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Not sure this applies to everywhere, but I can talk about Romania (Eastern Europe) vs. Western Europe. Romania has some of the best Internet in the world; as f
by rocgf 7y ago
Not sure this applies to everywhere, but I can talk about Romania (Eastern Europe) vs. Western Europe.
Romania has some of the best Internet in the world; as far as I recall, you can get 1Gbps for like 10-15 dollars in most non-rural areas. I think that's partly because of the huge amount of competition that was present in the early 00s, when we had a ridiculous amount of ISPs per city, and partly because all the cables are suspended on top of lampposts, as opposed to buried under the sidewalks and streets. That's way cheaper than digging half the city for new, higher-speed Internet.
- krzyk 7y agoAnd also because there was almost no infrastructure to begin with. So when one was created it went straight to fiber, while the western countries still got plenty of copper. Similar thing in Poland (although our network is in worse condition than in Romania, but we still can have 1 Gbps for about 18 USD, even in some rural areas like mine :). I think this is quite similar to the banking sector, we have most of the banks internet ready, some of them are are mostly internet, with very few brick and mortar places. When my colleague went to Switzerland he was shocked how the banks there force one to visit them personally to do even basic stuff (at least in the beginning - in Poland I can create banking account without leaving my home, I just need to wait for package to sign in front of a courier) - and have crappy websites. This is also a leftover of the early internet migration, now they don't have enough incentive to do it better.
- dzhiurgis 7y agoPretty sure there were phone lines just like everywhere. Maybe no cable tho? Back in Lithuania cable was installed everywhere in early 90s, but cable internet didn’t catch on. P.S. saw an ad here the other day - €3/week for 1TB of LTE data.