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This is why I'm happy to live in a country like France where the government takes part in deploying those infrastructures (by investing money in the deployment)

This is why I'm happy to live in a country like France where the government takes part in deploying those infrastructures (by investing money in the deployment). They planned to equip 50% of the territory by 2017 (which was achieved), and 100% by 2022. Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service.

madeofpalk 9y ago
> Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service. There's just no way you can draw a conclusion like this. I would be equally right in say that public corporations never have an incentive to improve services due to lack of a market or competition (see mass transit). The rollout of a nationalised national broadband/fibre network in Australia has been an interesting one for a number of reasons. We've actually seen private companies roll out their own networks to compete with both the public provider AND other private companies. Ultimately, the quality of these services is going to depend on a whole lot more than "public vs private"
masklinn 9y ago
That only works where the government is willing though, see Australia for a case study of the opposite. And keep in mind that in France currently "fiber" means "at least FFTN", much of rural france won't see FTTH for a long time.
- briandear 9y ago
  Exactly. Fiber to the home is the only fiber than really matters. If there is fiber but my last mile is old copper, then that doesn’t do me a lot of good does it? France claiming 100% fiber by 2022? They are dreaming, or perhaps even delusional. No way they can get FTTH by 2022. There are some places that don’t have any connectivity and you have to use Satelite. They’re going to fix that in 4 years?
  - masklinn 9y ago
    > Exactly. Fiber to the home is the only fiber than really matters. If there is fiber but my last mile is old copper, then that doesn’t do me a lot of good does it? I wouldn't go quite that far e.g. let's say you're my parents in a village of 300 (and as many cows) with the DSLAM >5km away, the best DSL you can get is 1024k on a good day (and on average closer to 512k with pings in the half-second range), my understanding is that for them the FTTN node would be roughly at the center of each village. All of a sudden, unless the village is huge there's <2km between any home and the node and you can expect 15~20Mbps over the entire village.
    - kaennar 9y ago
      But how would you carry a model like that over to a place as big as the USA? Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and just about every state that isn't on the East/West coast would have an incredibly difficult time executing this kind of plan because of the distance between communities. I'm not saying that a similar model wouldn't be easy to implement in the boroughs of New York, Boston, SV, Austin, etc., but when you still have 20% of Americans living in not-urban environments. Indeed even the urban environments are far more sprawling and spaced out than anywhere in Europe/Asia (e.g. Dallas/FW, Houston, Phoenix, Austin, and even Atlanta). The kind of engineering to distribute such a large network seems to mirror the issues with the nationwide power grid that was proposed to allow for consistent solar energy. The USA is just a very, very big place with populations, even urban, that sprawl and are not condensed like in London, Paris, Munich or other countries in the fiber fight.
      - masklinn 9y ago
        > But how would you carry a model like that over to a place as big as the USA? Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and just about every state that isn't on the East/West coast would have an incredibly difficult time executing this kind of plan because of the distance between communities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act > I'm not saying that a similar model wouldn't be easy to implement in the boroughs of New York, Boston, SV, Austin, etc. Oh please, the village I'm talking about is not a borough of a major metropolis, it's a small rural village, the closest thing which could be construed as a city has a population of under 50k and is 20km away. Boston and Austin have metro populations in the millions, there's barely 6 cities in all of France which reach that. > you still have 20% of Americans living in not-urban environments Oh good point, let's check the percentage of rural population in france. Hey look, it's 20%. Wow, probably an outlier, let's check Germany. Oh, 24%. Maybe Spain? 20% again. And these are highly urbanised countries mind, Ireland and Portugal are sitting at 36% rural population. > The USA is just a very, very big place with populations, even urban, that sprawl and are not condensed like in London, Paris, Munich or other countries in the fiber fight. None of London, Paris or Munich are countries, they're major/capital cities inside countries which have their own non-urban populations.
twelve40 9y ago
Funny though. No offense and I love France, and I love Europe (really do!), but FB's and GOOG's and BABA's of the world seem to be ... elsewhere? inverse correlation?
- ddorian43 9y ago
  If you want huge cash-money you goto USA. For <=$100K/year EU is probably better. I think, not really sure. But first part is true.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    USA seems to run on spectacle. Europe, if one can even process such a mix of cultures as a single entity, seems to abhor spectacle.
- cdancette 9y ago
  Do you believe big corps makes the economy stronger?
  - twelve40 9y ago
    It's kind of irrelevant what I believe because they do own this space by now, for better or worse.
- Arnt 9y ago
  s/elsewhere/nowhere/ Facebook is really just money, and money doesn't have a location. In terms of offices and employments and locations and blah Facebooks is as big as a middling supermarket chain. Which isn't to say that money is bad or irrelevant or anything. Just that it isn't local in a meaningful way. Facebook is local to wherever that ugly office building is in much the same way that half the world's aircraft are Irish.
- ehnto 9y ago
  There is probably a place in the world for both, but I would rather smaller, competitive companies, over encumbent monopolies and aggressive investment strategies (build a moat with money and watch everything else fail).
_nalply 9y ago
In Switzerland there are regions with FFTH. Click on this map to see where FFTH is available: https://map.geo.admin.ch/?layers=ch.bakom.anschlussart-glasfaser https://map.geo.admin.ch/?layers=ch.bakom.anschlussart-glasf... Thanks to this map it was easy to select the right place to move to, and we are currently in the process of moving... to an home equipped with FFTH!
- s3nnyy 9y ago
  I live in Zurich, I have Fiber7 (https://init7.net https://init7.net) at home and couldn't be any happier. They don't cost more than the DSL packs of the big firms, I get 500 mb up and down on the router with wifi and they have superb support!
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - adriaanm 9y ago
    +1 I use them in Lausanne. 777 CHF/year is a great deal! Interesting model: the price is the same for everyone, while bandwidth is the maximum they can offer in your location. Excellent support. I bought a TP-LINK MC220L + patch cables from them, and hooked up an edgerouter lite for PPPoE & VLAN tagging. Already had a wifi router (google wifi), which sadly can't do VLAN tagging. Haven't noticed any issues with the double NATing.
    - davrosthedalek 9y ago
      That model has a downside for the customer: the company has no incentive to invest to upgrade your speed, as you already pay them the one fixed amount.
      - xiphias 9y ago
        Generally that may be true, but in Switzerland they are so much better than the competition (big phone/cable companies), that it doesn't matter.
sureaboutthis 9y ago
It would help if the USA was as small as France.
- realusername 9y ago
  A lot of states are the same size or smaller than France and none of them has achieved to get the same internet price/quality so far. Not to mention the the US has a more concentrated population than most of Europe so it's even easier.
  - djrogers 9y ago
    You can’t compare what a state can pay for with what a federal government can pay for - the difference in taxation alone makes that laughable...
    - madeofpalk 9y ago
      It's probably unproductive to compare state vs federal budgets across different countries due to the drastically different funding modal different countries use.
- _nalply 9y ago
  To begin start in a metropolitan region and if it is profitable expand. The problem is something different: The incumbent providers are successful in preventing competition.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- anon96707 9y ago
  It is interesting that this argument is reflexively brought up every time someone mentions infrastructure. It is not the absolute size that matters, it is density and clustering degrees. And there are some sparsely populated countries in Europe that manage to build infrastructure just fine. Population density: USA: 35.0/km² (90.6/sq mi) Norway: 15.8/km² (40.9/sq mi)
rayiner 9y ago
The US has higher fiber penetration as a percentage of broadband subscribers according to OECD: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.10-PctFibreToTotalBroadband-2017-06.xls http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.10-PctFibreToTotalBroadb... (11.8% versus 9.5%). The US average connection speed on Akamai’s study are also about double that of France: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... (18.7 mbps versus 10.8 mbps; 48% of the U.S. has a connection above 15 mbps, versus 18% of France).
- icebraining 9y ago
  That number is only higher because the US has fewer broadband subscribers (per inhabitant); the denominator is smaller. The fiber penetration per 100 inhabitants is the same in both, 4%: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.2.OECD-FixedMobileBB-2017-06.xls http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.2.OECD-FixedMobileBB-201...
  - adventured 9y ago
    The US is far ahead of France on broadband in general, with average speeds 70% to 80% faster. That has been true for a very long time now. France ranks near the very bottom in Europe in percentages above 10mbps, 15mbps, and 25mbps. In the developed world, France is behind - typically far behind - nearly every nation, including Russia (a far poorer country). France's broadband situation is an embarrassment, nothing has fundamentally changed in that picture for the past decade.
    - pas 9y ago
      France is laughing stock also due to their ugly captive portal pay for every MAC address WiFis, oh and without an OpenVPN over WebSocket you are pretty much limited to TCP 80 and 443. And they are slooow as shit too.
      - mschuster91 9y ago
ailideex 9y ago
> Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service. This is just categorically false. Where I live our state owned telco is horrible and you have to jump through hoops to cancel your account with them. People have to keep paying them for literally months (sometimes more than 6) after they cancel their service with them to cancel as they just do not process cancellations and then sue you if you do not pay up. Our fiber revolution was driven not by the state, but by private profit-focused corporations. In fact the state telco now also has fiber - but it costs about twice the price and then you still have to deal with a provider which is sub standard and makes it near impossible for you to cancel their service. I pay about $10 USD more a month for 100mbit/100mbit up/down FTTH than I payed for 4mbit/512k ADSL up/down from state telco. With just about every other "utility" or "public service" the story is the same here. Police is shit so I have to pay for security if you don't want to get armed robbed raped or murdered, schools are shit so you have to pay for private schools if you want your child to be able to read and write. Electricity supply is shit - every year we have load shedding and prices keep going up while govt is lining their pockets and then looking for ways to further fuck rate payers while getting kickbacks from Russia. And now because the govt has made everything worse for years there is talk about nationalizing industries to fuel populism amongst the almost 30% (official) unemployed and many poor people as our economy has been shrinking for years (and of course this is capitalism's fault now - because private industry makes govt look bad in comparison). It is theoretically possible to have decent services where there is no competition and govt monopoly - but it is not the norm and I would say in most cases it does not work out this way.
- cdancette 9y ago
  And where are you living? This sounds a lot like being due a high level of corruption. I think that's one challenge to overcome, you're right that public services are not automatically better
  - ailideex 9y ago
    Where I live is irrelevant as this speaks to the point that "profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service.". They can and do all the time. Maybe not in France and maybe not in USA - but the for profit model works just fine here. Why it works so well some places and not at all in others is the real kicker. And yes the problem is exceptionally high levels of corruption - but if the Govt does not have a self granted monopoly on providing services this provides some measure of containment for corruption and also means that you don't have to pay for everything twice as I have to do now. And sure - I would like to have a non corrupt govt - but that won't happen ever. So people who make this blatantly false statement that Govt services will always be superior from private services is just giving fuel to the cash grab perpetrated by the Govt of my country. So yeah, thanks, I guess - thanks for giving the govt of my country excuses for looting even more money - like they needed any to begin with.
briandear 9y ago
Are you actually serious? I live in the Luberon, not far from Avignon and Apt and our internet speeds are 0.8 mbs up and 8 mbs down. So 800 KILObytes up. And that’s for a “business” connection! That’s thanks to Orange’s practical monopoly out where I live. I get to pay over €100 per month for such innovation. My total monthly bill with two cell phones and internet is €360. Which is insane — that is approaching $450 a month. Thanks French government, you suck. I pay confiscatory taxes — including incredibly high taxes on my internet and phone service and what do I get for it? Abysmal speeds. Given the geographic size of France — it should be covered in fiber already, but my area is projected at 3 years out. They won’t have 100% fiber by 2022. It’s impossible given the French propensity to make the simple complex, and the inexpensive, expensive. If Orange is a representation of the power of French innovation, then I fear for the future. That’s a company that has separate sign in systems based on the type of account you have and a system that takes 2 weeks to update when payments are made by credit card. Orange represents the single worst experience I have ever had as a customer — that includes my time living in the US and dealing with companies such as Time Warner. The French electric service, EDF, is a close second. You want to talk about government and successful internet infrastructure initiatives — have a look at South Korea. But France? Innovative? It’s all for show. It still is a pain in the ass to accomplish anything in that country. Europe uses IBANs almost universally, for example, yet French utilities still insist on the RIB. The insurance company I have can’t do prelevements with my German IBAN. It’s ridiculous. Just because a government spends money on something doesn’t mean that government is any good at what they’re spending money on.
- Whitestrake 9y ago
  > our internet speeds are 0.8 mbs up and 8 mbs down. So 800 KILObytes up. Your conversions might be mistaken. For example, at my place of work, on ADSL2: Down Stream : 6696Kbps / Up Stream : 736Kbps So slightly worse than you. Converting directly to kilobytes, we've got 837 KB/sec down and 92 KB/sec up. Shave off around 20% to get real-world speed, because those are sync rates, not actual throughput. Unless you actually have 8/0.8 MBytes down/up, equivalent to 64/6.4 Mbps down/up, which is quite decent! (Still maybe not quite €100 good).
shaklee3 9y ago
Australia's nbnco would disagree with you.
namdnay 9y ago
Well, to be fair to the private sector... it's only thanks to Xavier Niel that the French have such affordable internet (and now mobile too). Before he disrupted those two markets, it was just as bad as the US. Remember the "Forfait RSA" the government crowed about having negotiated for the poorest citizens? 40mn and 40SMS for 10 euros per month...
yorby 9y ago
I would like my city to implement fiber too but, how are the taxes in France?
adventured 9y ago
> This is why I'm happy to live in a country like France where the government takes part in deploying those infrastructures Does that explain why France is so dramatically far behind the US on Internet speeds, and has been for the last 20 years? Ideally the US goes out of its way to not follow France's path on telecom. As of Q1 2017: US average speeds: 18.7 mbps France average speeds: 10.8 mbps To put France's figure into perspective, they rank toward the bottom in Europe, behind Russia, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland. They're #27 out of 31 nations ranked in Europe. France also ranks near the bottom in Europe in % above 10 mbps, at just 31%. The US is at 67%. And again France ranks near the bottom in Europe in % above 15 mbps, at just 18%. The US is at 48%. The US is #10 globally when it comes to % over 25 mbps, with 21%. That category saw a one year increase of 65%.. The US ranks in the top 15 globally for highest percentage at 10 mbps, 15 mbps and 25 mbps. France should be copying the US based on their persistently atrocious broadband figures. And that's with the US approach being subpar. https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t...

madeofpalk 9y ago

> Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service. There's just no way you can draw a conclusion like this. I would be equally right in say that public corporations never have an incentive to improve services due to lack of a market or competition (see mass transit). The rollout of a nationalised national broadband/fibre network in Australia has been an interesting one for a number of reasons. We've actually seen private companies roll out their own networks to compete with both the public provider AND other private companies. Ultimately, the quality of these services is going to depend on a whole lot more than "public vs private"

masklinn 9y ago

That only works where the government is willing though, see Australia for a case study of the opposite. And keep in mind that in France currently "fiber" means "at least FFTN", much of rural france won't see FTTH for a long time.

briandear 9y ago
Exactly. Fiber to the home is the only fiber than really matters. If there is fiber but my last mile is old copper, then that doesn’t do me a lot of good does it? France claiming 100% fiber by 2022? They are dreaming, or perhaps even delusional. No way they can get FTTH by 2022. There are some places that don’t have any connectivity and you have to use Satelite. They’re going to fix that in 4 years?
- masklinn 9y ago
  > Exactly. Fiber to the home is the only fiber than really matters. If there is fiber but my last mile is old copper, then that doesn’t do me a lot of good does it? I wouldn't go quite that far e.g. let's say you're my parents in a village of 300 (and as many cows) with the DSLAM >5km away, the best DSL you can get is 1024k on a good day (and on average closer to 512k with pings in the half-second range), my understanding is that for them the FTTN node would be roughly at the center of each village. All of a sudden, unless the village is huge there's <2km between any home and the node and you can expect 15~20Mbps over the entire village.
  - kaennar 9y ago
    But how would you carry a model like that over to a place as big as the USA? Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and just about every state that isn't on the East/West coast would have an incredibly difficult time executing this kind of plan because of the distance between communities. I'm not saying that a similar model wouldn't be easy to implement in the boroughs of New York, Boston, SV, Austin, etc., but when you still have 20% of Americans living in not-urban environments. Indeed even the urban environments are far more sprawling and spaced out than anywhere in Europe/Asia (e.g. Dallas/FW, Houston, Phoenix, Austin, and even Atlanta). The kind of engineering to distribute such a large network seems to mirror the issues with the nationwide power grid that was proposed to allow for consistent solar energy. The USA is just a very, very big place with populations, even urban, that sprawl and are not condensed like in London, Paris, Munich or other countries in the fiber fight.
    - masklinn 9y ago
      > But how would you carry a model like that over to a place as big as the USA? Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and just about every state that isn't on the East/West coast would have an incredibly difficult time executing this kind of plan because of the distance between communities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act > I'm not saying that a similar model wouldn't be easy to implement in the boroughs of New York, Boston, SV, Austin, etc. Oh please, the village I'm talking about is not a borough of a major metropolis, it's a small rural village, the closest thing which could be construed as a city has a population of under 50k and is 20km away. Boston and Austin have metro populations in the millions, there's barely 6 cities in all of France which reach that. > you still have 20% of Americans living in not-urban environments Oh good point, let's check the percentage of rural population in france. Hey look, it's 20%. Wow, probably an outlier, let's check Germany. Oh, 24%. Maybe Spain? 20% again. And these are highly urbanised countries mind, Ireland and Portugal are sitting at 36% rural population. > The USA is just a very, very big place with populations, even urban, that sprawl and are not condensed like in London, Paris, Munich or other countries in the fiber fight. None of London, Paris or Munich are countries, they're major/capital cities inside countries which have their own non-urban populations.

twelve40 9y ago

Funny though. No offense and I love France, and I love Europe (really do!), but FB's and GOOG's and BABA's of the world seem to be ... elsewhere? inverse correlation?

ddorian43 9y ago
If you want huge cash-money you goto USA. For <=$100K/year EU is probably better. I think, not really sure. But first part is true.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  USA seems to run on spectacle. Europe, if one can even process such a mix of cultures as a single entity, seems to abhor spectacle.
cdancette 9y ago
Do you believe big corps makes the economy stronger?
- twelve40 9y ago
  It's kind of irrelevant what I believe because they do own this space by now, for better or worse.
Arnt 9y ago
s/elsewhere/nowhere/ Facebook is really just money, and money doesn't have a location. In terms of offices and employments and locations and blah Facebooks is as big as a middling supermarket chain. Which isn't to say that money is bad or irrelevant or anything. Just that it isn't local in a meaningful way. Facebook is local to wherever that ugly office building is in much the same way that half the world's aircraft are Irish.
ehnto 9y ago
There is probably a place in the world for both, but I would rather smaller, competitive companies, over encumbent monopolies and aggressive investment strategies (build a moat with money and watch everything else fail).

_nalply 9y ago

In Switzerland there are regions with FFTH. Click on this map to see where FFTH is available: https://map.geo.admin.ch/?layers=ch.bakom.anschlussart-glasfaser https://map.geo.admin.ch/?layers=ch.bakom.anschlussart-glasf... Thanks to this map it was easy to select the right place to move to, and we are currently in the process of moving... to an home equipped with FFTH!

s3nnyy 9y ago
I live in Zurich, I have Fiber7 (https://init7.net https://init7.net) at home and couldn't be any happier. They don't cost more than the DSL packs of the big firms, I get 500 mb up and down on the router with wifi and they have superb support!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- adriaanm 9y ago
  +1 I use them in Lausanne. 777 CHF/year is a great deal! Interesting model: the price is the same for everyone, while bandwidth is the maximum they can offer in your location. Excellent support. I bought a TP-LINK MC220L + patch cables from them, and hooked up an edgerouter lite for PPPoE & VLAN tagging. Already had a wifi router (google wifi), which sadly can't do VLAN tagging. Haven't noticed any issues with the double NATing.
  - davrosthedalek 9y ago
    That model has a downside for the customer: the company has no incentive to invest to upgrade your speed, as you already pay them the one fixed amount.
    - xiphias 9y ago
      Generally that may be true, but in Switzerland they are so much better than the competition (big phone/cable companies), that it doesn't matter.

sureaboutthis 9y ago

It would help if the USA was as small as France.

realusername 9y ago
A lot of states are the same size or smaller than France and none of them has achieved to get the same internet price/quality so far. Not to mention the the US has a more concentrated population than most of Europe so it's even easier.
- djrogers 9y ago
  You can’t compare what a state can pay for with what a federal government can pay for - the difference in taxation alone makes that laughable...
  - madeofpalk 9y ago
    It's probably unproductive to compare state vs federal budgets across different countries due to the drastically different funding modal different countries use.
_nalply 9y ago
To begin start in a metropolitan region and if it is profitable expand. The problem is something different: The incumbent providers are successful in preventing competition.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
anon96707 9y ago
It is interesting that this argument is reflexively brought up every time someone mentions infrastructure. It is not the absolute size that matters, it is density and clustering degrees. And there are some sparsely populated countries in Europe that manage to build infrastructure just fine. Population density: USA: 35.0/km² (90.6/sq mi) Norway: 15.8/km² (40.9/sq mi)

rayiner 9y ago

The US has higher fiber penetration as a percentage of broadband subscribers according to OECD: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.10-PctFibreToTotalBroadband-2017-06.xls http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.10-PctFibreToTotalBroadb... (11.8% versus 9.5%). The US average connection speed on Akamai’s study are also about double that of France: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... (18.7 mbps versus 10.8 mbps; 48% of the U.S. has a connection above 15 mbps, versus 18% of France).

icebraining 9y ago
That number is only higher because the US has fewer broadband subscribers (per inhabitant); the denominator is smaller. The fiber penetration per 100 inhabitants is the same in both, 4%: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.2.OECD-FixedMobileBB-2017-06.xls http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.2.OECD-FixedMobileBB-201...
- adventured 9y ago
  The US is far ahead of France on broadband in general, with average speeds 70% to 80% faster. That has been true for a very long time now. France ranks near the very bottom in Europe in percentages above 10mbps, 15mbps, and 25mbps. In the developed world, France is behind - typically far behind - nearly every nation, including Russia (a far poorer country). France's broadband situation is an embarrassment, nothing has fundamentally changed in that picture for the past decade.
  - pas 9y ago
    France is laughing stock also due to their ugly captive portal pay for every MAC address WiFis, oh and without an OpenVPN over WebSocket you are pretty much limited to TCP 80 and 443. And they are slooow as shit too.
    - mschuster91 9y ago

ailideex 9y ago

> Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service. This is just categorically false. Where I live our state owned telco is horrible and you have to jump through hoops to cancel your account with them. People have to keep paying them for literally months (sometimes more than 6) after they cancel their service with them to cancel as they just do not process cancellations and then sue you if you do not pay up. Our fiber revolution was driven not by the state, but by private profit-focused corporations. In fact the state telco now also has fiber - but it costs about twice the price and then you still have to deal with a provider which is sub standard and makes it near impossible for you to cancel their service. I pay about $10 USD more a month for 100mbit/100mbit up/down FTTH than I payed for 4mbit/512k ADSL up/down from state telco. With just about every other "utility" or "public service" the story is the same here. Police is shit so I have to pay for security if you don't want to get armed robbed raped or murdered, schools are shit so you have to pay for private schools if you want your child to be able to read and write. Electricity supply is shit - every year we have load shedding and prices keep going up while govt is lining their pockets and then looking for ways to further fuck rate payers while getting kickbacks from Russia. And now because the govt has made everything worse for years there is talk about nationalizing industries to fuel populism amongst the almost 30% (official) unemployed and many poor people as our economy has been shrinking for years (and of course this is capitalism's fault now - because private industry makes govt look bad in comparison). It is theoretically possible to have decent services where there is no competition and govt monopoly - but it is not the norm and I would say in most cases it does not work out this way.

cdancette 9y ago
And where are you living? This sounds a lot like being due a high level of corruption. I think that's one challenge to overcome, you're right that public services are not automatically better
- ailideex 9y ago
  Where I live is irrelevant as this speaks to the point that "profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service.". They can and do all the time. Maybe not in France and maybe not in USA - but the for profit model works just fine here. Why it works so well some places and not at all in others is the real kicker. And yes the problem is exceptionally high levels of corruption - but if the Govt does not have a self granted monopoly on providing services this provides some measure of containment for corruption and also means that you don't have to pay for everything twice as I have to do now. And sure - I would like to have a non corrupt govt - but that won't happen ever. So people who make this blatantly false statement that Govt services will always be superior from private services is just giving fuel to the cash grab perpetrated by the Govt of my country. So yeah, thanks, I guess - thanks for giving the govt of my country excuses for looting even more money - like they needed any to begin with.

briandear 9y ago

Are you actually serious? I live in the Luberon, not far from Avignon and Apt and our internet speeds are 0.8 mbs up and 8 mbs down. So 800 KILObytes up. And that’s for a “business” connection! That’s thanks to Orange’s practical monopoly out where I live. I get to pay over €100 per month for such innovation. My total monthly bill with two cell phones and internet is €360. Which is insane — that is approaching $450 a month. Thanks French government, you suck. I pay confiscatory taxes — including incredibly high taxes on my internet and phone service and what do I get for it? Abysmal speeds. Given the geographic size of France — it should be covered in fiber already, but my area is projected at 3 years out. They won’t have 100% fiber by 2022. It’s impossible given the French propensity to make the simple complex, and the inexpensive, expensive. If Orange is a representation of the power of French innovation, then I fear for the future. That’s a company that has separate sign in systems based on the type of account you have and a system that takes 2 weeks to update when payments are made by credit card. Orange represents the single worst experience I have ever had as a customer — that includes my time living in the US and dealing with companies such as Time Warner. The French electric service, EDF, is a close second. You want to talk about government and successful internet infrastructure initiatives — have a look at South Korea. But France? Innovative? It’s all for show. It still is a pain in the ass to accomplish anything in that country. Europe uses IBANs almost universally, for example, yet French utilities still insist on the RIB. The insurance company I have can’t do prelevements with my German IBAN. It’s ridiculous. Just because a government spends money on something doesn’t mean that government is any good at what they’re spending money on.

Whitestrake 9y ago
> our internet speeds are 0.8 mbs up and 8 mbs down. So 800 KILObytes up. Your conversions might be mistaken. For example, at my place of work, on ADSL2: Down Stream : 6696Kbps / Up Stream : 736Kbps So slightly worse than you. Converting directly to kilobytes, we've got 837 KB/sec down and 92 KB/sec up. Shave off around 20% to get real-world speed, because those are sync rates, not actual throughput. Unless you actually have 8/0.8 MBytes down/up, equivalent to 64/6.4 Mbps down/up, which is quite decent! (Still maybe not quite €100 good).

shaklee3 9y ago

Australia's nbnco would disagree with you.

namdnay 9y ago

Well, to be fair to the private sector... it's only thanks to Xavier Niel that the French have such affordable internet (and now mobile too). Before he disrupted those two markets, it was just as bad as the US. Remember the "Forfait RSA" the government crowed about having negotiated for the poorest citizens? 40mn and 40SMS for 10 euros per month...

yorby 9y ago

I would like my city to implement fiber too but, how are the taxes in France?

adventured 9y ago

> This is why I'm happy to live in a country like France where the government takes part in deploying those infrastructures Does that explain why France is so dramatically far behind the US on Internet speeds, and has been for the last 20 years? Ideally the US goes out of its way to not follow France's path on telecom. As of Q1 2017: US average speeds: 18.7 mbps France average speeds: 10.8 mbps To put France's figure into perspective, they rank toward the bottom in Europe, behind Russia, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland. They're #27 out of 31 nations ranked in Europe. France also ranks near the bottom in Europe in % above 10 mbps, at just 31%. The US is at 67%. And again France ranks near the bottom in Europe in % above 15 mbps, at just 18%. The US is at 48%. The US is #10 globally when it comes to % over 25 mbps, with 21%. That category saw a one year increase of 65%.. The US ranks in the top 15 globally for highest percentage at 10 mbps, 15 mbps and 25 mbps. France should be copying the US based on their persistently atrocious broadband figures. And that's with the US approach being subpar. https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t...