This is an excellent point. The FCC's shameful cowing to ISPs has a huge opportunity cost to consumers.
Greater connectivity creates new business opportunities. Uber would be impossible without smartphones and reliable data. Netflix would be a DVD company without high-speed home internet.
When the FCC tells us we "don't need" better internet, it forecloses whole new categories of businesses.
Re: Uber, the US has more wireless broadband subscriptions per capita, according to the OECD, than anyone but Japan and Finland (basically tied with Sweden). Re: Netflix, we just broke into the top 10 on Akamai's ranking of average connection speed. On both metrics, we blow away the other big Western democracies (the U.K., France, and Germany).
I question the utility of average here. If I have a single gigabit user, I can dwarf a whole lot of 2-3 megabit connections. Good that we're ahead, but medians would be helpful here to give a better picture. Hopefully Akamai dealt with this somehow in their methodology.
I agree with you that a /median/ average is more illustrative of the progress than a /mode/ average.
However even better would be an actual /map/ showing you by area of ISP service, the fastest speeds (down and up) that an ISP is willing to attempt* (believe in a normal case they have a reasonable chance of success) to provide.
Then from that map, weighted by population density, reaching qualitative conclusions; such as mode average based on population, or the cutoffs at 20 and 80% of the population.
Something is very wrong here. What other business/industry is there which wants you to use less of their product at a slower rate? (only electricity companies pushing for greater efficiency comes to mind). In a healthy capitalist economy, this shouldn't happen.
Isn't that business model of the ISP - you invest in infrastructure and then collect profits from it, selling subscriptions? The existence of ISPs is the proof that they do want to invest - otherwise who did the investments?
> ISPs want to maximize their profit, not the speed of their internets.
How this is contradictory? If you have faster network, you can have more people subscribing and paying more money.
The key here is the need to invest more. The ISPs would rather milk the existing investment. It is also not a given that people would pay enough more for a faster network.
I don't believe faster internet is the top priority of most American ISPs. This is the quality of a monopoly- the focus on maximizing profits. It's not that having faster internet is bad for them as much as it's a waste of time and money compared to simply milking their existing monopoly.
And make no mistake, ISPs are a monopoly. Due to 1) the inherent difficulty of building a broadband network 2) a hellish patchwork of local regulations and government-granted exclusivity deals, ISPs function in a state of basic monopoly.
Densely populated areas can have multiple options for high-speed internet, but the market is not bursting with competition.
If you don't have to compete, what's the point of building out faster internet? Why spend more on investment without competition? Why not just focus on making as much money as possible off previous investments?
Greater connectivity creates new business opportunities. Uber would be impossible without smartphones and reliable data. Netflix would be a DVD company without high-speed home internet.
When the FCC tells us we "don't need" better internet, it forecloses whole new categories of businesses.