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#Gaming

6/29/2013 1:04:00 PM
21

Susan Crawford on Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly, and Unfair

Thought I'd share this since some people are upset that Microsoft reversed their Xbox One DRM policy and this video talks about a pretty big reason the original policy sucked. Here's a couple of interesting bits. [quote]What's happened is that these enormous telecommunications companies, Comcast and Time Warner on the wired side, Verizon and AT&T on the wireless side, have divided up markets, put themselves in the position where they're subject to no competition and no oversight from any regulatory authority. And they're charging us a lot for internet access and giving us second class access.[/quote] [quote]It's fair to say that the U.S. at the best is in the middle of the pack when it comes to both the speed and cost of high speed internet access connections. So in Hong Kong right now you can get a 500 megabit symmetric connection that's unimaginably fast from our standpoint for about 25 bucks a month. In Seoul, for $30 you get three choices of different providers of fiber in your apartment. And they come in and install in a day because competition's so fierce. In New York City there's only one choice, and it's 200 bucks a month for a similar service. And you can't get that kind of fiber connection outside of New York City in many parts of the country. Verizon's only serving about 10 percent of Americans. So let's talk about the wireless side for a moment, you know, the separate marketplace that people use for mobility. In Europe you can get unlimited texting and voice calls and data for about $30 a month, similar service from Verizon costs $90 a month. That's a huge difference.[/quote]

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  • I agree with everything she said. I have AT&T DSL out here in the more or less rural area of Kentucky, and I went up to Time Warner Cable to see if my house would ever get their service and the woman looked at me and said it would be highly unlikely, and its probably because AT&T has some kind of monopoly over this area I live in. Literally all of my neighbors have AT&T as well. We all pay around $30 for internet speeds of around, 5 mbps down and maybe on a good day 0.5mbps up. Internet in the U.S. is a disaster compared to some other countries.

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