Many TFHHC applications require a broadband internet connection.
According to an article in the LA Times, Vermont ranks 45th among 50 states and two territories, with an average download speed of 3.32 megabits. Neighbor New Hampshire ranked 8th with an average download speed of 7.17 megabits.
Using data gathered from Speed Matters, a site that promotes greater Internet speeds, the Communications Workers of America compiled a list of broadband speeds in U.S. states and territories, and came up with the average speed for the nation — about 5 megabits per second. That’s a quarter of South Korea’s 20.4 Mbps, and about a third of Japan’s 15.8 Mbps.
The article states that the survey was not scientific. This is a gross understatement, as certainly the data can be skewed depending on where the readings are taken within a state and the number of samples. Large swaths of Vermont have no access to broadband connections, two years after our governor declared us an “e-State”. (!)
They survey only reports download speeds. Since most internet connections are “asymmetrical” upload speeds are a fraction of the download speeds. For high-bandwidth applications like videoconferencing, cheap DSL and cable connections are inadequate… and that suits the vendors just fine.
My speeds are: 12762 down and 1265 up at 9:44 EST on a Wednsday morning with a Comcast “business” account. Asymmetrical at a 10:1 ratio. Fortunately, our video application works at 384Kb.
It would be easy to dismiss the survey as junk. But the larger points are:
Broadband is the infrastructure of our time, much as rural electrification, copper telephone lines, and the interstate highway system were in the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1960’s. We haven’t had a national commitment for a “transformational” infrastructure since the middle of the last century.
Despite the fractional cost of broadband, compared to the previous infrastructures, (the poles are already in place!) symmetric, high-speed broadband to homes isn’t happening out in the boondocks, and the prospect of fully wiring rural states like Vermont is years away. Compare the cost of a mile of fiber-optic cable with the cost of a mile of interstate highway.
For all the breast-beating about great the U.S. is, we are going to get our clocked cleaned in the technological revolution of telecommunications. (We’re already getting hosed on renewable energy and battery technologies ).
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