3 ms·

> But neither the U.S. nor Sweden puts fiber on every road and street. Firstly, Sweden pretty much intends to do so. The official goal is to bring at least 100

> But neither the U.S. nor Sweden puts fiber on every road and street. Firstly, Sweden pretty much intends to do so. The official goal is to bring at least 100 Mbps service to at least 90% of the population by 2020. Many municipalities/states have programs to build out fiber to everybody. Sweden also already has a cable running to almost every premise, so in practice every road and every street is already passed. In 2011 xDSL covered 98,5% of the population and only 1100 households or businesses had no service or less than 1 Mbps service. Secondly, it's an estimate, but it's a far better estimate than population density or any other single metric presented so far. It correlates with the linear miles of cable needed to pass all premises, which is the deciding factor in determining costs. It is also readily available and it measures compratively how hard it would be wire up a nation. By this measure Sweden does far better, even having a need for more infrastructure per inhabitant to reach the same end result, i.e. broadband service for everyone.

rayiner 10y ago
You could cover 90% of the population of Sweden while only covering a small fraction of the roads. You could probably cover 98.5% of the population without covering much of the road network.
- amazon_not 10y ago
  > You could cover 90% of the population of Sweden while only covering a small fraction of the roads. Is this just a guess or do you have anything to back this up with? > You could probably cover 98.5% of the population without covering much of the road network. Here's a map of xDSL coverage: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/201104/20110412ATT17542/20110412ATT17542EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/20110... Let's see how you propose to cover that land area without also covering much of the road network.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    Look at the HSPA map on page 5. Look at how little of the country you need to cover to hit 99.6% of the population.
    - amazon2 10y ago
      That's an interesting observation. I wonder if that 99.6% figure is a mistake or if they use a different coverage definition for wireless, because the numbers don't add up. Looking at the map, the northernmost county has barely any HSPA coverage. Nevertheless that county has a population of a quarter of a million inhabitants. To get 99.6% coverage, you'd still have to cover over 200 000 of those and everybody else in the country. That's clearly impossible as 100 000 inhabitants in that county live outside the ten largest "metro" areas. There's just no way of not covering a lot of roads if if you aim for coverage in the high nineties with such a dispersed population.

rayiner 10y ago

You could cover 90% of the population of Sweden while only covering a small fraction of the roads. You could probably cover 98.5% of the population without covering much of the road network.

amazon_not 10y ago
> You could cover 90% of the population of Sweden while only covering a small fraction of the roads. Is this just a guess or do you have anything to back this up with? > You could probably cover 98.5% of the population without covering much of the road network. Here's a map of xDSL coverage: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/201104/20110412ATT17542/20110412ATT17542EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/20110... Let's see how you propose to cover that land area without also covering much of the road network.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Look at the HSPA map on page 5. Look at how little of the country you need to cover to hit 99.6% of the population.
  - amazon2 10y ago
    That's an interesting observation. I wonder if that 99.6% figure is a mistake or if they use a different coverage definition for wireless, because the numbers don't add up. Looking at the map, the northernmost county has barely any HSPA coverage. Nevertheless that county has a population of a quarter of a million inhabitants. To get 99.6% coverage, you'd still have to cover over 200 000 of those and everybody else in the country. That's clearly impossible as 100 000 inhabitants in that county live outside the ten largest "metro" areas. There's just no way of not covering a lot of roads if if you aim for coverage in the high nineties with such a dispersed population.