3 ms·

One venue of coverage I seem to recall as being arstechnica.com . That would make sense in that they had and still have a strong presence in Chicago. I'll loo

One venue of coverage I seem to recall as being arstechnica.com . That would make sense in that they had and still have a strong presence in Chicago. I'll look later for some old articles, if I don't get too distracted. I'll consider what you describe and what you linked. From memory and off the cuff, it reminds me of all the fiber investment around that time that seemed to undergo a value implosion and leave substantial "dark fiber" waiting for new projects/investments to pick it up. MCI and Wordcom (?) come to mind. (And the bath that some investors took.) If I was understanding one of them correctly, a year or two ago, my German friends could get high speed wireless Internet (from T-Mobile) at their newly purchased country home in the middle of the Eifel "Mountains" rural... "farmscape", I'll call it, for I think 40 Euro / month. Fast enough to stream, and no data cap. Meantime, here I was still reduced to just Comcast, as AT&T had over the course of a decade and a half never upgraded my block's line that was so old and poor quality that it wouldn't even reliably support DSL. And I'm in the middle of suburbia in a fairly dense sub-division. Comcast wanted $95/month for their high-speed Internet (with basic cable TV, the way they price their packages; gotta keep their cable TV demographics up). And that was after arm-twisting one of their reps for a discount. In the meantime, that number's up to about $135/month. Whatever the state of our technology, it's not translating here to effective competition and prices that compare to what friends are getting in Europe. Not even close. In my limited experience. P.S. On the other hand, I'd hate to buy an expensive laptop over there.

rayiner 8y ago
But objectively, U.S. internet access is faster than German internet access (or U.K., France, Spain, or Italy, which comprises like 70% of the EU population). According to Akamai, 50% of U.S. connections are over 15 mbps, versus 33% of German, and 18% in France. In states that are as dense as Germany, like Maryland or New Jersey, it's 60-65%. According to the OECD, fiber deployment in the U.S. is 12.6% in 2017 versus just 2.3% in Germany. The U.S. is also better positioned than those countries going forward. More of our infrastructure is hybrid fiber-coax, which can be incrementally upgraded by pushing fiber deeper into the network, and is on the path to symmetric gigabit in the next few years. Countries like France are much more reliant on DSL, which is really hitting its limits. (But the DSL can be "good enough" and cheap.) Which is really remarkable when you think about it. There is no other infrastructure that the U.S. does better than Germany or France. Our trains, subways, and roads are shameful compared to theirs. But our internet access is better. That's a real testament to the success of the 1996 deregulation.

rayiner 8y ago

But objectively, U.S. internet access is faster than German internet access (or U.K., France, Spain, or Italy, which comprises like 70% of the EU population). According to Akamai, 50% of U.S. connections are over 15 mbps, versus 33% of German, and 18% in France. In states that are as dense as Germany, like Maryland or New Jersey, it's 60-65%. According to the OECD, fiber deployment in the U.S. is 12.6% in 2017 versus just 2.3% in Germany. The U.S. is also better positioned than those countries going forward. More of our infrastructure is hybrid fiber-coax, which can be incrementally upgraded by pushing fiber deeper into the network, and is on the path to symmetric gigabit in the next few years. Countries like France are much more reliant on DSL, which is really hitting its limits. (But the DSL can be "good enough" and cheap.) Which is really remarkable when you think about it. There is no other infrastructure that the U.S. does better than Germany or France. Our trains, subways, and roads are shameful compared to theirs. But our internet access is better. That's a real testament to the success of the 1996 deregulation.