance that the campus network admins will be artificially throttling your connection, natch.

[1] You will notice that this URL is super-long and appears to encode all sorts of fun stuff in the domain name. This (along with a traceroute) leads me to believe that accessing this URL at another physical location won't give you a file from another CDN that's closer to that other physical location.

So ... where you ever able to get comcast to actually fix the problem?

hahahahahaha

I never did bring it to the attention of anyone who could have done anything. :/ It was fixed a year after it started happening and a couple of months after I performed that diagnostic work.

I'm so glad the concept of "dial tone", video or otherwise, never crossed the demand for and rollout of content-neutral, flat-rate-billed, backbone-peering-supported Internet Service.

Having worked in voice telecom billing for 11 years, it is my observation that phone companies adore detail billing. Imagine an ISP bill which details all the websites you visit, and bills each visit according to some value the phone company might opaquely ascribe. It might have gone that way with a thankfully unimplemented evolution of the amorphous notion of "video dial tone".

Had this $200 billion boondoggle actually given us megabit access, then it would be... access to what, exactly? I can't imagine phone companies providing access to the flat-rate, always on, servers-allowed, content-neutral Internet we have now, no matter the bit rate.

The thought of all phone companies collectively coming up with a service like Netflix is, to me, as unimaginable as the thought of those same phone companies coming up with the iPhone.

Yes, $200 billion is a shameful waste of ratepayer funds and a regulatory failure. But thankfully, it neither collared nor crossed with the Internet.

In my opinion, separation of ownership of content (and applications, and platforms, and end users) from the common carriers who own some of the "plumbing" which connects routers to routers to routers becomes fundamental to a free Internet.

(Edits for grammar, clarity, tone)

> Then there were regulatory problems as the FCC tried to control deployment centrally while states and cities tended to view video dial tone as just another cable company to be taxed and regulated.

That seems like the most egregious thing in the article: treating Internet-based video delivery as a cable company. The concept of local cable franchise monopolies is ridiculous enough to begin with, and the only possible justification hinges on not wanting to have multiple sets of cables wired everywhere. Content delivered over the Internet completely eliminates that justification, leaving no possible rationale for making such services subject to franchise regulations.

They should be subject to regulation; they should not be granted monopolies. These are two entirely different concepts. The current system grants them monopolies, and fails to regulate them appropriately. This is exactly the wrong way round. But this is the problem with politicians: monopoly provides concentration of cash, and this can be tapped into far more efficiently from the perspective of political exploitation. Its much easier to garner a donation from a rich individual with concentrated cash, than many individuals. Likewise, its much easier tax a few firms or not with tax {X} in return for special favours. Its much harder to garner the support of the diffuse and middle classes (not to mention, even get/keep their attention). So, this is sort of a classic case of political economy in the instrumental sense...on both sides.

Its much easier to garner a donation from a rich individual with concentrated cash, than many individuals.

Interestingly, this may change soon. It's probably inevitable that we're going to see politicians raising money a'la Kickstarter. A well-presented and charismatic politician should be able to raise a decent amount with crowdfunding, especially if they're a Redditor. Since most children are Redditors, and since some of those children will grow up to be politicians, it seems a matter of time till we see political crowdfunding.

The effects could be pretty huge. Therefore I expect this avenue of raising campaign money to be outlawed. But maybe it will slip by unnoticed long enough to change the political landscape.

Barack Obama did just that in 2008.

Sooner than you think.

smile

Actually, campaigns nowadays run on the concept of "bundlers," who are rich people who act as a funnel for their rich friends.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United_...

You mean they used to, until the limits on secret donations from one rich guy were gotten rid of.

I'm guessing that you're referring to something in particular?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/08/obama-golfs-with...

http://deneenborelli.com/2013/08/msnbc-boss-comcast-ceo-bria...

http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0811/into_the_woods_...

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/obamas-daughters-join-familys...

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/pres-obama-drops-by-mart...

The first comment on the page sums it up:

"America is the only country in the world where BRIBERY is legalized and stupidly called lobbying."

I laughed, but to be clear, of course that's not true.

and rather uninformed. lobbying may not be as efficient elsewhere as it is here, but it exists everywhere.

>but it exists everywhere

But it's not legal.

Lobbying is legal in the EU too. The organisation is one of the bigger employers in the EU. It's just not so known as in the US.

Lobbying <> bribery.

There's a difference between buying a politician diner and talking to them and writing a big fat check.

In theory that's right. But in practice the line that divides them is somewhat blurry.

Actually, it's conflicting interests either way.

Lobbyists was supposed to be experts in the field of whatever subject they are helping the politicians with. In practice they are experts in lobbying, nothing else. The salary comes from a company that has a certain interest and pays the lobbying organisation to get this result through the politicians. The bribery is not actually exchanging with the politician, it's with the lobying organisation. Bribery would have been more understanding, here it's just a question of stupidity sadly. The lobbying groups are confusedly just taking the money and wondering why it's so easy. There are a few documentaries on this subject and all the lobbyists are talking openly about what they do. The politicians not so.

To be precise, bribery isn't just legal, it's mandatory under the current campaign finance setup.

Campaign finance reform is a prerequisite for addressing any of the anti-consumer legislation we are stuck with today. Best of all, it hasn't been turned into a partisan wedge yet, so there's hope, assuming we can find a way to make people care.

Unfortunately, last time I saw a campaign finance reform proposal cross the HN frontpage, it fell off within 5 minutes :(

Campaign finance reform has always been a partisan wedge, insofar as the party that loses the most seats in a given election cycle is the one touting how much it's needed, but shuts up the next cycle when they gain the most seats. Thus, the only politicians willing to put money into that fight are either already outnumbered, or just crazy (or smart) enough to vote against their own future reelection.

Or, they actually believe they can get reelected in a system not based on bribery.

> the only politicians willing to put money into that fight are either already outnumbered, or just crazy (or smart) enough to vote against their own future reelection

1. This division doesn't fall strictly on party lines, which was my point.

2. With a modicum of cleverness you can get around the immediate issue (politicians don't want to give their opponents a leg up in the next election) by engineering the changes to phase in one position at a time and "lock in place" only when beneficial to the incumbent (e.g. in a year when corporate support backs out for one reason or another).

I'm Australian, am I to understand that our internet quality and distribution is only just approaching what the American's had in 2007? WTF!?

I wish poor internet connection was something I could really get upset about, but I guess the rest of my life is a lot better than most around the world.

As an Australian that lived in America for a long time, trust me when I say life in Australia with crappy internet is significantly better than life in America with fast internet.

You don't want to live there, trust me.

You've got to be more specific when you say "there" or at least mention what you found wrong. The US is a large country with vast differences between the cities. Your experience in one area could be dramatically different from another area in the US.

He might have experienced our healthcare. Even if he had insurance, our system is a clusterfuck that makes everyone worse upon contact.

Or, he might be older than 30 and therefore not willing to deal with the puny two-week vacation allotment that is still socially acceptable from US employers.

Or, he might have children who will have to be educated someday, and see that a system that combines astronomical tuition plus fickle nonacademic factors in admissions ("extracurricular" criteria designed to give the privileged a huge advantage) is not good for their future.

Or, he might have lived in the Red States and be gay. Or, pardon the "he", she might be a woman. Or transgender.

> He might have experienced our healthcare. Even if he had insurance, our system is a clusterfuck that makes everyone worse upon contact.

I'm not disagreeing with you I just need help understanding. I get a job. My job offers health insurance coverage, which most do now. I pay a small fee (<$200) per month to get the coverage. If I get hurt I go to a doctor and the insurance covers the costs in full, so long as they accept that insurance. How is this not ideal? What would be better for the tax payer?

> Or, he might be older than 30 and therefore not willing to deal with the puny two-week vacation allotment that is still socially acceptable from US employers.

Outside of tech. I've found within the industry most employers have a flexible vacation policy.

> Or, he might have children who will have to be educated someday, and see that a system that combines astronomical tuition plus fickle nonacademic factors in admissions ("extracurricular" criteria designed to give the privileged a huge advantage) is not good for their future.

Can't argue with this one. I wholeheartedly agree.

> Or, he might have lived in the Red States and be gay. Or, pardon the "he", she might be a woman. Or transgender.

Eh. I'd say this is more based on location within a state. Go to Austin Texas and you'll have a better time than many other states that are "blue".

How is this not ideal?

For people who don't think $200 every month is "a small fee". Folks on minimum wage might not agree with you on 'small', particularly if they're part-time. For people who don't have a job. For when your healthcare provider hasn't done a deal with your insurance. For having to do the paperwork in the first place.

David Sedaris talks about getting medical care while living in France. He tried to pay for it, and got "Oh, fix us up next time". On insisting, he got "oh, I suppose you could pay, if you really want to".

What would be better for the tax payer?

It's been pretty conclusively demonstrated that the US system is ridiculously expensive for the taxpayer with poor outcomes for society as a whole, compared to other systems.

Edit: I've never figured out how to do dot points on HN...

Red pill alert.

Your doctor accepting insurance is not guaranteed, or even likely, these days. As insurance companies become more aggressive against doctors, an increasing number are either deciding not to put up with that bullshit at all (in New York, half the doctors don't take insurance at all because there are enough richies) or to only accept a couple of plans (which you won't get, unless your company is union and the union does a hell of a job). Companies often buy cheapskate insurance where the network is thin, and you may need a specialist but be unable to get one (in network) for several months, or have to drive 100 miles. In an emergency, you pay a lot out of pocket. Possibly $20,000+. That's with insurance.

Most plans also have high deductibles ($2000+) these days, which means that the first $2000 of expenses you will pay. There's typically an exemption for an annual physical and for routine stuff, but getting seriously sick is beyond what most Americans can afford.

Oh, and if you have to buy individual insurance (your employer isn't big enough to get a group plan) then you will be paying a hell of a lot more than $200 per month for it. If you've ever had a serious illness, make it $2,500 per month. Cancer survivors are uninsurable if seeking individual plans (chemotherapy is carcinogenic, believe it or not). Diabetics are fucked.

Finally, if you deal with anxiety or depression or panic attacks (hey, it happens) you will get a lot of pushback from health insurance, even on unrelated claims, because statistically people with MH issues (especially depression) are more likely to just give up and eat losses, or fuck up on paperwork and eat losses, on claims that the insurer should technically pay.

American health insurance is, with no exaggeration, a 9/11 every 24 days. 45,000 per year. Many of those have insurance.

It is en vogue to consider U.S. health care sub-par. Americans are less healthy than other countries but it's not because we don't spend enough on care. It's because we depend too much on health insurance to make us healthy.

To me if health care is broken in the U.S., it is broken for two reasons: 1. medical coverage is tied to employment and 2. economic considerations are removed from the equation by insurance companies.

My two fixes to U.S. health care would be to allow (through de-regulation or regulation, whichever it requires) allow consumers to shop for healthcare based on their own desires for coverage (extreme catastrophic coverage, e.g. only cover procedures over $50K, all the way down to full coverage of toe nail clipping and nose wiping) without ties to their employer. This fix would remove the pre-existing condition problem. It is one solution the new healthcare exchanges attempt to provide.

To fix the second problem, I think health insurance companies and medical facilities should be required to show their prices for all treatments and procedures. If my health insurance will pay up to $5K for me to have my appendix removed and there is a doctor that I trust who will remove it for $250.00, I should be able to choose that doctor and my insurance premiums should reflect the choices that I make with my coverage.

If health care were handled like this, people could save thousands of dollars on their health coverage by making responsible decisions about what types of coverage to get and how much to spend on treatment. The money saved could be used to pay for things that are not required or to save for other lifestyle choices.

"I get a job. My job offers health insurance coverage, which most do now. I pay a small fee (<$200) per month to get the coverage. If I get hurt I go to a doctor and the insurance covers the costs in full, so long as they accept that insurance. How is this not ideal? What would be better for the tax payer?"

How about just being able to pay that 'small fee' without having it tied to an 'employer'? The 'employer' is normally paying a lot more than your share, so this 'benefit' just means craploads more money going to the insurance company instead of your pocket to make your own decisions with.

"Covers the cost in full"? Really? Rarely, unless it's something extremely basic, and you've got some excellent plan with an extremely low deductible. Which it sounds like you might - for that $200 you're paying, the employer is probably kicking in another $600+ (wild estimate based on past experience and discussions with colleagues).

Being able to have basic medical necessities provided to you should not be dependent on whether you're 'employable' (and 'employed') at any particular moment in time.

"Employer-provided" health insurance is one of the worst aspects of the mess that is healthcare in the US.

Australian here working for a major tech company with 5 weeks paid vacation, didn't even know 2 was standard in the US :/

I've worked in the US since 2001 and have never had less than 15 days paid vacation.

Are you seriously saying that life in the US is terrible if you're a woman? Do I understand that correctly? Has HN really reached that level of boneheadedness?

No, he's apologising for using 'he' all over his comment.

No, that last paragraph is clearly a list of circumstances which would cause life in the US to be bad. Depending on how you apply "red states", he may only mean that being a woman in a "red state" is bad. Either way, it's idiotic.

I understand that a significant majority of the United States' healthcare system is lacklustre.

I understand that a significant majority of the United States' only offer limited annual leave (compared to Australia's 4 weeks).

I understand that a significant majority of the United States' suffers from an extremely high murder rate for a 1st world country.

This is a sample of why I don't want to live in the US, even though they have fast internet.

Citation needed

Seriously.

http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/...

For murder rates, North America beaten by Africa only I believe.

The health care system is fine if you can afford it. The main problem with American health care is financial, and if you have good insurance (which should come with any good job) it's fine. Not great, but on par with the rest of the first world.

Limited annual leave depends on the job. If you're in software engineering or similar, you're unlikely to have a problem. If you get offered a job that doesn't offer the annual leave you want, either negotiate for more, or just don't take that job.

I doubt your statement that a majority of the US has an extremely high murder rate. Some parts of the country certainly do, but much of the country is perfectly safe. The overall average rate is higher than other first-world countries, but that does not imply that most of the country has a higher rate. Crime is not spread out evenly.

You may want to look into why you understand things that aren't really correct, and figure out how that happened.

Murder rate thing is probably because an Australian national named Christopher Lane, in the US playing Baseball at college, was randomly murdered in Oklahoma this year. He was out jogging when a couple of teenagers ran up and shot him in the back for no obvious reason.

Australian politicians immediately started telling people not to visit the US because it's so full of guns.

I've never heard of Christopher Lane before.

Wait, actually, on second thought, I have. But that didn't have any impact on my opinion of the US.

The murder rate statistic "thing" (as you described it) is based on the actual murder rate statistics. And my knowledge of US gun control.

Clearly, not a very nuanced understanding of what those statistics actually say (see post from mikeash above) or an intelligent perspective on the relevance of gun control.

I grew up in America and holy shit really!?

I live in Uruguay (South America) and I liked to mention the statistic that you're 10 times more likely to be murdered in Chicago (or was it Detroit?) than in Montevideo, yet you're 10 times more likely to be robbed in Montevideo :P

Not sure if it's still true but it was a funny statistic.

And the media here does portray the U.S. as a country where murder is uncommonly prevalent.

That sounds reasonable, but I thought I'd take a look.

It turns out that the Australian states with the worst murder rate (NSW & WA, 1.6/1000) would have been the fifth best in the US (after New Hampshire, Minnesota, Iowa and Hawaii)[1].

So yeah, most of the US does have a higher murder rate.

[1] 2011 figures, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

I don't think states are sufficiently granular to prove your case. For me, at least, you'd need to go all the way down to individual neighborhoods to show that "a significant majority of the United States' suffers from an extremely high murder rate".

Let me illustrate. The murder rate in Washington, DC is pretty high, at 13.9 per 100,000 (which I'll abbreviate as just 13.9 from here).

I live in the DC area. Does that mean that I live in an area with an extremely high murder rate? Nope. I live in Fairfax County, about 15 miles from downtown, but still well within the urban area. At first glance, Fairfax County is a collection of suburbs. However, this is kind of misleading, as the county has almost double the population of DC proper, about 1.1 million people. In 2011 (the most recent year I could find a figure for), there were 11 murders in Fairfax County, putting the murder rate at just under 1.0. That makes Fairfax County on par with or safer, on average, than every Australian state besides Tasmania.

And this isn't cherry-picked, aside from the obvious bit where I started out with it because I live here. neighboring Arlington County, for example, with a population of about 220,000, had no murders in 2011. Montgomery County had 16 murders in 2011 out of a population of about one million, for a somewhat higher murder rate of 1.6.

There is substantial variation within each jurisdiction as well. Large parts of DC is perfectly safe, with murders concentrated in certain areas:

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/investigative/homicides/

If you live in the northwest part of the city, you're perfectly safe. If you live in southeast, life is even more dangerous than the 13.9 average rate suggests.

DC is a somewhat special case, as a large urban area carved up into many jurisdictions. Other major US cities tend to have fewer local jurisdictions, which makes it harder to see the individual regions. Chicago, for example, has a population of 2.7 million within the city limits and that encompasses a huge range in terms of crime, from places where you'd never want to get out of your car to places that haven't seen a murder in years.

Yes, the US has more violent crime than other first-world countries, but it doesn't much apply to the average person. Much of this crime is criminal-on-criminal violence, and much of the rest is concentrated in poor and minority areas. That's not to excuse it at all, or to somehow imply that it makes it OK, but it is relevant when addressing what most of the country sees.

I knew someone would come up with the granuality argument.

The rest of the world works exactly the same way too.

Yes, there are places in the us that have little violent crime. There are more places like that outside the US though, and taking population into account my point stands.

Of course the rest of the world works the same way too. I never said it didn't.

But the fact remains that most of the US does not suffer from extreme violence, and comparing the averages across countries doesn't do anything to dispute that.

Even though you claim to understand this, you didn't let it stop you from declaring that "most of the US does have a higher murder rate." How does that work, then?

Even though you claim to understand this, you didn't let it stop you from declaring that "most of the US does have a higher murder rate." How does that work, then?

In areas of similar population density, the murder rate in the US is higher.

Of course there are areas of the US that have very low population density, and an equally low murder rate.

First we get "most of the US has a higher murder rate", then we transition to "the average is higher is the vast majority of US states" and now we're at "in areas of similar population density".

I really can't keep track of just what you're actually arguing, nor do I care to keep trying.

Are they not really correct? I have (in the past) looked into all three of the things you rebutted and I'm not so sure the evidence agrees with you.

It seems to me that the murder rate really is high for being a first-world country that isn't on the brink of collapse or recovering from it.

Lowest number is for places with less than 10,000 inhabitants (roughly, read the details that go with the source to know what this means.) For that we see a murder rate of 2.7 per 100,000.[1]

Countries in Europe that are higher than this: 4.9 - Belarus, 2009 8.6 - Moldova, 2011 9.7 - Russian Federation, 2011 (down from 18.9 in 2004) 4.3 - Ukraine, 2010 4.8 - Estonia, 2011 19.2 - Greenland, 2009 (this fluctuates wildly, 3.5 in 2007) 6.4 - Lithuania, 2011 4.4 - Albania, 2011 3.6 - Montenegro, 2011

Meanwhile the entire rest of Europe (44 other countries) is below that, and I picked the lowest rate of a reasonably-sized group out of the ones listed (26 million people.)

And it only goes up from there, in terms of murder rate - as high as 12.1 in some of the other groups. Also, this is not the only source and there are better analyses than mine out there that do a much better job of correcting for various things.

Similar data exists for healthcare, and I'd be happy to cite sources - our healthcare isn't great even when you can afford it.

[1] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/c... [2] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/c...

You seem to have completely missed my point about crime not being evenly distributed. Yes, the US murder rate is unusually high for a first world country. That does not, however, imply that most of the US experiences extreme amounts of violent crime. Most of the US is reasonably safe, with certain parts being unreasonably dangerous. To merely look at the average is like saying that the Dundee neighborhood of Omaha, Nebraska is extremely wealthy since the average net worth of people in the neighborhood is over $9.8 million, when it's actually a bunch of middle class people plus Warren Buffett.

On the health care front, I have trouble finding anything that actually discusses the quality of care when you have access to the system, rather than discussing the quality of care for the country as a whole. This is the best I could find:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_health_care_s...

Relevant summary quote: "Overall, results for mortality favoured Canada with a 5% advantage, but the results were weak and varied. The only consistent pattern was that Canadian patients fared better in kidney failure."

Two major confounding factors are overall health of the population (essentially, how much of poor American health care outcomes are due to being fat) and unequal access. Statistics for the country as a whole ignore these, and therefore are not relevant when deciding how the American health care system will treat an individual who eats well and has decent insurance.

Again, the US health care system has deep problems that need some serious attention, but as best I can tell, they are financial, not actually problems with the quality of care that's delivered to those who are able to receive it.

I'm not looking at the average for the whole country, I am looking at a specific piece of the FBI crime data, and comparing that to what should be by your own logic numbers that are already on the high side for other countries. In fact, the group I picked is of only areas with a population of less than 10,000, including areas where there is no population at all, as well as universities and colleges, excluding suburbs. It's about as biased toward the point you are trying to make as you can get from this data source and it still doesn't line up with what you are claiming.

Feel free to provide evidence for your claim as you still have not done so.

Here is one nonpartisan resource about healthcare I have offhand and a summary video by john green for those who don't feel like reading so much: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-makes-the-u... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSjGouBmo0M

Relevant points from it: no, obesity does not account for a significant portion; yes, it affects even those who pay; yes you need to look at a lot of data; and no the data does not agree with you.

The John Green video has 2 other links of interest in the description, too.

Your claims are still entirely unsubstantiated, and you keep throwing in more of them instead of backing your existing claims up with data.

Taking the average of every place in the country with a population under 10,000 does not strike me as being even close to "as biased... as you can get" toward my point. You're still discussing the mean, while the original claim was about the median. If crime is indeed highly clumpy, as I've proposed, then it's probably highly clumpy in communities of under 10,000 people too. The mean could therefore easily be high while the median remains low.

For more on my reasoning, see my reply elsewhere:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024053

And yes, a lot of it is handwaving and speculation. The data I'd need just doesn't appear to exist, since you'd have to take it down to the neighborhood level. That said, I think it's superior to discuss without data, while admitting that the data isn't there, than tho discuss with data that doesn't actually say what it's claimed to say.

Regarding healthcare, your first link does not mention inferior outcomes at all. It does not state, but heavily implies, that our outcomes are not significantly better or worse. I briefly searched around that site for other articles but couldn't find anything that discusses the health care system in isolation from the confounding factors. And there is no way I'm going to believe that obesity is not a significant factor here without something to back it up, given that obesity in the US is a factor in about 1/5th of all deaths.

Let's do one for another country, say Korea.

- I understand that a significant majority of Korea's healthcare system is lacklustre, but cheap.

- I understand that a significant majority of Korea's only offer limited annual leave (1 week) (compared to Australia's 4 weeks).

- I understand that a significant majority of Korea suffers from an extremely suicide rate for a 1st world country.

This is a sample of why I don't want to live in South Korea even though they have the fastest, cheapest internet on Earth.

Or France

- I understand that a significant majority of France's healthcare system is quite good, but you pay out the nose for it in taxes even if you don't ever use it.

- I understand that a significant majority of the French support industry and infrastructure choking union strikes over tiny contract details

- I understand that a significant majority of France suffers from an extremely high racial segregation and discrimination problem

This is a sample of why I don't want to live in France even though they have the best cuisine on Earth.

Or Australia

- I understand that a significant majority of the Australia's healthcare system is lacklustre.

- I understand that a significant majority of Australians still support the Aboriginal segregation and forced adoption laws.

- I understand that Australia not only has a slow internet, but widespread and regular censorship of what sites citizens can go to.

- I understand that Australia doesn't even offer free speech protection.

This is a sample of why I don't want to live in Australia, even though it has nice weather.

     I understand that a significant majority of Australians still support the Aboriginal segregation and forced adoption laws.

What? I don't think I've met anyone, ever, whom holds such an opinion. (And I grew up in south west Sydney).

I wasn't trying to be accurate, just reflect how absurd the parent was.

> I understand that a significant majority of Australians still support the Aboriginal segregation and forced adoption laws.

> I understand that Australia not only has a slow internet, but widespread and regular censorship of what sites citizens can go to.

You are greatly mistaken.

> I understand that a significant majority of the Australia's healthcare system is lacklustre.

It ain't perfect, but its significantly better than the US'

> I understand that Australia doesn't even offer free speech protection.

I know. This really sucks. We have "implicit" free speech, but it still sucks.

I wasn't trying to be accurate, just reflecting how absurd your comment was.

4 weeks paid annual leave

plus 10 days paid sick leave (cumulative) plus 10 paid public holidays per year

Oh yeah?! Well your architecture sucks!

Haha, it's all designed to be poor vantage points for mass shootings :P

Out of curiosity, can you elaborate on this a bit?

As an Australia who also has lived in the USA, wtf are you talking about? Yes, the USA is not perfect, but it is an amazing place, with so much support and infrastructure to get anything going. Everything is cheaper, available at all hours, and much better services (I am not just talking about the bars, I am talking about getting stuff done!). On top of that you have a supportive government towards startups, something Australia lacks.

Why do you think Australia has poor startup support? I believe politicians call it "small business", if you're arguing subsidization, then I'm not sure if you want to use the American government as a favorable example.

I understand what you mean. America was not always like this. People used to be friendlier, and you had more job choices. I love this country, but times have changed. I'm not being unpatriotic, but we lost our bragging rights.

Fewer killer jellyfish. For now.

Australia only has a few submarine connections to the rest of the world, it will always suffer because of this. On top of that it is incredibly low density, even in the big cities. The same reason we don't have an subway/underground or good public transport is the same reason the internet suffers. On top of that Australia has only produced a small amount of content compared to the rest of the world.

I'm just in the process of upgrading our office in the heart of Melbourne from ADSL2 to a 10/10Mb synchronous DSL. That costs us just shy of $600 per month. There is enough fat in that pricing that the vendor dropped around 10% off the list price with us just asking, no real haggling.

Our office in the heart of SF has 100/100Mb (admittedly, 'selected buildings only') for $50/month.

And this is just after us receiving an new government which scuttled the NBN that might have given us comparable service in 1-2 decades time. We're going to have expensive, slow internet for a long time.

You can look at other suppliers with fibre.

it will probably be quite shit but tpg offer that sort of service for 300$ per month (though they have a 5k installation charge )

I did look at exetel and one other one I can't remember, and they had similar pricing (all with ethernet-over-copper). We're going with Internode because their support is a known good.

My experience with TPG-by-friend is that they're wonderful until you need support. My personal experienc with Optus is that they obscure their help services, they have no tools for techies in small-medium businesses, they obscure their billing, they outsource support to terrible staff (last guy I had refused to even say anything), they have intentionally misleading marketing... and ugly corporate colours :)

I'm also not sure that fibre comes to the building (we're in an old building in the CBD) and assumed a high connection charge if it didn't... and we're only a dozen or so in the office. It's just that we have a couple of video editors, and when they upload, everyone moans...

Anyone who comes up with a reasonable way of bypassing the natural local monopolies of cable companies is going to make a fortune.

I would think dense wireless networks in urban areas could work. I'm not an expert, and would be interested in hearing from one, but I imagine that wireless networks could benefit from algorithmic advances in a way that might be more difficult in traditional copper/fiber networks.

If you gave me (someone with very little wireless experience but used to be a cable guy) carte blanche, here's what I would investigate:

Several routers in an urban area which require minimal installation and can be mass-produced and immediately interchanged - think roof access, and could be turned on and off remotely, maybe battery operated, flowing to relatively few fiber hubs.

Infrastructure advantages: Network algorithms have come a long way, and the ability to dynamically add or scale nodes as needed could have great performance/cost balances that aren't possible with fixed nodes. And upgrades do not require new lines, just more and better routers. If a router dies, replace, and send the old one to a shop somewhere inexpensive. No midnight service restoration pay.

Customer advantages: I connect to wifi the same way I do right now. Zero home installation (google Comcast horror stories if you need imagery).

If I were to start, I would do it in an urban area with a landowner that had a monopoly. Hyde Park, Chicago is like that. There are basically two landowners: University of Chicago and Mac Apartments. You have to make one community love you to pieces before branching out, and that would require a lot of cooperation. Of course a danger here is if Mac suddenly decides that they hate you and removes access privileges. But if that worked, and you got more funding to expand, imagine the word of mouth: "Here's how installation works: it's a wifi network and you connect to it".

A la "it's a folder, and it syncs" dropbox. Presumably something like this has been tried before, but that's true of many things that end up working (like search engines or social networks).

> I would think dense wireless networks in urban areas could work

You've basically described mesh networks. There are a number in cities across America, but are normally run by enthusiasts.

The trouble is, in dense urban environments, there's a lot of noise to overcome, and if you don't work around that, your network will fall apart. Especially a problem with the coming 802.11ac routers which will crowd up the 5 GHz band that is current the target for backbone links in the wireless networks.

Let's take that rooftop box example. Would this operate better if it weren't on any 802.11 frequency, but another with less noise... a point-to-multipoint box which can communicate with a proprietary gateway in each domicile (or open source device design for enthusiasts), which could also provide routing?

>a proprietary gateway in each domicile (or open source device design for enthusiasts), which could also provide routing?

Why not bypass this and go straight to the device? Imagine paying for internet and not being limited to your house. Then you can expand your "work somewhere which is not your home and not your office" options beyond just Starbucks, et al. Plus the more different you are from the current business model, the better; you have a greater variety of ways to sell yourself, e.g. "This Internet Option, for the on-the-go professional who doesn't have time for wires!" or "Comcast wants you to have a modem. Lol, ok, Grandpa. Eyeroll.gif" or even "Gee Honey, you were right about This Internet Option. I never realized how much more alive - and sexy, and free - I feel using my laptop on the backyard swing!" Also you could compete on price (dramatically so!) with mobile carriers, if your network of boxes is, say, at least city-wide. Home, work, and between.

(Sorry about that. I was having fun.)

> Would this operate better if it weren't on any 802.11 frequency, but another with less noise

Well, there main unlicensed bands used by hardware today are 2.4 (Full up), 5.8 (Filling), and 24.1 GHz (Relatively clear). If you want to get into other frequencies, you're going to need to license them ($$$). If you want to work with the frequencies already available, you're going to need to plan a little, since different frequencies have different speeds and penetrance.

Wirless meshs are neat in some aspects, a more guerilla approach to internet for sure, but you're definitely going to have an easier time dealing with bandwidth and noise if you just roll out your service over insulated wires.

> Anyone who comes up with a reasonable way of bypassing the natural local monopolies of cable companies is going to make a fortune.

That reasonable way is for municipalities to gather some courage and run their own open-access fiber. Until municipalities realize that the monopolies that they've granted their "local" cable companies are now working fiercely against the interests of their citizenry, real change in this space won't happen.

To anyone who's thinking of trotting out the old "The US is too spread out to make that feasible!" canard: NYC, SFO, and SJC have slower, poorer, more expensive per bps residential broadband options than Chattanooga, TN does. Make sure to carefully examine the population densities and regions surrounding each of those metro areas before making your argument. :)

"Decision-making power in the US is too spread out to make that feasible!"

If you wanted to run a fiber-optic line between SFO and SJC, you'd probably have to ask at least three or four different county governments, never mind the state, federal, or municipal governments. Take a look, for example, at the mess that is keeping Caltrain funded every year.

That problem is mere politics and provides no fundamental technological barriers.

You're right, but that makes it sound more, not less, difficult to accomplish.

WiFi is slow though, I just want a lan box.

Start small in a part of the city populated by mostly young people - like university students. Buy ad time on the Discovery Channel. Run your cables through the air between buildings and over trees - it will fail with every storm, but it's cheap to replace. Hopefully you'll get big enough fast enough to put some proper cabling before regulation catches up with you.

>> WiFi is slow though, I just want a lan box.

hahahaha :D

OK, dear anon4, do you have idea what the fastest connection to the stock market today is, no? Hint, it's "wireless". High Frequency Trading set an arms race to have the best and fastest connection to the trade-market. Every nanosecond counts.

TL;DR?

Wireless is faster than Cable. Yup.

What I mean is that I currently get my internet via a LAN cable that goes into my router box. I have a tower PC hooked via a cable to it and a laptop that connects via WiFi. The tower can achieve the full 5 megabytes/sec I pay for, while WiFi maxes out at about 1½ mbytes/sec. It's slow.

It sounds as if either your laptop's wifi card is old or your router is. 5mb is nothing, 802.11n can easily handle that (its about 20) and dual band connections can push it a bit higher.

Where WiFi at home is breaking down is some cable companies are offering 30, 50, or more down. Then there is Fiber which just blows past what most people will get out of home WiFi networks.

"802.11n can easily handle that (its about 20)"

Is that all? I haven't benchmarked mine, but it claims 300Mbps, and I've never noticed any speedup on my video streaming by switching to ethernet (my internet speed is ~28Mbps). It's possible I just wouldn't notice an ~8Mbps speed up though.

Yes, it's g, not n. I still would rather have cabled-delivered ethernet than a literal ether net.

Are you getting your megabytes and your megabits the right way round? Either way, your wifi is so very slow and you probably have a fault.

Nope. If you're not in the same datacenter you're too slow; all the HFT systems are in racks next to the exchange rack communicating over 10G Ethernet.

Source: actually working on an HFT project.

@pjc50 Thank you for your input, really appreciated. What you say is that proximity gives you more benefit than having antennas transmitting data 'wireless', right? I agree with that and I don't, firstly because "Quantum Teleportation (QT)" is available soon enough for a broader audience than just Physicists [1] and such "directed antennas" positioned in the same proximity to the datacenter as the 10G links can result in equal or higher bandwidth. Otherwise it's an unfair comparison. Also QT is making rounds in the defense and aerospace industry now much more than ever, because they could use it to send data to satellites much faster than with earlier methods.

Please correct me, if I'm wrong, but I'd be grateful, if you had a source for your argument. :)

TL;DR: » If you're not in the same datacenter you're too slow; That applies to wireless and for cable.

By the way, what's your job title, if I may ask?

[1] http://qcmc2012.org/

... Quantum teleportation as a mean of transmitting information ?

You know that as of today, QT is completely unable of transmitting data... It transmits a quantum state instantly yes, but that "transmission" cannot in any way be used to transmit any form of data, it would be a severe breach of relativity theory. Look, it's the second sentence of the Wikipedia article on the subject : "Because it depends on classical communication, which can proceed no faster than the speed of light, it cannot be used for superluminal transport or communication of classical bits" [1].

And anyway, the Quantum Communication Measurement and Computing Conference, is not about QT, even if it is probably a discussed subject. The scope of that conference is : "Quantum Cryptography and Quantum Communications, Quantum Measurement and Quantum Metrology, Quantum Computing and Quantum Information Theory, Implementations of Quantum Information Processing and Quantum Simulations, Quantum Control, Foundations of Quantum Physics" [2].

So QT may serve as a way to allow really fast transmission of data, but for that, first physicist would have to completely reinvent physics. That's of course a possibility. But don't count on it as a "soon enough for a broader audience than just physicists" thing. We are decades away from such a breakthrough. And then, if that sort of breakthrough happens... gosh, that would probably change the face of the world in a much more important way than just a faster wireless data feed.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation [2] http://qcmc2012.org/about-qcmc/

» completely unable of transmitting data...

Flat out wrong.

Yes the references supplied were bad, I didn't bother looking deep enough for a good reference. I don't care if you believe that it's science fiction or comic science, it's there and the race to commercialization has already started. If you really care about what you say, then you should read this and stop being a naysayer: doi:10.1038/492022a

Oh, I'm happy to tell you that you should read a bit about the No-Communication Theorem.

Here, this post explain it fairly well : http://lesswrong.com/lw/q2/spooky_action_at_a_distance_the_n...

Maybe that (non peer reviewed) author at nature should read it too.

The wikipedia page for the no communication theorem is fine too. Or this technical article : http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0212023.pdf

The other commentator has dealth with QT; it's not yet a really available commercial technology, and it's not even clear that it lets you send data outside of your light cone which might violate causality.

I would like a cite for your bandwidth claim, but remember it's not bandwidth that matters - orders and market data are fairly small packets of data - but latency. The usual problem with radio systems is that you don't have a nice clean signal "edge" that you can recover, you need to apply some processing to the signal. That might be pure analog (heterodyne reciever) or A/D or pure digital (convolve to recover data from QAM). This processing delays the signal.

Our approach is to do all the processing in an FPGA connected to a 10G line. This allows us to use various tricks to start sending the first byte of the trade before the final byte of the market data packet is recieved.

It says "Principal Engineer" on my business cards; I'm a consultant for a small firm.

I never said that QT is a really available commercial technology. Look I wrote:

>> … firstly because "Quantum Teleportation (QT)" is available soon enough for a broader audience than just Physicists …

Look up: doi:10.1038/492022a if you don't believe in QT. Then I'm glad to see your arguments on that.

>> I would like a cite for your bandwidth claim

Here you go 10-Gbit/s vs 1-Tbit/s → doi:10.1038/nphoton.2012.138 if you need other details on encodings: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.2891v2.pdf and http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.0709.pdf

You mention latency, I know about that and I was not sure if I should've mentioned it, or not, but decided not to. That's because I thought you would know from my writing that I know about latency pretty well.. However, you know that the topology of a system defines if, a system is as strong as it's weakest link. Because I don't know how the latency in the given wireless system is, I can tell you that.

Oh man.. Can't I say anything on HN without having a scientific proof, or what? holy moly... What am I, everyone's slave? Do yourself a favor, just ask politely next time and I will do that, when time allows. But accusing somebody of being a bullshitter, without having any proof yourself, except that your work on HFT stuff is creating an "unfriendly" atmosphere. If being right matters more for you than being helpful, then that's your problem, but it doesn't help to improve the atmosphere in here. And sorry, if you feel attacked or something in any way, it's absolutely not my intention to do that.

"I would like" was me asking politely.

My arguments are mostly about the difference between "QT can be done in the lab" versus "QT can be done outside of the lab with commercially available equipment", and also "can QT transmit information faster than c?". The answer to the latter appears to be no: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/34653/is-it-possi...

http://www.nature.com/news/data-teleportation-the-quantum-sp... asserts that entanglement survives transmission over long distances, not that this can be used to transmit information any faster than the photons travel.

Also, starting this conversation with "hahahaha :D" was .. unhelpful, along with claiming things that contradict the experience of experienced people.

Your argument in all honor, but it doesn't make sense, because I said that "it will be there soon enough for commercial purposes". Again, I didn't say that it's commercially available today for you to sell to your customers.

StackOverflow is not a good source, especially that thread, it is full of bad answers. I've read all of them. The first poster said: "Those quantum states may encode classical information." The poster of the question has obviously no clue about physics and nobody in there mentioned teleportation of quantum entangled states, which you should know, is instant.

Here's a more detailed explanation, if you prefer that:

If you have a particle (such as a photons, electrons, or molecule) and have it physically interact with another particle, and then separate them, the result is that they can then both be described as being in the same quantum mechanical state. Basically, they are now the same, in factors such as position, momentum, spin, polarization, etc.

However, because we are dealing with quantum mechanics, the state of those particles remains undefined until measured (because it would then be forced to assume a specific state).

Now, how does this relate to instant data teleportation, you say? That’s the interesting part. You see, quantum entanglement is a form of quantum superposition (which I talked about in the aforementioned post about some quantum mechanics). This means that each particle that you have can be in any state. (Remember: observing a particle will force it to become a specific state). However, when you observe one of the particles, it will become a certain state, while the other particle becomes the opposite state. The change is completely instantaneous, and the particles can be anywhere — you could have your second particle on the other side of the planet and it would assume an equal and opposite state of it’s entangled counterpart. Instant data transfer.

Say you had a binary bit you wanted to transfer. First, you must entangle the bits. Then, put one of them on the other side of the globe. Observe one of them, forcing it to assume a certain state, and the other will instantly change. Like magic. Source: [1]

Ask me about latency here… However, you drifted the discussion to QT. My initial post was originally trying to say that data can be transfered wirelessly faster than with a cable, or at least as fast. Latency cannot in such a system cannot be generalized, because it is dependant on the technology in the receiving side. If the receiving side uses optical fiber, you would need an architecture as described in [2].

---

[1] http://programmingantics.wordpress.com/2012/08/15/quantum-en...

[2] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=5...

"If you have a particle (such as a photons, electrons, or molecule) and have it physically interact with another particle, and then separate them, the result is that they can then both be described as being in the same quantum mechanical state. Basically, they are now the same, in factors such as position, momentum, spin, polarization, etc.

However, because we are dealing with quantum mechanics, the state of those particles remains undefined until measured (because it would then be forced to assume a specific state)."

No they are NOT in the same quantum mechanical state at the moment of entanglement. They are, as you said later, undetermined until measurement (or better, until the collapse of the wavefunction). So they are not the same before, unless you accept the completely discredited theory of local hidden variables (cf. Bell's Theorem). They are connected, by the spooky action at a distance, and at the moment of measurement of one, the other will react accordingly. But before that measurement neither are in any state at all.

But at least I've pinpointed the point where you got QT wrong : "Say you had a binary bit you wanted to transfer. First, you must entangle the bits. Then, put one of them on the other side of the globe. Observe one of them, forcing it to assume a certain state, and the other will instantly change. Like magic."

The problem, see, is that, by definition of quantum mechanics, the collapse of the wavefunction is completely random. You can't force a photon to assume the state you want, it'll assume a random state. Then the other photon will indeed assume the symmetrical state. But that's still be the product of the randomness of the first measurement.

In other words, causality has not been violated because no information is transmitted, only randomness. It's like having two connected dices separated by hundred of miles, when you roll a 1, the other rolls a 6, when you roll a 2 the other will roll a 5 etc. So you roll your dice, and you look at it. You got a 4 ! Great. Now you know that somewhere around in the world someone is looking at his own dice and seeing a 3. Did you transmit any kind of information ? No you knew beforehand that the guy would have a symmetrical result. And you can't tell him a message, because it's completely random. How would you say to your friend on the other side of the planet "Hello" ? You just got 5 fours in a row on the dice... Your friend know it. But that has no meaning at all.

Now, of course, you can imagine local hidden variables, that could be read beforehand to influence the result. Or use another way of influencing the result of the wavefunction collapse, so that a message could be transmitted. But that's what I was speaking of when I said that you had first to reinvent the laws of physics. Cause the Bell's theorem and the No Communication Theorem forbid it in the actual understanding of science. Boy I would love to live in an universe where we can so easily violate causality. That would be FUN !

You're talking about old things like Bell's theorem to support your straw man fallacy, but neglect your own saying. States are transmitted instantly and you still misunderstand either willingly or not the possibility of information transmission by this method.

Your words >> "Then the other photon will indeed assume the symmetrical state."

Your causality argument is void, because in no way has this to do with a paradox. That's high-school physics you use to draw the straw man here. You have no references that back your claims and have you even looked at the scientific journals I have sent you? Try to formally disprove those. And I'm all ears again, but here you only defend your position no matter what.

Hahahaha. You're funny.

Ok. So I'm doing a strawman... But you're not doing an argument from authority ?

So let's be clear. Bell's theorem is not an "old thing". I mean, what serious scientist argue something like that... (Yep, that's a No true Scotsman ;-) ) I've never encountered any argument in that direction. Of course some people argue against some of the derivations of Bell's theorem, and his test, but against the soundness of the theorem in itself ? For the record : "No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics."

Then people who challenge the consequences of Bell's Theorem, argue for Non Local Hidden Variables (http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9906036v1.pdf). But frankly, non locality is not at all in the actual consensus of quantum physicists. It would have huge consequences on special relativity.

So, again, if you want to argue that Non locality is true, welcome to a completely new world of physics. As of today, no one have any proof that non-locality is real. The scientific consensus is that No communication theorem is a much more credible solution to the EPR paradox. I mean of course some people say that proof of NCT are circular. But most only do because they think we can find a better proof of it.

How many serious scientists work on disproving the Non Communication Theorem ? John Cramer ? Some people in his lab ? That's mostly it. And as of today... they found nothing I am aware of.

And then what are your references ? A nature article, published in the vulgarization part of the review and non peer reviewed ? That short blog post that show very limited understanding of the problems with Quantum Entanglement ?

Anyway, if No Com Theorem is false, boy what a world, time traveling become possible, teleportation, several other sci-fi things. That would be great. But probably will never happen.

HFT use microwave, not WiFi.

Oh great and microwaves are what, not wireless? C'mon please read what people write before you blindly accuse someone of being wrong. I wrote wireless NOT WiFi! But you know what, I'll still give you a free +1, because you tried to help.

Microwave requires line of sight. That's where its advantage arises. You can't assume line of sight with a WiFi router.

Microwave is anything from 300 MHz to 300 GHz. WiFi is well within the microwave range as is WiMax, GSM, UHF and VHF. None require line of sight. The only reason you need line of sight is keeping interference down and power requirements (both usually regulatory).

When I said microwave I meant specifically the microwave technology utilized by HFT (I've always heard it referred to as simply 'microwave'). I guess I was mistaken because I read that the microwave used by HFT beats out fiber because light travels faster through air than through glass and mistakenly implied that meant line of sight.

Maybe drone routers providing floating/adhoc networks:)

> Anyone who comes up with a reasonable way of bypassing the natural local monopolies of cable companies...

I'm nowhere near a socialist, but government intervention is a perfectly reasonable way to deal with natural monopolies. How do you think Northern European and Asian countries pulled so far ahead of the US on this?

Disclaimer: This is an observation, unsupported by facts, and please take it as such.

I'm pretty sure that the ISP sector is not constrained in any way by a natural monopoly. Take a look at the Internet in Romania wikipedia article[0]. In my view telecom companies have grown to disproportionate sizes, almost everywhere in the world, and this has given them enough power to buy the lawmakers. A lot of legislation has been passed to protect them, state laws, national laws and even international laws. So no, I think that the telecom sector has been intervened enough since its creation, what the consumer needs is to completely deregulate it, and to let the free market work its magic.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Romania

So just anyone can dig wherever they want whenever they want, laying redundant fiber and tearing up the streets?

Somehow I doubt that that would be the most efficient way to do it. But maybe a couple or three companies could lay redundant fiber, while another two used existing infrastructures with new implementations, and maybe a couple more could offer satellite connections.

I don't know, this is just pure speculation. What I know for sure is that the reason to protect companies that exploit "natural monopolies" is to protect the consumer. And right now, the protection of these companies is hurting the consumer, more than helping him.

Yeah, in an ideal situation the state would be able to provide "free" internet at a really low cost. But that solution overlooks this huge problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgJ644LPL6g

I strongly suggest that if you're going to espouse these opinions, you do some math first.

In this case, I suggest you model rural America's density, and the cost to lay down a wire, or fiber, or whatever in a town, along with all the needed infrastructure.

Then I suggest you model the financial returns of that investment under conditions where there are multiple players.

If you do this well, you'll find that as you add competition, you add marketing cost, and you're also forced to amortize the fixed infrastructure costs over smaller and smaller numbers of consumers. And you'll also find that whoever was first to market in that area has a dominant position from a game theoretical perspective, and can make moves that would make it essentially impossible for any competitor to enter the marketplace profitably.

Natural monopolies aren't made-up things.

Assuming that natural monopolies do exist, you just described how they actually work. They don't need the protection of the government because the incumbent has so many advantages over the entrant, that (most of the times) there is no need to offer any incentives to any company for it to be the first one to exploit a natural monopoly.

The government regulations aren't there to create or protect monopolies. They're there to control monopolies that were likely to occur anyway, so that the monopolists can't use their position in an overly extractive manner.

Since these regulations occur at a local level, some of the rules are more effective than others, and some of them are straight-up corrupt. But the common case is not government creating monopolies, but rather government restraining them by regulating them.

Ok, I guess I was looking at it wrong.I was thinking about government-granted monopolies where the government willingly prevents competition. It is my understanding that this was how of most of the telecommunication companies around the world started.

I've heard of other scenarios where the government prevented competition, but they nearly all boil down to the same core: the constituents want X, but some sort of market failure is occurring (or likely to occur) and a temporary market intervention was able to resolve it.

Almost by definition you can't have competition for large networks, road, data, water, electricity, gas, anything that needs lots of effort to set up to serve everyone. All the competing networks are more specific, rail, air, or much more limiting, broadcast tv.

Thus as there can be no competition the network itself should have public ownership, and then there can be competition of services run on top of that network. UPS vs FedEx; various companies that sell electricity/gas over someone else's network; ISPs that run on the phone network, etc.

A few unlicensed wireless systems exist, namely, Ubiquti's AirMax (http://www.ubnt.com/) and Cambium's ePMP (http://http://www.cambiumnetworks.com/). The problem is that these systems are often set up by people with no knowledge of how radio or the Internet works. Imagine a residential DSL connection being resold to fifty people while being made even worse by radio interference and propagation issues. It is possible to build an ISP while bypassing a local monopoly, but few have the requisite knowledge.

I have tried posting this idea a couple of times before and have been roundly scolded, but oh well, here goes again. I think... that readers of this forum are ideally equipped to find a way around this problem. What I mean to say is that it is universally felt by everyone that they hate their broadband provider, phone company etc. Why can't we, the tech community come up with a competing technology? I know many have tried to do "open source" types of mesh wifi networks, but I think something more robust than that is needed. Everyone agrees current companies are leaving their customers unsatisfied, hence there must be an opportunity there for someone clever enough to come up with a good alternative.

I wonder if an automatic peering arrangement could be built on top of a mesh infrastructure, to give incentive for running more robust nodes (not just for in-network traffic, but for uplink to the internet at large).

Interesting. I was thinking about some of the open source implementations of LTE that have been posted here but maybe the wifi mesh approach needs tweaking. Also, from a business perspective, I think it would be cool if there was a way to make it sort of like a "co-op" so people who host hot spots or base stations would get some profit sharing or something?

FON (https://corp.fon.com/en) tried to make this work, I'm sure there were other attempts.

It's not a mesh network, so it doesn't divorce itself from the last mile carriers.

Very interesting, that is exactly what I was thinking about. I guess something like that would some how have to reach a critical mass.

I guess the problem is that all of these (broadband provider, phone company) are regulated by the government. Once you have the government involved, forget about competition, the market won't fix. You have to fix politics.

Too bad there is not a tech way to work around them. Maybe using some kind of unlicensed wireless?

There is, actually. They're called Wireless ISPs or WISPs. http://www.wispa.org/find-a-wisp

Ah, but what is within reach of government regulation? Are they willing to, say, shoot down satellites?

It's not a technological problem. The technological barriers have been taken care of. Google Fiber exists and is awesome and affordable. The reasons we don't all have Google Fiber level of service are political: regulatory capture, monopolies and oligopolies, conflicts of interest, etc.

The problem with fiber I think is that a lot of communities are "trench weary" and don't want more fiber providers digging up the streets. I think Google gets around that by hyping that they are coming to town, which is smart, it gets the politicians to back them.

It's only not a tech problem if every service has Google levels of server capacity and performance. Websites still regularly fall over when posted on aggregation sites.

They fall over because they're misconfigured (namely, default Apache config on a $5 VPS; works fine at low traffic, but throw some more at it and Apache spawns more processes than you have RAM, starving the DB and OS filesystem cache, then swapping to death), not because websites are bandwidth-limited.

I'm not just talking about simple static websites. Please, let's not pretend that upgrading everyone to fiber will be sufficient. You know better than that.

I don't know what systemic tech problem you think exists for web hosts. There's no lack of bandwidth on their side of the internet -- heck, if you excluded Netflix and YouTube, over 60% of last mile capacity in the country would be completely unused during peak hours. Those few sites, like video streaming services, that are bandwidth-limited also tie their revenue to consumption -- more bandwidth on the consumer end just widens their potential customer base.

There are many infrastructure changes that are needed in order to increase the performance of the Internet besides faster home connections. CDNs / caching / DNS performance / SPDY / distributed computation and on and on and on. The OP makes it sound like the only thing between us and 0 ms response times on every service and every web page is some politics.

In other words the reason we don't have Google Fiber levels of performance is because 1) we don't have Google Fiber and 2) all the infrastructure to maximize the potential of that last mile connection isn't there. 2) is a problem!

Just remember to resist the urge to think of this as corporations stealing money from the government. This is government stealing money from citizens.

Absolutely. Corporations do nothing but good. They bear no responsibility for their purposeful misuse of the funds.

And government does nothing but bad.

Swear on your stack of Ayn Rand books that the world would be better if we had more corporations, because they are perfectly ethical and never screw anybody over.

Yes, that's right. Never blame the con artists^W^Wcorporations who didn't do what they promised. Instead blame the government for trusting them.

Corporations can be evil, but if 5 corporations competed for consumer dollars, then there would be a lot less screwage happening to consumers. Government laws that disallow competition are the first things that need to change.

Government should be there to protect consumers from price fixing, and that's just about it.

You're taking what he said and swinging it so fully in the opposite direction it makes you look as crazy as him.

Can't we both agree that corporations and governments abuse their power as a matter of fact?

Why not tone down even more to get to the fact that not only can they both abuse their power, but they can both not do so too. Not all politicians and corporations are created equal.

Can't we both agree that corporations and governments abuse their power as a matter of fact?

All people and institutions that have power sometimes abuse the power. Sometimes the abuse is knowing, sometimes it's accidental.

This is not terribly interesting.

You're taking what he said and swinging it so fully in the opposite direction it makes you look as crazy as him.

In my defense, I wasn't commanding the HN audience to place 100% of the blame on one party or another. I was just illustrating how insanely idiotic it was for OP to command us to absolve the corporations of their sins, and instead place 100% of the blame on the government.

I enjoy HN comments for their tempered, rational thought. I don't think diminutive hyperbole benefits your position here.

For future reference: there is a small downward facing arrow that can succinctly express your opinion.

I made no generalizations. My claim was about this specific case, and I stand by it.

I have never read or owned an Ayn Rand book.

I have absolutely no problem with paying money to the government so damn near everybody can get decent internet service if they want it. Corporations have shown over and over that they are unwilling and actively hostile towards that idea.

The only corporation that I have seen upend that view is Google. Whether competition from private enterprise, or government these companies scream that it is unfair. No, it isn't.

There's very little difference between corporations and government these days. So it doesn't really matter what we call the people stealing from the citizenry. Corporations shower politicians with gifts, jobs and campaign contributions, which in most other countries would just be called bribery. The purpose of this from the corporation's viewpoint is to align the interest of the politician to that of the corporation. And once their interests are aligned they operate in concert. So as this process accelerates the border between government and corporation becomes less and less clear.

Yes. Less government, more free market. The government should be fighting anti-competitive behavior not granting monopolies. There is no reason for a government sanctioned monopoly in ANY market...it's just a breeding ground for corruption.

Nothing will change until we get to the root cause. Get corporate money out of politics. Its really sad to tell you the truth.

We need to remove the local legal monopoly protection granted to cable operators and telcos.

This is not really an American problem. In nearly all developed countries the delivered broadband "moore's law" has been abysmal compared to what technology allows.

In an apartment building the cost of per apartment gigabit ethernet with a couple of trunked 10 gig ports for last mile would be very very low.

(And we'd have much faster tech for same money, but development stalled due to lack of deployment - 10 gig ethernet is what 12 years old now?)

It's mostly a North American and maybe Australia thing tbh. Europe and Northern Europe and most of Asia/Africa is significantly better then NA.

It's bad in Europe too, you get just ADSL2 or bad cable in cities for the most part. I'd say ADSL2 worse for >90% of the population and improvement is very slow.

ref: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/07/average-global-...

(also shows that US bandwidths are better than Europe on average)

I remember reading this years ago. It's just as sad today as it was back then.

In the bay area, if you can get our bandwidth needs at the level you need from them, I highly recommend Sonic.Net. They seem to be trying to do the right thing/build infrastructure/and bring better broadband speeds to people in the bay area.

I recently left them to go from DSL to go to Wireless w/ a local reseller of some of Sonic's service. I gave up a few static IPs to get 20Mbps symmetric. I'm one of those where upload is just as important as down. Price is reasonable given I could get rid of my land line and some other costs.

My Charter High Speed internet went from $60 to $40 a month on the spot just by threatening to leave them and go with AT&T U-Verse. And I did it all through their chat with a sales rep online without calling anyone. They even gave me a free cable modem.

Moral of the Story: Shop around and make threats, you are the customer they need you and your money. They'd rather lose $20 a month than lose $40 so you can almost always talk the prices down.

That's because you have two options to choose between. Many have none, so it's either pay the price or have no home internet. Where the only choices are Comcast and Verizon, which offer near-identical packages and pricing in most markets, Comcast's retention department no longer negotiates. If you threaten to switch, they'll tell you to go ahead, and send a door-to-door sales rep to your home every 6 months.

PacBell had built one of these next gen networks, it was even in limited deployments, as soon as SBC bought them, they killed it. It was an HFC network (hybrid fiber/coax)and was a commercial ready product. I'm not in a position to find citations right now, but if you google Pacific Bell and Hybrid Fiber Coax, you'll find the cites.

[2007]

http://www.theconnectivist.com/2013/11/the-worlds-cheapest-a...

Internet cost as part of income is more accurate

Why? The cost of providing Internet service has very little to do with wage differences.

More accurate than what?

Cringely's claim is that various subsidies and tax breaks, totaling 200 billion dollars, were given to telco operators with the understanding that a 45 mbps symmetrical connection would be developed and offered to end users. The companies received those subsidies and tax breaks, but didn't develop the system they claimed they would develop and instead built a system that is nearly 27 times slower (I use the term built loosely there since the ADSL network sits on top of the same old copper wire infrastructure that has existed for decades and decades).

funny how this article came back today, I'm visiting my grandma, she has an ipad as her computer (first successful adoption of a computer for her btw, she previously had bought 2 computers and didn't take to either one) and I'm looking at her internet speeds and I can't deal with it. She is paying $28 for 3 mbps (max) speeds. It's dsl from at&t. I ran a speed test and she only gets about .5 mbps. I get about 300mbps(when plugged into ethernet) when I'm at school...

Last-Mile solution: blimps.

what's the tl;dr please?

ISP's took lots of money to build better internets, then told politicians that the current set up is what they asked for.

My broadband service is terrible. Far to expensive, it is slow and drops packets. And the competitive environment sucks. Comcast and Regulators: go to hell.

I'll vote for any politician who is interested in improving the situation.

We've tallied the votes, and it turns out it didn't matter who you voted for. Sorry. We hope it felt, for a fleeting moment, like you had influence over anything outside your immediate surroundings.

I see the old 'representative democracy' fallacy is still quite prevalent in broadband talks. Maybe another decade of complaining on the internet might do it?

HEY BUDDY, if you don't think the country has come a long way from where it was in 2004, then I just don't know what to say to you.

I don't understand how Comcast charges differnt rates for internet speeds, but at around 5:30 p.m., when people settling in after a hard day of work--the rate is reduced?

My hope is Comcast is eventually split up by the government.

Do you think the government would rather deal with more ISPs or fewer, insofar as surveillance is concerned?

That's an interesting angle. My immediate thought was that it's different parts of the government making such decisions. But upon reflection I have no reason to believe NSA et al wouldn't try to influence such matters as they could.

Yep, exactly. Some matters are just "big enough" that you can't go rogue without answering for it. After all, the heads these agencies (NSA, SEC, whatever) are all presidential appointees.

The NSA != the government. It can't dictate how the economy works. It just has to deal with what's there.

> My broadband service is terrible

My business gets 10mbps down, 2mbps up, for $90/month in Los Angeles. It also goes down frequently (5-6 times a year). I think the next best upload rate (5mbps) was $400/month or so with some bullshit "enterprise" plan.

It takes way too long to do simple file transfers from my office to a remote machine. I fucking hate it and our culture of monopolies can go to hell.

My business has a redundant 10Gbps connection to our cabinet at zColo. We lease the dark fiber (but it doesn't run very far, so it's not very expensive.) The cabinet has a 1Gbps uplink for Internet.

Home is 50Mbps FTTH right now. Google should start to deploy in ATX during 2014, and when they come to my neighborhood, I plan to switch to Google Fiber.

I also have a Time Warner fiber service on premise, mainly for one of my employees who lives just outside Elgin, TX. (but also because we get a redundant 100Mbps connection.

While I spent an order of magnitude more than you, I also have much better service. :-)

I have lived in a number of places in northern Sweden. All had fiber to the house. New houses doesn't even have copper-lines for phones any more, they all go fiber. Some houses don't even have phone-outlets, only a 100 Mbit/s RJ45.

A town with 2500 people (100 Mbit/s the last 20 years, Between $60 and $30 per month)

Smaller town with 250 people (100 Mbit/s the last 15 years, $30 per month)

Small city with 100 000 people (100-1000 Mbit/s the last 15 years, $35 per month including IP-phone box and phone-account)

Been wondering how long it would take for you guys to do something about your internet connections. You keep blaming the big distances and so on but everyone I know is living in big cities and still has realy bad DSL...

Oh Sweden, is there anything you can't do? I'm impressed by this country, especially considering what they manage to pull off with such a small population.

I live in the UK, in London actually.

I don't get the choice you get, what I have currently (2Mb/s:d 80Kb/s:u and incredible latency) is the only thing you can buy as a consumer.

leasing a line would cost #1,200 (gbp) a month, which combined with my exorbitant rent would leave me literally penniless.

I would say you're a lucky case.

I have Comcast at my business in Los Angeles. It's $65/mo for what I measure at 50mbps down and 10mbps up.

When I tried the small, local cable ISP they were offering me 10/2 for 200 per month.

There's definitely no rhyme or reason to it.

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