Re: [PLUG] cultural ethics of email and spam

[Eugene Smiley <eug+plug@esmiley.net>]

John Von Essen wrote:
> My sarcasm is to illustrate a point. US telecoms and broadband access 
> providers go to GREAT measures to provide high speed access at 
> competitive prices. 

Bwaaaaahahahahahaahahaaaaaaa!

I've never laughed so hard in my life. US telecoms and broadband providers are
for the most part owned by STOCKHOLDERS. These stockholders expect a return on
their investment and expect NOT to see their money spent on frivolous things
like providing WORLD CLASS high speed broadband access. Yes, I said it.
stockholders think FAST broadband is frivolous. The reason? POOR government
policy. The FCC calls broadband anything above 200kb/s.

They will invest the minimum they can get away with to maintain or grow their
market share.

I was in Australia in March and was seeing ads for 12 Mb service for 40 AUD. 2
to 4 times the speed in the US and about the same price.

http://www.freepress.net/news/21073:
> "Japan’s fastest-growing broadband service offers speeds in excess of 100
> Mbps, and Korea offers 100 Mbps uploads and downloads. Most current U.S.
> customers are lucky to get one-tenth or even one one-hundredth of that speed,
> particularly for uploads — and they pay more for the lower speed."

> "Eating Korea’s Dust
>
> Korea is perhaps the best example of a country’s rapid rise to widespread
> broadband availability. By almost all measures, Korea far surpasses all other
> nations in terms of broadband access, while Japan is the leader for price and
> highest typical connection speed. Over the 10 years between 1997 and 2007, Korea
> went from no broadband access to approximately 70% of households wired for
> broadband. Korea has a tradition of constructive and proactive government policy
> and involvement in building industry and technological capability to be
> competitive in the international market."

How about this gem, http://www.freepress.net/news/22669:
> "In its analysis of additional OECD broadband statistics, Free Press said
> that U.S. consumers pay dearly for broadband — $10 per Mbps versus the $1 or
> less per Mbps that is paid on average by other OECD nations. “The growing
> digital divide between the United States and the rest of the world will have
> real-world consequences,” said S. Derek Turner, research director of Free
> Press who added that a continuing broadband lag by the United States will
> have “significant effects on U.S. economic performance on the global stage.”"

Other resources:
http://www.benton.org/node/4711
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,133574-c,isps/article.html
http://www.freepress.net/docs/bbrc2-final.pdf (Check out fig. 8 and fig. 11)

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