If new data from the UK is on the mark, then the current access provider triple play push with slow/ high priced broadband is far from the mark. There is more competition in many parts of the UK than there is in the US, so broadband consumers are accustomed to having more choices. Beyond that, I see no reason to believe that US consumer sentiment will be any different.

Just over a quarter of all UK broadband customers are dissatisfied with the service offered by their provider, according to a survey from price- comparison site uSwitch.com.

In particular, customers are unhappy with their broadband connection speed, which they believe is often far slower than advertised.

USwitch found that many consumers who agreed to an “up to” 8MB broadband package were in fact only receiving 4MB. (The Independent)

According to a recent report the top reason for changing broadband provider changed from reliability to price between April and June of this year. Reliability has now become the third most common reason to switch providers, with the second now being the ability to bundle services – phone, broadband, and television.

In fact, there are many reasons why people decide to switch providers these days, and the report lists the top five reasons for making this move. The first, as mentioned, is the cost of the service, the second the ability bundle services into one package, and the third the reliability of the service. In fourth place was the level of customers service received from the broadband provider, with many switching because they receive poor service or cannot get through to the call centre when needed. (Broadband Expert)

Someone at Google thinks that Bell Canada’s network management practices are violating Canadian law. This and other recent “network watchdog” efforts by searchzilla are leading some to speculate that the company is planning greater involvement in content distribution.

“Bell claims its throttling of peer-to-peer applications is a reasonable form of network management. Google respectfully disagrees. Network management does not include Canadian carriers’ blocking or degrading lawful applications that consumers wish to use,” the company wrote in a 15-page submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which was made public over the weekend.

“From consumer, competition and innovation perspectives, throttling applications that consumers choose is inconsistent with a content and application-neutral internet, and a violation of Canadian telecommunications law, which forbids unfair discrimination and undue or unreasonable preferences and requires that regulation be technologically and competitively neutral.” (CBC)

While the debate continues over the actual impact of online viewing on broadcast industry in the US, it’s become the preferred delivery medium for the UK’s comedy fans. Availability of an increasing  connection speed with no fear of reaching a download ceiling will certainly aid the continued growth in this trend. Could it be our American duopoly’s slow connections and threatened monthly download quotas will negatively impacting our entertainment industry?

Here’s something for all you statistics fans out there. Up to 40% of total viewing of BBC3 sleeper hit comedy The Mighty Boosh is via the iPlayer broadband TV catch up service, according to the BBC. 40% - and that’s not including all the students watching the Boosh on YouTube.

Amid all the hand wringing in recent years about comedy disappearing from TV - well the mainstream channels, anyhow - are we overlooking a flippin’ great resurgence for the genre through the medium of online video? (Organ Grinder)

While our American cable guys and the AT&T death star move forward with more aggressive measures to limit bandwidth consumption, the Koreans have created a competitive market in which average available bandwidth is routinely measured and reported on by the government. No mention of bandwidth hogs there, only steady improvement at lower prices.

Korean broadband providers typically offer speeds of 100Mbps. However, the government-sponsored Korean Communications Commission (KCC) found that no service provider consistently provides this level of service.

The fastest ‘100Mbps’ service was delivered by LG Powercomm with an average speed of 91Mbps, the KCC found.

The average speed of all 100Mbps service providers is just 46Mbps, but this compares to typical average broadband speeds of well below 10Mbps in most other countries.

Seven service providers offer high-speed broadband services in Korea to more than 15 million subscribers.

Korea Telecom controls 44.2 per cent of the market, followed by Hanarotelecom with 24 per cent and LG Powercomm with 12.2 per cent.

“By giving quality information to internet users, we expect customers to have more information when they choose products,” said KCC representative Lee Eun-hee, according to the Joongang Daily.

“This encourages service providers to compete against one another to improve the overall quality of such products.” (VNUnet)

We need to get to the real root cause of the move to manage bandwidth by our duopoly. All of the major broadband providers are also close system pay content providers (pay TV, pay per view) As the open net continues to create serious competition for the pay TV business, the duopoly becomes predatory and tries to squelch its competitors by restricting free access to viewers. If our law makers will not open the market to broadband  competition, then they must not allow access providers to be in the content business. Far better to open access to competition now through the restoration of local loop unbundling.

BPL is not dead in the least if you believe this press release from an Ecuador electric company:

BNamericas reports that Ecuadorian power company CentroSur is deploying a fibre-optic ring in Cuenca to support a launch of broadband services in the city next year. The utility, which expects to receive telecoms licences this month, plans to invest an initial USD2 million in launching broadband internet access over a hybrid network based on fibre-optic, wireless and broadband-over-power line (BPL) technologies.  (Telegeography)

Since Ecuador has not NAB or ARRL supported by a duopoly actively working to undermine the project, perhaps it really has a chance there. We’ll be watching for more news.

While the average broadband user inthe UK fares better than his American counterpart, there is still little serious competition in fixed line access. Plus, the UK’s 2 wild and crazy guys can behave just as badly as ours. As further proof that a doupoly does not foster adequate competition to best serve the the public good, the UK cable monopoly is now mimicing the American one.

The decision follows recent regional testing of extended restrictions in London and the North West. Previously the brakes were only slammed on for five hours if limits were exceeded at any point between 4pm and 9pm.

Now, “M” customers who bust 900MB during the day will have their theoretical maximum download halved from 2Mbit/s to 1Mbit/s. “L” and “XL” users’ usual headline speeds of 10MBit/s and 20MBit/s will be slowed by three quarters if they break daytime download limits of 2400MB and 6000MB respectively.

The download thresholds for the daytime throttling period are double those of the evening period, which also restricts uploads.(The Register)

To Virgin’s credit they are investing in providing 50MBPS speeds and are spelling out how heavy users access will be throttled. I’m not giving them a pass, they are doing this purely because they can. With more competition Virgin would be building more capacity and managing users less. How do I know? Look to Paris. No provider there is throttling or complaining about heavy users. What makes Paris different is robust competiton.

While fiber is the future proof network that more countries are adopting, world DSL speeds and prices are up. DSL is the last mile of choice for the US Telcos and other less developed places. The improved DSL speed, however is largely due to improvements south of the equator.

The big change came as a result of big boosts provides by Latin American carriers, who boosted residential speeds by 36% to 2.74 Mbps. Telecom Argentina and Telefonica del Peru were two carriers that boosted speeds. In comparison, the prices for FTTx and cable tariffs have not changed much. (Gigaom)

If we wait for Argentina and Peru pass us, will it be enough to convince US law makers that a duopoly is not a competitive environment that best serves the needs of our population? Could be. So far, not one of the remaining Presidential candidates has addressed this issue outside of taking a position on misleading “net neutrality” legislation. Any net neutrality legislation first assumes the presence an anti competitive market and then does nothing to make it more competitive. If adopted, a government bureaucrat will establish how much of what we will have at what cost fro the same old duopoly. Think I’m wrong? Let me remind you this is the same bureaucracy that thinks ISDN is broadband. It is far better to first undo the duopoly before going down that path.

So many chances to improve things have passed since I began this blog almost a year ago that should have changed things. Sadly so little has changed. In fact the Telcos gained nearly complete control of the new wireless spectrum set aside for broadband. New data bears out that the state of American broadband is continuing to lose ground to the rest of the developed world.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has once again released their broadband statistics for OECD member countries. The OECD’s broadband portal offers statistics that are current up to December 2007 — the latest data showing we’re tops in total broadband subscribers (69.9 million), but still fifteenth in penetration per 100 inhabitants (23%) and 22nd in average monthly subscription price.

The latest data shows that the U.S.’s broadband penetration rate (subscriptions per 100 inhabitants) now sits at 23%, up from 5.49% back in 2002. While 23% is higher than the OECD average (20%), it still places the U.S. in fifteenth place overall, behind countries such as Canada (27%), Finland (31%) and Denmark (35%).

Broadband prices are another area where the United States lags its OECD counterparts, the U.S. coming in at 11th in terms of cost per MB, and 22nd in monthly subscription price. As of October 2007, the average price of a broadband connection in the U.S. was $53.06. Even when getting a helping hand from discount $15-$20 DSL tiers, that’s higher than Mexico ($49.81) and South Korea ($37.81) but certainly lower than Norway ($88.07) or Iceland ($97.30). The average price per MB in the U.S. was $12.60 (it’s $3.70/Mbps in France, but $97.43/Mbps in Turkey).(Broadband Reports)

The rials are over and the roll out is set to begin. large numbers of UK residents will soon have what all but a few US residents dream about. of course, there is a more competitive environment in the UK and politicans are much more limited by law in accepting largess from the lobby.

The network is said to be capable of reaching 50 Mbps which is astonishing when compared to some regions that can only receive a broadband connection speed of 1.5 Mbps!

This announcement from Virgin Media follows a trial which involved testing their connection speed over a long distance. (Techwatch)

Even if your only an occasional reader of the blog, you’ve probably seen one of my rants on the poor state of American broadband. In fact, it was the state of US broadband that inspired the founding of this blog.

I always take great pleasure in reading another blog’s declaration of the poor state of US broadband in relation to the rest of the world as affirmation that this is important. Ars Technica recently reported some data with a slightly different viewpoint. Needless to say, for Americans there is nothing good in this news:

But multiple reports show that countries around the world are beating us at broadband, and we’re putting our economy and technological leadership at risk through a truly stunning failure to cast a national vision. Other countries are doing better at this, and they’re doing it through a combination of financing, fear (competition), and federal mandates.

 

Report	US ranking
FTTH Council, “Asia Lead the World in FTTH Penetration” (July 18, 2007)	11
Robert Atkinson, “The Case for a National Broadband Policy” (June 2007)	12
OECD, “Broadband Statistics to December 2006″	15
ITU, “Broadband Statistics for 1 January 2006″	15
ITU United Nations Conf. on Trade and Develop., “Chapter 3, the Digital Opportunity Index”	20
Website Optimization, LLC, “US Jumps to 24th in Worldwide Broadband Penetration” (August 21, 2007)	24

 

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