It's no secret our internet infrastructure is ranked like 28 in the world for coverage and speed. There are countries in Eastern Europe with faster internet and more coverage than we have.

Unless of course they can only create the fast interenet only for special clients and scrap net neutrality we'll stay stuck behind far behind the ball as the world's speed and coverage grow. They are holding a better internet hostage to this debate. They are holding out to make sure they can allocate special privilidges and CONTROL CONTENT on the new fast net. They can keep those people/companies they don't want to get out on the slow net by debying access to the special services, or pricing them too high for little guys to speed up.

Evidently there isn't enough money in making increasing the speed and coverage here for the big corporations to bother. They won't spend the capital when they can milk the current technology until they get their back-door, content-control wishes.

Plus they will only put in new coverage areas where it's profitable.

In my city they tried to put together a plan for the to put city-wide wireless access in. We would have benefitted tremendously. But the media companies got together and shot it down because they said it was anti-capitalistic to put the government in competition with their services and the plan was scrapped.

By the way, the University of Illinois, one of THE most technologically advanced Universities and the location of the first supercomputer, is here. I can be on campus in 3 minutes and I can't get DSL, although my neighbors a block away can.

Unfortunately, many of the government contractors working on all the data-mining and illegal databases have parked new offices in our University associated research and incubator park...5 minutes from my house.

But NO DSL. Cable only...and they suck. Our office is outside the edge of town. But we can see the University from our front yard, and have only two choices, dail-up and satellite. They never even bohered with ISDN.

Ok, I remember when there was panic and people thought that because businesses having multiple Fax machines they would use up all the phone numbers.

I also remember everyone panicking that there would be to many people doing business on the web, it would clog up or even crash it.

There are stories like this every couple years. And so far, they having come true. People are constantly working on better compression methods , improved packet technologies, increasing bandwidth, and more.
Jesus, I remember not so long ago when people , very intelligent , knowledgeable and respected people said it was physically impossible to transmit information over telephone wires any faster than 9600 baud rate. A year or so after that we saw 56k baud rates on dial up. Nowadays we have 3MB and higher over telephone wires sharing that same little wire coming into our homes with voice as well.

So when it comes to computers and electronics, and chicken little runs around screaming the sky is falling, just remember that there is a good chance someone out there will figure out a way around it.
If they cant figure it out, then someone will figure out a way to deal with it.

The big worries about the Internet is how corporations want total control over the internet and the ability to charge us for every single thing we do on it. Every font we see online , they think they should be able to charge us a dime for it, even if its not theirs. They want to control what we view, how we view it, when we view it, and charge us for it every single step of the way. From an internet for all, to an internet only for who THEY allow. At the Fees they want.

http://savetheinternet.com/

Net Neutrality

Again I will state. (You may refuse to post this again)

Between 1997 and 1999 the so called experts were saying that the internet would collapse because it was not designed to handle the traffic that was coming through.

Now, because of video the question has has been raised.
Again I will say this BS. See this:

Nortel to quadruple network speeds

source:http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9891249-7.html

I am a programmer who understands what networks can and cannot do

These are the same people who said that the internet would collapse in the 90s.

News flash "Nortel to quadruple network speeds"
source:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9891249-7.html

Learn and study tech, do not spew BS because you can

In lieu of the bandwitdth problems, I guess I will make this shor

The argument of video crippling the Internet Versus Voice/Data is a Pure Bullshit logic. The allocation of speed and the rate of data transmission are controlled by the telecomm companies; each carrier manage and control the flow of packets (Video/Voice/Data) to the internet. In addition, the advertise bandwidth is not always reliably available to the customers. Carriers or ISPs often allow a greater number of subscribers than their backbone connection can handle, under the assumption that most users will not be using their full connection capacity very frequently. The aggregation strategy works to the advantage of the carriers to control the data transmission to/fro the subscribers.

While there is increased traffic flow to the Internet, Packets are Packets regardless whether it is Video, Voice or Data. More YouTube Uploads do not slow down the Internet. As mentioned, the aggregation strategy is how the Carriers control the penetration, speed and data transmission to the Internet.

Most home subscribers have either DSL or Cable Broadband connections, which then are connected to carriers Central Office Telco Equipment

What a load of shit! I am so sick of these assholes telling us how we're killing the net, when any real expert knows it is the media corps.' foot dragging and our lack of any national infrastructure policy that is the cause of us being so far behind the rest of the industrialized world in bandwidth.
Take note of his real issues-all of us stupid and unnecessary bloggers and posters of political content he does not approve of (Ron Paul testimonials, etc.) using up all this space while "real" journalists like himself no longer get to set the agendas and limit other viewpoints' access to media.
Furthermore, I just wonder if anyone in big media has a check or promotion for these lying shills who put out this crap to advance the interest of big media over the consumer ?

Fuck you, Jason Linkins.

Maybe next time you'll do a little real research, instead of writng your own opinion piece with someone else's opinion piece as your source.

The backbone is up to speed, it is the last mile that is a problem for the US. the backbone is going through another upgrade now. Corporate Net Admins assign QoS to their bandwidth already (ie- streaming media only gets smaller pipe, udp) this would resolve their current complaint of overloading the internet.

What is the number one hog of internet bandwidth? Still p2p program Bittorrent.

Why is download speed cheap compared to upload speed? Notice you see this more on cable providers than others? You do like that HD programming right? Also most homes only occasionally upload large files. When we all run video servers then there will be demand for high upload speeds and the cost will come down.

Future apocalypse? there are so many solutions to this I can't believe this is a story.

If you want to think of the challenges facing the US internet think about the 15 power plants that will need to be built by 2011 to handle the growth in server power requirements...

ITs funny how full of bullsh*t this is. America's bandwidth is becoming 3rd world thanks to the greedy telecoms - who want more profit for less bandwidth. While in east Asia there doubling the speed of their bandwidth every few months, and in some places they pay $5 a month for double the speed of what most in US pay $50 a month.

Oh give me a break. Just light up some more Fibre. What happened to all those lines laid in 1999 that went dark after the bubble burst, or were never lit up?

P.S. ...I meant to point out that slow uplink speeds are a method to try and quell each of us having a voice. It's a throw-back to broadcast one-way media, like TV, Radio, and Newspapers...

"It should be noted that an early bellwether of this looming crisis was reached toward the end of 2007, when the sheer number of political blogs finally exceeded the available body of political jargon for which they could be named."

... Well, the large number of political blogs exploded because the body politic that exists in the United States is absolutely unresponsive to the needs and desires of the citizens that are supposed to be the masters of their government. Widely discussed is the collapse of the Republican Party. Widely discussed, too is the collapse of the Democratic party if the super-delegates go against the popular will.

But regarding bandwidth, this is a ruse. As Dexxjones said, what about all those unwanted ads? We get unwanted activity on our web browsers even from HufPo! Dexxjones is also right that whatever shortage might be perceived will be blamed on the "lack of net-neutrality," which, by the way - like so many things (eg The Patriot Act, Conservative Party, etc.) is named absolutely backwards. What we want and need is what we have now - neutrality. Nobody can block your content!

BTW, truly high-speed internet is being quietly stifled in many parts of the nation. And, upload speeds are intentionally being kept very small. Want a 9mbps DOWNload speed? NO PROBLEM! $19.95/month. Want a ONE mbps UP-load speed? Pay over $200 a month!

DEMAND MORE.

yeah its the fault of the people. never mind all of the unwanted streaming video ads blaring nonsense. they have nothing to do with it, right? this is going to be the big excuse for net neutrality, you just watch.

during the strike, the networks said "we dont know how much money can be made"
a few weeks after the strike networks started bragging about how much money they WERE making on the net.

the telecom/network/studio clusters will make a big deal out of how citizen video and the dreaded file trading is killing the internet right up until they get their net neutrality.

then? the internet will be a corporate wasteland. tomorrow's fm radio/local paper/network news.

and amazingly there will be plenty of bandwidth to serve those ads, spy on their customers and the price of the internet itself will continue to go up.

they fool nobody but the complicit media which they of course own.