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Optimize with a SATA RAID Storage Solution
Range of capacities as low as $1250 per TB. Ideal if you currently rely on servers/disks/JBODs
According to the broadband testing firm NetIndex, U.S. consumer broadband speeds rank 33rd in the world, right behind the Ukraine. Personally, I pay more than $1,500 per month for 30/30MB fiber for our office. This is ridiculously expensive and slower than the average household Internet in many other countries. It's a serious impediment to the United States maintaining its economic competitiveness -- and to enabling all of us to take full advantage of the cloud, which is clearly the next phase of computing.
As a patriotic American, I find the current political atmosphere where telecom lobbyists set the agenda to be a nightmare. All over the world, high-end fiber is being deployed while powerful monopolies in the United States work to prevent it from coming here. Some of those monopolies are even drafting "model legislation" to protect themselves from both community broadband and commercial competition.
Poor laws and regulations have protected a duopoly in most areas of the country. You can buy Internet from the local cable monopoly or the local phone monopoly, period. Neither have much motivation to make it much faster nor any cheaper.
Lobbying for lock-in
In my state, North Carolina, Time Warner Cable's lobbying group managed to get our rather technology-unfriendly legislature to pass a horrible law to "protect private enterprise" by making it nearly impossible for local communities to build out their own municipal fiber without the burden of onerous
regulations. Apparently, what's good for Time Warner isn't good for the rest of us. (Forgive me, but I don't consider state-sponsored
monopolies to be "private enterprise.")
On its face, such mischief appears to be a local problem in the United States, with at least 20 states having passed legislation to protect Ma Bell and Pa Cable. But clearly, it's a coordinated national effort. Multiple national lobbying organizations pretend to protect private business from unwarranted government competition, but are actually shielding large, state-sponsored, franchise monopolies.
For many small businesses, $1,500 per month is out of reach. In the case of my business, we expect to have to upgrade this connection pretty rapidly as we expand -- and, sadly, pay even more. This kind of a cost, plus the speed disadvantage, puts us on an uneven playing field with similar companies in other countries. Plus, in some rural areas of my state and the rest of the country, there is no broadband at all.
Originally, my company used the same cable broadband you get in the home with 50MB down and 5MB up (believe it or not, this is perceptibly slower than 30/30MB fiber in general). When we moved from local servers to the cloud, we knew the 5MB uplink would be a serious problem. Also, with clients and partners in Europe who love Skype, it seemed prudent to reduce the packet loss and latency endemic to normal business cable.
We've been here before
The current situation brings to mind the battle over rural electrification in the 1930s, where the utility monopolies tried
to prevent the government from expanding the electrical grid outside of the wealthiest parts of the country. The argument
was that the utilities couldn't pay for it -- and if the government got involved, it would cost jobs.