A couple of recent reports from Free Press and Ovum consulting reveal a couple dramatic trends in broadband penetration and access. Ovum issued a report on September 4 which shows that within a year China will soon be the largest broadband market, with 79 million users in 2007 and 179 million in 2010. No wonder the chinese bloggers keep knocking off the English blogs from the top spots on Technorati. The United States, in comparison has about 84 million broadband users, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project .
Meanwhile, Free Press issued a study called "Broadband Reality Check II" that shows that American’s pay more for megabits per second than many other industrial countries, twice what the Japanese pay. Which means that most working families in America can’t afford reliable, always-on access to the net. This is partly due to the lack of competition in the US broadband market, as over 40 percent of U.S. ZIP codes have one or fewer DSL or
cable modem providers providing service.
"President Bush set a goal of bringing universal, affordable high-speed
Internet access to every household by 2007," said S. Derek Turner,
research director of Free Press and author of the report. "We’re
nowhere close to reaching that goal. Yet the FCC seems content to
ignore the problem, manipulate the data, and pretend we’re moving
forward."
None of should surprise anyone in New York.
Our broadband cable internet bill at home is ridiculous. We pay $100 a month to Time Warner Cable, which along with Verizon are the only two viable broadband providers in the city. We tried to downgrade to their "cheaper" service at $70 a month, but that only gets you measly 128 kbps upstream, which was deadly for uploading videos or other rich media to the web, which we do a lot in my household.
Time Warner’s broadband internet packages are bundled with a ridiculous number of cable TV channels, none of which I ever plan on watching. Niche ethnic media, hundreds of sports channels, home shopping channels, channels that only seem to run various flavors of "Law and Order," etc. At a consumer level, I would love it if Congress mandated cable companies to offer more al la carte cable packages.
Some of my media activist colleagues tell me that a la carte cable is bad because it takes funding away from education and public programming like CSPAN and cable access. But it galls me to have to pay so much when I access so little of it.
But ‘Law and Order’ channels and the ‘ethnic’ channels are the only ones I ever watch…
But yeah, it is pretty rediculous. With Comcast I have to pay at least $5 in cable TV, and the basic TV package is $20 (with fees); so either I pay $5 and can ‘steal’ any open signals, or I can pay $20 and get all the open signals legally, or I can pay $60 and get the few digially transmitted channels I do watch (along with everything else).
And there really isn’t another choice if I want megabit access.
Crissa, you are really getting a deal. On the west coast, in the SF Bay Area, the ‘base’ level analog Comcast is $24.95 or there abouts. I’m paying $45+ for the full analog set of channels without any ‘premium’ channels. And then $45+ on top of that for the broadband cable. (4MB, I believe).
I could, in theory switch to AT&T DSL, or several other flavors of it. But then while my cable bill would go down, I would lose a ‘Bundle discount’ on my cable bill, and the tv portion of things would actually go up!
I also wouldn’t be able to match the throughput of the Comcast cable without paying more (after the introductory period) for my DSL acceess than I am now.
What gets me is that one of the channels I would like to be getting (Sci-Fi) is NOT available in my part of the SF Bay Area on the Analog system. I would have to get Digital to get it. Which is charged for ON TOP of the Analog charges!! So even the lowest grade of Digital Cable to have Sci-Fi would up my overall Comcast bill by at least $30. So, about $120 a month for it?? And I’d only be able to watch the Digital TV signal at the TV that has the Decoder Box (or pay $5-10 per additional box in the house)? No Way.
I am of mixed mind on the a la carte cable idea.
To do it, I would have to go digital, of course. So all the limitations on having to watch the content on ONE system would be there. (And yes, I know there are additional hardware I could (and will) go with to unleash that. And yes, I know Analog is likely to go away ‘any year now’.)
And how much are they going to CHARGE for the channels? If they charge $1 a month per channel, fine. But I doubt that’s going to be the case.
My suspicion (from what we are starting to see on the iTunes store and elsewhere) is that TV is just about to change in a MAJOR way and the Cable/DSL companies are going to be more your broadband provider, perhaps your telephony provider, but less your true TV programming provider.
Entertainment is evolving. It looks a lot like we are going to be getting it over our broadband connections. We are already seeing the fulfillment of that happening in music. (Though radio seems to still be going strong.) It’s beginning with Movies and TV. It’s happening with our games. (XBox360, PS3 and Wii all can receive game content from the net.)
So a la carte Cable TV may come along in due time… but many of us may be living beyond it well before it gets here.
Chineses are unarguably degrading low life individuals.
Their intelligence level is so low and inferior.
And they are so barbaric and uneducated.
That’s why they talk so loudly in public places and they use violence everywhere though they get beaten up at the end.
Anyways, Chineses are pathetic unpleasant losers.
They are born that way juyt like their ancestors.
They are helpless.
Not only they spam everywhere, they bark so madly with their ugly monkey faces.
Chineses are really unpleasant disgraceful human species.
They are not worth being existed in this planet.
All Chineses should be flushed in the toilet bowls.