10 ms·

This was a super interesting read. The one thing I never fail to get over though is how expensive internet is in the states. In the UK you can get 200/20 for ab

by vflagr 10y ago

This was a super interesting read. The one thing I never fail to get over though is how expensive internet is in the states. In the UK you can get 200/20 for about £58 p/m including TV & Phone. I couldn't imagine paying nearly $100 p/m for 100mbps.

falsedan 10y ago
That's thanks to the BT/OpenReach split in the 90s forcing small ISPs to compete on service & cost (because they all have the same guaranteed cost to access the infrastructure). Plus y'know you can blow fibre to 90% of the population in a reasonable amount of time.
- jon-wood 10y ago
  Except it's not - for 200/20 at those prices the GP must be talking about a Virgin Media line, and they run their own cables. The increased competition between providers probably contributes to driving down prices to just above the point of profitability, but its not responsible for the infrastructure in this case.
  - 9NRtKyP4 10y ago
    200/20 is available from Openreach as fibre-to-the-premises but it's rare and only a handful of providers offer it.
  - falsedan 10y ago
    I think the common base-level infrastructure helped drive ISPs to compete on service & feature + meant they can use their funds to implement those features.
chrishacken 10y ago
It's not that the bandwidth is expensive; it's the cost to deploy everything. If there was preexisting conduit/fiber in the ground and all we had to do was plug two cables together, I'd be able to charge $25/m too. I've never been to the UK, but I believe your population density is a lot higher than that of the US; which is where all of our costs originate (interconnecting the customer to our network).
- martinald 10y ago
  I don't think that's the reason really. The main reason I can see is that Comcast (or cable internet) has no real competition. I don't understand why that is. AT&T, Verizon etc seem to have given up on competing. Verizon stopped their rollout of FTTH a while back nearly entirely, though it has restarted very slowly. AT&Ts VDSL based UVerse solution is way too sparse, with very long cable runs. Compare this to BT in the UK where most VDSL2 runs they are doing are <500m. They're now looking at GFast to push fibre even closer to customers, getting copper runs down to ~200m. Ok, so this may be caused by low population density, but I'm not entirely convinced. It must be way cheaper to dig trenches in suburbia USA as many of the places don't even have sidewalks to dig up and then expensively refill, you could just trench along the side of the road.
  - ajosh 10y ago
    One other reason is that counties have the land rights. They negotiate with the big Telco's like Comcast, Verizon, Cox, Charter, etc and then issue a monopoly or duopoly in the county for a fixed period of time - usually 10 years at once. The Telco can offer a few things like fiber connectivity between county buildings, tax payments, etc. By doing that, they secure the rights to the area. Given the federal system of the United States, this is a difficult thing to stop. This makes true market-based competition within most areas very difficult to achieve.
    - rayiner 10y ago
      > One other reason is that counties have the land rights. They negotiate with the big Telco's like Comcast, Verizon, Cox, Charter, etc and then issue a monopoly or duopoly in the county for a fixed period of time - usually 10 years at once. They do not do that. It's illegal under federal law. Pole and conduit owners are required to rent out access at non-discriminatory rates: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/224 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/224. The reason companies don't overbuild is because it's expensive and there isn't any return. FiOS came to my building in Baltimore. I was the only person on my floor to switch away from Comcast. Even these days, people choose their broadband provider based primarily on the TV package.
frozenport 10y ago
Same cost in the US but you get much less speed.
gnopgnip 10y ago
You can get cheap internet in the states in many urban areas.
rayiner 10y ago
Depends where you are. Before Brexit, 58 pounds was about $90. I pay about $110 for 150/150 symmetric fiber + TV + phone in Maryland.
cgh 10y ago
The much slower upload speed means your download is bottlenecked (tcp ACKs). A lot of providers offer such asymmetry because it works well for video (udp) but otherwise it's not the great deal you might think it is. As another point of reference, I live in semi-rural Canada about an hour from a major city and have 150/150 fibre for CDN$85/month.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kid0m4n 10y ago
I get symmetric 200/200 for about $70/month in Bangalore, India. It's just a dumb pipe though (no included TV/phone, though I could also go for those).

by vflagr 10y ago

falsedan 10y ago

That's thanks to the BT/OpenReach split in the 90s forcing small ISPs to compete on service & cost (because they all have the same guaranteed cost to access the infrastructure). Plus y'know you can blow fibre to 90% of the population in a reasonable amount of time.

jon-wood 10y ago
Except it's not - for 200/20 at those prices the GP must be talking about a Virgin Media line, and they run their own cables. The increased competition between providers probably contributes to driving down prices to just above the point of profitability, but its not responsible for the infrastructure in this case.
- 9NRtKyP4 10y ago
  200/20 is available from Openreach as fibre-to-the-premises but it's rare and only a handful of providers offer it.
- falsedan 10y ago
  I think the common base-level infrastructure helped drive ISPs to compete on service & feature + meant they can use their funds to implement those features.

chrishacken 10y ago

It's not that the bandwidth is expensive; it's the cost to deploy everything. If there was preexisting conduit/fiber in the ground and all we had to do was plug two cables together, I'd be able to charge $25/m too. I've never been to the UK, but I believe your population density is a lot higher than that of the US; which is where all of our costs originate (interconnecting the customer to our network).

martinald 10y ago
I don't think that's the reason really. The main reason I can see is that Comcast (or cable internet) has no real competition. I don't understand why that is. AT&T, Verizon etc seem to have given up on competing. Verizon stopped their rollout of FTTH a while back nearly entirely, though it has restarted very slowly. AT&Ts VDSL based UVerse solution is way too sparse, with very long cable runs. Compare this to BT in the UK where most VDSL2 runs they are doing are <500m. They're now looking at GFast to push fibre even closer to customers, getting copper runs down to ~200m. Ok, so this may be caused by low population density, but I'm not entirely convinced. It must be way cheaper to dig trenches in suburbia USA as many of the places don't even have sidewalks to dig up and then expensively refill, you could just trench along the side of the road.
- ajosh 10y ago
  One other reason is that counties have the land rights. They negotiate with the big Telco's like Comcast, Verizon, Cox, Charter, etc and then issue a monopoly or duopoly in the county for a fixed period of time - usually 10 years at once. The Telco can offer a few things like fiber connectivity between county buildings, tax payments, etc. By doing that, they secure the rights to the area. Given the federal system of the United States, this is a difficult thing to stop. This makes true market-based competition within most areas very difficult to achieve.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    > One other reason is that counties have the land rights. They negotiate with the big Telco's like Comcast, Verizon, Cox, Charter, etc and then issue a monopoly or duopoly in the county for a fixed period of time - usually 10 years at once. They do not do that. It's illegal under federal law. Pole and conduit owners are required to rent out access at non-discriminatory rates: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/224 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/224. The reason companies don't overbuild is because it's expensive and there isn't any return. FiOS came to my building in Baltimore. I was the only person on my floor to switch away from Comcast. Even these days, people choose their broadband provider based primarily on the TV package.

frozenport 10y ago

Same cost in the US but you get much less speed.

gnopgnip 10y ago

You can get cheap internet in the states in many urban areas.

rayiner 10y ago

Depends where you are. Before Brexit, 58 pounds was about $90. I pay about $110 for 150/150 symmetric fiber + TV + phone in Maryland.

cgh 10y ago

The much slower upload speed means your download is bottlenecked (tcp ACKs). A lot of providers offer such asymmetry because it works well for video (udp) but otherwise it's not the great deal you might think it is. As another point of reference, I live in semi-rural Canada about an hour from a major city and have 150/150 fibre for CDN$85/month.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

kid0m4n 10y ago

I get symmetric 200/200 for about $70/month in Bangalore, India. It's just a dumb pipe though (no included TV/phone, though I could also go for those).