This may offer a bit of comfort to some with slower broadband connections. For US internet users, your tax dollars have now proven that the speed of broadband is 50% slower than what it’s claimed to be.
For those that would say, "Did we need to spend a bunch of tax money to figure something out everybody already knew?" In fact, yes. The problem needed to be identified in absolute fashion so plans can be made to actually do something about it. Saying something is slow and proving it as such are two different things. And now it’s proven.
A few other things have been proven as well.
First, what ISPs claim to be "fast" really doesn’t sound believable anymore due to the fact more and more US customers are saying, "I paid for ‘fast’ internet and I’m not getting it." When you download web pages, files and so on at the same speed you did with your "slow" broadband, you feel cheated. And you are being cheated. Fast should be legitimately fast, and it isn’t.
Second, internet today is no longer a luxury. For many it’s increasingly becoming a necessity. While it’s true you can go through daily life without it, it is becoming more difficult to do so and in the long run can cost you.
A simple example of this is paying bills online instead of mailing them out. The current cost of a US stamp is 44¢, and this doesn’t include the cost of envelopes. If you mail out 10 letters a month, that costs you $4.40 each time. Sending out bill payments online is completely free, and for payments that you cannot pay electronically, the bank will cover the cost of the postage and mail it for you.
This is just a single example as there are obviously many more.
The US is grossly behind the times when it comes to our broadband speed. The last time I wrote about this, the US ranked 15th in the world, with an extremely poor last-mile average download rate of 2.3mbps.
Thank the FCC for at least identifying our slow broadband as a legitimate problem. Plans to improve the network in the US will start soon in 2010. This is very late to the party concerning other countries are beating the pants off us right now in the broadband dept., but at least the problem has been identified and steps will be taken to resolve it, hopefully in short order.
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