An Explanation of the State of the Internet Infrastructure in the United States
I believe there are some misconceptions about the state of the internet within the United States. The belief might be that it was invented here, so it surely must be great. In limited areas it is indeed very fast. Extremely limited. In reality, many countries overall have better internet than the United States.
I can explain why. This also applies to many other aspects of our infrastructure.
Two things tend to motivate industries and companies to extend and create new infrastructure in the United States. This is either due to opportunity to access new markets that will offset or make the cost of extending that infrastructure immediately profitable, or government subsidies. With regards to government subsidies the waste is huge. These companies can often find ways to milk those subsidies so they do as little as possible to still get that money. I've seen grandiose sounding programs funded by the government that were supposed to extend infrastructure and cost vast sums of money to only see it not happen.
Currently in my day to day job I am a network engineer. I tend to do our data center side of things and deploy new servers and things of that nature. I program our firewalls and switches. I also am the expert in our company on ordering circuits.
For those not familiar with the term that means essentially in our case internet connections. We are a VOIP company and we pride ourselves in trying to provide customers that want it with redundant backup for their phone systems. In such cases I need at least two circuits and it is important the last mile of those circuits not be provided by the same local carrier. In the U.S. this means more often than not I get a CABLE circuit and a NON-CABLE circuit. Why? All Non-Cable circuits tend to go through the carrier that has essentially a local monopoly. So you can order DSL, T1s, T3s, MPLS, Fiber, and all manner of circuits from dozens of carriers. They will quote you. They will provide you the circuit, but the last mile will all go through the same local carrier.
I live in the Denver area though I support clients all across the U.S. and some in Canada (a few in Mexico as well). In the Denver area the local carrier is CenturyLink So if I get a T1 from XO, or Windstream, or Earthlink, or Verizon, etc they will sell me a circuit. That last mile. It will be CenturyLink.
So if I am trying to setup a redundant network for a client and I have an XO T1 and a Windstream T1 and something goes wrong with CenturyLink then BOTH of those circuits go down. That is not very useful for redundancy.
For this reason in most cases the second circuit has to go through a cable provider such as Comcast, Charter, etc. Why? They usually have a different network all of their own going through coaxial cable based networks. Though they have also been expanding into the fiber arena.
Yet that is generally the case. Really you might have TWO choices. Sometimes you have ONE.
Now ANY of these carriers will offer to provide you service. If they don't have the infrastructure there they are willing to give you the circuit if you pay the cost of running the infrastructure there. This can translate to many thousands of dollars to extend the network so it has access to your region. Most people will not do this.
When you see people extending networks it is usually because someone paid to have it extended and the carrier can gleefully then offer services to other people in that area. You'll usually know this happens when a carrier knocks on your door without you asking and starts soliciting you for a new service.
They do not extend for "possible" business. They wait for a guaranteed client, and then after they have the extension already in the work they solicit other people.
What does this mean?
Well I was living in a remote part of Colorado from 1997 - 2007. Most of that time you could get 56K modem in some places, 28.8K in a few others, and in many you got below 20K in speed. This was when the government was paying subsidies to extend the infrastructure. In fact, we saw them lay the fiber cable. They laid all the cable to do this. Then they never bothered to turn it on. So the alternative for awhile was to do it via Satellite at the time DirectTV was coming out with DirectPC. I was actually a certified installer of that. Then later Hughes bought out that business. It could provide good downloads but it has insane latency due to the delay in going back and forth between the satellite. So forget anything that required quick response time. They also began imposing such restrictive fair use policies that it wasn't worth having anyway.
In around 2006 that area finally started getting some DSL offerings. I moved in the summer of 2007 back to the Denver area.
Do you realize that today I still have clients in New York City that I can only get them T1s? This is changing, but unless the infrastructure is extended a lot of carriers do not offer anything faster.
There are places in Denver where the choices are T1s, DSL, or Cable. There are some places where Cable and some crappy DSL are all that is available.
This is the state of the United States infrastructure for internet. I don't think a lot of people outside of the U.S. realize this. I also know there are many people in the United States blissfully unaware of this.
Yet this problem is not just in the internet. It is also in our power grid, our sewer systems, our bridges, and many of our roads.
Who will build the roads? That is a popular question when people seek to counter people who would like to eliminate or severely reduce the size of government. The answer to that is the SAME PEOPLE that build them now, as it isn't the government that does it. It is the government who has wasteful poorly managed programs that pay entities that are not the government to build them. That money could be paid to organizations that could oversee it more critically without the waste say in some crowd funded manner. So "Who will build the roads if there is no government?"... answer: The same people that build them when there is a government.
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"The United States of Disrepair," how true it is. In my area of the country (Midwest), we had one of the local bridges (that supports an Interstate Highway) shut-down several years ago, in an emergency situation, because they had discovered that it was extremely unsafe to use. It could have easily been too late too, and we've obviously had others bridges fail, causing loss of life. It's not as if this great country is too poor to maintain our infrastructure, either.
I've never traveled out of the country, so I can't speak from personal experience, but it was my understanding that many countries had much (overall) faster/more consistent Internet service than the US, even before coming across this post. The US should at least be on par.
It's sad to see what the US actually is, compared to what it could (and should) actually be...minus such waste, and corruption. I love my country, but we need to turn things around, in many aspects!
It's very sad when the government is more 'problem-than-solution,' but that's far too often the case. Our Federal Government is bloated, inefficient, and extremely wasteful, at least.
Thanks for your post, and you have a new follower.
It's because the Federal Government Corporation has been at war for quite some time now, it's essentially saying "these war criminals are bloated, inefficient, and extremely wasteful".
You'll get no argument from me. I'm 57, and I've never experienced this general level of contempt for the government, by the masses. It's not a Trump thing, or Obama thing - it's a GOVERNMENT and BANKERS THING! It's always the same old story; increased spending, watch the trillions disappear into the 'Black Hole' of The Pentagon, and war...LOTS of WAR! There's always money for war! This ridiculous 'War on Terror' is complete insanity. May as well have a war on, 'Bad Stuff.' How the hell would you even know if you'd won a 'War on Terror?' Does the head terrorist send out a Tweet saying, "You won, terror lost?" I say we have a 'War on War.' The 'War on Drugs' went so well, let's keep going! No drugs here. It's very much about having PERPETUAL WAR, that's where the money is. Keep dropping the bombs, killing the children, and watch the money roll in!
We could at least just keep paying the weapons manufacturers and just drop the bombs in a volcano, instead of on innocent people. If I lived in the Middle East, I'd probably hate the US too. Why wouldn't they when we keep dropping bombs on their families, friends, and homes?
We are very much existing in '1984.' (The book)
The US is not America, and not our Lawful Organic Government. The US Major has always been in the clutches of the Bankers, war is declared between Nations, in Law, or it's not a war only a military action, and what we have are mercenary actions. Essentially it all comes down to this: Government gains it's power from the consent of the governed, and it cannot act outside the powers it was given or in breech of trust and what we have here is a Corporation offering Governmental Services, the catch being that without people to consent and elect Public Officials we have been operating as US citizens and not "Free, Sovereign and Independent People" as the Treaty of France defines us. The difference being that we have not had a Continental Congress since before the Revolutionary War, which was only and simply a mercenary action. So here we are today, all vouched from birth as Wards of the state by our Mothers who were forced and tricked into signing us to a Probate Court, under the title of informant, and give us away as abandoned infants, and we have been treated as Guilty Until Proven Innocent and deemed to be Infantile Adults, incapable of governing ourselves and this is Demonstrable both legally, lawfully and Factually as nothing else explains the Criminality that has overtaken our Countries. We have been Duped again and again and demonstrate that we aren't capable of Governing Ourselves. On one hand the guilty are the criminals and they cannot escape their acts, and on the other we are guilty and complicit by our constant, unwavering unflinching silent acquiescence, and clearly the way out is by defining the problem, otherwise we are bound to keep scratching our heads as how and why these bankers have this kind of cheek and operate with the nerve of a 6 year old Moma's boy who'd bully the Sheriff in the middle of the Street or the Principal in front of the school. The balls on these people are there because for 150 years they have managed to do all this genocide, pitting us against ourselves and done this with our silent affirmations, but no more, people have grasped the Crime from it's century old inception and their tricks of Semantic Deceit and similarly named Corporations as Nations have been appreciated quite well and we have learned our lessons, let see what other tricks they have for us now.
didn't Obama spend a few TRILLION dollars on infrastructure repair in the early part of his first term?
Yeah, he spent a bunch, but nothing around here, evidently. Maybe he was buying ammunition for Chicago? They seem to never run out.
The way I see it is; humans are flawed, EXTREMELY flawed. As long as you have governments made up of humans, you're gonna get some corrupt, power-hungry monsters that grow. Every large government that comes to mind is out of control. The US, just like most all of them, has done, and continues to some heinous acts. We're told that we're spreading freedom and democracy, but it sure looks an awful lot like death and destruction.
We should have plenty of money in order to keep our infrastructure maintained, but there's never enough money. Always many trillions for war, however. I wonder who's next, Fiji? Micronesia? I bet we can take both of them at the same time, with (3) aircraft carriers tied behind our back. We could steal all their coconuts.
humans are NOT flawed.
any organization larger than the cognosphere is.
the Iron law of bureaucracy..
governments are insane.
I always liked the H.L. Mencken line on that: "The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."
That's pretty much the conclusion that I've arrived at.
Interesting to learn this dwinblood, so what is the solution for our internet?
Well I can't tell you a solution without first explaining barriers.
There are entities all across the country that essentially have government supported monopolies. This is true of local internet as well as power.
Just look at the problem Google was having with trying to get Google fiber everywhere. A large portion of that trouble was being blocked due to government supported monopolies in the areas they were proposing to go.
So one way this might work is to get the government out of the way, and stop permitting monopolies.
Though this is a very messy situation. All I can do is speculate.
I will say if we were not paying the government to FIX this for us and could instead spend that money ourselves then we could likely crowd source making most of this stuff happen much more rapidly.
Then the question of Who will build the roads is the same as how will we pay for the roads, and I agree Crowd Funding is how it's been done in the past and how it continues in many areas.
Yes, really the only difference is removing the middle man or at least changing the middle man and reducing the expenses of the bureaucracy and thus hopefully removing the influence of some of the corruption.
In this context that is about the most crucial and defining difference. Essentially what we have right now are Criminal US Trustees that are acting in Breech of Trust/Contract and they stand in between us and our lawful governance or those that will respect the contract so removing this Criminal aspect from the equation of who pays and who owns what afterwards is tantamount. Granted the most beneficial way would be to create our own monetary policy, to issue out our own tokens and distribute them equally to everyone, either by function or by fingerprint/ footprint / aliveness and or community basis, and making it stable/logical as a function of denoting value and definitively cutting out the middle man Rothschild banking Cartel, the Bishops and Archbishops, and the her lowlinessand freeing ourselves from the monopoly which could only be challenged purposefully now in the age of information.
I was actually watching a true crime documentary a few days called "The Disappearance of Maura Murray," and they were interviewing some of the homeowners who lived close to the spot where they believe she vanished from.
This documentary was produced about 6 months ago, and just began to air a few weeks ago. I was shocked to hear a few of the residents mention that even now, in 2017, they still do NOT have cell phone service inside their homes!
Honestly, I couldn't believe it. Now, I understand that there are probably plenty of places in the US where you cannot get a cell signal, but in an area where there are quite a few homes? That's really astounding.
It made me wonder whether or not they had Internet or cable TV service there.
It's funny that I came across your post because I had actually been thinking about this just a couple of hours ago!
Great article BTW. Upvoted and followed :)
Where I lived up to 2007 we could get Cell phone service as long as we used Verizon as it was the only network that worked in that area, but there were still very large areas without any coverage.
My pet name for that stolen from the study of Stochastics is "Strange Attractor"
The internet in america is truly sad.
Then the govern-cement stepped in and made things worse.
Why is 56k baud the fastest modem? Because of The US govern-cement.
Basically, your DSL modem is just a faster modem. Connected to the same wires and everything.
Fortunately, the whole internetz will be changed. A total paradigm shift. Internetz will be available everywhere on the planet. And thus, americans will finally have good internet.
Well WHEN that happens a lot of my concerns I expressed in this article will be moot. Until then though it is a concern.
AT&T will dye a horrible deaf, fer the ebil de hav wrought.
Watch for a post on it. But, I cannot talk about what Tesla envisioned until I throw out more of the chapters in our current "science" book.
I'm familiar with most of Tesla's work including some stuff not known in the mainstream. I had a chance to read some documents from someone in the military related to Tesla over two decades ago, but I didn't get to keep it. I also didn't bother at the time to think of making a copy for myself.
So I do know what a lot of his plans were that essentially were squashed, not funded, and/or stolen at his death by the government.
EDIT: Though all of this stuff I saw has been spoken about in the internet, so it is public knowledge in the age of the internet, but it is of course stuff that simply gets one labeled as a nut or conspiracy theorist.
Or worse, un-scientific. Or told that you need to go to take a science course, and then get back to us. Or that you are stupid, because Einstein was the greatest mind ever. Or this is established science. Or its caused by invisible weightless particles, duh.
Tesla's radio didn't work like Marconi's.
Though Marconi's required several of Tesla's patents to work.
There is a story that Tesla didn't patent anything. That it was all Westinghouse. He was allowed in Tesla's labs, and so basically drew down what Tesla had made work.
I feel this may be true, because of the patents I have seen do not feel like Tesla's work. If Tesla did them, the focus would be on the part that made it work, not the mechanical enclosure, etc. The voice in the patents do not seem to be the voice that Tesla wrote in.
None of it adds up. Except for that book, that you see Tesla reading in that very famous picture Tesla set up /posed for.
If I had to pick the minds of the past I am most impressed with that I know much about it'd likely be Tesla and Da Vinci.
I think Einstein is pretty bad ass but when compared to those two he was no where near as prolific or diverse.
The problem comes about in that,
if Tesla's theories are correct, then Einstein's theories are wrong.
And since Tesla built all kinds of actual devices, and Einstein built nothing (except maybe an atomic bomb) I stand with Tesla. Also, all of his theories work out, and Einstein's do not. Well, at least he popularized that space could be curved.
Spooky action at a distance happens. Communication across the universe can happen almost instantly. The galaxy spins as if all the stars were glued to a plate, so gravity is not what operates the galaxy. Etc.
And there are further indicators that show that Einstein was a puppet set up to take all of the fame and attention away from the real geniuses.
Seems like we need a mesh-net rilly bad..
Yes, a good idea. Yet it needs to be big and widespread otherwise we cannot expect it not to have gaps that could impact things like crypto significantly.
I seem to recall that there are several mesh-net projects in progress. One is a crypto I think?
The thing about meshnet...anything at all helps a little bit...the more the better.
It is still such a wonderful post. Thanks for Sharing @dwinblood !
The back end is to blame in this case, could it be that those companies are state owned ? Should there be more private companies to have better alternatives?
It is never good that actually no choice for a service could be made, just because of the fact " there is no other option "
We are controlled by the system gobernment... Thats what they want and do.
So Livelifefullest, and also in this topic; try to be independent.
This is a great post!
I have known some things about this for awhile due to technology being in my field of work to.
A lot of states have monopoly electrical grids that are complete crap, and new companies are not allowed to start up because the people who approve permits to new electrical companies are the government(who denies the permits so they maintain a monopoly). Not only that, but there are now a lot of non-profit schools(yes I am serious, and it isn't a government or state run school either) and non-profit electrical companies who have monopolies in rural areas. They pay no taxes, instead what they do is continuously buy more land and give everyone huge raises at the end of the year. The only reasons these things exist is due to government created monopolies that stand in the way of technological progress.
Where I am living there has been some laws passed in recent years though to make things better, there actually is an electric choice now and 4 or 5 internet providers(used to be 2 or 3 depending on what part of town you are in).
We have in Denver one electrical provider. Xcel Energy.
We in reality have to internet networks. Comcast or CenturyLink.
I do want to qualify. We have a choice in Denver from MANY internet providers. However, due to the last mile being either CenturyLink or Comcast then all the other choices are using part of their own network and then reselling the last mile of one of those two. This is actually how it works pretty much everywhere in the country sadly. Places where communities started their own internet (rare) or where Google got their Google Fiber in it might be different. There are also some places where you can get microwave wireless internet that also would change this, but these are not that common. And yes Satellite is still there too which works pretty much anywhere but it still suffers from that high latency issue.
Curated for #informationwar (by @openparadigm)
Relevance: Information infrastructure with some anarchist propaganda for diversity of opinion