Why Every American Should Hate Hong Kong

... and Japan, South Korea, Finland, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Canada, Poland, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Iceland and Germany. In that order. Death to the broadband hogs! I want a fast connection too!

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...speedchart.jpg

It ain't right. And Hong Kong really has me cheesed off:

Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited ("HKBN") today announced a revolution in Hong Kong's broadband market, being the first Internet service provider in Hong Kong to launch Fiber-To-The- Home (FTTH) residential broadband services, "FiberHome100". Significantly, HKBN has turned traditionally cost prohibitive FTTH technology into affordable mass-deployed residential service, at US$48.5 service fee for its 100Mbps access service.

Less than fifty bucks for 100mbps? [whine]That's not fair![/whine] To get 30mbps in the U.S. costs $180 per month. Argh! Double-argh!

Too bad for Japan that housing there doesn't provide enough space for one of them huge like Xbox desktops.

Ours is always going to be slow because our country is so big. Honk kong needs way less cable than we do.

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

Ours is always going to be slow because our country is so big. Honk kong needs way less cable than we do.

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Ah, that's the reason. Couldn't have anything to do with the $200 billion broadband-related scandal and with the telco monopolies (which are rebuilding, after having been broken up 20 years ago).

You know you can do better than that. If geographical issues were the only problem, then I'd expect small (geographically speaking) areas with high density of population to have really really good broadband prices and services (comparable to Asia, Scandinavia) - for example Silicon Valley, New York, etc.
Do they ?

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Originally Posted by Blodrast

Ah, that's the reason. Couldn't have anything to do with the $200 billion broadband-related scandal and with the telco monopolies (which are rebuilding, after having been broken up 20 years ago).

You know you can do better than that. If geographical issues were the only problem, then I'd expect small (geographically speaking) areas with high density of population to have really really good broadband prices and services (comparable to Asia, Scandinavia) - for example Silicon Valley, New York, etc.
Do they ?

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I don't know?? The chart shows average. A big reason for our slow average is that we got all the early infrastructure in place and it's expensive to replace it all. I'm not some telco goon trying to cover up a scam ~D I don't know anything about that stuff.

My school has 100 Mbit broadband.

Fifth! :beam:

Sasaki, Finland and Sweden are as sparsely populated as the US, and come in third and fourth place. The UK is almost as densely populated as Japan, and comes in at place 237.
You can't compare Hong Kong with Montana of course, but on the whole, size or density of population don't seem to be decisive factors.

I'm so tempted now to post huge, bandwith gobbling pictorial jokes between the Scandinavians and French in which we get to enjoy poking fun at all you 56k third world countries. ~;p

That's sometimes the problem with being a leading edge.
case in point:
Industrial Revolution, where all the new looms and mills were in England, but at the end of the 1800s, the Germans were second in Europe, in terms of production, because they got all the new stuff for the same price as the English, but didn't have to renovate really anything.

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

Fifth! :beam:

Sasaki, Finland and Sweden are as sparsely populated as the US, and come in third and fourth place. The UK is almost as densely populated as Japan, and comes in at place 237.
You can't compare Hong Kong with Montana of course, but on the whole, size or density of population don't seem to be decisive factors.

I'm so tempted now to post huge, bandwith gobbling pictorial jokes between the Scandinavians and French in which we get to enjoy poking fun at all you 56k third world countries. ~;p

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True. My service is 15 Mbps. Which we get via a bundle that includes basic phone (local calling here is a flat rate) and cable. For around $100 a month.

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

I don't know?? The chart shows average. A big reason for our slow average is that we got all the early infrastructure in place and it's expensive to replace it all. I'm not some telco goon trying to cover up a scam ~D I don't know anything about that stuff.

My school has 100 Mbit broadband.

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No, they do not. My question was rhetorical.
You may recall that there was a thread a while ago, titled "How much do you pay for your internet ?" or something like that. I also know people (friends, acquaintances) who live in California, for example (Silicon Valley), and I have a fair idea of what's available and for how much.

I could provide links, but it's not easy to filter truth from agendas, and I believe everybody should read several pieces and make up their own mind about it. (Besides which, I'd prolly also be accused of wearing a tinfoil hat and hating corporations, half of which is true. So instead of trying to convince people, I'll just let people make up their own minds.)

So, if you or anyone else would care to find out a bit more about it, google 200 billion dollars, broadband, telco, promise ... (the 200 billion is the actual figure, I didn't pull that out of thin air).

LOL @ Greece. My dad uses Otenet and it's rubbish. The best he gets is a 56k dialup type. It's a nightmare sending him files. He's looking at DSL at the moment. He's got a great idea though, it involves some brushwood, a lighter and a wet blanket.....:laugh4:

Japan FTW! WOOT! :2thumbsup:

Australia's internet is ---------------

USER:COUNTARACH CANNOT COMPLETE THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE USER:COUNTARACH HAS TIMED OUT

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

Fifth! :beam:

Sasaki, Finland and Sweden are as sparsely populated as the US, and come in third and fourth place. The UK is almost as densely populated as Japan, and comes in at place 237.
You can't compare Hong Kong with Montana of course, but on the whole, size or density of population don't seem to be decisive factors.

I'm so tempted now to post huge, bandwith gobbling pictorial jokes between the Scandinavians and French in which we get to enjoy poking fun at all you 56k third world countries. ~;p

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Finland has a population of 5.3 million,[1] spread over an area of 338,145 square kilometres (130,559 square miles). The majority of the population is concentrated in the southern part of the country.

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At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²)[1] and with over 300 million people, the United States

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30 times the size and 60 times the people...population density isn't the issue. It's amount of distance covered. And if you already have phone lines everywhere, dialup makes more economic sense than spending a huge amount of money to get broadband, and broadband makes more sense than spending all that money to get fiber optic. People don't care about it that much. I wouldn't pay extra money for fiber optic.

as I understand it, Sasaki is about right on the mark. about two years ago CAT5 was laid all across our county, because it was the best and fastest and most available. Now some people are complaining that CAT5 is too slow and doesn't have nearly enough Bandwidth, so they want to upgrade the entire county to CAT6, however, by the time CAT6 is fully replaced it will only take another year before CAT7 becomes available. ughh.

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

30 times the size and 60 times the people...population density isn't the issue. It's amount of distance covered. And if you already have phone lines everywhere, dialup makes more economic sense than spending a huge amount of money to get broadband, and broadband makes more sense than spending all that money to get fiber optic. People don't care about it that much. I wouldn't pay extra money for fiber optic.

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That Sweden (and I assume Finland) has decided that optic fiber is something that should be included into the vital infrastructure might have something to do with it as well (you can get 24 mbps through the phone jacket as well, if you're outside the optic fiber area).

I'm sitting on a lousy 10 mbps line myself, but it's free so I think I'll stick with it. :beam:

*Waits for Lemur to really go into a whining mode. :laugh4:

Well, I'm paying 40EUR for ISDN + 6MBIt + unlimited Flatrate and I think it's ok, best you can currently get here from normal ISPs is 16MBit AFAIK.

Now I heard that we had a lot of money once which we wanted to spend on fiber wires across all of western Germany but then decided to buy the underdeveloped eatern part of Germany from the russians so that we could spend even more money trying to get them up to our standards (and if I might say so, currently it looks like they get more modern stuff than the west, new train stations while those here in the west rot, they get an AMD factory etc, all because doing it in the east gives huge government benefits)

So Blodrast is right, it's not just geographical, there are more factors. I'm quite happy with my 6MBit connection, it sort of makes downloading look like you actually do something and have something to look forward to. Though I was quite surprised when I gave some friend in Japan a link to a roughly 1GB Americas Army download and after two minutes he said he was installing now.:dizzy2:
Yes, he had a 100MBit connection...
I think the best use for such high bandwidths would be HDTV over the internet, most download servers nowadays aren't even fast enough to fully utilize my 6MBit connection so in that regard having more wouldn't really speed things up.

If I were a smart guy in Hong Kong, I'd figure out some way to capture my excess, unused broadband, and redistribute it, for profit, to broadband-starved areas.

But I guess that'd be like capturing unwanted rainfall in the Mississippi delta, and moving it to a drought area.

Maybe our kids will figure such things out.

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

People don't care about it that much. I wouldn't pay extra money for fiber optic.

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I agree mostly with that sentiment - my previous residence had 100Mbps, but other than that it was like living in an (expensive!) ghetto. I never regretted moving.

Bah, beaten by the Netherlands ~:angry:

RE: the US situation. Blodrast is a spot on. The hardware and technology to give every American 100mbit connections to the house has been here for years, the problem is the telcos. The general tactic for them, unless they have a real financial reason to upgrade, is to use equipment until it dies or is about dead. After all, if it's still there and it's working, it's fine right? You can just charge everyone obscene amounts for "unlimited high speed internet", which of course you filter out all that pesky p2p traffic, and you oversubscribe your infrastructure dozens to hundreds of times over. When they call to complain about speed, just blame it on solar flares, "maintenance", or the customer themselves. Profit!

I wanna live in Japan.

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Originally Posted by RoadKill

I wanna live in Japan.

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:beam: Same here. Actually, I have wanted to at least go to Japan for a few years now, as I have gradually grown to dislike my own country a bit more each year.

I imagine Japan is awefully crowded, and that living there is expensive.

Poland is on the 9th place... not bad - I still remember how hard it was to get a telephone some 10 years ago...:yes:

MY web access isn't too fast I must admit - only 4 Mb/s, but at least I pay only about 8$ per month for that, so I don't complain.:2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

Ours is always going to be slow because our country is so big. Honk kong needs way less cable than we do.

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Then why is Canada's faster than yours?

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Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars

Then why is Canada's faster than yours?

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Because they have 1/10th the population and northern canada is largely empty :smash:

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

Because they have 1/10th the population and northern canada is largely empty :smash:

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And 90% of them live within 100 miles of the US border. :yes:

Pah, rubbish! (thrash?)

Americans are teh backwards sukkorz because they didn't invest in high-speed internets. Size's got absolutely nothing to do with it.

All the top-five countries have fast internet because of centralised public efforts. Large infrastructure - railroads, electricity, cabling - simply fares better as public works. Their scale and scope is too large for a functioning market. Markets in these areas tend to not be free markets at all, but tightly regulated semi-private markets - the worst of two worlds.

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Originally Posted by Fatty

...we get to enjoy poking fun at all you 56k third world countries. ~;p

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Am I the only one on 56k here? [Just... y'know, putting it out there.]

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Originally Posted by Scotty

Am I the only one on 56k here?

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Nah, you're not the only one. I'm on a slow 56Mbps too. :sweatdrop:

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

Nah, you're not the only one. I'm on a slow 56Mbps too. :sweatdrop:

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I'm mentally strangling you as I'm typing this.

:balloon2:

...and, to give you another bit of taste of how nice the telcos are playing and their attitude towards competition and an open market, here's another article from Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/10/02/2050230.shtml

Summary:

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Originally Posted by The Article

"Starting last spring, reports began surfacing of Verizon routinely disabling copper as it installed its fiber-based FiOS service. We discussed the issue here a couple of times. In my experience, every time Verizon has installed FiOS at a friend's house, they have insisted they have to cut off the copper and move the POTS to the fiber. By doing so, they block anyone else such as COVAD or Cavalier from renting the copper for competitive access. Sources report that today, at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Verizon executive VP Thomas Tauke denied ever doing that. (The transcript should be up in a day or so. The AP coverage does not mention this detail.) I wonder if Rep. Markey's staff is interested in hearing from people who experienced Verizon disabling copper, and without notice?"

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(Note that the original article has some links in it that you may or may not be interested in clicking).

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Originally Posted by Blodrast

...and, to give you another bit of taste of how nice the telcos are playing and their attitude towards competition and an open market, here's another article from Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/10/02/2050230.shtml

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I think it's silly to think that they would continue to maintain outdated infrastructure, at their expense, solely for the purpose of helping their competition. :shrug:

Who's asking them to maintain it? It would be enough if they did not actively sabotage. Remember, Verizon did not lay those lines; Ma Bell did, as a government-subsidized monopoly. Verizon was given the rights to those lines under the condition that they allow competitors access to them.

I don't think the future is in copper anyway, but that doesn't stop this from being anti-competitive and sleazy.

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

I think it's silly to think that they would continue to maintain outdated infrastructure, at their expense, solely for the purpose of helping their competition. :shrug:

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That's tough turkey, when one is dealing with a near-monopolistic situation like power, cable, phone, etc. The feds mandate that one provide competitive access to their infrastructure at cost to facilitate competition. If this weren't the case, then companies such as Speakeasy, etc, would not exist, and you would have zero alternatives for your local cable/phone/etc provider. These situations always turn bad, and lead to poor/nonexistant customer service, and even customer "abuse", if you will. I'd love to go with FIOS if that were an option, but cutting copper without giving 3rd parties access to my house isn't kosher, and as I'm positive we'll find out, illegal.

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Originally Posted by CA

Australia's internet is ---------------

USER:COUNTARACH CANNOT COMPLETE THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE USER:COUNTARACH HAS TIMED OUT

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Hahaha! Yeah, tell me about it. Absolute rubbish. Bloddy nightmare trying to dl files.

I don't actually even really know how fast my connection is, but I do know I've never had to profane over it being slow whatever I did with it.

And it costs about 40€ a month. I'm actually thinking of downgrading the thing to save money, as it clearly has more bandwidth than I need... :sweatdrop:

40.00$ per month for 1Mbpsbsbsbsbs.

But...
ERROR:

Modem is disconected.
Reconnecting modem.
Conected modem to the line
Trying to connect nº1:error
(huge gap)
Trying to connect nº29:Done

Message will be sent.

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Originally Posted by Watchman

I'm actually thinking of downgrading the thing to save money, as it clearly has more bandwidth than I need... :sweatdrop:

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Now I don't just hate Finland. I hate you, personally. "More bandwidth than I need"? Is that even a logical statement? Can any human being really utter those words?

THat's it -- you must not be human. You're probably an octoquid, or one of their frilled shark agents. We're onto you, Watchman.

UK internet is awful - the companies are quite happy to milk us for our cash while giving us awful service, rather than even think about upgrading the entire network so we can achieve decent speeds comparable to the rest of Western Europe.