How Come My ISP Won’t Increase Internet Speed and Lower My Bill, Like They Do in Sweden?

We Americans are getting addicted to our high-speed broadband connections. Unfortunately, they are often slower and more expensive than the Internet hook-ups you can grab in many other developed nations.

For example, my brother pays $40 a month for his 100-megabit broadband connection in Karlstad, Sweden. He can take his pick from 19 different service providers, all using a common last-mile infrastructure and competing on price and features. For $70 a month, he could upgrade to a full gigabit.

Me, I’m stuck paying $83 a month for a 50-megabit connection. Moreover, my upload connection rarely goes past half the speed Verizon (nyse: vz) promised. So I’m paying more and getting less, and if I wanted Verizon’s fastest available FiOS connection, I’d be paying $300 a month (plus taxes!) for half a gigabit.

It’s pretty clear that the Swedish model delivers more value and lower prices than the American way. And it’s all made possible by a robust collection of municipal networks.

So why isn’t America following the municipal path to high-speed bliss?

… it’s complicated
Here’s what happened in Sweden, in a nutshell.

As the 1990s drew to a close and the Internet started to become a big deal, Swedish consumers and businesses started thirsting for faster and more reliable connections. An industry emerged to serve this unmet need, much like anywhere else.

But there was a problem. Formerly government-owned telecom giant Telia had already installed a nationwide fiber-optic network and was unwilling to share network access with other operators. One by one, county and municipality leaders started drawing up their own plans for local high-speed networking — and reaching out to one another to connect the separate networks into a nationwide loop.

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About Mark Milliman

Mark Milliman is a Principal Consultant at Inphotonics Research driving the adoption and assisting local governments to plan, build, operate, and lease access open-access municipal broadband networks. Additionally, he works with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to increase the value of their intellectual capital through the creation of strategic product plans and execution of innovative marketing strategies. With more than 22 years of experience in the telecommunications industry that began at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Mark has built fiber, cable, and wireless networks around the world to deliver voice, video, and data services. His thorough knowledge of all aspects of service delivery from content creation to the design, operation, and management of the network is utilized by carriers and equipment manufacturers. Mark conceived and developed one of the industry's first multi-service provisioning platform and is multiple patent holder. He is active in the IEEE as a senior member. Mark received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
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