There was a piece in the Hartford Courant this morning that explored the broadband technology here in the US against what’s available in other countries. There were two points to this piece: our speed and accessibility is lagging the rest of the world; and the cause is the greed-motivated preservation of monopolies. In other countries, it is common for all of the providers to share a single infrastructure. This article is available here: http://www.courant.com/business/custom/consumer/hc-ls-consumer-confidential-0506-20120505,0,1640338.story. It was originally published in the Los Angeles Times.

Here’s a choice quotation:

The Federal Communications Commission issued a report last year showing that the U.S. ranks 12th for broadband service such as cable and DSL connections, outpaced by South Korea, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Britain, Canada and Germany, respectively.

This got me to run a speed test, something that I’ve done many times before. I’m using Comcast residential service. I’ve been doing this every once in a while, and my results have been pretty consistent: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1935909282.png,