ITNews

The Business Week posting The Sad State of U.S. Broadband tells the story

The U.S. has a dismal showing among nations in terms of broadband availability, with no easy solution to bridge the gap

For the second year running, the U.S. ranked 15th among the 30 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development in terms of broadband availability. Denmark ranked first again in the annual OECD survey, followed by a host of European and Asian nations. Indeed, while the number of Americans with access to broadband service rose 20% last year, to nearly 70 million people, the most in the OECD, that amounted to just 23 of every 100 residents. By contrast, the top five countries in the OECD ranking all sport per-capita penetration rates of better than 30%.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission seems to playing the Telecom industry lap dog role when it quickly points out differences in population and geography that have made it more difficult for the nation to catch up with smaller countries.

Yea, right, sure. Lame excuse. My take on this situation is control is paramount for the telecom industry. The Telecom greed mongers will increase broadband speeds once they have stifled any and all Internet video on-demand competition, and the Telecom industry is firmly in control. This business model has worked well for the Hollywood greed mongers for decades, so why not for the Telecom greed mongers.

…John

eWeek is reporting ISPs Assailed at FCC Hearing.

Unfortunately none of the ISPs accused of wrongdoing showed up to hear the harangues by the Cristian Coalition, Raging Grannies, and other irate citizens complaining about IPSs mucking with packets.

You’ve got to hand it to ISPs like Comcast for doing about everything wrong to contain a public relations blowout.

…John

Did you know some ISPs (Internet Service Provider) inject advertisements into your Web queries? This and other stupid things some ISPs do are discussed in the Electronic Frontier Foundation posting Software for Keeping ISPs Honest.

The March 27th, 2008 announcement of a détente between Comcast and BitTorrent was great news. The two parties announced they will undertake a collaborative effort with one another and with the broader Internet and ISP community to more effectively address issues associated with rich media content and network capacity management. Read the details in the BitTorrent posting Comcast and BitTorrent Form Collaboration to Address Network Management, Network Architecture and Content Distribution

Unfortunately, the general problem of ISPs doing strange things to Internet traffic without telling their customers is likely to continue in the future. EFF and many other organizations are working on software to test ISPs for unusual (mis)behavior. In this detailed post, we have a round-up of the tools that are out there right now, and others that are in development…

Yep, it is likely to continue. The mighty power of greed knows no boundary. As though defending against Internet hackers, crackers, and crooks, isn’t enough, we will soon need to defend ourselves from unscrupulous ISPs.

…John

Prices for Samsung, Sony and Sharp Blu-ray disc players are at an all time high.

I guess the winners of the high definition disc format war have won the right to turn on their greed machines.

(Credit: Tom’s Hardware)

I seems to me these greedy vendors would lower their prices to attract more customers and increase the number of Blue-ray titles they sell.

Oh well, when did logic ever trump marketing greed?

…John

I was pleasantly surprised reading the Tech-Ex posting Circuit City Extends Return Time for HD-DVD Players.

Some retailers have been offering credits or trade-ins for returns of HD-DVD players, but you always need to buy a new Blu-ray player in exchange. Circuit City is going them one better, extending its 30-day return policy to 90 days for HD-DVD players.

Maybe some merchants aren’t as unscrupulous or greedy as I indicated in my HD DVD Death Watch posting.

…John