Japanese blows US speeds out of the water
Image courtesy: www.hometoys.com
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who has waited with frustration for a page to load or a video to download, but the U.S. has shockingly slow internet speeds. America trails other industrialized nations, in many cases by a large margin, when it comes to bandwidth. The median US download speed is 1.67 Mbits a second. The average Japanese download speed is 61 Mbits a second. Yowza. That’s one heck of a gap. The reasons behind this gap are complex, but the disparity is at least partially due to a lack of competition and subsequent motivation on the part of ISPs to step their game up. While this type of thing won’t cause a mass exodus to Japan, it might call for a re-examination of our country’s networking. A little OC3 love here and there would be much appreciated.
61 damn I feel slow.
Ouch..
Are we really shocked. Asia adopts new technology several years before the us even looks at the technology. They already have phones that double as a currency device that allows them to make purchases with money or credit cards. We are just now getting to the point of paying bills with your cell phone.
It is a whole lot easier and cheaper to upgrade the infrastructure of a small country than it is to upgrade the infrastructure of one the size of the US. It’s not that we couldn’t do it, just that the cost outweighs the benefit for the providers. We’ll always be behind.
On the topic of economics, I was curious how much they pay for the faster service. Anybody have any idea?
@ one1082
I agree with you that it is easier in a smaller country to adopt new technology. But the delta between where they are and where we are is more than behind it is more like a century behind. The United States can do a better job than what we are doing in this area.
US Telcos and broadband providers would prefer to take the money required to make this kind of massive infrastructure upgrade and give it back to the CEOs (who do all the hard work) and the shareholders.
Heh.
I agree with one1082, the distances that have to be covered are a huge cost to the companies. Unless their are some wireless options coming i dont see us ever catching up because of it.
I think as it stands now that if we want the same speeds as the smaller countries then we would have to pay much much more as the size is a huge monetary factor.
FYI its nto just asia, search for the speeds in like sweden or norway..
I can easily say that the article is pure BS. Check it for yourself. 61Mb/sec AVERAGE in Japan? Sorry but no. It also says 7Mb/sec avg in Canada, and I can personally attest that this is not the case, when the fastest available is 14Mb/sec and thats only available in a very few select markets, while the vast majority top out at 5 and most are still on 3 or even slower.
Korea is pretty quick, faster than Japan, but I can assure you the US isn’t so far behind, especially not with the eventual roll out of FIOS.
this is a study funded by the communication union, thats very biased. they want more pay and jobs for the union and the best way to do that is to make it look like we are sooo far behind the other countries. this is like that story where MS funded a study that said their OS was the most secure…
give us some independent numbers from a non biased source. no story here.
Shyiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Das some fast shyiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
We are already in debt to almost every country…even japan I believe we owe….we don’t have the money to keep up with them…they already have video calling…come on now we only have house phones that does that