If a “pay-by-the-byte” pricing scheme is necessary for the economic survival of US ISPs, then how on earth are the ISP’s in Asia and elsewhere making it? Here are some current prices from Asia:
Japan:
100 mb/s symmetrical FTTH – $51/ month US
47 mb/s down, 5 mb/s up ADSL – $6.00 / month
https://asahi-net.jp/en/
Korea:
100 mb/s symmetrical FTTH – $36.63 / month
50 mb/s symmetrical FTTH – $30.22 / month
10 mb/s symmetrical FTTH – $27.40 / month
http://www.megapass.net/service/megapass/IN_PImegftth02W.php
Then Hong Kong Broadband Network offers FTTH with symmetrical speeds ranging from 10 MB/s all the way to 1 GB/s (1000 MB/s), with prices topping out at about $258 per month for the symmetrical gigabit FTTH.
www.hkbn.net/bb1000/index.html
If these companies are making money at those prices – with no bit caps – then why can’t American companies offer the same packages at equivalent rates?
It’s gotta be greed driving US companies. And that greed is keeping this country in the broadband dark ages!
Here’s a link to one of the major Japanese companies (Softbank) infrastructure page:
http://www.softbank.co.jp/en/softbankgroup/business/broadband_infrastructure/index.html
I think the major difference between US companies and Korean and Japanese and other Asian broadband providers is that these companies are smart enough to realize where the internet is ultimately heading; they’re smart enough to realize the true potential there and because of that, they’ve spent heavily on their infrastructure.
What potential?
The internet will soon be the number one household utility in the world. Just like water or electricity, or phones. Internet access will be a must have – just like those other utilities. Why? Because:
· You’ll do a major portion of your shopping on the internet using your broadband connection;
· you’ll use your broadband connection to make videophone calls to your Aunt Susie or maybe your doctor, and everyone else you can think of (who wants a sound-only phone when you can see who you’re talking to?);
· you’ll download the latest movies from Blockbuster or Amazon or whoever over your broadband connection (it’s a lot easier than driving to the store and standing in line!);
· you’ll listen to streaming music from thousands of radio stations;
· you’ll watch any of thousands of video streams ( true on-demand HDTV);
· you’ll download the latest software (from, e.g., Valve or EA Downloader or many others) over the internet.
· And there’ll be many more applications that haven’t even surfaced yet.
All this and more is possible when you increase the bandwidth.
At 100 MB/s, a 7 GB movie would take 10 minutes to download. At 1 GB/s, the same movie would take less than one minute.
In Asia right now, all of this is possible. Streaming video is already getting big (they have a lot of content being produced specifically for the web). The only thing holding back movie downloads (that I am aware of) is rights management.
American and Canadian companies, on the other hand, see a static product. It wasn’t that long ago that Comcast’s President was quoted as saying, “3 mb/s is all they’ll ever need.” Yeah, right.
The American and Canadian companies spend all their time trying to milk the last little dime out of their current offerings. The epitome of this is AOL, which has lost better than half their subscriber base just in the last few years, because of their lack of vision ( “Who needs more than 56k?”).
Not that there hasn’t been some movement in the industry. Comcast, for example, has broadened its horizons. But regardless, the same general mindset still persists. The American ISPs are still busy trying to convince us to make do with what we have. They’re not sufficiently smart to see where this is all ultimately heading.
So here we sit in the “Dark Ages” in good ol’ North America.
This won’t go on for ever. It can’t. Asia is already in the future, and as more and more people become aware of that, the demand for true broadband (100 mb/s or better) in the US will grow.
All the American companies are doing, with their talk of “pay per byte” and all this other claptrap is forestalling the inevitable. It will happen eventually. We will have true, universal broadband in the United States.
Hopefully it will happen sooner than later. Because every day that passes gives the Asian companies just that much more of a competitive edge – and puts the US at a bigger disadvantage.
I dislike the notion that the US will become a third world country…
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