Why U.S. Internet Stinks

1) South Korea

South Korea is a techonlogically advanced country. This is because they have worked extremely hard to put in infrastructure for technology, but they also end up having to sacrifice natural land and air quality for it.

2) Hong Kong

Hong Kong's small size enables it to gain advanced internet.

3) Japan

Japan is famous for being technologically advanced and, because it is under communist rule, regulation on frequency and things like that enable technology to most faster.

4) Netherlands

Each country that I have seen so far has been relatively small. This is because it is far easier to get internet across smaller countries, but that is not the real reason. There is a much deeper issue behind this in other countries.

5) Latvia

This country was also enabled by its small size.

The United States is an interesting situation because it is a large country, which ranks 16th in the world. There is a difference between the U.S. and smaller countries, tough. In many of the countries in which there is fast internet the prices are fairly low. This is not the case in the U.S. Our rank is lower because we are hung up on the red tape created by the monopolies that cable companies have. The companies often have exclusivity in a particular area of the country. There are many companies, in different industries, that have exclusivity in particular areas though. There is one main difference between other companies and cable company monolpolies though. That is the fact that the internet is now becoming a place in which an entire form of commerce can exist: eCommerce. So why don't we have faster internet? And why is it so expensive?

The U.S. is such a large country, which is so densely populated, that cable and internet providers can complain that there it is not feasable for them to compete with other countries. That is complete horse crap. The fact is that countries like the U.K., that weren't even listed until now, have rapidly risen through the ranks because they enforced Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality states that all people or companies, no matter how big or small, should pay the same prices for internet.

For example, a prolific "Youtuber" Phillip Defranco had just begun starting to make his channel into an actual company when his internet provider stated that he must pay "Business Internet Fees." Basically what this translates to is slower, more expensive, internet that just because you are a "Business", which is outrageous. Why should someone who is a business pay more. Now I know what you're thinking, "Well if it's a big company like Google, who uses a lot of bandwidth then it makes sense," but actually companies like Google or Microsoft pay less for their internet because the cable companies know they will be a steady customer.

So essentially, cable providers argue that just because you're a bigger, "more stable" company you deserve cheaper prices. This is why internet speeds in the U.S. are so skewed. Cable companies are making large amounts of money, removing competition as well as destroying innovation, and because they have big enough lobbies they can keep doing this indefinitely. So I suggest that you do anything you can to try and change this. Contact as many people as you can. Especially about any bills such as SOPA that do the exact opposite.