This might not come as a surprise to most people in the United States but our internet infrastructure is terrible and needs to be upgraded immediately. Two articles recently showed up on my feed and I thought it was funny in a way and I wanted to share with you guys.
The Cause Of Slow Internet In The US
Basically what they’re blaming the slow overall internet speeds on is poor or faulty copper wiring as well as the wiring / the fiber that connects the nodes together. The Articles also blame it on the routers that handle all of our internets. (Obviously, this is simplifying a fairly complex issue.)
One thing that I find funny about one of the articles is the fact that they ask if Netflix is the cause of the Slowdown. The answer is yes and no. If an ISP is not prepared for an influx in traffic that’s their own fault. Clearly, they’ve had plenty of time, years, in fact, to get this issue sorted and it’s still not.
In my local area, there is a company that provides fiber services for very realistic pricing. From what I’ve been told they had some government funding to help get the fiber installed but nonetheless it is installed and they’ve made their money back in just a few months. Mind you I live out in the middle of the country. So if a company can invest in fiber and provide it to just a few country homes here and there and still make their money back then that just proves that the current ISPs are being lazy and don’t want to improve the internet for everyone.
Something really needs to be done. It should not take an hour to upload a handful of photos to Facebook for example. It shouldn’t take an hour or in some cases from my experience, 24 hours or more to upload a video to YouTube. That’s just plain inexcusable!
Unfortunately, as some people like myself have probably experienced, fiber services are not always available for your home even though they may be in your town. Another issue with the way our internet currently works is the fact that we encourage monopolies in a way. The government might not say that they allow monopolies but it’s very clear that they do. For example, my home only has one hard-wired internet service provider. The rest of them are wireless and have data caps. Those obviously will not work for me. So I have to stick with the slow and only option I have.
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