Ten years ago, the United States had the fastest and cheapest residential Internet service in the world. Today U.S. residential Internet service, especially broadband, is among the slowest and most expensive. Fortunately, this is likely to change as U.S. broadband Internet services become decidedly more competitive, both in terms of cost and available bandwidth. …

Japan went from being among the most expensive countries for residential Internet bandwidth a decade ago to absolutely the cheapest today. While some of this change can be attributed to technology improvements, most of the change can be attributed to competition, specifically the entry of Softbank BB into the Japanese broadband market. Softbank BB entered the Japanese market early this decade with loss-leader pricing that forced all the incumbent broadband suppliers to respond in kind, leading to a dramatic expansion of the Japanese broadband market where today residential 100-megabit-per-second service costs less than $20 per month. …

Korea, as it is often wont to do, followed Japan in terms of bandwidth pricing. More importantly the government of Korea made it a national priority to build out the residential Internet infrastructure at government expense. This was, ironically, in part inspired by the U.S. National Information Infrastructure plan, which was intended to accomplish the same end but failed miserably. Though they took full advantage of $150 billion in tax credits, the U.S. telcos simply did not build the network they had agreed to build, yet their model inspired more successful efforts in Korea, Singapore and other Asian markets.

Of the 30+ nations that can be judged to have residential Internet service superior to the U.S., in case after case that superiority can be attributed to government funding of infrastructure, to largely urban (short-distance) topologies, or to aggressive competition. …

I, Cringely

If you want improvements in your internet, likely you need increased competition or government support.

Personally, I’d prefer increased competition.

Yet the ISPs do everything they can to stifle competition. Lobbyists buy off politicians.

What we really need is governments to encourage competition. Free enterprise governments.

Let’s check the speed of my current wireless connection using internetfrog.com

Not bad!