US Internet Still very Slow

By Robert X. Cringely
bob@cringely.com
My friend Ira, who lives in Yokohama, Japan, has 100-megabit-per-second fiber-optic Internet service in his home. This costs Ira less than $30 per month. What the heck is up with that? Ten years ago, the United States had the fastest and cheapest residential Internet service in the world. Today U.S. residential Internet service, especially broadband, is among the slowest and most expensive. I'll explain next week how I believe we came to be in this bandwidth mess, but this week I get to predict that the situation may (finally) be changing. Get ready for a substantially faster and somewhat cheaper Internet.