Charlottesville's internet-speed glory
Posted by Helena Cobban
January 21, 2010 3:31 PM EST | Link
Filed in Global affairs , Hometown Charlottesville
Every so often I get back to reading my Google Reader.... Just now I saw this great post by Matthew Yglesias.
So the USA is still not #1 worldwide in average speed of the available internet. We're, um, #18, as of the third quarter of 2009. Amazingly, too, of all the countries Yglesias lists, the US is the only one that saw a Year-on-year drop in speeds. I suppose one possible explanation for that is that a lot of new users got connected, but at lower speeds. Either that, or someone is, whatever, sitting inside the Intertubes someplace blocking all the traffic as it goes past. (Could that be the NSA?)
But then, look at the city-by-city listing. Charlottesville is right up there among the global leaders, at #8! Go, Charlottesville!
I don't know why Yglesias has to be sniffy and make a point of noting that, like the other "fast" US city listed there, Charlottesville is, um, pretty darn small by world standards.
Oh how interesting Helena. I can imagine our local booster-media will be touting this too, though 'ti a bit surreal. I wonder how "Charlottesville" was defined. By corporate limits or by address? I have a Ch'ville postal address, but live maybe 7 miles south of the corporate city limits.
I barely have broadband at all, via a very sluggish extended reach dsl, maybe 750 kbps. Most of my neighbors in this area (all with Charlottesville addresses) are stuck with miserable satellite options or (gasp) dial-up.
Meanwhile, the corporate raiding game (via our local phone assets) from Centel to Sprint to Embarq to now... CenturyLink goes on.... I hear CenturyLink is promising fiber optic in every pot. Believe it when I see it.
I suppose U.S. productivity goes into the military and not infrastructure.