The Study
In a recent study[pdf] by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, or ITIF the United States is clearly trailing when it comes to broadband speeds. The US has a whopping average broadband speed of 4.8mbps.
To the average user in the US five megabits per second seems fairly fast, at least until you see what other countries are doing. Take the leader in this study, Japan, for example; their average broadband is 61mbps. This is over twelve times faster that the US average.
Results
I took this image from Ars Technica as it clearly demonstrates this speed gap.
Is it really needed?
One may ask, why put up with these speeds? We just do not know any better. For average internet usage a 5 meg connection is more than adequate. The issue is that video is coming to a computer near you. With podcasts gaining in quality more and more people are now downloading shows rather than watching it broadcast on cable or satellite.
Just to see how popular this technology is, TiVo has updated its boxes to allow podcasts to automatically download podcasts. They have an entire interface for dealing with podcasts. This just goes to show that podcasts are good enough to be on your TV.
Another great example of this technology is the Apple TV. The entire purpose is to stream media from your computer to your TV. Arguably the primary focus of this device is to allow downloaded content to be played on your TV.
This brings back the point of broadband speeds. When you try to watch a good quality video off the internet the file sizes are huge. If the pipe speeds got bumped up to the 20+ megabit range these downloads would not only be faster but the quality of the shows could increase.
Limiting Factors
So, what is holding these companies back? To put it simply, money. The broadband companies of today no longer invest in them self. They take their profits and pocket them or invest in politicians that will back their laziness.
To combat this the government needs to do one of two things: Place far stricter regulations on the broadband industry or remove most of the regulations.
In a properly regulated government that knew what technology was it would be able to handle new things in a reasonable fashion. The problem is that the elected officials do not know about the latest and greatest technologies. All that needs to be said on this matter is that “The Internet is a Series of Tubes“.
The other approach is to remove some of the regulations and allow for more competition. As much as people tend to hate to approach it, the internet is regulated in the states. To be able to provide internet access you have to get countless government approvals/licenses to provide someone with access. If these happened to disappear new providers would join the market and everything would change for the better.
Reality Kicks In
In reality neither of things will happen anytime soon. The government is too set in their ways to make the necessary changes. The large telecom companies buy off the politicians and therefore get their way. This is not right, but it is how the US Government tends to work.
To get faster broadband speeds one would not think it would take a government reform. Seeing as we have been sitting on the same connection speeds for over five years it really looks that way.
