7 ms·
If this is true why is my Virgin Media fibre pretty damn fast and reliable and every American seems to constantly whinge about their cable provider?
by andy_ppp 9y ago
If this is true why is my Virgin Media fibre pretty damn fast and reliable and every American seems to constantly whinge about their cable provider?
- rayiner 9y agoWhat do you mean, "if this is true?" I linked my sources (Akamai and OECD)--you can see for yourself. As far as that perception goes, my suspicion is that it has to do with the tech press/readership skewing young and urban. The U.S. is highly unusual in making the actual building of wires largely a state/local issue, and also in treating cities as ghettos instead of national priorities. Maryland, where I live, is a microcosm: if it were a country, it'd be just below Finland for broadband speeds. But it's only major city (Baltimore) is impoverished, and doesn't have fiber even though all the counties around it do. My neck of the state is pretty rural--large parts of it don't even have public water/sewer. But it's had fiber for a decade. Meanwhile, New York and Boston are just now getting fiber, and San Francisco still mostly doesn't have it.
- andy_ppp 9y agoSo what you’re saying is averages don’t give the whole picture?
- rayiner 9y agoIf you're talking about how well a national regulatory regime works, nationwide or statewide averages are probably more relevant data points than anecdotes about specific cities.
- pjc50 9y ago> treating cities as ghettos instead of national priorities This sounds completely backwards, until you realise all persistent problems in the US can be traced to racism. (I'm still unconvinced as to the idea that broadband is statistically "better" in the US but the customers complain far more. I suspect that a huge chunk of people prefer slow/cheap/reliable to fast/expensive, certainly once you get beyond about 10mbit.)