These companies in the USA that refuse to allow faster Internet speeds need to be taken over by some rich savvy entrepreneurs.

Problem is, just the opposite is happening. The U.S. government is letting these companies get bigger and bigger creating monopolies. If you have a captive audience, you don't have to provide service.

It is the local governments which prevent competition through the poll taxes and restrictions. When a company gets larger market share through a free market prices go down and quality goes up. It is only when the company has force using the government it is a monopoly and prices go up and quality goes down.

Pity that history refutes your claims.
Remember the horrible service of AT&T? I sure do!
Quality and choices increased with the baby bells and now quality and choice is disappearing as they re-monopolize.

No, AT&T was not free market, it was a monopoly protected by the federal government. When you have monopolies quality goes down and cost goes up because competition is held back by force of government. Capitalism, freedom, free markets, individual rights work. People reject them because of an incorrect moral code of altruism as Ayn Rand discovered.

Regrettably, Ms Rand got it wrong as well, as she trusted businesses to do the right thing. History is replete with businesses selling tainted products, defective products, even poisons that were claimed to be medicines.
The reality is, we've yet to find that magical balance that works for business and for the public.

You just totally ignored that I proved you were wrong about AT&T. It was a monopoly, not free market. Also if people commit crimes that is why we have government to put them to justice. You don't go around enslaving people because they might commit crimes.

Gee, it is no wonder the ISP's argue we don't need faster internet. This is like the fox guarding the henhouse. Why would they make any argument that means they have to concede to additional capital investments? The fact that the FED even listens to that dribble is disturbing.

The head of the FCC is an ex cable company exec, and when he leaves that office he'll probably go right back.

Quite likely. It's called regulatory capture for a reason.

Notice all the countries (if you exclude Hong Kong adn South Korea who we are committed to defend) have no military to speak of - just something I noticed -

And relatively high population density too. It makes sense to put gigabit + speeds in NYC, but not so much in Wyoming.

You'd think, but (as mentioned in the article) most local and municipal ISPs offering gigabit are actually in rural areas or small cities. Here are a couple examples:

http://www.vermontel.com/in...
http://chattanoogagig.com/

We have begun the build-out of our muni gigabit in Longmont, CO (30 mi. N of Denver). Expect it mostly done within two years.

FYI South Korea does have a Army and Hong Kong belongs to China so their for they have an army too. The ISP here in the US is worried about the short term investments not the long term investments is why we will always be behind.

He said "excluding Hong Kong and South Korea".

You missed it slightly, John.
The main carriers are interested in short term profits, rather than long term investments.

Japan, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Netherlands, Latvia, Ireland, Finland, and Sweden ALL have military forces.

Actually, on a population basis, most of these countries are doing very well militarily.

Erm, South Korea most certainly does have a military and it's a sizable one as well.
Latvia has a sizable military as well, I trained with them!

I work in South Korea at the Hyundai shipyard in Ulsan. I just did a speed test on wifi with my iphone 6 plus and got 28.69Mbps download ; 51.86Mbps Upload and ping at 15ms. yea, I would say its way faster then my UVERSE and comcast in texas and in Seattle

Most people do not realize that since America was basically first with the internet we have an old, aging infrastructure. It does need to be replaced, but by and large, many places around the world started out with a better system to begin with. After America was the guinea pig.

Comcast says we don't need or want higher speeds? Really? Your ads promising "double the speed" of before says you don't believe that.

I get 18 mbps for $60 a month. I think these companies can do better, but when you have very limited choices, you take what you can get.

Aging infrastructure my rump. Gigabit internet was always going to require new fiber threads to be pulled to every house. The old telephone wires can't carry it. Cable could, but it takes a lot of bandwidth that they would rather use for TV. Every country in the world faced the same issue, and some of them got off of their behinds and built stuff.

I had Verizon FIOS, which is fiber based. The service was quite good, but never anywhere near 50 MPS that was advertised, save to Verizon services.

Obviously the infrastructure is aging if you have to pull fiber to make better connections. That was my point. The typical current coax connection will not handle the load.

What is your problem? You dumb?

I am not sure what you point is. Is there something specific in my post that you find objectionable? Or wrong? Thanks,

Please save us Google and focus on Fiber.

America is being out Americaned

The most important thing is missing: price! The US has mediocre service for a high price: http://www.npr.org/blogs/al...

I recently got an offer from ATT for an optical service for 500$ per month and 100M up and down... take for instance Paris France where optical service is everywhere available for years now for consumers with a 10Go broadband for 29 euros per month.what a gap !

We can thank our government officials for making/allowing a business environment in which we are not in the top ten countries. If you want less government regulations because you think it will help business "create more jobs" then this will likely be the results. Very few corporations will "do what is right" if profits are their only motivation and reward. While there may be some foreign government funding to create the infrastructure for this internet performance I would bet that a profit is still being made in these countries. If US ISPs can't provide a comparable infrastructure and costs the question is why? By their responses it is clear that internet is a cash cow and a monopoly for them that they don't want to change. That is why they desperately fight local competition and encourage laws that weaken regulations.

At one time, the United States was tops in just about everything. Not anymore. Internet service is slow because the ISP want to bleed the American consumers dry. Even our train service is slow, as compared to other countries...

in Europe. their is not much freight rail. amtrack has to share with BNSF, buffets company. blame warren buffet for slow rail service

The train service in Athens puts the train service in DC to shame.

Greece is broke though

Bumba**, so is America.

Agreed. European rail service is great.

Why in the world would you need to be able to download an HD movie in seven seconds?

It's probably the same reason why rich people want to get richerand besides that kind of Internet speed would not only be used for movie downloading

Higher bandwidth reduces the congestion on links. There would be less concurrent downloads that would require sharing of the bandwidth.

So you can watch a movie right after you decide you want to watch it instead of waiting 30 minutes for it to download like people in America have to.

Movies are streamed. I think download rates over 10Mbps are overkill for 99.9% of residential users, and this article is talking about rates 1000 times that amount. What is the use case for that? I don't think there will be one during this century, if ever. There's got to be practical limits on the amount of data it would be useful for a person to consume per second.

I download entire DVD's of software (open source). That slow rate you describe slows my download tremendously, limiting my time available to configure and utilize that software.

Here is a small hint, in a democratic society, you do not determine what someone else "needs", either the populace decides as a whole (or via their representative) or via market forces.

Now, I work in networking. At work, we have a half dozen OC-48 lines coming in. We utilize much of that bandwidth, due to the nature of our business. Would you want to limit that as well?
Bandwidth is finite, but additional circuits can be tied in an load balancing takes care of the rest.
For those who don't know, payload on an OC-48 is 2.4 GPS.

For me, 2.4 GPS is wasted (in my home), but I certainly can put 100 MPS to good use. And good use that is legal.

And Bill Gates once said there would never be a need for more than 640KB of RAM on a personal computer.

8k tv is 25gbps uncompressed. 85mbps compressed

I can't see the pixels on my 4k TV, unless I want to turn the entire side of my house into a TV, I don't see the point in 8k...other than to say "look how many k's my TV has..."
Compressed 4k through Netflix looks nice, and runs well on my Fios 50/50 connection. Uncompressed 4k is something I would rather save for disk based media. I always prefer physical media when going for maximum quality.
I work from home on digital media, and my connection is more than enough for me, even downloading software. I have no doubt things will continue to slowly improve, but I'm in no hurry to have gajigabit speeds.

Right! And also, why would you need to compare South Korea to the U.S.? As if there were only two significant countries in the world. "Hey U.S.A.! What about me! Huh? Huh?"

Why compare everyone with the USA? The US is not a leader in anything - except murders, imprisonment, waging war on other countries, spying on other countries, having the biggest spy agency, etc etc. Nothing at all to be proud of.

Follow how much money the FCC gives to AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, etc.. and then follow how much wireless spectrum is made available to the cell companies that isn't tagged as unlicensed for open bandwidth. The Federal Government blocks small businesses from introducing disruptive technologies to compete with cable and cellular carriers to perpetuate big monopolies. Tom Wheeler, the head of the FCC, is a former lobbyist appointed by Obama to protect those monopolies. Guess how much money he is going to make when he leaves his job and goes back to the private sector.