Broadband Access America? ...Still Waiting

Despite all the hype about broadband access, only 24% or rural Americans have high-speed Internet connections at home.  In urban America, the figure is higher at 39%.  However, this means that, even in urban America, 61% of the population still don’t have broadband access at home.

Compare this with the fact that most Japanese consumers can get an Internet connection that's 16 times faster than the typical American DSL line for a mere $22 per month.  Across the world, it’s a similar story - in France, the DSL service that is 10 times faster than the typical United States connection; 100 TV channels and unlimited telephone service cost only $38 per month. In South Korea, super-fast connections are common for less than $30 per month. Places as diverse as Finland, Canada and Hong Kong all have much faster Internet connections at a lower cost than what is available in the US, which has slipped from 4^th (2001) to 16^th place in the World for broadband access per capita.

The truth is that America, because of a lack of a national broadband policy, has failed to take advantage of the broadband access revolution and is falling well behind the rest of the developed world.   The control of the telecoms infrastructure by a few, extremely powerful corporate giants has led to the lagging of the US and also a digital divide within the country itself;  Currently, broadband services in America remain unavailable for many living in rural and poorer urban areas, and remain slow and expensive for those who do have access.

So what’s the answer?  Well, until the politics get sorted out, the only real answer for many non-broadband customers is to use some type of web acceleration product which will enable them to achieve broadband-style access speeds.  Its not broadband access, but its near-enough – and what’s more it’s much less expensive!

For details of our recommendations for a web accelerator to give you broadband access speeds, click here.