3 ms·

This is the correct answer. Old, but still relevant density map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File:World_population_density_1994.png

This is the correct answer. Old, but still relevant density map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File:World_population_density_1994.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File...

lorenzhs 11y ago
Norway and Sweden have excellent Fiber-to-the-Home and very low population density. You can get 1GBit/s symmetrical quite cheaply (I don't remember how much, one Swedish offer I found just now is $120/month).
- scott_s 11y ago
  Area of Norway: 148,718 mi² Area of Sweden: 173,732 mi² Area of USA: 3.806 million mi² Even if the densities are similar, infrastructure is harder at scale. It's also true that the places in the US with less density tend to have less economic engines.
  - lorenzhs 11y ago
    Population density of Norway: 14 people per km². Population density of the USA: 35 people per km². Sure it's hard to do this at scale, but nobody is asking for it to be deployed everywhere at the same time. You could start in populous areas, where it would be cheap to do so, and gradually supply less populated areas.
    - douche 11y ago
      That's sort of the way it already works... It's never going to make economic sense to put gigabit fiber out to rural areas, unless it is heavily subsidized. If there were some business location that required high speed, people lucky enough to live along the trunk line to that location might get service - that's the only reason I had cable TV as a child.
- dangerlibrary 11y ago
  1. I suspect that offer isn't available in northern Norway. 2. They are only a couple hundred miles from the big internet exchanges in the Netherlands and Germany. Most of those miles can be covered with undersea cables, so you don't need to dig, which is expensive. 3. The U.S. regulatory environment for internet providers is horrible and everyone knows it.
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    See [1], which is a request to tender: "Tromsø Municipality will contribute to the initiation of construction of a powerful and progressive fibre-based broadband network in the outskirts of the municipality of Tromsø". I assume that means the town itself already has it. Or [2], a press statement from Luleå's largest fibre broadband provider, back in 2012. Both places are in the Arctic, Tromsø is 3000km from Amsterdam. NYC to London is only 5,500km... [1] http://www.publictenders.net/node/1956874 http://www.publictenders.net/node/1956874 [2] https://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2012/10/25/lunet-offers-its-fibre-customers-com-hem-tv-packages-in-lulea/ https://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/...
  - lorenzhs 11y ago
    1. Many regional providers exist all over the country that provide similar services in fairly remote towns. 2. Symbiote addressed this quite well. They're really not that close to the big exchanges. 3. That's not a technical problem though, and could be changed if there was a will to. Which is exactly what this discussion is about—in Scandinavia (in fact, most of Europe), there is competition and the broadband situation is fairly good. Heck, I pay less than $50/month for 200/10 MBit/s and cable TV in Germany. There's no technical reason this wouldn't work in metropolitan areas in the US.
- rhino369 11y ago
  Why does Akami only report ~1/3rd of Sweden and Norway having above 15 Mbps? https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/downloads/pdfs/2015-q2-state-of-the-internet-report.pdf https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/downloads/pdfs/2015-q2-st... I've never been anywhere either country, but I suspect this uberInternet Meme about Scandinavia is not quite representative of average Scandinavian ISP speed.
  - lorenzhs 11y ago
    Sweden is globally ranked 4th in that report, and Norway 7th. Just because GBit fiber is availabe to many doesn't mean that everybody wants to have (or pay for) it.
Retric 11y ago
Nope, population density is only important outside of cities. Circa 2000 the US had a lot of unused backhaul capacity between cities. So, the real reason why most people in the US don't have cheap high speed internet is simply corruption at the local, state, and federal levels. PS: This is also why for example Florida lags in solar adoption. When you dig a little into politics you find US politicians are horribly corrupt at all levels which has deeply infected US law.
- rhino369 11y ago
  Calling policy differences corruption is silly. The US made a choice to favor competition and low regulation over no competition and high regulation. It was probably a poor decision. But you can't just label it corruption. Plus backhaul capacity has virtually nothing to do with ISP costs. Almost all the costs is last mile network.
  - Retric 11y ago
    What completion? US has far less internet completion due to various local monopolies than the EU. In much of the US it's flat out illegal to try and compete with the incumbent. But if you want actual corruption: 200 billion was supposed to pay for high speed internet, but woops companies just pocketed the money. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... But, hey ignorance is bliss. If you want to pretend the US is not ridiculously corrupt then have at it.
    - rhino369 11y ago
      First, 200 billion number is total BS. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 Second, Europe has telecom monopolies and the US doesn't. What Europe does is force the monopoly to sell service to ISPs. But only one company owns the copper/fiber. There is one company in charge of building a fiber network and everybody has to use it. The ISP competition makes sure nobody is ripping you off, but it doesn't ensure network quality at all. Since there is one physical connection to your house. They have no incentive to keep their costs down. They have no incentive to build faster networks. And there is nothing the ISP can do. So what they do is regulate the telecom. Make them do it. In the USA, most areas have two competing telecom-ish companies. The telephone company (AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, Frontier, but never more than one of the above) and a cable company. In populated areas, both of these provided high(ish) speed internet. In some areas only one does, and in some areas none do. But these companies actually own their networks. But they don't have to resell their service like Europe enforces. But that increased competition on the network to your house doesn't work very well. If Verizon makes a huge upgrade, there is no insurance that people will pay more for it. Which is exactly what happened. Verizon spent a ton of money on a nice fiber optic network and people mostly stuck with their old cable service. So in America you have two networks, with overlapping coverage, each delivering to roughly half the market. Competition actually causes less efficiency. But in the end Europe and Americas ISPs aren't really that different. America has better ISPs than the France, Italy, Spain, etc. But countries who can more effectively regulate, have better outcomes. I wish America regulated it better, but it's not corruption. Just a bad policy choice made in 1996.

lorenzhs 11y ago

Norway and Sweden have excellent Fiber-to-the-Home and very low population density. You can get 1GBit/s symmetrical quite cheaply (I don't remember how much, one Swedish offer I found just now is $120/month).

scott_s 11y ago
Area of Norway: 148,718 mi² Area of Sweden: 173,732 mi² Area of USA: 3.806 million mi² Even if the densities are similar, infrastructure is harder at scale. It's also true that the places in the US with less density tend to have less economic engines.
- lorenzhs 11y ago
  Population density of Norway: 14 people per km². Population density of the USA: 35 people per km². Sure it's hard to do this at scale, but nobody is asking for it to be deployed everywhere at the same time. You could start in populous areas, where it would be cheap to do so, and gradually supply less populated areas.
  - douche 11y ago
    That's sort of the way it already works... It's never going to make economic sense to put gigabit fiber out to rural areas, unless it is heavily subsidized. If there were some business location that required high speed, people lucky enough to live along the trunk line to that location might get service - that's the only reason I had cable TV as a child.
dangerlibrary 11y ago
1. I suspect that offer isn't available in northern Norway. 2. They are only a couple hundred miles from the big internet exchanges in the Netherlands and Germany. Most of those miles can be covered with undersea cables, so you don't need to dig, which is expensive. 3. The U.S. regulatory environment for internet providers is horrible and everyone knows it.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  See [1], which is a request to tender: "Tromsø Municipality will contribute to the initiation of construction of a powerful and progressive fibre-based broadband network in the outskirts of the municipality of Tromsø". I assume that means the town itself already has it. Or [2], a press statement from Luleå's largest fibre broadband provider, back in 2012. Both places are in the Arctic, Tromsø is 3000km from Amsterdam. NYC to London is only 5,500km... [1] http://www.publictenders.net/node/1956874 http://www.publictenders.net/node/1956874 [2] https://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2012/10/25/lunet-offers-its-fibre-customers-com-hem-tv-packages-in-lulea/ https://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/...
- lorenzhs 11y ago
  1. Many regional providers exist all over the country that provide similar services in fairly remote towns. 2. Symbiote addressed this quite well. They're really not that close to the big exchanges. 3. That's not a technical problem though, and could be changed if there was a will to. Which is exactly what this discussion is about—in Scandinavia (in fact, most of Europe), there is competition and the broadband situation is fairly good. Heck, I pay less than $50/month for 200/10 MBit/s and cable TV in Germany. There's no technical reason this wouldn't work in metropolitan areas in the US.
rhino369 11y ago
Why does Akami only report ~1/3rd of Sweden and Norway having above 15 Mbps? https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/downloads/pdfs/2015-q2-state-of-the-internet-report.pdf https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/downloads/pdfs/2015-q2-st... I've never been anywhere either country, but I suspect this uberInternet Meme about Scandinavia is not quite representative of average Scandinavian ISP speed.
- lorenzhs 11y ago
  Sweden is globally ranked 4th in that report, and Norway 7th. Just because GBit fiber is availabe to many doesn't mean that everybody wants to have (or pay for) it.

Retric 11y ago

Nope, population density is only important outside of cities. Circa 2000 the US had a lot of unused backhaul capacity between cities. So, the real reason why most people in the US don't have cheap high speed internet is simply corruption at the local, state, and federal levels. PS: This is also why for example Florida lags in solar adoption. When you dig a little into politics you find US politicians are horribly corrupt at all levels which has deeply infected US law.

rhino369 11y ago
Calling policy differences corruption is silly. The US made a choice to favor competition and low regulation over no competition and high regulation. It was probably a poor decision. But you can't just label it corruption. Plus backhaul capacity has virtually nothing to do with ISP costs. Almost all the costs is last mile network.
- Retric 11y ago
  What completion? US has far less internet completion due to various local monopolies than the EU. In much of the US it's flat out illegal to try and compete with the incumbent. But if you want actual corruption: 200 billion was supposed to pay for high speed internet, but woops companies just pocketed the money. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... But, hey ignorance is bliss. If you want to pretend the US is not ridiculously corrupt then have at it.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    First, 200 billion number is total BS. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 Second, Europe has telecom monopolies and the US doesn't. What Europe does is force the monopoly to sell service to ISPs. But only one company owns the copper/fiber. There is one company in charge of building a fiber network and everybody has to use it. The ISP competition makes sure nobody is ripping you off, but it doesn't ensure network quality at all. Since there is one physical connection to your house. They have no incentive to keep their costs down. They have no incentive to build faster networks. And there is nothing the ISP can do. So what they do is regulate the telecom. Make them do it. In the USA, most areas have two competing telecom-ish companies. The telephone company (AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, Frontier, but never more than one of the above) and a cable company. In populated areas, both of these provided high(ish) speed internet. In some areas only one does, and in some areas none do. But these companies actually own their networks. But they don't have to resell their service like Europe enforces. But that increased competition on the network to your house doesn't work very well. If Verizon makes a huge upgrade, there is no insurance that people will pay more for it. Which is exactly what happened. Verizon spent a ton of money on a nice fiber optic network and people mostly stuck with their old cable service. So in America you have two networks, with overlapping coverage, each delivering to roughly half the market. Competition actually causes less efficiency. But in the end Europe and Americas ISPs aren't really that different. America has better ISPs than the France, Italy, Spain, etc. But countries who can more effectively regulate, have better outcomes. I wish America regulated it better, but it's not corruption. Just a bad policy choice made in 1996.