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Category: US broadband

04.04.2023 Musings

by Om Malik
This post is by Om Malik from On my Om

white ceramic mug and saucer with coffee beans on brown textile
Photo by Mike Kenneally on Unsplash

Sometimes, when sitting quietly, enjoying a cooling cup of perfectly crafted pour-over coffee, I find myself staring at the back of my hand. In front of my eyes lies a landscape akin to the red sand of the American Southwest that lay baking under the scorching sun after a week of rain. You can see the time crisscrossing the skin, which has been losing a battle with the vanishing collagen. What was unseen slowly becomes more visible, crack by crack—a slow creep of the wrinkles. You can run, but you can’t hide from time.

When I am feeling down & urgently need retail therapy, I buy a pair of socks. Elon Musk buys 9.2 percent of @Twitter

Leichtman Research Group (LRG), a market research group, has collated the data for 2021 and “found that the largest cable and wireline phone providers in the U.S. – representing about 96% of the market” added 2.95 million net additional broadband Internet subscribers. These companies added 4.86 million subscribers in 2020 and 2.55 million in 2019.   They now account for 108.4 million subscribers — cable companies have 75.7 million broadband subscribers, while phone companies have 32.7 million subscribers.

Just because Facebook, Google, and everyone else has managed to erode our privacy and hoard our data doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take our privacy seriously. Why? Because data is personal and social. And like us humans, it ages with time, gets stale, and becomes pretty worthless. Any day is a (Read more...)

Broadband & Internet is Growing Everywhere

by Om Malik
This post is by Om Malik from On my Om

man in green jacket sitting on chair

About 30 years ago this month, some boffins at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Lab at Stanford University decided to set up a website — they wanted to improve how information was exchanged between many international physicists. And that is how the first website in North America was born. We have come a long way since.

87% of U.S. households get an Internet service at home, compared to 83% in 2016 and 69% in 2006 Reports Leichtman Research Group  Broadband accounts for 98% of households with an Internet service at home, and 85% of all households get a broadband Internet service – an increase from 81% in 2016 and 42% in 2006. 

These numbers roughly mirror the data shared by Pew Research earlier in the year. And no matter how you look at it, this is good news. And what’s even better is that according to the latest data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), estimates that 4.9 billion people use the Internet, though not all of them go online frequently and are using the network in drips and drabs. Nevertheless, a ‘COVID connectivity boost’ added 782 million additional people to the total since 2019.

What’s not such good news is the cost of broadband in the United States. According to The Cost of Connectivity, a research report from the Open Technology Institute, the average cost of broadband in the US is about $68.38. That is higher than average prices in large parts of the world.

Blame it (Read more...)

Broadband & Internet is Growing Everywhere

by Om Malik
This post is by Om Malik from On my Om

man in green jacket sitting on chair

About 30 years ago this month, some boffins at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Lab at Stanford University decided to set up a website — they wanted to improve how information was exchanged between many international physicists. And that is how the first website in North America was born. We have come a long way since.

87% of U.S. households get an Internet service at home, compared to 83% in 2016 and 69% in 2006 Reports Leichtman Research Group  Broadband accounts for 98% of households with an Internet service at home, and 85% of all households get a broadband Internet service – an increase from 81% in 2016 and 42% in 2006. 

These numbers roughly mirror the data shared by Pew Research earlier in the year. And no matter how you look at it, this is good news. And what’s even better is that according to the latest data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), estimates that 4.9 billion people use the Internet, though not all of them go online frequently and are using the network in drips and drabs. Nevertheless, a ‘COVID connectivity boost’ added 782 million additional people to the total since 2019.

What’s not such good news is the cost of broadband in the United States. According to The Cost of Connectivity, a research report from the Open Technology Institute, the average cost of broadband in the US is about $68.38. That is higher than average prices in large parts of the world.

Blame it (Read more...)