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"Carriers say they’re throttling to manage internet traffic. To deliver the videos people want to watch on their phones, sacrifices in speed are required, accor
by erickj 8y ago
"Carriers say they’re throttling to manage internet traffic. To deliver the videos people want to watch on their phones, sacrifices in speed are required, according to the three largest U.S. wireless companies"
Moving from the US to Switzerland a few years ago really opened my eyes to how much US wireless carriers were fucking me as a customer.
On Swisscom, my mobile provider, I get unlimited unthrottled data (with tethering!) for ~$99/month. With this I get speeds > 100Mbs on the "good side" of my apartment. And 60Mbs on the "slow side" of my apartment:
I also get these speeds in the Alps.
For another point of comparison Salt (rebranded Orange here), offers a home internet plan of 10 Gbps + 250 TV channels + a free Apple TV for $49 / month.
https://fiber.salt.ch/en/?utm_campaign=saltfiberen&utm_medium=homepage&utm_source=banner#/ https://fiber.salt.ch/en/?utm_campaign=saltfiberen&utm_mediu...
- scarejunba 8y agoPart of the problem is that when you point out things like this, Americans on the Internet frequently react as if you are insulting their nation and invent nonsensical reasons for why their Internet must be slow.
- ectospheno 8y agoI'm an American and I understand why my internet is slow. So do all of my friends and coworkers. What do you propose we actually do about it?
- skh 8y agoVote and encourage others to vote. Also, it’s worth pointing out comparisons to Europe and Japan to help dispel the myth that we are a shining light to the rest of the world and that we are number 1.
- scarejunba 8y agoSupport things like this https://savecompetition.com https://savecompetition.com and similar initiatives that are constantly being brought up. Enable providers like Sonic to survive by telling your representatives.
- Teknoman117 8y agoAs an American I really wish I had enough money to start my own ISP which had ground rules that all it'd ever be is an internet provider with the sole goal of continuously improving internet service.
- thx11389793 8y agomy cursory research seems to indicate that it's pretty reasonable to start a local wireless ISP, with a lower bound wrt minimum number of clients to make the venture worth it being 50 or so according to someone.
- js2 8y agoIt requires some money and resources obviously, but neither do you need to be Google or a Telco to setup an ISP: About a year ago, FOA was contacted by Greg Turton of Cordele, GA. who was curious about what was involved in creating a FTTH network. Greg is a real estate developer who also owns several local hotels. Where he lives and builds homes is way outside of a service area that anybody wants to build good broadband, forget FTTH. Cordele itself has a population of only about 15,000 and is one of those small cities along the Interstate highway that are everywhere in the US. We answered Greg's questions and led him to some of the FOA Guide web pages and YouTube videos about FTTH to get him started. More conversations discussed how to get connections as an ISP, types of components and suppliers, etc. Fortunately the local electrical utility has lots of fiber but they were restricted from building their own FTTH network because Georgia was one of 19 states where lobbyists for the incumbent providers got laws passed restricting their ability to operate a FTTH system themselves. But they were more than willing to lease dark fiber to Greg at really good rates. And there were good choices on getting an Internet connection. ... http://www.thefoa.org/tech/ref/appln/FTTH-DIY.html http://www.thefoa.org/tech/ref/appln/FTTH-DIY.html
- kuwze 8y agoYou might want to checkout the YC startup Necto[0]. [0]: https://apply.nectolab.io/ https://apply.nectolab.io/
- jessaustin 8y agoShut down FCC. That's all it would take. Sure, your FM radio would stop working, but that's a small sacrifice to make, to get actual competition in something as important as telecommunications.
- eigenloss 8y agoThis is the worst solution posed here. If we had no FCC, large companies would be thrown into an arms race to pump as much RF as possible into the air while smaller ones (radio stations, anybody?) would simply be drowned out and crushed.
- jessaustin 8y agoJust like in the wifi band... oh, wait. I'm not saying that radio use can't be regulated. I'm saying that FCC is the worst possible organization that could be imagined to do that regulation. To understand that, simply compare Europe to USA.
- GW150914 8y agoShut down FCC. That's all it would take. Sure, your FM radio would stop working, but that's a small sacrifice to make, to get actual competition in something as important as telecommunications. Good idea, I was just thinking that I hate how emergency services can talk to each other, and my cellphone works. People are so damned soft, they should have to release a homing pigeon if they want to call 911! Sure, a few people might die and life will be a dark and terrible nightmare of RF interference, radio astronomy will end, and modern civilization will grind to a halt, but that’s a small price to pay for my libertarian wet dream.
- jessaustin 8y agoFCC is uniquely bad among USA government regulatory agencies. I'm fine with EPA, FTC, OSHA, FAA, etc. All of those place reasonable limits on human action. They don't say, "this market will be 40% VZN and 45% ATT!" Any number of other agencies could keep the emergency services bands online. Most of the actual regulation of how devices radiate signals is already controlled by voluntary associations of manufacturers. Please don't discuss your wet dreams in this forum.
- frockington 8y agoI pay ~$25/month for my phone. My internet is slower because I don't care about watching Netflix or youtube on my phone, but I could pay more if I wanted. As an American, I don't really care what Europe has because it in no way affects me. I would suspect most Americans also don't care about Europe as it is an ocean away and is made up of tiny nations that most Americans couldn't be bothered to spell
- tw04 8y agoWhen providers are claiming they CAN'T do something, you absolutely should care when half of the Western world already has that thing they claim can't be provided...
- peterwwillis 8y agoThere are significant logistical differences between the US and Switzerland. One has 327 million people and an area of 9.8 million square kilometers (36 people per Km2). The other has 8.4 million people and 41 thousand square kilometers (216 people per Km2). Switzerland has one of the highest and fastest internet penetration rates in Europe. If you rent an apartment, cable is often thrown in as part of the cost. The rest of the people's landlines are ADSL (which isn't very fast unless you use the latest ADSL2 dslams), or VDSL, which you can only get if you're very close to a CO. Finally, fiber is easier to roll out when you have a smaller population in a smaller area. Most Americans cannot get VDSL, and the DSLAMs are old. Cable is pretty fast, and fiber is slowly getting rolled out, but it's a big freaking country, meaning this is expensive as hell. The mobile providers in Switzerland only have to provide a very small number of broadband equipment and mobile towers compared to that needed to cover the US. Also, the same equipment used in Switzerland covers up to 6x more subscribers, because of increased population density. The US has to provide much more equipment and installation over a much larger area to cover a comparatively smaller number of subscribers. So you have to literally buy more equipment to cover more area, and then you make less money because the equipment covers less subscribers on average. Upgrading the equipment then also becomes significantly more expensive. One is extremely expensive, time-consuming and difficult to cover with high speed broadband, the other is not.
- drharby 8y agoThat's ignorant of you to say
- wdr1 8y ago> Americans on the Internet frequently react as if you are insulting their nation I'm surprised someone on HN would make such an overly broad, and with it, inaccurate statement. Personally, I've seen a lot of debate. Not all of it constructive, but rarely (if ever) anything like "omg, you bastard. #murica ruelz"
- ucaetano 8y ago> someone on HN would make such an overly broad, and with it, inaccurate statement You must be new here!
- drharby 8y agoI really dislike the double standard on HN. Such statements are given an echo chamber effect if it fits a certain narrative. Sure, something can be said about inherent community biases and the like, but it doesn't change the fact that minority opinions are drowned out many times while noncontributing noise is upboated bc it pokes fun at America, Trump, Bezos, or whatever boogeyman exists. But here we arw
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- scarejunba 8y agoIt's rarely that. It's usually a superficially constructive claim - America can't do it because it's not dense, America can't do it because it's too populous, America can't do it because its cities are too dense or too sparse or too far apart or too old or too new, America can't do it because Americans prefer what they have. They'll usually have some irrelevant statistics. Presumably total population, total surface area, some other such superficial analysis. I never engage in these discussions. This is the first time, and probably the last. But I've seen them time and time again.
- tracker1 8y agoIt probably should be left to individual states to work out to a large extent. That said, I really do think that common carrier rules should have been applied and stuck to very early on.
- Trav5 8y agoNot all of us. The US is great, but not perfect. I love hearing about how other places are better. It gives hope and a goal for improvement here. I pay $435/month for my office and home internet as well as 3 mobile phones.
- munk-a 8y agoWat. In Canada I pay a total of 88$/month for home internet and 2 mobile phones, with the internet being high capacity and pretty fast even for large data transfers. That is CAD as well, so that's about 66$ USD
- ionised 8y ago$435 per month just on internet!?
- Trav5 8y ago$30 of that is for an iPhone contract, so really only $405... $145 for office, $75 for home, the rest is for mobiles.
- toasterlovin 8y agoThe flip side of this is that there's a contingent of Europeans who look down their noses as Americans, while having basically no comprehension of how utterly ridiculous it is to do something like compare the United States to Switzerland on any metric.
- phobosdeimos 8y agoAs I see it people in the US believe that the whole of the country needs to be treated equally. If you live in rural Kentucky your internet speed has to be the same as someone who lives in NYC. Pointing out that New York is the economic engine the US runs on and deserves to get priority makes everyone upset.
- weberc2 8y agoI thought the meme was that Americans were fiercely individualistic and that Europeans were outcome-egalitarians? Of course the picture is more nuanced than that, but I've never heard the reverse before.
- phlakaton 8y agoI think you could not be more incorrect about this. The FCC does sponsor efforts to make sure that less developed areas are getting broadband. However, I would argue that this is similar to electrification programs a century ago, and is more about access than equality. From my experience, Americans care very much about what speed and reliability is available within their neighborhood. They care very little about access outside of their neighborhood.
- brightball 8y agoLet me fix this for you: Nobody likes to hear that they are lower on the priority totem pole, however, everybody understands when new businesses go after the biggest markets first. If somebody is going to be upset by investing first in the areas with the most people...then you really have to disregard their point of view. I live in a rural suburb and have had one of those cell-phone-over-ethernet setups in my house to handle the poor signal. I understand.
- plandis 8y agoThe person legitimately asking for differences in the two countries has yet to be given an answer, if you’d like to constructively answer instead making broad generalizations about users from entire countries.
- dmode 8y agoI was amazed at the wireless coverage in Switzerland. Was hiking in remote parts of Eiger and had full LTE signal. Here, I can't even get signal in the middle of an urban areas oftentimes
- Youden 8y ago> For another point of comparison Salt (rebranded Orange here), offers a home internet plan of 10 Gbps + 250 TV channels + a free Apple TV for $49 / month. And in Switzerland, this is a little controversial because that 10Gbit/s is shared with up to 64 neighbours (GPON) while the Gigabit providers give you a more dedicated line.
- Teknoman117 8y agoI wouldn't even have a problem with that if I was told up front. Just don't give any individual neighbor priority.
- pitaj 8y agoI get completely unlimited LTE data (but no tethering) for $55 a month in the US. These plans exist if people are willing to look. Edit: removed population density comment because people were inferring an argument or defense from it, when that was not the purpose of it.
- baybal2 8y agoMan, you get cheaper and better 4g in Russia, Kazakhstan, and ...Mongolia out of all places. That logic is invalid.
- frockington 8y agoI don't think prices are a good comparison. You will have much higher prices in places where wealth exist. There is much more wealth in the US than Mongolia or Russia. Maybe a percentage of total income would be the best comparison.
- baybal2 8y agoThat holds true in comparison in that regard very well, if not better.
- lostcolony 8y agoPer someone else's comment, then, explain Manhattan having such sucky speeds. Unless you stipulate there's a goldilocks population density; if it's lower than that you don't get the investment, if it's higher than that there's too many people for the amount of spectrum/infrastructure. In which case, fair enough; are the places in the US that fall in that zone reaching speeds equal to Switzerland? I would contend no, not consistently, but of course, I'd need to know what that zone is.
- pq0ak2nnd 8y agoLet's compare to Manhattan. Switzerland has the same population as Manhattan. Switzerland has a population density of 196/km², Manhattan has a population density of 25,846/km². I'm not absolving the plundering by US Telcos, but there are legit issues as to why cell service quality might differ between a major US metropolis and Switzerland.
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- linkregister 8y agoThis is an argument against US operators. Higher density means higher utilization and therefore ROI for each cell tower. European cities with higher density than Manhattan have far better mobile and wired internet.
- dixie_land 8y agobut higher density also means much more interference so it is technically much harder to achieve good speed
- WhompingWindows 8y agoDoes that apply to ethernet lines though? Those would still be dwarfed by other economies' speeds, right?
- tedunangst 8y agoStupid Apple removed the Ethernet jack from my phone.
- mrguyorama 8y agoHilariously, with their addiction to USB C and dongles, haven't they now provided a reasonable ability to connect Ethernet into your phone?
- pitaj 8y agoSo what are the policy differences between Switzerland and the US, and how can the US improve things?