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“When it comes to broadband, America is the original shithole country”
- chovybizzass 6y agoPalo Alto and still no fiber. Shitty comcast goes down every day.
- quantified 6y agoYour cell phone service is lame too. What gives?
- refurb 6y agoThis tweet is one of the most US-centric ones I've seen.
- nextstep 6y agoYeah... it's a thread about the US's shitty broadband situation. What do you expect?
- Mordisquitos 6y agoI'm the first who is very critical of online Americentrism, but this tweet is virtually the opposite. It is raising an issue that is a problem in the US as compared to most, if not all, of the developed World that many ordinary Americans are probably unaware of—precisely because of their US-centric cultural isolation.
- luckylion 6y agoBut as you can see from this thread, it's not a problem "as compared to most, if not all, of the developed World". It's a problem in lot's of countries, including Germany, Austria, France, and the UK.
- coldtea 6y agoAs we can see from this thread, the US is worse than all of those countries (and even where it is now, it got later than them) - more expensive, less options, less speed, very limited in tons of places. It's just that these other countries also have complains, but those are at their own level of service, not compared to the US.
- refurb 6y agoNo, as someone who has experience the internet in the US and other countries, the US does not have the worst internet. Not even close (and I’m talking other western countries). It’s US-centric because the author doesn’t know this but just assumes it.
- filleduchaos 6y agoI feel you. I am normally quite critical of nearly everything about the US, but the Americans who treat every problem they have as uniquely, hyperbolically horrible (even when considering the "western" world alone) are a special kind of frustrating. To hear them talk, you'd think that Europe and Australia/New Zealand were perfect utopias. Meanwhile take this particular issue for example; many of the friends and acquaintances I have in Canada, Germany and Australia have plenty of complaints about internet service as well (even the Twitter thread has someone from Canada post a screenshot where they're only getting 0.38Mbps).
- Mandatum 6y agoUp until 2007 or so, similar story in New Zealand. The government broke up our internet monopoly, then the subsequent duopoly 10 or so years after that.
- jcelerier 6y agoidk, as a french who went to palo alto for a week, I found speeds to be embarrassingly bad in what is a major tech hub of the world compared to the gigabit fiber I've had in medium french cities since something like 2012 ?
- pessimizer 6y agoNobody thinks Australia is a utopia.
- refurb 6y agoYup. This is it exactly. Having spent time in the US and other western countries the US is much better in some aspects and worse in others.
- ng55QPSK 6y agoMaybe it's time to take the US from the list of developed countries?
- coldtea 6y agoThat doesn't even make sense. First, it's an American writing about the state of broadband in the US. What exactly would it be other than US-centric? Second, why would it need to be anything else? He wants to write about the broandband in his country.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoHas anyone tried Starlink yet?
- phnofive 6y ago110Mbps down/20 up, 50ms. Not bad for the price - maybe FttH is a myth after all.
- pdpi 6y agoI get 8-10ms latencies on most of the online games I play. FttH (well, FttB in my case) is pretty damn good.
- walrus01 6y agoyes, 150 to 330 down, 16-20 up, 0.25 to 0.75% packet loss in the current sparse network. It's not as good as a well implemented DOCSIS3 last mile or GPON, but it absolutely blows away anything DSL based, and 99% of WISPs.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoThat is pretty good, to be honest. Any experiences with videoconferences over Starlink? I wonder if I can just build a house in the middle of nowhere, with some solar panels + battery (but with trash service and water access) and move there.
- walrus01 6y agoI think you almost certainly could. I've had remote access to another beta terminal since mid november, and my own since late January. There are very brief 5-10 second periods of no ping answers to the default gateway which cumulatively add up to about 0.50% packet loss over a 4 hour period. It's been getting progressively better as more satellites are launched and the make-before-break handovers are seamless. You do want to ensure you have no tree obstructions and a clear view of the sky in many directions - some people have needed to put the antenna on a 10' tall mast mount.
- Kaibeezy 6y agoFiber runs down the middle of the road along my property line. I doubt Openreach will ever get me connected.
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoRemember The USA doesn't even have LLU. To be honest FTC (Fiber to CAB) and VDSL for the local drop (35 - 70 MBS is 10x better than almost all US subs get access to. And very few consumers need (or want to pay for) FTP
- dboreham 6y agoThe part of the US with which I'm familiar (Intermountain west) is mostly connected with HFC. DSL is what bottom feeders looking to pay as little as possible use and as a result its QoS is poor. HFC is fine imho for 100% of retail subs at present. We have 650/40.
- cat199 6y ago> And very few consumers need (or want to pay for) FTP Consumer 'needs' have been formed by gatekeepers to shape their profit motives, so this is a bit of a red herring.
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoSo exactly how do you persuade an OAP (Senior) who uses their phone mostly to call their Children to upgrade and pay more so that you can have pointless bragging rights about FTP. I am sure incumbents would love to move low revenue customers onto more expensive plans.
- cat199 6y agoArguably social media, etc. could be home appliances much like anything else. Some people might not actually need high speed internet - but this doesn't change the possibility (I would say fact) that the market of available goods and services, and in turn, the entire 'culture' around internet usage, has been distorted by industry interests.
- ChuckNorris89 6y agoAmerica? You surely mean Germany/Austria.
- sreeni_ananth 6y agoSame case in Australia I guess? India on the other hand has leap frogged many developed countries here. Fiber to home with unlimited data is quite reasonable.
- ilikeerp 6y agoI had fibre to the curb in QLD and fibre to the node in Sydney. Was the fastest broadband I've ever experienced!
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoIn Major cities and middle class areas possibly but I doubt rural connectivity gets FTP
- msravi 6y agoOh, the infrastructure has been/is being laid. It's called BharatNet. 154,000 villages (of around 600,000) are now connected using OFC[1] With private service providers in a city, I pay around $15/month for a 150Mbps connection with a 1000GB data cap (after which the speed drops to 1Mbps). I can go up to a 1000Mbps/5500GB plan at around $80. BharatNet will likely be cheaper since it's government run. 1. https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/technology/over-1-54-lakh-gram-panchayats-now-have-high-speed-broadband-infra-ravi-shankar-prasad/2210010/ https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/technology/over-1-...
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago:-)
- nilsocket 6y agoI live in small town. I pay 645 rupees ~ 9 dollars per month, for 60mbps speed till 3.3TB, 2mbps beyond 3.3TB. Other plans range from 30mbps to 300mbps with costs ranging from 590 - 1800 rupees i.e., 8 to 24 dollars. Government plans to cover whole country by end of 2022.
- odiroot 6y agoHas Mr Doctorow ever visited the DACH region?
- intellirogue 6y agoI'm living in Germany, and coming from NZ (where we have fairly universal 1Gbps FTTH) it has certainly been a big step down, but it can't compare to some of the insanity that my US friends deal with.
- robert_foss 6y agoI live in central Berlin, and it is is downright embarrassing, internet access in Germany is terrible. 10 years ago I had 1Gbps fiber in Sweden. For reference I have 400/20 Cable, for 44Eur/m. No caps. Provider Pyur. Overall medium terrible experience.
- ceejayoz 6y ago200/5 runs $80/month here (upstate NY, USA), and I’m in a “good” broadband spot for my area.
- ChuckNorris89 6y agoJan Böhmermann (Germany's John Oliver) did an investigation on his show[1] into Germany's terrible internet infrastructure and proved it's basically down to corruption from Kohl's regime that scrapped the fiber plans for copper in order to enrich a certain friendly company with political ties that was big in the copper business back then. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDNYS_4dkAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDNYS_4dkAc
- ng55QPSK 6y agoAnd for 40 years they could not change? Fiber is comming close and close to homes every year as it's needed for FTTC (and doing vectoring on DSL for the last 400m) and for DOCSIS on coaxial cables.
- thrower123 6y agoI grew up in bumblefuck Maine, and we had cable TV run in the 90s, with cable internet since at least the early 2000s. My parents get close to 500 mb/s now on their basic package from Spectrum. I suspect that being far enough out from Portland and Bangor that over-the-air TV never worked well was a bonus for getting cable built out.
- maxerickson 6y agoI have Spectrum and it is fine, but it is merely 'fast' and it is expensive (comparatively anyway).
- donmcronald 6y agoRobelus from Canada has entered the chat!
- emilecantin 6y agoI live in rural Québec. My county got fed up with the ISPs and actually covered _every_ road & street with fiber. Gave a swift kick in the nuts to Bell & Cogeco, and now we have actual competition here. My costs went down 20$ / month.
- williesleg 6y agoThat's racist.
- ng55QPSK 6y agoFirst world problems.
- cat199 6y agoYes, it is. But it's still a problem.
- varispeed 6y agoUK enters the chat. We could have had the best broadband in the world, but Mrs Thatcher decided to cull fibre optic networks in favour of copper ones as in her mind BT would get competitive advantage over companies offering copper network. Absolute madness and seems like the motive of money changing hands under the table was never investigated. https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784 https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-l...
- tscherno 6y agoFunny,the same happend in Germany during the Helmut Kohl era. https://www.epr-blog.de/2018/09/21/fiber-optics-is-the-future/ https://www.epr-blog.de/2018/09/21/fiber-optics-is-the-futur...
- ChuckNorris89 6y agoI think UK still has it better fiber infra than Germany overall.
- tweetle_beetle 6y agoWe're now in the position that just one company has a FTTP network. It's mad that Virgin Media has a monopoly on one cable that runs into my house, but all the other providers have to compete over the other cable that runs beside it (and I believe are unable to provide their own, even if they wanted to). I guess she got what she wanted.
- pm215 6y ago"unable to provide their own" seems to me like it's not universally true across the UK, at least -- CityFibre are digging up the roads just along from my house right now, installing new fibre all the way along the road, presumably in preparation for being able to provide fibre directly to each house...
- tebbers 6y agoThis is not true at all. The UK is seeing an explosion in non-BT FTTP networks - Hyperoptic, CommunityFibre, CityFibre, B4RN to name just a few off the top of my head. Granted, BT's network is probably currently the largest but that's because it's had a headstart and is a massive company - but they are certainly facing lots of competition at the local level which is great.
- ketzu 6y agoThe one thing I took from most threads on this topic is: Everyone seems to think broadband speeds are terrible and expensive at their place, fed by many anecdotes.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- alibarber 6y agoHah! Well I'll counter that, in my apartment in central London we got something like 100Mbps via cable, that was an artificial cap because I didn't want to pay more (300 was available, we got the cheapest package) - thought that was pretty decent for my wife and I. Moved to Helsinki, didn't know what the options were for internet access so bought a 4G router from Amazon before flying out and stuck a pre-pay net-only sim in it (that you could buy from any kiosk) as a temporary solution. Year later (and all the WFH shit-hits-fan stuff that has happened in the last year) and it's still going strong, again getting around 100Mbps. The Finnish one is CGNAT-ed though so for any 'hacking away for fun (and British TV)' stuff I set up an RPi with a WIFI ap and L2TP tunnel to AAISP back home.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoDoctorow's point is that the citenzens need to make themselves heard so this problem can be fixed. If you think your country has worse broadband than the US, vocally complain to your politicians too. Arguing over who's the worst won't help anyone.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoOur politicians tried to fix it, centralised it, and made it a much worse development than countries that didn't. Simply demanding the government do something is no guarantee it'll end up any better, and it could well prevent the development that preceded the "action" from continuing apace.
- alfiedotwtf 6y agoAustralia enters the chaNO CARRIER
- peterkelly 6y agoAustralia would like a word...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoCompletely partisan hogwash. Australia - another giant continent with spread out population - also has a copper legacy base. We tried to rollout FTTP (fibre to the premises) on the basis that 1000Gbps is a human right or something. It completely fell apart and stalled within two years, and the government who passed it got thrown out, and the next govt tried to complete it with a piecemeal solution that has left swathes of the country less happy than before (though some people got FTTP on the taxpayer's dime and loved it). And now we have much less competition in technology, a govt monopoly on the hardware mandated in 99.5% of households, and a fig leaf of greater choice in who you will pay to shape your internet speed (as all providers are selling you an identical service based on the single-option mandatory hardware described above). TL;dr this is a nightmare, let the market solve it. Tinker with some regs, at most. It can get much worse if you start centralising the "solution" to imperfect internet on a giant continent. Never model American infrastructure on Tokyo or Belgium or other dense small areas with different geography.
- wwtrv 6y ago“The market” did manage to solve it in most East European countries (which had relatively rudimentary copper infrastructure which I assume played a part). You can get a 1Gb line for €20 or less (usually from multiple competing companies) in all major cities where I’m from (low pop density/low overall population) and I’ve heard it’s even cheaper in Romania. The situation with cellular providers is very similar as well. The downside is that due to very low margins most providers can now hardly afford investing into new tech like 5G now.
- wombatmobile 6y agoAustralia has a population of 25 million on a continent the size of USA. 90% of the population lives in the top 10 urban areas. The rest are isolated in small pockets, vast distances from urban centres. > We tried to rollout FTTP (fibre to the premises) on the basis that 1000Gbps is a human right or something. The Labor Party's objective was to give country and regional citizens the same standard of online access as urban citizens. They would charge the same retail price for access even though the infrastructure build was more expensive per capita in regional areas. > It completely fell apart and stalled within two years The project's first two years were spent negotiating infrastructure rationalisation with the national monopoly telco. Before the fibre backbone was laid, the Labor government lost an election and was replaced by the Rupert Murdoch backed Liberal Party. Murdoch ordered the Liberal Party to downgrade the network from universal FTTP so that no competitors could arise to threaten his national cable network. The Liberal Party obliged by scrapping universal FTTP, paying billions to the monopoly telco for obsolete copper, which became a hybrid last mile component of parts of the network, which has now cost double the original estimate for universal FTTP. Less than half the network delivers the max claimed speed of 100/25, for a typical price of A$90 per month (US$70).
- puzzlingcaptcha 6y agoHow fast is fast enough for a run-of-the-mill household connection? I have a 300/25 connection from my cable provider (using DOCSIS) and while fiber has been available for a few years I don't feel like I'd benefit much from a faster link.
- msh 6y agoIn these times I would say fast enough on both download and upload to have multiple video teams/zoom/meet meetings running at the same time, while also supporting basic websurfing and netflix.
- NoOneNew 6y agoJust to throw it out there. We all do realize laying down either glass or copper is expensive per mile. Replacing old infrastructure, per mile, is even more expensive. Add in just how incredibly large the US is compared to other countries... if the gov is going to subsidize something, I want to make sure the bridges, overpass and canal infrastructure maintenance budget is bigger than worrying about how long it takes to download a 4k youtube video.
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoJust do what the EU did. Mandate that the last mile must be shared between broadband providers. It boggles my mind that this didn't happen in the US, as it's a super-US kind of solution (minimal interference in the market, people get to make a profit). And I say this every time this comes up on HN, and people act like it's impossible.
- sschueller 6y agoAny place can be a "shithole". If you end up being one of 2 buildings that isn't connected via Fiber where everyone else is already at 10GBits they tend to forget about you. All provider maps show 100% coverage but every time you try to get service for some reason it doesn't work. But with large companies no one really cares when you are just a rounding error.
- dirtybird04 6y ago>Broadband is the single wire that delivers free speech, a free press, free assembly, education, family life, employment, health, opportunity, civic and political engagement, and every other necessity for a decent and dignified life in the 21st century Okay I know this is HN and there is heavy slant towards technology and tech-driven solutions but this is just a ridiculous statement. What if I get a 4G/5G router? Is my life any less decent or dignified? There's a lot more to life than ridiculous torrent/YouTube/netflix speeds
- totalZero 6y agoThe term "broadband" is defined by the FCC as connections of 25/3 or better. My phone is on low band 5G and gets 4x that. So your 4G/5G connection would presumably still be "broadband." https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-definition-broadband-25mbps https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-defin...
- frandibar 6y agoAmerica is a continent, not a country.
- rhino369 6y agoIn American English (and I’m pretty sure British English too), America generally means the USA. And we don’t consider North and South America to be a single continent. If you want to refer to both you should say the Americas. If you use the world America without other context, the lister will assume you are talking about the country and won’t even consider you mean North and South America combined. I know some cultures consider the Americas to be a single continent. But that’s odd. They are arguably less combined than Europe, Asia, and Africa are.
- xodice 6y agoI'm quite pleased with my 1gb up/down for $165 from TruVista. Stable, cheap, IPv6 and a static IPv4 IP. Not sure I agree with this guys opinion, but I might just be lucky? Everyone in my area uses a similar fiber plan. Again though maybe my small town of 10k~ people might be an outlier?