100 Mb/s Internet for Every Home in the U.S.?
A recent report from a group of IT managers at over 2200 colleges and universities called EDUCAUSE has outlined an interesting plan. They propose that the government should support a program to roll out a fiber optic infrastructure across the U.S. that would allow for 100 megabits per second at any location.
The plan totals at a cost of $100 billion and would be supported over the next four years by the federal and state governments, each paying $8 billion (that’s a total combined contribution of $64 billion.) For comparison, the federal government could pay for this entire investment if they used the money currently used to support only 116 days of the Iraq war.The rest would be paid by the public or private-sector entity that would maintain and also construct the network.
We are currently 14th in the world by average broadband speeds and 18th in the world by price per megabit of speed. Most countries above us have governments that have already backed high-speed fiber. The United States’ current highest speed available to the average person is Verizon’s FiOS. FiOS is only available in certain areas and tops out at , don’t quote me on this, a “blistering” 20 mb/s. This is nothing compared to Japan, whose average is 93.7 mb/s.
EDUCAUSE states that the slow average speed of internet in the U.S. is decreasing economic opportunity. Faster speeds allow for better communication, distance learning, video streaming, corporate data transfer.
Not sure where that graph comes from but it’s not overly accurate. It has NZ at 5th with 13.6 Mbps. The maximum we can achieve on one of our residential lines is 8Mbps with most people achieving about 6.
great post…
I’m not that surprised, internet speeds are dropping bad in our country, I do troubleshooting for the internet and I have come to notice that most people can’t get within 2 Mb/s of their top speed. And it’s too hard for our country (America) to change as a whole, now if each state were to operate independently as its own country then maybe it would be easier on the governments and people to pay for the change, because I think that would boost each state’s economy as we would be able to start trades and such with other “Countries” to boost each other’s economy. But that’s just my opinion.
@Cam
I got that graph from arstechnica.com
Also, buisiness and corporate internet may be throwing the average off, because I know, even though I get roughly 8 mbps, most of my friends get < 6 mpbs.
Interesting article. where can we read more about this?
http://www.golfnorwich.com/
Griffin!!! I get 8mpbs (but I only pay for 6). Weird huh?
Alec, you are not “most of my friends”.
And neither is Alex.
But Josh, now he is so awesome. He just makes me quiver when I look at him.
Lol.
6 is a bit overoptimistic(and by a bit, a mean hugely) isn’t it? Most people get 1-2Mbps, if that!
that’s a wonderful idea, but as we’ve discussed over on slashdot about this exact report, the american people have already paid over 200 billion since 1994 for this network, and the network operators (who were supposed to use the revenue from provisions in the Telecom Act of 1994) have pocketed that money.
See the full rundown at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/31/2024239&from=rss
Even though 6 may sound overoptimistic for the home, you have to remember that large corporations using large fiber optic lines (like OC3) throw off the average . Even if every comp in an office gets dial up speeds you have to realize that it comes off of one large line.
I want this in Ireland. I would also cost a lot less than 100 billion for such a smaller country.
If you want anything to work faster then keep government out of it.
Yeah but the government can throw around their weight in getting people to do things.
Other than the “cool” factor and to boost the US position on the above graph, why exactly do I need 100Mbps?
I currently have 6Mbps, and its more than enough for me. I have no desire to host my own web site or other services. I have no problem streaming audio/video to my desktop. Do I really need a web page to come up in .1 seconds as compared to .2? Will I ever notice? Will I even care?
Does this justify $100 billion of taxpayer money? If that estimate is accurate. By that I mean, these “experts” might say it will only cost $100B, but if the fed/state/local govts get their hands on it, I’m sure it will cost a whole lot more.
@Nick
But wouldn’t it be better to be able to download a youtube video in seconds instead of minutes, or to have games that were lag free? Also, you have to think about the future here. In 10 or 20 years 6 mbps will be like dial-up and without an existing fiber network, it would be expensive to get anything more.
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Just because we are spending a lot of money on the War in Iraq does not mean we are justified to spend billions on something as unimportant as slightly faster internet. I know that it has its advantages, but that money would much better be spent boosting the United States’ internet through education or, you know, trying to avoid that pesky, looming economic recession? By the way, as we speak, I am typing from the Boston area and receiving 48 mbps, and that’s still 4 mbps slower than what I normally get: http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/5868/48lh8.png
Most of those other countries are tiny compared to the US. It’s a heck of a lot easier to connect up high speed internet across smaller, denser areas than it is huge land masses. Japan is about a hundred and fifty thousand square miles big. The US is over Three and a half MILLION square miles.
daskos99 that is your local network connection, not your actual internet speed. If you want a speed test do to http://www.speedtest.net.
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