Highlights of the North American broadband conundrum

Over the years, broadband Internet speeds have been slowly improving, with ISPs providing (for a pretty penny) the maximum speed possible with current technology. Right? Wrong. Not even close, as it turns out. What's more, Canadian ISPs actually limit to how much content their users can view or download per month. Here's a rundown of a few issues that have arisen within the current predicament. 


Canada
Neftlix.com, the new god of online media streaming, has offered a new low-def service to accomodate their Canadian customers' plight. The way the netflix.com blog puts it, watching 30 hours of high-definition content per month can use up to 70 GB of data, while the new reduced-quality option would only use 9 GB, which is "well below most data caps." This obviously reduces the picture quality, and is completely optional. Still, it seems like a step back for the fight against data caps. 


One Canadian ISP named Rogers aims to clamp down on peer-to-peer file sharing, and has accidentally restrained World of Warcraft, which is of course a completely legitimate program. Teresa Murphy, a WoW player, filed a complaint to Rogers, stating that their throttling incorrectly identified the game as a peer-to-peer program, and made the game unplayable, often causing lag or disconnections. In Rogers' reply to Murphy, the company stated that a proper solution would not be ready until June, four months after Murphy's complaint was filed. 



USA
Verizon claims to have the "fastest" broadband network in the nation, which offers a fiber-optic service at 150 mbps for $195 per month. Now let's widen the scope to a world view. City Telecom, an ISP in Hong Kong, provides its customers with 1 gbps upload and download speeds for the equivalent of $25 per month. That's a connection upwards of six times faster for about 1/8th the price. How is that even possible? An intricate fiber-optic network that fuels both the wired and wireless parts of the service and thinking differently. 

Photo courtesy of Kainet

In an interview, NiQ Lai, chief financial officer of City Telecom stated, "We want to make one gig to the home the industry norm in Hong Kong." The company started in 2006 and was willing to take financial losses for a few years while building the network. Thankfully, it has paid off, making City Telecom the second-largest ISP in Hong Kong, with the goal of becoming number one by 2016. With service like that, it's a definite possibility. 


So why doesn't Verizon, the "fastest" broadband provider in the US, offer something similar? Because the company's own fiber-based service "seems to be satisfying demand," said C. Lincoln Hoewing, Verizon’s assistant vice president for Internet and technology issues to the New York Times. 


Simply put, Americans are not demanding more from their ISPs. What are we going to do, boycott the Internet? Back in reality, Google has a solution. Implement a 1 gbps system inside the US, and make users and ISPs take notice. After more than a year of deliberations, Google has chosen to implement a high-speed fiber-optic network in Kansas City, Kansas. The city was chosen from over 1,100 applicants, and the network that Google lays will be offered to local ISPs in an arrangement known as "open access." Here's hoping it catches on.