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If the US was the size of some of these countries with no previous infrastructure and got to build something modern from scratch, we'd have a high number too. This seems pretty meaningless to me.

Actually there's several methodologies to account for that. One is that there isn't a* single place* in the U.S. that matches the national average of South Korea, let alone their hot spots.

So what? Fifteen years ago we were kicking their asses. In fifteen years when we're replacing our very outdated infrastructure and they're sticking with what they have now for the same reasons of economy that we are sticking with our old system, we'll be way ahead. Making today the standard is an arbitrary measurement in an ongoing process.

I don't see it working out that way. There's no reason to upgrade when your business is profit based and nobody else has the billions to upgrade either. They have better infrastructure not because they did it later but because the government paid for/subsidized it. Ours won't do that.

Yeah I got to agree with Ragamuffin here, I don't ever see us paying for that kind of thing either.

Wow... we already have, a couple of times. Why wouldn't we do it again? By your logic we shouldn't have any fiber optic anywhere in any major American city, since copper lines already existed. But here in reality, greater bandwidth does in fact mean greater profits, so it's good business, and despite what you say our government did, has, and WILL subsidize a major portion of the cost, at least indirectly. The only reason there is a delay is they are waiting for previous investment plus cost of upgrading to be less than profit lost from not upgrading. At that point, they will say they want to upgrade but can't afford it, and the government (meaning YOU) will foot a good portion of the bill.

Just like last time. That's why you have cable internet instead of AOL.

I'm not using logic. I'm referring to history. And my point is that since rural electrification/telephony, we haven't done it.

I guess I don't know where you live, since the cable lines I'm using were installed in the 70/80s. I don't know anybody who has fibre, although I've heard rumors of Verizon offering such, where YOU pay for the install costs into your house.

That's almost completely untrue.

Comcast spent 400 million dollars upgrading their system in 2007 in the city of Chicago alone. This was mostly modem upgrades, but did involve laying new cable as well.

There is already a great deal of fiber in America; our speeds are limited because we still run copper cable to the home, not because our backbones are copper.

Verizon runs fiber optic to the home and expects to have 18 million homes on fiber optic by the end of this year. They already have it to 12 million homes. I wonder how many people that same amount of cable would cover in North Korea or Japan, with their much higher population densities?

Verizon has stopped expanding fiber optic for the time being because of the economy; people aren't upgrading to it even where it is available, and local municipalities are not willing to pony up the cash to help with the upgrade because cash is tight. But it's just a matter of business, not incredible avarice or apathy.

The FCC has broadband plans as well. The government is not just sitting around. Check out http://www.broadband.gov/.

I know it's fun to kvetch but honestly I had the best possible connection in northern Chicago in 1999, and it was ISDN. To claim we haven't upgraded in the last ten years is ludicrous.

To claim we haven't upgraded in the last ten years is ludicrous.

The claim isn't that we haven't upgraded, it's that it's not modernized. Our cable system was upgraded to handle Internet traffic, but it was not modernized, otherwise we'd have fiber right where your cable is instead of copper.

Likewise we use POTS for DSL connections. That required upgrades, but not modernization: DSL is a blatant hack to make the old crap work.

People keep trying to make like population density is the reason why the numbers are laid out as they are. Yet of the top 100 fastest *cities* in the world for Internet access, America landed just 12 spots.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/akamai-announces-first-quarter-2010-state-of-the-internet-report-99301704.html

Also, laying fibre city to city is the easy part. Yay. We've done that. Yay. What's at issue here is the important part, getting that fibre into my damn house. That's not happening. I see no indication that it's going to happen.