Andy Adams is an IT worker and experienced writer
It’s hard not to feel bad for the Americans these days, their dollar becoming weaker and weaker, the problems with oil prices and now another blow, Broadband. As one of the worlds most developed countries it seems they are lagging behind in the area of home internet.
A recent study by the European Commission into the penetration rates of Broadband Internet, basically how popular it is has found that the United States of America were left in the dust compared to many European countries. It was found that Denmark, Finland and Sweden were amongst the world leading countries that have a penetration rate of over 30%. The United Kingdom, France and even miniature country Luxembourg are all reported to have greater rates than the United States paltry 22.1%.
How have the Europeans blazed ahead of the USA? Well it may be down to the 19 million brand new lines installed in 2007, that’s 50,000 households getting broadband internet fitted every day! The telecoms industry is big business in Europe with estimated revenue of €62 billion being made.
So how come broadband isn’t as popular in the United States? Well one could argue that the sheer size of the country and it’s many smaller towns in the middle of nowhere being hard to provide service to. Whilst this is true and there are plans for countrywide Wireless networks such as the fabled “WI-MAX” plans there are a number of other reasons that have made US consumers wary of investing in Broadband.
One reason is the recent controversy over one ISP (Internet Services Provider) which was found to be limiting some customers speed if they were found to be using the internet to download via Peer 2 Peer networks like Bit Torrent. A nation of computer geeks spoke out over this and it has resulted in many people changing providers or shirking Broadband all together.
In some apartment complexes entire buildings have a Internet Provider built in to the building and if you live there you have to get your internet from the predefined provider. As a consumer I wouldn’t like to be told what service to have for my own home, especially when service quality and speeds can vary drastically between providers.
This is probably why the European regulatory model is much better for consumers, the model is designed to promote competition and so we see cheap broadband deals and offers in Europe much like we do with Mobile Phone deals, we even have TV networks like Virgin Media and BSkyB offering packages including telephone service and Satellite/cable TV too to sweeten the deal.
This competition and abundance of cheap broadband deals has seen 12 million households switched suppliers in 2007 alone and has obviously helped promote the service which has fast become as common as other utilities like water and energy.
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