[LINK] Why is European broadband faster and cheaper?

[Kim Holburn]

In the study below Australia has the third worst Average download speed.  We're one of the most expensive and we aren't even mentioned in the very high speed tier.  They talk about how local loop unbundling and function separation is essential for getting broadband advances.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband-faster-and-cheaper-blame-the-governme/

> Why is European broadband faster and cheaper (than the US)? Blame the government
> 
> By Rick Karr  posted Jun 28th 2011 6:00PM
> 
> If you've stayed with friends who live in European cities, you've probably had an experience like this: You hop onto their WiFi or wired internet connection and realize it's really fast. Way faster than the one that you have at home. It might even make your own DSL or cable connection feel as sluggish as dialup.
> 
> You ask them how much they pay for broadband.
> 
> "Oh, forty Euros." That's about $56.
> 
> "A week?" you ask.
> 
> "No," they might say. "Per month. And that includes phone and TV."
> 
> It's really that bad. The nation that invented the internet ranks 16th in the world when it comes to the speed and cost of our broadband connections. That's according to a study 

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/broadband/

> released last year by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society on behalf of the Federal Communications Commission. 
> 
> It's not surprising that we lag behind such hacker havens as Sweden (number one worldwide, according to the study) and Finland (number seven), nor densely-populated Asian nations like Japan and South Korea (numbers three and four). But the U.S. also trails countries that are poor by European standards: Portugal is just ahead of us in 15th place; Italy is number 14. (The full rankings are on page 81 of the study.)
> 
> By most measures, the U.S. has been losing ground. The UK, which traditionally lagged in international broadband rankings, is now number eleven, Germany, which has been slow to move to the most-recent DSL and fiber technologies, is number twelve.


.....


> So, what's the difference?
> 
> Our reporting suggests a one-word answer: Government.
> 
> Not government spending. The UK's administration hasn't invested a penny in broadband infrastructure, and most of the network in the Netherlands has been built with private capital. (The city government in Amsterdam took a minority stake in the fiber network there, but that's an investment that will pay dividends if the network is profitable -- and the private investors who own the majority share of the system plan to make sure that it will be.)
> 
> The game-changer in these two European countries has been government regulators who have forced more competition in the market for broadband.
> 
> The market in the UK used to be much like ours here in the U.S.: British homes had two options for broadband service: the incumbent telephone company British Telecom (BT), or a cable provider. Prices were high, service was slow, and, as I mentioned above, Britain was falling behind its European neighbors in international rankings of broadband service.
> 
> The solution, the British government decided, was more competition: If consumers had more options when it came to broadband service, regulators reasoned, prices would fall and speeds would increase. A duopoly of telephone and cable service wasn't enough. "You need to find the third lever," says Peter Black, who was the UK government's top broadband regulator from 2004 to 2008.
> 
> Starting around 2000, the government required BT to allow other broadband providers to use its lines to deliver service. That's known as "local loop unbundling" -- other providers could lease the loops of copper that runs from the telephone company office to homes and back and set up their own servers and routers in BT facilities.
> 
> BT dragged its feet and very few firms stepped up to compete with the telephone giant. "The prices were too high," Black says. "There were huge barriers to entry. The processes were long and drawn out."
> 
> When Black was named Telecommunications Adjudicator in 2004, he fought on two fronts to break the BT logjam. First, he used his own experience as a former employee of the telecom giant to push for change from the inside. When that wasn't enough, he used the bully  pulpit provided by his government post to embarrass BT in public. He publicized the company's failure to meet goals. Reporters loved the story of the government regulator holding the giant firm's feet to the fire.
> 
> "Embarrassment works, you know?" he laughs.
> 
> When Black started work, only 12,000 British homes had multiple broadband providers. By the time he stepped down in 2008, about 5 million did, and today the number's closer to 6 million. "That's about a 500-fold increase in less than ten years," he says.


.....

> Verizon told me in its written statement that it flat-out opposes the kind of local-loop unbundling that's reduced prices and increased speeds in Britain "for competitive reasons". Those regulations are "bad public policy and bad news for consumers", Verizon says, which "only benefit a few big phone companies, and those companies do not pass their savings on to consumers." Verizon also claims that "those competitors do not invest in their own networks".
> 
> Broadband industry insiders in the UK beg to differ.
> 
> AT&T takes a different tack: The firm says it supports competition, but notes that, "There is no 'one-size fits all' regulatory regime" that will work worldwide. AT&T cites two main differences between the UK and U.S. markets: First, more U.S. homes have the option of buying broadband service from cable companies. Second, the U.S. is more spread out -- the technical term is that those "loops" are longer.
> 
> But again, the facts in the UK suggest otherwise. Many homes in Britain's largest city -- London -- have cable access, but cable prices have fallen alongside that of DSL service.
> 
> Meanwhile, the size of the U.S. may be a red herring. Most of the region between Boston and Washington is as densely populated as most of Europe and the UK. So is the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego. And so is the region of the Midwest centered on Chicago. Those areas are home to about a quarter of all Americans. In other words, we live in a big country, but a lot of it is relatively empty space.



-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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