Joost: Hindered by American Stupidity

Not like "you are stupid" stupidity, more like "you didn't pay attention to who you elected or what they did" stupidity. Its not big secret that America, inventor of the internet, is somewhere down the list past Slovenia in terms of broadband speed and cost.

(The US - with broadband penetration at just under 53% - is in 24th place.)

The fact that anyone would consider 3Mps down broadband in 2007 should be an indicator of just how bad the situations is.

Oh wait! I just checked and the official definition is "data transmission speeds exceeding 200 kilobits per second (Kbps), or 200,000 bits per second, in at least one direction: downstream (from the Internet to your computer) or upstream (from your computer to the Internet)."

I guess the rest of the post really kind of writes itself. Joost can't work on a 10 year old, crippled network. Another big win for the USA!

From NewTeeVee:

"The fundamental problem that Joost faces is the fact that the broadband available to North American households simply isn’t fast enough for them to provide image quality comparable to digital cable or satellite, much less high-definition video.

My concern is that with DSL provider AT&T moving into IPTV, and cable Internet providers already delivering video, what little competition there is in America for consumer broadband providers, any incentive to increase speeds (especially the upstream bandwidth) could hit a wall of corporate self-interest. After all, why should companies like Comcast offer the kind of high speed broadband enjoyed in Europe and Asia when it would simply enable companies like Joost to compete with the company’s own digital video offerings?

Even if there is a significant increase in network speed, without any guarantees of network neutrality, Internet providers could simply charge Joost and other independent IPTV upstarts for the bandwidth rights to stream video of comparable quality to their own digital video offerings.

And guess who that cost would get passed on to? That would be you. So while Joost has a lot of potential on other continents, the cards are stacked against the company here in the USA."