"Forget how far the nation is falling behind the rest of the industrialized world in the percentage of households with high-speed Internet access," writes the Los Angeles Times' James S. Granelli; a study released by the Communications Workers of America on Monday, June 25, shows that "both California and the United States are taking an even bigger thumping" from the rest of the world in the actual speed of "high speed."
As someone who has spent untold hours of frustration waiting for web pages to load and fill, or even for already loaded screens to scroll up or down, using my supposedly super-duper "high-speed" DSL connection, my first reaction was, "Why am I not finding this surprising?"
This was rported in the business section of the Times and elsewhere a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't seen it diaried here, so I thought I'd leap into the breach! Or at least try to crawl into the breach on my hands and knees. Crank up your tin Lizzies, Americans, and meet me below the fold for the depressing details.
Continues Granelli, summarizing the CWA study:
The median Internet speed in the U.S. is 1.97 megabits per second. In California, it's even slower, at 1.52 mbps. Both are dwarfed by No. 1 Japan, which offers users 61 mbps at the same price as U.S. service. At least four other countries have Internet connections that outpace the U.S.: South Korea, Finland, Sweden, and Canada.
Granelli notes that the Communications Workers were careful to point out that the study cannot conclude that the U.S. ranks sixth worldwide in Internet speed; as no other countries were studied, it can only be said that the U.S. ranks last among the six nations studied.
The speeds cited in the study are averages for each nation, but something is clearly wrong when Japan can manage an average speed that's not just a little higher, not 10 or 20 or 30 percent higher, but more than 30 times higher than the average Internet speed in the U.S. And at no higher a cost to the Japanese customer than Americans are paying. South Korea's average (45.6 mbps) is more than 20 times higher, Finland's (21.7mbps), 10 times higher and Sweden's (18.2 mbps), nine times higher. Our neighbors in the Great White North average Internet speeds (7.6 mbps) almost four times higher than those in the U.S.
By way of illustrating what the difference means, Granelli says that downloading a movie in Japan takes about two minutes; the same movie, in the U.S., two hours.
So now I understand that it must not be only me for whom "WHY is this TAKing so LONG???" has become my 21st century office mantra. (And I'm not even trying to download movies--life's too short! I'm usually only trying to jump from one page of text and still pictures to another, or even just scroll down a page, when I get the dreaded "wait" signal, and start swearing!) And it's reassuring to know, at last, that my problem isn't with Safari or anything to do with my Mac hardware.
As Granelli and the Communications Workers also note, however, it isn't the laggardly downloading of movies that's the real cause for concern.
"Speed defines what is possible on the Internet," [Communicatons Workers] union President Larry Cohen said. "Speed determines whether we will have the 21st century networks and communications necessary to grow our economy and jobs."
A similarly brief but somewhat more telling article on the CWA study, by Leslie Cauley, appeared in USA Today and is available at the CWA link above. Cauley fingers the culprit as a lack of network capacity: "The more capacity you have, the more speed you can deliver." Cauley also tells us that the Federal Communications Commission is still defining a speed of 200 kilobits per second--less than one three-hundredth of what they're averaging in Japan--as "high speed." This definition was only adopted 12 years ago. Which is when dinosaurs ruled the earth, in high-tech terms. Cauley says the FCC "opened a proceeding" in April that could result in a reconsideration of that definition. The Times reports that Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI) has introduced legislation to collect data on broadband deployment and to redefine what "high speed" means, among other things.
USA Today also provides the state-by-state rankings for average Internet speeds in the U.S. Rhode Island sets the pace, with an average of 5.011 mbps. New York is fourth, at 3.436 mbps, and California 36th at 1.520 mbps. Alaska is slowest, with an average of 545 kilobits per second.
Union President Cohen is also quoted in the USA Today piece, where he's a shade less polite than in the L.A. Times:
We have pathetic speeds compared to the rest of the world. . . . People don't pay attention to the fact that the country that started the commercial Internet is falling woefully behind.
The Times story, however, provides the information that the communications workers union is advocating a number of steps for providing affordable broadband service to all U.S. residents, and that these include setting a national policy goal, improving data collection, creating public-private partnerships for deploying broadband, and "preserving an open Internet to give users unfettered control of what they do online."
Results of the study and much more information about Internet speed are available here.
Now what I want to know next, and I'm hoping someone in the Comments will enlighten me, is, Who or what is to blame for the remarkable relative lack of network capacity we seem to be experiencing in the U.S.?