That's a good point. The latest OECD figures cited by Mischa have the
US in a less advantaged position for lowest speed (under 2 Mbps per
OECD) offerings than we used to be in, but in a better position in
medium speed and average bill. What you're going to see in the next few
years is a settling out of these figures according to the dominant
technologies in the various nations. In the fiber nations (Sweden,
Japan, and Korea) you'll see higher average speeds, inching toward 1
Gpbs advertised) at current prices. In the DOCSIS nations, you'll see
pricing remaining steady, but speeds inching toward 100 Mpbs, and in the
DSL nations like Germany and France, you'll probably see some price
cutting but you won't see many speeds above 25 Mbps.
At the end of the day, the price and performance of broadband networks
are limited by the cable in the ground, as the electronics that use the
cable are uniform. Cable in the ground is dictated by population and
history, not so much by policy.
The exception to all this is fiber in the layer 0 countries where telcos
were essentially forced and induced to pull fiber by a combination of
privatization conditions, population distribution, and regulatory
constraints on the twisted pair.
In any event, Dave Burstein's claim that the US suffers from
"monopoly-like pricing" doesn't hold up to scrutiny; US broadband
pricing is quite normal with respect to all the speeds in all the
countries with similar distances to cover. The only way broadband gets
cheaper in a country like the US is if we hide the price of network
upgrades in a taxpayer-supported subsidy or if we all move into
high-rise apartments in big cities. This isn't magic, it's been known
for a long time.
RB
PS to Lauren: Sorry if I disturbed the decorum of your list, but certain
people posting here have a history, and to me tossing around bogus
figures and bad data is height of rudeness. I don't care if people call
me an asshole, just don't lie.
[ Richard, if you want to call the accuracy of figures into
question that's fine. But don't attempt to use that as an excuse
to pull the discussion into the gutter. We will keep this on a
polite level -- even your PS to me is borderline as far as family
viewing is concerned. In particular, I will not stand for ad
hominem attacks, and since I run the list the judgment as to what
falls into that category will be exclusively mine. Nor will I
stand for arguments (and I get plenty of these in my private
mail) that attempt to contaminate policy issues with
discussions of what "other" causes this or that organization or
firm also supports (this has been used frequently to try falsely
paint Net Neutrality as a "communist" plan, by the way). There
are other venues that do not operate under these kinds of rules
of course. I don't speak for them.
-- Lauren Weinstein
NNSquad Moderator ]
rb
On 8/29/2010 7:37 PM, George Ou wrote:
The price per burst rate Mbps isn't comparable between the US and other nations
because nearly all other nations have very small usage caps on their wired
broadband services. More generous usage caps (or no hard caps) translates to a
higher base price so those higher base prices aren't that bad a deal when
you're capped on usage. In fact if you're a heavy user, you're getting a steal
because the majority of users are paying a little more to subsidize you.
Even the controversial (but failed) usage caps proposed by Time Warner dwarfed
the typical usage caps of most other nations listed by the OECD.
http://www.digitalsociety.org/files/gou/compare-bb-2.png
Ranking 9th place at lower monthly costs while offering some of the most
generous usage caps is fairly respectable and certainly not the rip off that so
many portrait it to be.
George
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Mischa Beitz
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 7:17 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Unbundling rates [ +Administrivia ]
* Every responsible study of the rates US operators charge for low-end
broadband and cell calls finds that we have rates among the lowest in
the world; check OECD, Merrill Lynch, any source you want. The carriers
give the service away at the low end and charge more for the high end,
which is as it should be.
OECD recently released their 2009 broadband data here:
http://www.oecd.org/document/54/0,3343,en_2649_34225_38690102_1_1_1_1,00.html
I've only cursorily looked at what seem to be the pertinent data
regarding Richard's claim regarding broadband. Here's what I found:
In "average monthly subscription price for very low-speed connections"
US ranks 9th out of 24 OECD nations. Not bad, but "among the lowest"?
8 out of 24, or fully 1/3 of the other nations, had less expensive
average low-end prices than the US.
In pricerange per Mbit/s, the low-end of the pricerange places the US
at 25th of 30 OECD nations, suggesting that 24 nations have less
expensive price offerings when measured in price per Mbit/s. Whether
"high-speed" or "low-speed", the OECD data certainly doesn't suggest
to me that US broadband providers are "giving the service away".
The other graphs seems to suggest a similar picture. However, that's
just from a quick glance at the graphs provided by OECD on my way to
work this morning, I'm ready to be corrected in my reading of them.
Regards,
Mischa Beitz
--
Richard Bennett
Senior Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC
