Global Broadband Speeds Dropped At the End of 2011 118
darthcamaro writes "A strange thing happened at the end of 2011. For the first time in years, global broadband adoption and speeds dropped. According to Akamai, broadband adoption declined by 4.6 percent and average speeds declined by 14 percent. In a somewhat strange twist, New Jersey now also dominates the top 5 list of fastest broadband cities in the U.S, though Boston is the fastest overall at 8.4 Mbps."
New Jersey (Score:1, Funny)
I hate that city!
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No they didn't.
In order to "dominate" a list of 5 items and yet not be the top item you have to occupy multiple spots in the list.
Hence, more than one of cities (3 to be precise) in the list are cities in New Jersey.
But yes it's terrible wording.
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What they actually meant was that the state of New Jersey dominates the top 5 because several of the cities in the top 5 are in New Jersey. Jersey City isn't in the top spot though. That's taken by Boston. This service provided by someone who doesn't speak the language natively. HTH.
New Jersey...and Pace Picante Salsa (Score:2)
The early on, Pace Picante salsa commercials, the first one with the cowboys sitting around the fire...complaining that the salsa didn't taste right....then looking at the label saying "This ones made in New Jersey".
The whole group goes "New Jersey"??? And you hear one voice doing..."Get a rope...."
Ok...awhile after that came out...and was established as a funny common commercial...for some reason, they took and re-dubbed it to say "New York City"....and all subsequen
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The good news is, the country's fastest broadband can be found in New Jersey. The bad news is, the country's fastest broadband is in New Jersey.
Given the reversion to the Compuserve Model... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I'm not surprised.
Instead of providing superior service (at various levels) on a flat-rate connection, you get a degraded connection(at any level) that is metered.
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I do think that we're reaching a point where it's hard to actually use all of the bandwidth available to us, just like it's hard to use the CPU power available to us, and to a lesser extent, the memory and the disk space. It's easy to waste CPU power and the rest of the computer's resources though, as programmers don't feel the nee
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These things tend to go in bursts. People think of things to do with bandwidth, which drives demand, and eventually technology reaches it. There was a little peak in the '90s between 56K modems and Napster where internet connections where fast enough, then people started streaming music and they became too slow. For any reasonable quality, you needed at least a 100MHz Pentium to be able to listen to the music in real time. ADSL and cable modems took us past that, and 1Mb/s was fine up until people start
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I do think that we're reaching a point where it's hard to actually use all of the bandwidth available to us
I know how to use all of a household's allocated bandwidth: a household with multiple computers all trying to download a recently released service pack for the operating system over a single satellite connection. Or is there a version of WSUS designed for home use so that each computer doesn't have to download the service pack separately?
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People are VPN'ing into the office (Score:5, Insightful)
Jersey City is right near NYC. wouldn't surprise me if the reason everyone wants broadband is so they can VPN into the office instead of taking the train to work
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The train is ok. It's when you have to commute between office and home and there is no train and it's 40 miles all of them in NJ.
There are probably other reasons too - NJ has very high per capita income, population density and a lot of it is served by both FIOS and cable giving some competition that seems to generate promotional deals and service tiers with high bandwidth for bragging rights.
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Secaucus has a large number of data centers [datacentermap.com], although not necessarily more than New York City.
NASDAQ has it's high frequency trading facility in Carteret NJ. [securities...onitor.com]
I don't think any of these actually add to the broadband rates in NJ, as the study is measuring mostly consumer rates. That said, there is a large amount of IT investment in New Jersey.
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For those that didn't read (Score:5, Informative)
For those that didn't read the article and were confused by New Jersey's new status as a city, what it actually means is New Jersey cities are in the #2, #3 and #5 spots of the top five list.
It doesn't say New Jersey is a city, dummies (Score:4, Insightful)
It says New Jersey "dominates" the list. One entry can't dominate a list, so obviously they are saying that the list is dominated by cities IN New Jersey. If you RTFA you'll see that 3 of the top 5 cities in the US are all in NJ. It's always such a surprise when people are snarky and dumb on the interwebs.
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It's always such a surprise when people are snarky and dumb on the interwebs.
You must be new to the internet...
You must be new to sarcasm. Or maybe I am. I can't tell anymore.
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How do you "dominate" a list without being the in top place and only having one entry?
Do you also complain that "the United States isn't a university" when some article says "The United States dominates the list of the world's ten best universities though the University of Cambridge tops the list"?
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Mobile net? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe people are switching to mobile net?
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DING DING DING DING! We have a winner!
I have a 10 Mbit Cable modem at home, which I use heavily. But increasingly, my Android phone is becoming my dominant platform for casual browsing. Its 3G connection affords me ~ 1 Mbit, which would definitely push the average numbers down quite a bit in my case, but still represents a net increase in overall bandwidth consumed.
Simply put, I use more Internet bandwidth, everywhere.
Harsh cap (Score:2)
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This is a global survey not an American one.
I'm not surprised... (Score:2, Insightful)
Take where I live for instance:
The cable company hasn't done much in 4-5 years for increasing bandwidth. However they did put in metering.
The telco, similar. DSL speeds have remained static, while there are now bandwidth charges.
Phones? Yes, that 4G phone might be cool, but it doesn't take much to burn through its bandwidth. Paying half a C-note to transfer a DVD? Bullshit.
It is no wonder why people are seeing this. There is zero incentive to add infrastructure, other than real time monitoring with in
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There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)
"Freedom" for whom, that's the question. We, the people, who need more network capacity, and could easily get it for pennies if we paid for it with taxes, like our roads, are now paying enormously more for shrinking, monitored, censored communications. And it's going to get worse.
Image what our roads would be like if we had built them with a "free market" model. Constricted, gated, metered, and ten times more expensive. And most of us would walk.
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The New York Thruway is kept in great condition, and once gas hit about $2.50/gal it became cheaper to pay the toll than to take parrallel roads that are not as straight and level (e.g. US20, NY17/I86).
And the money collected also maintains the Erie Canal Trail.
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And if the government holds the deed because we paid in taxes, it will be even more confined, monitored, censored, gated and metered.
Oh, that wouldn't be so bad. You'd just need to renew your internet user license every few years (and we'll never use it as a global ID card! Promise!). Renew your computer registration...make sure it clears a malware emissions test. Make sure you don't ride the net in an OS that hasn't had several tens of millions of dollars worth of "hack-resistance" collision testing, such as Linux. And submit to periodic traffic-stop hard drive "inspections" from an officer. And if you don't use a antivirus safety
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No free dental (Score:2)
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Indeed. That's why it's time to declare internet service a utility once and for all, and regulate the fuck out of these industries, just as we do with those providing our power.
When my local electricity provider wants to raise rates, they need to go to our public utilities board and get the rate increase approved, and they need to do so in public hearings where the people can (and do, our last rate increase hearing made the local news when a few people went all Tea Party on them) comment. Arbitrary bullsh
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>>>That's why it's time to declare internet service a utility once and for all, and regulate the fuck out of these industries
We don't regulate electric, natural gas, or sewer companies because they are utilities. We regulate them because they are natural monopolies and would price-rape their customers if the State did not price fix them.
Internet is not a natural monopoly. You can squeeze 100 fibers into the space of one sewer pipe. There is no reason why we should be limited to just one company,
More than one power company (Score:3)
We don't regulate electric, natural gas, or sewer companies because they are utilities. We regulate them because they are natural monopolies
According to TJ DiLorenzo's "The Myth of Natural Monopoly" (PDF) [mises.org], all the natural monopolies that people ordinarily associate with public utilities originate with the city's natural monopoly on roads and the city's resulting inability to find an efficient price for permits to tear them up to install conduit.
You can squeeze 100 fibers into the space of one sewer pipe. There is no reason why we should be limited to just one company
In that case, why should people be limited to one power company or one wired pay-TV company? How many power lines can one squeeze into a sewer pipe?
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Ah, yes. The glory of paid-for-with-taxes roads. It must be because they are paid for with taxes that the capacity of the roads is unlimited. I can't recall the last time I heard of a 'traffic jam' or a 'rush hour'. And the roads are always in perfect condition.
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Ah, yes. The glory of paid-for-with-taxes roads.
I'll take my "paid for with taxes roads" over a toll road any day. Do you think private industry or the free market you worship would have ever constructed the interstate highway system? If they did, it would cost a thousand dolars to drive from Miami to LA, stopping every mile or two to throw another dollar in the basket.
And guess what? The last toll road I was on (actually it was a toll bridge) was full of potholes and congested during rush hour, just like t
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The question was not whether or not private industry could have constructed a road system. The statement made by the OP implied that if the government owned the ISPs, there would be no slowdown of speeds and that capacity would be sufficient. He gave roads as an example. My point is that the roads suck. They do not have enough capacity, and they are in terrible shape in many places. If the government-owned roads are so awful (and they are), what makes anyone think a government-owned ISP is going to b
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Metropolitan speeds? (Score:2)
There's something missing from the report, and that's Metropolitan speeds. The report calculates connections to Akamai, which is a good metric data set, but what about Metropolitan broadband? It's just as relevant.
In-country broadband or city-wide broadband speeds are relevant; it's about how fast local connections are and how infrastructure is handling traffic. When you download stuff (e.g. distros) you usually pick the closest repository and get data from there. Also lots of other files and data are mirro
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There's something missing from the report, and that's Metropolitan speeds.
My broadband has about 5-10 mbps bandwidth if I transfer something from "general" Internet, but metropolitan speed is 100 mbps. My country-wide connection speed is about 50 mbps, tested with friends; http, p2p and ftp transfers are all equally fast.
What country is this. In the US, a connection like that would be seen as a rip-off. (I'm paying for a 100 Mbps connection, but only get 5-10 % of the speed when connecting to the actual Internet) I take it that most people are using a single ISP, and their internal network is much faster that their peering. There are enough different ISPs in the US, that that probably wouldn't work as well.
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Romania.
We only started to have a broadband boom in late 90s, so it's why all networks around have been built with CAT5 cabling and later, optic fiber. As a result, the infrastructure is excellent, compared to more developed countries which are having a hard time replacing old infrastructure and mostly rely on improvisations to increase broadband speed.
Oh and I pay 10 bucks a month, flat rate, for unlimited traffic at max speed.
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The ISP offer says "Up to 20 Mbps external and up to 100 Mbps metropolitan speeds". I am reaching 20 Mbps pretty often, but not consistently. If I get something from Australia, clearly it's going to come slowly, for example. So the ISP does what promises most of the time and I'm not anal about drops in speed. I'm using metropolitan mostly for heavy traffic (e.g. torrents) anyway.
Another thing I think is relevant: lag/latency. Especially while playing MMOs. My usual latency (unless the server is located in a
Time for some questionable analogies... (Score:2)
1. Does New Jersey, as a state, suffer from short man syndrome? Rhode Island doesn't, it just sends you to sleep with the fishes.
2. Broadband speed claims are a little like braggin' on your new spawts cah. Sure, it goes from 0-60 in less then 6 seconds. How's that working out for ya on the Garden State at 5:30. Headed South. The GSP is usually Slashdotted by then, save for holidays and wrecks.
3. And braggin' on your broadband speed is as relevant as braggin on the new BMW. Stuck in traffic. With a det
Why is it strange that NJ dominates the USA cities (Score:2)
Re:Why is it strange that NJ dominates the USA cit (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of that traffic passes/passed via NJ and to a lesser part Rhode Island. So the area by default would be over served by private telco and NSA interests over many years e.g. TAT-14.
Add in huge loops that span Europe, the Caribbean, and South America and link to parts Middle East - it all gets back to parts of New Jersey.
Would state-wide density really show a bump if everybody was on the same fly over state "old copper, cable or average new optical roll out speeds" vs say massive hardened backhaul?
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Would state-wide density really show a bump if everybody was on the same fly over state "old copper, cable or average new optical roll out speeds" vs say massive hardened backhaul?
God I hate the arrogance of the phrase "fly-over state". Here in Indiana we have a higher average connection speed than the both New Jersey and the US average according to the akamai graph generator on the site.
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It may be almost 5.5 times the population density of California as a whole state, but consider the following, there are 8.8 Million people in NJ but compare with the actually populated portions of CA:
Los Angeles County: 9.8 M people, 2400 per square mile
Orange County: 3 M people, 3800 per square mile
San Francisco County: 0.8 M people, 17200 per square mile!
Alameda County: 1.5 M people, 2000 per square mile.
Santa Clara County: 1.8 M people, 1400 per square mile
Total population of those counties: > 16M peo
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Hudson County (next to New York City): 13,495 people per square mile
Essex County (Newark): 6,211 people per square mile
Union County (Elizabeth): 5,216 people per square mile
Bergen County (NYC Suburbs): 3,884 people per square mile
Passaic (NYC Suburbs): 2,715 people per square mile
Middlesex County (Edison): 2,612 people per square mile
Cam
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I would guess this is the case more and more. Also, new adoption is probably among the poor. The poor can probably only afford cheap setups anyway, hence lower averages.
I think this indicates that broadband is reaching a wider population and we could even be looking at the start of a shift to a cheaper broadband infrastructure if price demands go lower.
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Re:I'm not at all surprised. (Score:5, Informative)
The point about tech isn't how much bandwidth people use today, but how bandwidth could be used tomorrow. You get a chicken and the egg issue. Certain services require high bandwidth, like true 1080p BR quality streaming, or weekly cloud back-ups of your 1TB drive.
There are an infinite amount of possible services that we have not yet thought of because we don't have the bandwidth for them. The same thing happened with computers. Pffft, who needs an electronic calculator? Who needs an 8086? Who need a Pentium? Who needs a dual core cpu? We now have quad core 1.5ghz cpus with GPU acceleration and 2GB of ram, packed into a cell-phone.
Build it, and they will come.
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I have 6 mbits down, 800 kbit up ADSL, which actually nets 4.98 mbits down and 650 kbits up. It easily keeps up with NHL GameCentre Live, which is my primary use for it during the winter. The only thing it can't keep up with is most 1080p video from Youtube. Almost, but not quite. Even there, if I let it buffer for 30 seconds, that allows 5 minutes of playing before it has to buffer again. The network throughput is pegged at 637 Kbits down.
For 720p videos, my connection can easily keep up. And if I hit an
Get over it (Score:1)
Would you dorks please get over the "New Jersey is not a city" thing? Now that we all know what was intended in the post, what are your thoughts on the content of the article?
No point when servers are metered (Score:3)
I opted for the 20 Mbps VDSL here in Denver (Qwest/CenturyLink's alternative to fiber, the plans for which they dropped in the wake of the 2008 worldwide financial crisis) and restrained myself from splurging on the 40 Mbps VDSL. Even the 20 Mbps is a waste. Most servers only let data out at 10 Mbps tops. I've gotten 20 Mbps only once -- downloading 1940 census images from archives.gov. I suspect people are catching on and are stepping down their last-mile bandwidth choices.
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Most servers only let data out at 10 Mbps tops.
You should get one of these connections that let you download from more than one server at the same time, they're pretty awesome.
Sarcasm aside, for a family that is used to download and stream stuff, it's easy to hit 20Mbps, particularly if you don't want to fill the pipe, which is bad for latency sensitive applications like gaming and VoIP.
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You should see my network usage when rebuilding a computer. Between Windows Updates, Steam, Diablo3, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, ~1GB of drivers, and watching Netflix while waiting, I can keep 30Mb constant for hours with lots of bursting into the 40-60 range(powerboost).
The coolest thing I have seen is the Streaming features of the new WoW client. I only need to download ~100MB. Since my cable has powerb
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Given the way ISPs are now a days I see a 100Mbps connection as a way to hit the data cap in a few hours. I'm more concerned about data limits more than bandwidth. And really my only choices here is comcast or moving to another city.
Phones and Tablets (Score:1)
How much you want to bet this has to do with smart phone and tablet adoption and their 3G / 4G speeds?
I got 100Mbps! Don't blame me. (Score:2)
My local ISP (slic.com) installed FTTH, and I'm getting 100Mbps to my house, so don't blame me for any drop in speed!
Re:City, State, whatever (Score:4, Funny)
its one huge suburb of NYC
Re:City, State, whatever (Score:4, Funny)
Re:City, State, whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
People seriously need to go back to school and get some reading comprehension.
"New Jersey now also dominates the top 5 list of fastest broadband cities in the U.S"
The phrase "New Jersey dominates the list" means that the majority of cities on that list are in New Jersey.
Oh look (FTA): The fastest city in the US is Boston at 8.4 Mbps; fractionally ahead of North Bergen, NJ for average connection speed. Jersey City, NJ came in third at 8.3 Mbps, Monterey Park, CA fourth at 8.2 Mbps and Clifton, NJ fifth at 8.0 Mbps
3/5 cities on that list are in NJ. Hence, NJ dominates the list.
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Comprehension or not, the phrasing is terrible as the sentence was unnecessarily ambiguous. You could legitimately think that there is a city called New Jersey which has an overwhelming lead over the other cities on the Top 5 list and the sentence would work perfectly. There's a city called New York, which might well dominate top 5 lists of many things, so this is not all that hard to believe.
You could have just said "Cities in New Jersey dominate the list," and it would have been crystal clear.
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No, you couldn't, because it says that Boston is fastest.
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In a somewhat strange twist, New Jersey now also dominates the top 5 list of fastest broadband cities
This is correct. Cities in New Jersey have three of the spots (2, 3 and 5) on the top 5 list.
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FWIW, my complaint is towards "somewhat strange". NJ has the highest population density of any state in the US. That's pretty much exactly the kind of state I'd expect to dominate this kind of list.
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I'll spare you my thoughts on Newark and why strange might be fair.
One reasonable explanation is that AT&T is based in NJ. It's kind of like Comcast having a big presence in PA.
Re:City, State, whatever (Score:5, Informative)
NJ has the highest population density (1189/sq mile) [wikipedia.org]. It is surrounded by two major cities (New York and Philadelphia).
AT&T is not based here, but they used to be, before SBC bought and renamed themselves. That company is now based in Dallas. There are still a lot of AT&Ters around the state in large facilities. This doesn't really matter though, considering AT&T probably provides local access to less than 1% of the NJ population.
Verizon is based here. Their actual headquarters is located in New York City, but all of the executives sit in Basking Ridge, NJ. This is important, because almost all of the Verizon employees at a director level and above are now in New Jersey. Different from AT&T, they are the local telco in almost every town.
Comcast is based in Philly. Lots of Comcast employees live in New Jersey. Comcast is a major cable franchise in NJ (as it is in most places).
The state of NJ, a few years ago, granted Verizon a state wide video franchise. [cedmagazine.com] This is a big deal. It means that Verizon can offer FiOS everywhere in the state without negotiating with the 566 different municipalities in the state [wikipedia.org]. (566 municipalities for 8.8 Million people - NJ is a a good example of local government gone awry. Compare to 351 for 6.6M in MA, or 482 for 37M in California)
As the result of the above, FiOS is available in most towns, offering 20-50Mbps internet. Comcast Xfinity offers their highest tier service wherever there is FiOS, so nearly everyone in the state can get fast internet if they're willing to pay $30-$60/month. Notice to governments: reducing the amount of regulation (state wide franchise) can create more competition which can yield better results for citizens.
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As a resident of Jersey City, I am not surprised we are on that list. They pretty much started ripping up the entire waterfront starting about 15 years ago, and just rebuilt the whole thing from scratch. I actually had fiber running into my last apartment, which was a new building. Multiple data jacks in each room- topped off with a real patch panel in one of the closets, it was a dork's dream...
Many people have never heard of it, but Jersey City is directly across from Manhattan on the other side of the Hu
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Corrected title (not - incorrect title) (Score:2)
From the article:
According to the fourth quarter 2011, State of the Internet report from Akamai, the global average connection speed to the Internet dropped to 2.3 megabits per second (Mbps), representing a 14 percent decline from the third quarter of 2011. While the average connection speed declined, the global average peak connection speed was relatively flat, coming in at 11.7 Mbps for a 0.4 percent quarterly gain....
Also dropping were adoption rates -- I would surmise, because people saw no reason to s