Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"The United States is where the Internet was born. But we're falling behind in the race to the online future. Most of us go online these days using a service that's called broadband - faster than old-fashioned dial-up, and always on. But broadband service in the U.S. lags behind a dozen or more industrialized countries - and we're doing worse every year. Need to Know correspondent Rick Karr traveled to the U.K. and the Netherlands - with support from the Ford Foundation and in collaboration with the website Engadget - to find out how these two countries have jumped ahead of us online. This is a story about capitalism, competition, dynamism and innovation in what is arguably the most important industry of the 21st century. Old-fashioned American values, right? Then why are we being left so far behind?"

It's a little sad when I think about the leadership role North America had when it came to wired Internet access, and how that has been eclipsed by other countries putting more money into infrastructure. I remember having fast, always-on Internet via a cable modem in 1995...yet if I stop and look at what I have today from that cable modem, and what I'm paying for it, it doesn't seem like 16 years of progress has been put into that technology. Watch the documentary - it's worth it.

"Today marks the beginning of AT&T's limited monthly data allotments for subscribers to its DSL and U-Verse broadband Internet services."

These days, it seems everything is connected to the web. From refrigerators to picture frames and everything in between, all of our new toys require some sort of data connection. That tie to the web is typically via a wireless link to a router with a DSL, cable, fiber or U-Verse provider.

If your provider happens to be AT&T, you will now need to keep tabs on your data usage as today marks the first day of AT&T's implementation of monthly data allowances. If you are a DSL subscriber, your monthly data allowance is 150 GBs. If you are a U-Verse subscriber, your monthly data allowance is 250 GBs. Notifications will be given when subscribers reach 65, 90 and 100% of their allowance. A $10.00 per every 50 GB fee will be assessed if you exceed the data cap more than three times.

"Two-thirds of U.S. Internet connections are slower than 5 Mbps, putting the United States well behind speed leaders South Korea and Japan. The United States places ninth in the world in access to "high broadband connectivity," at 34% of users, including 27% of connections reaching 5 Mbps to 10 Mbps and 7% reaching above 10 Mbps, Akamai says in its latest State of the Internet Report. That's an improvement since a year ago, when the United States was in 12th place with only 24% of users accessing fast connections. But the United States is still dwarfed by South Korea, where 72% of Internet connections are greater than 5 Mbps, and Japan, which is at 60%. Hong Kong and Romania are the only other countries or regions to hit the 50% mark."

Nothing surprising here - the US is a big country, with a significant number of its 307+ million people spread across the land, and it's hard to give high speed access to everyone. There will always be people living in places where high-speed wired Internet will be hard to get to, but there are certainly wireless technologies that will do the trick - but only if they're willing to pay for it!

I'm feeling a bit miffed lately after talking with my cable company, Shaw Calgary, so excuse me while I rant about high-speed Internet access in Canada for a bit.

For several years, I've been paying about $50 CAD (about $50 USD) per month for high-speed Internet access that was eventually bumped up to 25mbps downstream speeds, and 1 mbps upstream speeds. The reliability has been excellent - I recall perhaps one period of down-time in the past year - and the 25mbps downstream speeds are sufficiently zippy for my needs. 99% of the time, the bottleneck on my downloads is the server at the other end. When I connect to a fast server, such as downloading NVIDIA graphics drivers for instance, it's not uncommon to see 2MB/s download speeds. The 1mbps upstream speed, however, was always a source of frustration for me. I shoot a lot of photos and videos, and when you're uploading 600 MB of JPEGs or an 800 MB HD video file, uploading at 1mbps is a painfully slow process, requiring hours. My ISP has been constantly ratcheting up download speeds, which is great, but the upload speeds have been between 512kbps and 1mbps (depending on the account) for years.

Pricing is also a concern; this article by Michael Geist has some shocking facts that are worth digging in to: Canada ranks 14th in the world in terms of high-speed accessing being affordable. Consumers in the UK pay an average of $30 USD equivalent, while we in Canada pay an average of $45 USD equivalent. That's a 50% hike! To put that into direct context, my ISP (Shaw) charges $33/month for their cheapest package if you don't also have other services from them. The speed of this $33 package? A sluggish 1mbps download speed and glacial 256kbps upload speeds. Oh, and a 10 GB/month bandwidth cap as an extra kick in the head. Read more...

"Swedish telecommunications gear-maker Ericsson has just performed its first live demonstration of VDSL2-based technology that enables transfer rates of more than 500 Mbps per second—and that's over six twisted copper pairs—just like an ordinary phone lines—bonded together into one big pipe. "

Ericsson is taunting North America with its demonstration of 500Mbps DSL. VDSL-2 works by reducing noise in a pair of copper wires, allowing it to go faster and longer. Combined with line bonding allows them to reach the incredible 500Mbps speed. I'm excited with the concept of having Internet access that could drive several HD video streams at once, I know it'll be years before I see anything like this. With reading about how all the Internet carriers in the United States and Canada are having problems with capacity, providing connections 5-100 times faster than what is currently available is bound to cause a hiccup or two. Then again, they may decide to put a 10GB data transfer cap on the connection!