6 ms·

I was in Bucharest a couple of years ago and used wired broadband in an apartment. It was good - not terribly faster than what I get here, or at least ... not

I was in Bucharest a couple of years ago and used wired broadband in an apartment. It was good - not terribly faster than what I get here, or at least ... not faster such that I'd notice. I suspect the price was cheaper, although unsure what the 'big mac price' might be for people who live there day to day. I have a 200 down / 20 up connection at my office for $80/month - roughly the same at home for ~$50/month. At home, we don't normally get that unless actually wired in, as the wifi stuff around the house is bad (boosters don't help much). At the office, even over wifi, it can often be over the 200 - the wifi is probably a bottleneck there. The town where the office is is offering 'gigabit to the home', but only in new construction homes. The downtown spot I'm in won't get upgrades for a while, from what I'm hearing. I'm in the suburbs of a moderately large tech area, and almost rural by some measures. That said, I know some friends a bit further out aren't served very well at all, and are struggling with satellite connections as their last hope for 'fast' internet (6-10m from what I remember). > I am surprised there's not more backlash about this. FWIW, we (USA) get hosed around on so many things (healthcare, net, etc) and are also fed a patriotic diet of "America is the best" growing up. Because we're so large and isolated, many folks never travel, and a couple generations ago, most didn't have access to international publications/media like we do today. All that combines to give many of my fellow citizens a somewhat distorted view of our own standing and quality of life. There's little reason to 'backlash' when you think you're already "the best".

EdwardDiego 6y ago
I think that exceptionalism rote taught explains a lot of America's inherent conservatism - why change if you're already the best?
- rayiner 6y ago
  We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. We have the highest disposable income in the OECD: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/14773.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/14773.jpeg. The median household income of a married couple with kids is $95,000. And the taxes are extremely low in that bracket. Our unemployment rate in the midst of Trump’s botched handling of COVID is less than what France’s unemployment rate is in a normal year. Even when you hear complaints about things like healthcare, the debates are more about universal coverage than the quality or affordability of care itself. Americans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their own healthcare: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcare-quite-positively.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar.... (And, Americans being preternaturally optimistic, just assign less value to the security of a safety net in the case they lose their job, etc.) Americans live in houses far larger than the average European: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/comparing_average_house_size_in_us_to_europe https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com.... We have more TVs, more cars, etc. It’s easy to assume that Americans are just ignorant and irrational. But Americans know that Europe has a bunch of services we don’t, and they pay much higher taxes in return. Democrats make that comparison all the time. People are aware of it. But the fact is that the current system works pretty well for your typical voter. A flatter society with more social services would be better for a lot of people. However, your average suburban married couple would take a significant hit to their standard of living if they lived in France instead.
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    > We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. Some of you are. You're only surpassed by Romania, Costa Rica, and South Africa in this chart: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm Romania, Italy, South Africa in this one: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-c... Doing better in this one, in that now you're behind Bulgaria, Turkey, Chile, Costa Rica and South Africa. https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indic... I'm assuming that disposable household income per capita doesn't quite capture the severely unequal distributions of disposable household income. > Americans live in houses far larger than the average European: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com.... We have more TVs, more cars, etc. That's a cultural difference, not at all indicative of anything - European cities are typically built for denser living - far fewer McMansions, far more well built, sound proofed apartments with ample public transport networks, to the extent that one can work and live in a city without owning a car. Although there are a bunch of bicycles. In fact, very few of my German colleagues own cars because they have no reason to, as they all live in major cities. If they need a car for a holiday, they rent one. > Americans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their own healthcare Which is exactly the point I was making, I mean, the country with one of the lowest passport holding rates doesn't really have much to compare their health system to.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      Your “cultural difference” point is a good one. More cars and more house and things many want, and I find it baffling. My measure is that I want to vacuum the house from one power point, and not worry what happens to the car.
    - NicoJuicy 6y ago
      https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Belgium https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu... Fyi, an interesting statistic is that Eg. Houses in Belgium are more expensive to buy and way cheaper to rent.
miahi 6y ago
About pricing in .ro: I have a business link with 1000 down / 200 up and static public IP for $25. A similar speed home link is $9. Adjusted for big mac index (2.5x) they would be around $60 / $22.
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  Thanks for the BMI number. I didn't pay too much attention to pricing of things when I was there (bit of a working holiday), but those numbers help put things in perspective. I've seen some areas in the US with similar speeds like that for business cases be ~$100/month - still more than your .ro pricing, but I think most places that can get those speeds will still have somewhat higher pricing. Home - most folks I know don't have those sorts of home speeds, nor have access to those speeds in their areas. Often people bundle internet/tv/phones/etc, so they may get a 'better' price thinking about individual components, but... $9 is pretty darn good. My home prices have gone down a bit over the years as speeds have gone up a bit, but I'm still tied to whatever's offered in this geography.
- a2tech 6y ago
  I have gigabit up and down in my house in Michigan for $49/month. Fiber, a new ISP. We got lucky in my town because the city owns the phone poles and is very open to leasing space.
  - mgkimsal 6y ago
    nice! "a2" - Ann Arbor, by any chance? I used to live in Ypsi, but those were the days of dual-channel ISDN being 'hot stuff'. :)
    - a2tech 6y ago
      Actually, we ARE in Ypsilanti. Ann Arbor has worse options then us--they don't own their poles and they're a bigger city. We're small enough and have the poles to make us a better target for small time rollouts. I'm loving the fiber life style though.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> I was in Bucharest a couple of years ago and used wired broadband in an apartment. It was good - not terribly faster than what I get here, or at least. Often in apartment rentals in Romania, the link to the apartment is a fast fiber one, but 1) the installers didn’t properly connect all eight pins to the ethernet cable, and/or 2) the apartment’s owner has installed a slow router. Gigabit routers have until recently been a specialist item in Romania that had to be special-ordered, and the owners of rented apartments and cafes just bought a cheap slow router at the local hypermarket. So, the internet that customers enjoyed was always slower than the physical connection could have provided.
- miahi 6y ago
  The 2.4GHz band is saturated (in an apartment building you'll see tens of networks, there's no free channel even if you want to optimize. And there are not many 5GHz-capable devices or they have the 5GHz band disabled (not sure why - I found this also whilst renting/airbnb in other countries, the wifi was bad but the old "admin/admin" login worked on the router, so we could switch it to 5GHz). And yes, the install teams are outsourced and the quality varies wildly.
StavrosK 6y ago
> It was good - not terribly faster than what I get here, or at least ... not faster such that I'd notice That's more about proximity than about bandwidth. Whenever I'm SF, I'm surprised at how quickly everything loads, mainly because the datacenter is next to me rather than on the other side of the world.

EdwardDiego 6y ago

I think that exceptionalism rote taught explains a lot of America's inherent conservatism - why change if you're already the best?

rayiner 6y ago
We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. We have the highest disposable income in the OECD: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/14773.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/14773.jpeg. The median household income of a married couple with kids is $95,000. And the taxes are extremely low in that bracket. Our unemployment rate in the midst of Trump’s botched handling of COVID is less than what France’s unemployment rate is in a normal year. Even when you hear complaints about things like healthcare, the debates are more about universal coverage than the quality or affordability of care itself. Americans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their own healthcare: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcare-quite-positively.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar.... (And, Americans being preternaturally optimistic, just assign less value to the security of a safety net in the case they lose their job, etc.) Americans live in houses far larger than the average European: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/comparing_average_house_size_in_us_to_europe https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com.... We have more TVs, more cars, etc. It’s easy to assume that Americans are just ignorant and irrational. But Americans know that Europe has a bunch of services we don’t, and they pay much higher taxes in return. Democrats make that comparison all the time. People are aware of it. But the fact is that the current system works pretty well for your typical voter. A flatter society with more social services would be better for a lot of people. However, your average suburban married couple would take a significant hit to their standard of living if they lived in France instead.
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  > We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. Some of you are. You're only surpassed by Romania, Costa Rica, and South Africa in this chart: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm Romania, Italy, South Africa in this one: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-c... Doing better in this one, in that now you're behind Bulgaria, Turkey, Chile, Costa Rica and South Africa. https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indic... I'm assuming that disposable household income per capita doesn't quite capture the severely unequal distributions of disposable household income. > Americans live in houses far larger than the average European: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com.... We have more TVs, more cars, etc. That's a cultural difference, not at all indicative of anything - European cities are typically built for denser living - far fewer McMansions, far more well built, sound proofed apartments with ample public transport networks, to the extent that one can work and live in a city without owning a car. Although there are a bunch of bicycles. In fact, very few of my German colleagues own cars because they have no reason to, as they all live in major cities. If they need a car for a holiday, they rent one. > Americans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their own healthcare Which is exactly the point I was making, I mean, the country with one of the lowest passport holding rates doesn't really have much to compare their health system to.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Your “cultural difference” point is a good one. More cars and more house and things many want, and I find it baffling. My measure is that I want to vacuum the house from one power point, and not worry what happens to the car.
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Belgium https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu... Fyi, an interesting statistic is that Eg. Houses in Belgium are more expensive to buy and way cheaper to rent.

miahi 6y ago

About pricing in .ro: I have a business link with 1000 down / 200 up and static public IP for $25. A similar speed home link is $9. Adjusted for big mac index (2.5x) they would be around $60 / $22.

mgkimsal 6y ago
Thanks for the BMI number. I didn't pay too much attention to pricing of things when I was there (bit of a working holiday), but those numbers help put things in perspective. I've seen some areas in the US with similar speeds like that for business cases be ~$100/month - still more than your .ro pricing, but I think most places that can get those speeds will still have somewhat higher pricing. Home - most folks I know don't have those sorts of home speeds, nor have access to those speeds in their areas. Often people bundle internet/tv/phones/etc, so they may get a 'better' price thinking about individual components, but... $9 is pretty darn good. My home prices have gone down a bit over the years as speeds have gone up a bit, but I'm still tied to whatever's offered in this geography.
a2tech 6y ago
I have gigabit up and down in my house in Michigan for $49/month. Fiber, a new ISP. We got lucky in my town because the city owns the phone poles and is very open to leasing space.
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  nice! "a2" - Ann Arbor, by any chance? I used to live in Ypsi, but those were the days of dual-channel ISDN being 'hot stuff'. :)
  - a2tech 6y ago
    Actually, we ARE in Ypsilanti. Ann Arbor has worse options then us--they don't own their poles and they're a bigger city. We're small enough and have the poles to make us a better target for small time rollouts. I'm loving the fiber life style though.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

> I was in Bucharest a couple of years ago and used wired broadband in an apartment. It was good - not terribly faster than what I get here, or at least. Often in apartment rentals in Romania, the link to the apartment is a fast fiber one, but 1) the installers didn’t properly connect all eight pins to the ethernet cable, and/or 2) the apartment’s owner has installed a slow router. Gigabit routers have until recently been a specialist item in Romania that had to be special-ordered, and the owners of rented apartments and cafes just bought a cheap slow router at the local hypermarket. So, the internet that customers enjoyed was always slower than the physical connection could have provided.

miahi 6y ago
The 2.4GHz band is saturated (in an apartment building you'll see tens of networks, there's no free channel even if you want to optimize. And there are not many 5GHz-capable devices or they have the 5GHz band disabled (not sure why - I found this also whilst renting/airbnb in other countries, the wifi was bad but the old "admin/admin" login worked on the router, so we could switch it to 5GHz). And yes, the install teams are outsourced and the quality varies wildly.

StavrosK 6y ago

> It was good - not terribly faster than what I get here, or at least ... not faster such that I'd notice That's more about proximity than about bandwidth. Whenever I'm SF, I'm surprised at how quickly everything loads, mainly because the datacenter is next to me rather than on the other side of the world.