Internet Companies Sturring a Speed War?
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Oh yes, the Spidey-senses are tingling on this one. Today Cablevision, a major television and broadband provider, announced that they would offer intense download speeds of 101Mbps and upload speeds at 15Mbps, the most speed to come out of any major ISP.
Although the service is targeted at small businesses, the $99/month price tag isn’t so terrible for typical users that require a lot of bandwidth. Compared to Verizon’s FiOS service, customers have a maximum of 50Mbps download and 20Mbps upload for around $140/month, half of what Cablevision is going to be offering.
Seeing as this is a significant step toward increasing the country’s broadband capabilities, we’re wondering if other companies will soon follow suit. Not because of any recession, the United States lags in availability and speed of Internet access, yet pay the highest for service in comparison to other countries.
In the United States, we pay an average of $41/month for 2MBps, while Japan pays about $35/month for service 15x as fast, as reported by The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (itif.org). Ridiculous!
Cablevision’s newly directed business speeds are a foot in the door towards better speed and, hopefully, an invitation for competition down the road from other providers. Already, Verizon spokesperson ,Eric Rabe, has come out with a statement, according to NYTimes Bits Blog:
We can go to 400 mbps with the technology we are now deploying -– without giving up TV channel space. We can add higher speeds at the time of our choosing, but no announcement to make today.
This sounds like a challenge, Verizon, and for the sake of everyone we hope they fight it out to offer better broadband at better prices. It makes me sad that our momentous country gets the hand-me-down when it comes to Internet, a huge part of society and business together. We need our LOLcats and ROFLcopters at the speed of light, why are we paying so much for so little?
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