13 ms·

Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

207 points by d0ne 15y ago

ojbyrne 15y ago
For those who think this is going to be an anti-government regulation, libertarian orthodoxy type article, here's the tl;dr: "government regulators who have forced more competition"
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- VMG 15y ago
  ... after creating monopolies in the first place
  - bgentry 15y ago
    The government doesn't have to create these monopolies. Utility (i.e. telecom) companies naturally tend towards a monopoly because of the absurdly high cost of rolling out duplicate infrastructure. Usually the first mover is able to fend off any real competition by lowering its prices below that which its competitors can afford, given that they still have an infrastructure to build.
    - masklinn 15y ago
      And even if the first mover does not end up alone on the market, after some time the market tends to undergo significant consolidation (once most of the organic growth has been achieved). And you end up with a natural monopoly anyway. You can even see that in very recent history: the US government broke up Bell in 7 in 1984, it's already merged back into 2 companies (AT&T and Verizon are composed of 3 baby bells each, the 7th is part of Qwest/CenturyLink)
      - ori_b 15y ago
        Correct me if I'm wrong, but the baby bell split was a vertical split. In other words, it left 7 regional monopolies, rather than 7 companies covering the same regions, competing for the same customers. That means that customers were still stuck with one choice for phone and internet access, but the choice merely varied based on where you went. The Baby Bells weren't competing with each other.
  - krschultz 15y ago
    The logic there is astounding. The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies. These companies then merged their way back into a handful of large corporations and are still trying to merge even more. Did the government force them to join up together? Of course not. The government is actively discouraging a lot of these mergers, i.e. the government is forcing there to be a more competitive marketplace.
    - Semiapies 15y ago
      The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking British Telecom.) Similarly, there are a lot of municipal agreements in the US where one company gets the exclusive right to handle local phone or cable service within a city or region. More companies or smaller companies doesn't mean any benefit for consumers when they still just end up choosing between "the phone company" and "the cable company" as designated by law.
      - masklinn 15y ago
        > After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking even worse entities.) In order to regulate it (putting it under jurisdiction of the FCC) as Bell was already a natural monopoly by this point, even after the Kingsbury Commitment.
        Perceval 15y ago
        At the top of this thread, ojbyrne says we need to have government regulation in order to create competition. Here you say that we needed regulation to make AT&T a de jure national monopoly so that we could further regulate AT&T. So, regulation grants monopolies, then regulates those monopolies, then also regulates more competition into the monopoly market it had previously granted? This is good governance?
        masklinn 15y ago
        Regulation did not create AT&T's monopoly. AT&T did that, the government later sanctioned it in order to try and better regulate the monopolistic company (it failed).
  - logjam 15y ago
    >... after creating monopolies in the first place If you are really trying to advance the theory that "the market", left to itself, won't generate monopoly after monopoly, perhaps you could point us to actual examples of those golden times when the absence of regulation served consumers more than they served business oligarchy.
    - russell 15y ago
      Are you trying to say that unregulated monopolies like US Steel, Standard Oil, the railroads, AT&T, American Tobacco didnt have the best interests of the public in mind? After all Carnegie gave us lots of libraries and without Rockefeller we would not have had the Rockettes.
      - seabee 15y ago
        If American Tobacco had the best interests of the public in mind, do you think they'd still exist in any form? Being philanthropic is not mutually exclusive with owning an amoral or even unethical business.
        masklinn 15y ago
        I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
      - chopsueyar 15y ago
        One man's robber baron is another man's philanthropist. Did you ever use Windows Millennium Edition?
      - lionhearted 15y ago
        I can't comment on the other three, but Standard Oil was fantastically good for the United States and the world. I'd really recommend the biography "Titan" by Ron Chernow about John Rockefeller's life. Tons of advances in efficiency, chemistry, operations, logistics. Oil prices fell dramatically, consistency and quality went up, supply went up through all of Standard's monopoly years. Breaking it up was far more about political factional conflict than it was about problems for consumers. (Preemptively: Before anyone decides to jump on it, Rockefeller's rebate deal with the railroad wasn't above board. But Standard Oil was a huge net gain for the world. Absurdly so, actually.)
- bobo888 15y ago
  Well this is how it happend in Romania: ----------------- 2000 - 2002 There was NO regulation. We just threw UTP cables from building to building, and bought external connectivity from bulk sellers. We didn't pay any taxes. We didn't have any signed agreements with "customers". We didn't have any permits from the city council either. There were no employees... heck, we weren't even registered as a business. We just threw UTP cables through the city like it was in our own backyard. The only problem was after thunderstorms, when there was a shortage of switches to replace the burned ones :) Oh, and from time to time I had to call some customer's mom to ask her to reset the stuck switch hosted by her kid, because half the network couldn't connect to the internet. Users paid about $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with other users (multiplayer games and movie/mp3 sharing) and 64 kbps internet access. Basically we were just some highscool/college kids building a LAN, and every user paid a share of the costs. My network had about 200 subscribers and covered a 2x2 km area. Several networks like this one were scattered throughout the city. Every month a couple of new networks appeared, while others bit the dust (including my own). ----------------- 2003 - 2004 (By this time me and my friends lost interest in being a "pseudo-ISP", so I can only speak from the POV of a customer) Networks with 100-300 users began joining together forming networks of 1000+ subscribers. Companies were formed, real sys-admins were hired. Some backbones were now built with fiber optics. Big companies noticed this and started to complain in the mass-media, calling such networks "illegal". Well, they were partly right (nobody gave a f#ck about building permits and taxes). Now users paid $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with hundreds and even thousands of other people, and 256 kbps internet access. Big telcos were barely able to offer 128 kbps with a monthly traffic limit. ----------------- 2005 - 2008 Big telcos stopped complaining and began building their networks. Then increased their networks speeds, removed the FUP, offered subscriber packages (phoneline + cable + internet access). For $10 you could get a landline and 5 mbps internet. A lot of city "LANs" couldn't keep up with the big guys and crumbled. Others joined forces and became real ISPs (with tech support, tax payments, ...) and some even managed to obtain money from investment funds. They could still compete with the main ISPs because they offered much better tech support, and the 100 mbps LAN speed was still of huge interest, even if the internet access was limited to 1-10 mbps. ----------------- 2009 - 2010 Small ISPs begin implementing Fiber to the Building. Hello Gigabit (well, 1000 mbps with others subscribers only... the internet connection is limited to 20-30 mbps). Big telcos buy more and more small ISPs, but also continue to improve their infrastructure. Some drop the old cable (with its DOCSIS modems) and begin implementing Fiber to the Building too. ----------------- Today For $10 per month you can get 100 mbps internet access + 5GB of mobile 3G connection. My ISP started installing Fiber Optics to the home (GPON technology) for houses and continues installing Fiber to the Builing (and UTP from there to your apartment) for high buildings. They also began installing WiFi access points through the cities (free access for all subscribers). ----------------- IN THE END, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE ROMANIAN GOVERMENT FOR NOT INTERFERING. And if the large companies will try to form monopolies, I'm sure new ISPs will appear. I don't care about regulations. Thank you.
tzs 15y ago
The most interesting part in that is that in the UK, both Verizon and AT&T were strong and public proponents of local loop unbundling. When asked about it for the US, they say it is terrible and will hurt consumers.
- chrisjsmith 15y ago
  That's because everyone justifiably hates BT, rather than it made sense.
  - bjelkeman-again 15y ago
    Well it produced the same result in Sweden. And I am sure that “everyone” hates the incumbents in the US too, so the result would possibly be similar.
    - masklinn 15y ago
      Likewise in France (see FreeTelecom, pretty much the poster child for line sharing and local loop unbundling)
  - masklinn 15y ago
    That's mostly because in the US they're incumbents, whereas in the UK they're challengers. Because line sharing and (then) local loop unbundling makes new entries into the market significantly easier (as there isn't the cost to build a whole physical network upfront, and the network can be implemented over time instead) it drives competition in the sky and fees into the ground. It lets challengers challenge, but it's awful for incumbents as they can't just fleece their customers unchallenged.
  - Nrsolis 15y ago
    (As someone who had Internet access in the UK (dialup) for quite a while before moving back to the US, I can tell you that I was surprised at how well it worked and how CHEAP it was. I had Demon and I was amazed at how clueful they were; especially compared to US ISPs.) But more to the point: the US telecoms are deathly afraid of competition. The same thing goes for the CableCo's. Wireless is killing their wireline business and broadband isn't making up the difference. That's why they are looking at network-neutrality killing services/deals they can monetize. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but when one company essentially OWNS the access loop, it's a recipe for high-prices and bad service to customers. If our FCC wasn't chock full of industry players looking to land a cushy lobbying spot after their term is up, we'd see a lot more competition (and better options for everyone).
willwagner 15y ago
I'm mentioning this from a point of complete ignorance but why can't this sort of proposal be used for cable operators as well (both for broadband and television)? Getting to choose from several competitors on who gets my tv and broadband service would I expect create better plans than the current "pay for 100 channels but only use 3" that most if not all US consumers currently get.
- rawsyntax 15y ago
  I agree. The only choice we have now is cable vs netflix.
- mseebach 15y ago
  DSL uses the phone lines to the central, of which there is (at least) one per household, so you just need to hook into a different router at the central. This is easy. For cable you have one cable running down the street, and access is binary, either you have everything or you don't. It's not practical to force the cable owner to "open up", like you can force the phone line owner. Digital is changing this, very quickly.
- derobert 15y ago
  Currently, in my area, there are at least four different choices: FiOS, Comcast, DirecTV, DISH Network. At yet all four offer similar programming packages (big blocks of channels). This seems to be evidence against your hypothesis.
jarin 15y ago
On one hand, more government regulation brings things like Sarbanes-Oxley. On the other hand, you get faster, cheaper Internet access, and arguably more jobs from that. This is why I cannot bring myself to identify with a political party.
- EliRivers 15y ago
  Both of those sound like good things.
  - jerf 15y ago
    Sarbanes-Oxley seems to be a pretty solid example of a regulation whose costs exceed its benefits by quite a bit.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      Want to put a dollar figure on the Enron/Worldcom implosions? How about if we threw a couple of those into the 2008 disaster, same time as Lehman collapsed? What's the cost there? People are really, really bad at pricing catastrophic events. Not to say that the bill couldn't be cleaned up, probably. But the conservative half of the aisle seems to be more interested in talkshow ideological invective than sucker's games like "fixing stuff".
      - jerf 15y ago
        First, you assume without proof that Sarbanes-Oxley will actually prevent the next Enron. Goals aren't results. I do not accept this as unarguably obvious. The rule of thumb is that it is easier to undetectably game complex systems than simple ones. Second, you've not mentioned the fact that Sarbanes-Oxley has real costs, not just in terms of direct compliance but also the business that they've simply shut out in advance because the businesses knew they couldn't afford compliance. Finally, the really relevant metric is not merely "How can we as a society purchase assurance against another Enron at any cost?", but "How can we as a society purchase assurance against Enron in the most cost-effective manner?" I am deeply skeptical that SOX is the correct answer to this question, or even within spitting distance. You've also implicitly bought into the political duality and assumed that if I'm not for it I must be in the "conservative half", even after I just said I'm libertarian quite nearby. I don't particularly care about whether it's "liberal" or "conservative" solutions, I care about working in the most cost-effective manner. SOX is almost certainly not it. People are bad about accounting for disasters, people are really really bad at accounting for regulations. The twin specters of mistaking goals for results and counting only benefits without the costs loom over pretty much every discussion.
hammock 15y ago
It blows my mind that anyone in a startup community, which is all about creating value and making good investments, would suggest that the government tax him (!) and invest in broadband infrastructure instead of that person investing in it himself.
- forensic 15y ago
  Monopolies and duopolies are not free markets. In order to create value, monopolies need to be checked.
  - rawsyntax 15y ago
    We have checks on monopolies here in the US. The only problem is that often the people checking on the monopolies are the same people who run the monopolies.
- barrkel 15y ago
  I've read your sentence perhaps 10 times and I can't figure out what it means in relation to the article. Are you saying telecom incumbents are startups? Does the "him" refer to telecom incumbents? Are you suggesting that the government is taxing startups that are trying to invest in telecoms? Or that the government is investing in telecoms (which is very much not what the article is about)?
  - hammock 15y ago
    I actually did read the article. I wrote that comment before there were any comments, in anticipation of comments in support of subsidized broadband. It was a risky venture, for sure. Heh
- tybris 15y ago
  Read the article. No tax money was spent.
- isleyaardvark 15y ago
  I'm sorry, did you not read the article? > Not government spending. The UK's administration hasn't invested a penny in broadband infrastructure, and most of the network in the Netherlands has been built with private capital.
bjelkeman-again 15y ago
The report which is referenced by Endgaget says about fiber penetration in Sweden: "Fiber and fiber-LAN networks have a slightly bigger share of the market than cable, holding 14% and 13%, respectively. Sweden trails only South Korea and Japan in household fiber penetration rates.” "Municipal networks alone control 20 to 25% of the coverage. Among the more than 150 local fiber/LAN networks in 2008, a majority are owned by municipal authorities or municipally run companies.” And I think this is probably one of the key factors to high fiber penetration. My local government owns the fiber, and I paid to connect to it from my house, so I own the last 40 meters. :) And now I can chose from seven companies offering IP services (four which offer services for homes, the others are company offerings only) and four which offer digital-TV services. 92% of apartments in our local community are connected to the fiber network and 37% of the individual houses are. The other houses are likely to use DSL.
- mseebach 15y ago
  It's not a silver bullet, though. In Denmark, electrical utilities (semi-private) spend obscene amounts of money digging down fiber, but when fiber arrived at my in laws, it took all of a minute comparing their offer with what they could get over DSL before ticking the "no thanks" box. (The price was at best comparable, and then there was the several hundred dollar connection fee).
americandesi333 15y ago
This is a very interesting article, especially 'dummifying' the complexities of US telecom markets. I used to always wonder why US was so behind in terms of broadband deployment and the answers that we given to me were always around 'density'. However, there are densely populated areas in US that can create better broadband experience. The challenge here is that the larger telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon) are required by law to sell their loops to other carriers, but there is a lot of CAPEX needed even with the fiber/copper look. It costs around $1000 per subscriber to bring a broadband TV service home even from the neighborhood (connecting from neighborhood to home and all the equipment in the home). This high CAPEX is a barrier for new entrants in this market. Another reason why US is behind is that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is not allowing the telecom companies in US to charge users based on their tiered internet usage. Therefore, price per mbps is flat no matter how much bandwidth you use. On the other hand, European telecom companies are allowed to charge extra for higher bandwidth usage. Once these two barriers fall (cloud based home TV management and tiered pricing) there will be more competition in US.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > On the other hand, European telecom companies are allowed to charge extra for higher bandwidth usage. These are getting rarer and rarer these days. And the countries which raced ahead dropped quotas early, or never had quotas in the first place (France for instance, second ADSL market in Europe, standard ADSL contracts are all unmetered and metered never represented any significant portion of the market). Even Belgium, historically one of the worst countries in europe quotas-wise (supposedly due to the very low level of computer-based production, meaning ISPs can get no peering), is moving away from quotas. > Once these two barriers fall (cloud based home TV management and tiered pricing) there will be more competition in US. No.
  - americandesi333 15y ago
    Masklinn, If my first point was not correct, then why is there so much lobbying effort and dollars being spent on the 'net neutrality' issue? Also, just out of curiosity, want to know why the 'No' for the two barriers and if you identified something different that would change the landscape.
afterburner 15y ago
Free markets need government regulation in order to create competitive environments where the customer is served best. (The "blame the government" in the title refers to blaming the US government for not creating those conditions, and crediting the European governments for doing so.)
- Apocryphon 15y ago
  I think it's a clever, ironic use of blaming the government- in the U.S., big government is always seen as an impediment and to be dreaded, but the problem is not for meddling bureaucrats, but hands-off ones who allow corporations free rein.
  - arecibodrake 15y ago
    You mean the governments that constrain through force the market so that only a few monopolistic entities are present?
    - Apocryphon 15y ago
      The problem is caused by bad government, but the solution is good government, as exemplified by the BT story. A completely free market would lead to a monopoly in broadband anyways. The irony here is that the government is not doing anything to solve the problem.
      - arecibodrake 15y ago
        Government getting the hell out of the way of people voluntarily interacting the marketplace is the best situation. For example: cable easements. Get rid of them. Get rid of all easements. Without them, you would have a variety of options and methods of gaining access to a number of utilities (internet, power, etc) as well as new services that have not yet been created.
        prodigal_erik 15y ago
r00fus 15y ago
So this is basically more evidence that government regulation does work (when it's not captured - oil and nuke reg agencies are horribly corrupt). If there's anything that all folks of political bent should agree on, it should be greater transparency where government and business (ie, moneyed interests) interact - otherwise you get the mess that is the US government "regulation" efforts.
tzs 15y ago
In the "Need to Know" version of this story they talked with a BT representative about how things had worked out for BT after they were forced into local loop unbundling. It worked out great for BT. They make more money leasing out the lines and leasing out space in their switching centers for the third party ISP's equipment than they were making providing monopoly ISP services directly. It truly is a case of everyone wins. BT makes more money. Third party companies can start ISPs and make money. Consumers get plans that fit their needs better and cost less.
- fourk 15y ago
  After looking at the options available that were linked in the article, I'm unsure that I agree that everyone wins. Specifically, consumers looking for the higher end of the spectrum. At least, the only higher-end provider linked in the article, Demon [1], seems to offer abysmally low bandwidth caps on almost every plan, and generally low max download speeds (20Mb or less). How well are their bandwidth caps enforced? I ask because Comcast does not seem to enforce their bandwidth caps in San Francisco, at least for customers on their >$99/mo Home plans. I realize that this is an extremely small sample size, how well does this trend describe other UK providers? Personally, given the option between any of the plans Demon has to offer, I'd still prefer my 50Mbps down/10 up Comcast line that has effectively no cap, for which I pay 100/mo. Is Demon the exception and not the rule when it comes to pricier third party providers in the UK? [1]: http://www.demon.net/broadband http://www.demon.net/broadband
  - arethuza 15y ago
    BT Infinity (40Mbps down, 10 up) is £18 a month with a 40GB cap and £25.60 for unlimited.
    - fourk 15y ago
      Thank you, as much I tried to resist believing it...the grass certainly is greener on the other side.
      - 15y ago
themal 15y ago
It's worth highlighting that although broadband over-the-phone is competitive in the UK, the cable internet service (which was built with US money) is a virtual monopoly and there's no sign of its network being unbundled.
- chopsueyar 15y ago
  It is also the least expensive way to build out infrastructure (US cable).
maxharris 15y ago
Here's why: population density is much higher in Europe. The price per mile to put cables into the ground has a lower bound that cannot be breached. The same length of cable will connect far more customers in high-population areas than it will in rural Wyoming. It is not valid to compare Europe with the USA in this regard because they truly are apples and oranges geographically. I assert that broadband would be faster and cheaper anywhere given true capitalism (that is, a system where people trade honestly, at a profit, with the only government involvement being the courts [no regulation to give corrupt businesses and activists the upper hand].)
- Apocryphon 15y ago
  The article actually mentions that point: Meanwhile, the size of the U.S. may be a red herring. Most of the region between Boston and Washington is as densely populated as most of Europe and the UK. So is the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego. And so is the region of the Midwest centered on Chicago. Those areas are home to about a quarter of all Americans. In other words, we live in a big country, but a lot of it is relatively empty space.
  - maxharris 15y ago
    I don't buy that. One reason is that the article fails to account for the taxes that are put on phone bills that subsidize rural telecommunications. Another is that the regulations that force American telcos to support low-density projects have direct effects (someone subsidizes folks in Wyoming, and that invariably ends up being people living elsewhere) as well as indirect ones (regulating a business changes its culture for the worse. Risk takers get pushed out.)
    - dalke 15y ago
      The Federal USF Surcharge is what, US$1 per residential line per month? That's the only nationwide subsidy program I know of. Even if it's more - $5/month? $20/month? - that's nowhere near enough to account for the disparity in network performance in the Northeast seaboard states compared to, say Sweden. I'm an American living in Sweden. I'm in a city and can get 200Mbit/s for US$80/month. Checking Comcast for Boston and I don't see any option above 105Mbit and that costs US$105/month. That's not a simple difference in subsidies. In any case, Sweden is not a densely packed country. It's about 54 people/sq. mile and the US is 83 people/sq. mile. Massachusetts is 830 people/sq. mile. Why doesn't Boston have better internet service than here? It can't be subsidies for universal access for a far-flung population since the surcharge isn't that high. It can't be population density since otherwise Boston or any other large US city would have better connectivity than here. The point of the survey is to analyze those reason, and you drew your conclusion after only reading a summary of it. The objections you raise come up every time there's a cross-national comparison of internet access. They are accounted for, and the US is still behind, and falling further behind.
arecibodrake 15y ago
The only reason we don't have most metropolitan areas with gigabit fiber to the door is almost entirely teleco/cable easements. The day you stop government from mandating one company per area or delimiting it to a small few monopolistic entities and allow a free market is the day we stop dealing with the hell that is becoming us. The answer is quite simply LESS government, dammit.
- seabee 15y ago
  That clearly isn't the answer, as the article spends many paragraphs explaining. The answer is "do things that encourage competition and investment". The US government fails at this, but it is neither a limitation of government per se or easily achieved by private enterprise alone.
  - arecibodrake 15y ago
    The article argues that good situations resulted from government action. The reality is that while these situations are viewed as good, they are not neccessarily the best. Only when individuals are able to voluntarily interact in the market do the best services and products meet the best prices and innovation is at its highest. One of the main factors that does not permit government from being able to exist in a market in a positive way in comparison is due to a complete lack of price model interaction. Government (by its very nature) does not depend on consumer response (price model). It thus has no way of allocating resources as efficiently as it would were it to exist without tax dollars (confiscated property, not gained through competition or voluntary interaction). As such, it cannot gauge weather or not the things it is doing are the best or the most effective to meet the demand. There are mountains of writing on the basics of free markets and Austrian Economics, if you would like me to link you to some resources.
    - arecibodrake 15y ago
      Ah yes! -2! Let's outpace reddit down the website memory hole! I mean really people, this is basic economics.
tobylane 15y ago
1. Foreign call centers. My parents are now too scared to move because they (foolishly) assume everyone uses them. Talktalk and BT do, low quality lines to South Africa and India. 2. I practically live on the dividing line between two exchanges. The one I'm not on is really advanced, lots of choice, but not the one I am on. There are various ideas floating around, which I've never heard of since, such as iPlayer and Steam caches at every exchange. I wish they'd stop caring so much about speed (I get 5.5mb/s in speedtests, over 1.2 (directly, the line isn't) miles of copper) and move onto ping and caches.
Apocryphon 15y ago
When Black was named Telecommunications Adjudicator in 2004, he fought on two fronts to break the BT logjam. First, he used his own experience as a former employee of the telecom giant to push for change from the inside. When that wasn't enough, he used the bully pulpit provided by his government post to embarrass BT in public. He publicized the company's failure to meet goals. Reporters loved the story of the government regulator holding the giant firm's feet to the fire. I wonder if there are similar tales in the U.S. of the brave little bureaucrat against the hulking titan of industry. Seems rather countercultural.
biturd 15y ago
Where can I find out more about the "last mile" wireless links near the end of the video? I will be moving to an retirement area that has a summer population of a few hundred and a winter population of many thousands. There is no internet currently aside from cellular. I wanted to look into long link wifi, but only have found expensive point to point solutions that are multiple thousands of dollars. I don't even know if it is possible. The closest town is only a few miles, but I doubt Comcast is going to let me share a few business class accounts to all those users. I was going to try to keep it free to near free, a few bucks a month and cover the equipment costs on my end up to a few thousand dollars. If I can't hook into cable without violation of TOS, then I have to go right to the telco and lease a line, which I have no idea the costs of these days. I would need at least several hundred Mb/s I believe. Hopefully there is a datacenter or ISP nearby that would allow me to work with them to put something on the roof or on a neighbors property. Suggestions on resources?
- wmf 15y ago
  Start here: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/wisp/2_How_to_start http://www.dslreports.com/faq/wisp/2_How_to_start
absconditus 15y ago
This does not seem like much of an explanation. CLECs have existed in the US for over a decade now. In Chicago many of us have about a dozen options. None of them are very competitive with EU providers when it comes to price. A few are probably comparable when it comes to speed. I have noticed that even when there is competition most people will stick with Comcast or AT&T and bitch about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carrier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carr...
smutticus 15y ago
There is a direct correlation between competition and lower prices in this market. The US has little to no decent competition in many markets. Therefore ISPs rip people off. If you think Western Europe has cheap broadband try going to small countries in Eastern Europe like Croatia, Slovenia, Latvia or Estonia. I've never seen cheaper BW in Europe than in Latvia.
- arethuza 15y ago
  Wow - 200Mbps fiber for about £25 a month - that's pretty good! http://www.lattelecom.lv/majai/internets/optiskais_internets/ http://www.lattelecom.lv/majai/internets/optiskais_internets...
  - DCoder 15y ago
    Lithuania here - 25 pounds/month gives me unrestricted 100 Mbps, next month they're tripling all speeds for no additional costs. The one-step-cheaper option is 90% of the cost for only 10% of the speed, so I opted for this one instead.
- sbalea 15y ago
  Romania: 100mbps fiber + 5GB 3G bundle, about $13/mo http://www.rcs-rds.ro/internet-digi-net/fiberlink/pachete http://www.rcs-rds.ro/internet-digi-net/fiberlink/pachete
richcollins 15y ago
Government regulation is the cause of slow US broadband. The laws are set up to prevent competition. If these laws were removed speeds would increase dramatically for those that desired them.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
MaysonL 15y ago
Or more specifically, blame the government we get because of the way we finance and run political campaigns.
naner 15y ago
An issue that appears to be overlooked is that the US is much less densely populated and has a much higher overall population and land area to cover. I favor the way many European countries are able to handle things like this (and healthcare, and transportation, etc) but the US is hardly similar to any of those countries. We're operating at a completely different scale here. Not to mention political and cultural differences and issues of states' rights versus the federal government's rights.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > An issue that appears to be overlooked It wasn't overlooked in the article, you overlooked it in your reading: > Meanwhile, the size of the U.S. may be a red herring. Most of the region between Boston and Washington is as densely populated as most of Europe and the UK. So is the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego. And so is the region of the Midwest centered on Chicago. Those areas are home to about a quarter of all Americans. In other words, we live in a big country, but a lot of it is relatively empty space. > The argument that the U.S. is too spread out is nonsense, according to Herman Wagter, one of the Netherlands' most prominent evangelists for next-generation broadband. He thinks there's something else going on in Verizon's and AT&T's opposition to competition at home: They're afraid of it.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  The potency of the population density argument is seriously diminished by the fact that rural municipal broadband initiatives frequently provide much higher performance than available commercial offerings. Blaming the government is reasonable. Before the FCC shut it down, I had a 6mbit up/160kbit down wireless cable modem from Sprint Broadband Direct in a rural area in 2000, connecting to a tower 30 miles away.
- anghyflawn 15y ago
  What do you think is the population density of Sweden, Norway, or Finland? There is still very decent broadband to be had up here at 70 degrees northern latitude.
skrebbel 15y ago
This article surprises me. I'm Dutch and I always thought that in the US, everybody had super awesome broadband for nearly no money. Not sure why, though.
forgotmyuser 15y ago
This needs to be the #1 story on HackerNews for a week. I AM SICK AND TIRED OF MONOPOLIZING CABLE COMPANIES. The article hits right on the spot, word for word. It's time we do something about this, it's time we have some competition and reasonable prices. IT'S TIME TO ACT!
iVy 15y ago
It is somewhat weird reading about DSL in 21 sentury. Atleast i hope ISDN is dead. Down here, in Lithuania, 50% of population (or maybe even more) has the ability to use 300 mbps fiber for only 30 eur/month. No data caps, no shaping.
leppie 15y ago
Global report (excludes Africa). US is dirt cheap compared to internet pricing here...
trystero 15y ago
France is one of the most regulated countries and the price for internet access is still the cheapest in Western Europe. So, no, I wouldn't blame the government for your prices.

207 points by d0ne 15y ago

For those who think this is going to be an anti-government regulation, libertarian orthodoxy type article, here's the tl;dr: "government regulators who have forced more competition"

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
VMG 15y ago
... after creating monopolies in the first place
- bgentry 15y ago
  The government doesn't have to create these monopolies. Utility (i.e. telecom) companies naturally tend towards a monopoly because of the absurdly high cost of rolling out duplicate infrastructure. Usually the first mover is able to fend off any real competition by lowering its prices below that which its competitors can afford, given that they still have an infrastructure to build.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    And even if the first mover does not end up alone on the market, after some time the market tends to undergo significant consolidation (once most of the organic growth has been achieved). And you end up with a natural monopoly anyway. You can even see that in very recent history: the US government broke up Bell in 7 in 1984, it's already merged back into 2 companies (AT&T and Verizon are composed of 3 baby bells each, the 7th is part of Qwest/CenturyLink)
    - ori_b 15y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but the baby bell split was a vertical split. In other words, it left 7 regional monopolies, rather than 7 companies covering the same regions, competing for the same customers. That means that customers were still stuck with one choice for phone and internet access, but the choice merely varied based on where you went. The Baby Bells weren't competing with each other.
- krschultz 15y ago
  The logic there is astounding. The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies. These companies then merged their way back into a handful of large corporations and are still trying to merge even more. Did the government force them to join up together? Of course not. The government is actively discouraging a lot of these mergers, i.e. the government is forcing there to be a more competitive marketplace.
  - Semiapies 15y ago
    The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking British Telecom.) Similarly, there are a lot of municipal agreements in the US where one company gets the exclusive right to handle local phone or cable service within a city or region. More companies or smaller companies doesn't mean any benefit for consumers when they still just end up choosing between "the phone company" and "the cable company" as designated by law.
    - masklinn 15y ago
      > After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking even worse entities.) In order to regulate it (putting it under jurisdiction of the FCC) as Bell was already a natural monopoly by this point, even after the Kingsbury Commitment.
      - Perceval 15y ago
        At the top of this thread, ojbyrne says we need to have government regulation in order to create competition. Here you say that we needed regulation to make AT&T a de jure national monopoly so that we could further regulate AT&T. So, regulation grants monopolies, then regulates those monopolies, then also regulates more competition into the monopoly market it had previously granted? This is good governance?
        masklinn 15y ago
        Regulation did not create AT&T's monopoly. AT&T did that, the government later sanctioned it in order to try and better regulate the monopolistic company (it failed).
- logjam 15y ago
  >... after creating monopolies in the first place If you are really trying to advance the theory that "the market", left to itself, won't generate monopoly after monopoly, perhaps you could point us to actual examples of those golden times when the absence of regulation served consumers more than they served business oligarchy.
  - russell 15y ago
    Are you trying to say that unregulated monopolies like US Steel, Standard Oil, the railroads, AT&T, American Tobacco didnt have the best interests of the public in mind? After all Carnegie gave us lots of libraries and without Rockefeller we would not have had the Rockettes.
    - seabee 15y ago
      If American Tobacco had the best interests of the public in mind, do you think they'd still exist in any form? Being philanthropic is not mutually exclusive with owning an amoral or even unethical business.
      - masklinn 15y ago
        I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
    - chopsueyar 15y ago
      One man's robber baron is another man's philanthropist. Did you ever use Windows Millennium Edition?
    - lionhearted 15y ago
      I can't comment on the other three, but Standard Oil was fantastically good for the United States and the world. I'd really recommend the biography "Titan" by Ron Chernow about John Rockefeller's life. Tons of advances in efficiency, chemistry, operations, logistics. Oil prices fell dramatically, consistency and quality went up, supply went up through all of Standard's monopoly years. Breaking it up was far more about political factional conflict than it was about problems for consumers. (Preemptively: Before anyone decides to jump on it, Rockefeller's rebate deal with the railroad wasn't above board. But Standard Oil was a huge net gain for the world. Absurdly so, actually.)
bobo888 15y ago
Well this is how it happend in Romania: ----------------- 2000 - 2002 There was NO regulation. We just threw UTP cables from building to building, and bought external connectivity from bulk sellers. We didn't pay any taxes. We didn't have any signed agreements with "customers". We didn't have any permits from the city council either. There were no employees... heck, we weren't even registered as a business. We just threw UTP cables through the city like it was in our own backyard. The only problem was after thunderstorms, when there was a shortage of switches to replace the burned ones :) Oh, and from time to time I had to call some customer's mom to ask her to reset the stuck switch hosted by her kid, because half the network couldn't connect to the internet. Users paid about $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with other users (multiplayer games and movie/mp3 sharing) and 64 kbps internet access. Basically we were just some highscool/college kids building a LAN, and every user paid a share of the costs. My network had about 200 subscribers and covered a 2x2 km area. Several networks like this one were scattered throughout the city. Every month a couple of new networks appeared, while others bit the dust (including my own). ----------------- 2003 - 2004 (By this time me and my friends lost interest in being a "pseudo-ISP", so I can only speak from the POV of a customer) Networks with 100-300 users began joining together forming networks of 1000+ subscribers. Companies were formed, real sys-admins were hired. Some backbones were now built with fiber optics. Big companies noticed this and started to complain in the mass-media, calling such networks "illegal". Well, they were partly right (nobody gave a f#ck about building permits and taxes). Now users paid $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with hundreds and even thousands of other people, and 256 kbps internet access. Big telcos were barely able to offer 128 kbps with a monthly traffic limit. ----------------- 2005 - 2008 Big telcos stopped complaining and began building their networks. Then increased their networks speeds, removed the FUP, offered subscriber packages (phoneline + cable + internet access). For $10 you could get a landline and 5 mbps internet. A lot of city "LANs" couldn't keep up with the big guys and crumbled. Others joined forces and became real ISPs (with tech support, tax payments, ...) and some even managed to obtain money from investment funds. They could still compete with the main ISPs because they offered much better tech support, and the 100 mbps LAN speed was still of huge interest, even if the internet access was limited to 1-10 mbps. ----------------- 2009 - 2010 Small ISPs begin implementing Fiber to the Building. Hello Gigabit (well, 1000 mbps with others subscribers only... the internet connection is limited to 20-30 mbps). Big telcos buy more and more small ISPs, but also continue to improve their infrastructure. Some drop the old cable (with its DOCSIS modems) and begin implementing Fiber to the Building too. ----------------- Today For $10 per month you can get 100 mbps internet access + 5GB of mobile 3G connection. My ISP started installing Fiber Optics to the home (GPON technology) for houses and continues installing Fiber to the Builing (and UTP from there to your apartment) for high buildings. They also began installing WiFi access points through the cities (free access for all subscribers). ----------------- IN THE END, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE ROMANIAN GOVERMENT FOR NOT INTERFERING. And if the large companies will try to form monopolies, I'm sure new ISPs will appear. I don't care about regulations. Thank you.

tzs 15y ago

The most interesting part in that is that in the UK, both Verizon and AT&T were strong and public proponents of local loop unbundling. When asked about it for the US, they say it is terrible and will hurt consumers.

chrisjsmith 15y ago
That's because everyone justifiably hates BT, rather than it made sense.
- bjelkeman-again 15y ago
  Well it produced the same result in Sweden. And I am sure that “everyone” hates the incumbents in the US too, so the result would possibly be similar.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    Likewise in France (see FreeTelecom, pretty much the poster child for line sharing and local loop unbundling)
- masklinn 15y ago
  That's mostly because in the US they're incumbents, whereas in the UK they're challengers. Because line sharing and (then) local loop unbundling makes new entries into the market significantly easier (as there isn't the cost to build a whole physical network upfront, and the network can be implemented over time instead) it drives competition in the sky and fees into the ground. It lets challengers challenge, but it's awful for incumbents as they can't just fleece their customers unchallenged.
- Nrsolis 15y ago
  (As someone who had Internet access in the UK (dialup) for quite a while before moving back to the US, I can tell you that I was surprised at how well it worked and how CHEAP it was. I had Demon and I was amazed at how clueful they were; especially compared to US ISPs.) But more to the point: the US telecoms are deathly afraid of competition. The same thing goes for the CableCo's. Wireless is killing their wireline business and broadband isn't making up the difference. That's why they are looking at network-neutrality killing services/deals they can monetize. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but when one company essentially OWNS the access loop, it's a recipe for high-prices and bad service to customers. If our FCC wasn't chock full of industry players looking to land a cushy lobbying spot after their term is up, we'd see a lot more competition (and better options for everyone).

willwagner 15y ago

I'm mentioning this from a point of complete ignorance but why can't this sort of proposal be used for cable operators as well (both for broadband and television)? Getting to choose from several competitors on who gets my tv and broadband service would I expect create better plans than the current "pay for 100 channels but only use 3" that most if not all US consumers currently get.

rawsyntax 15y ago
I agree. The only choice we have now is cable vs netflix.
mseebach 15y ago
DSL uses the phone lines to the central, of which there is (at least) one per household, so you just need to hook into a different router at the central. This is easy. For cable you have one cable running down the street, and access is binary, either you have everything or you don't. It's not practical to force the cable owner to "open up", like you can force the phone line owner. Digital is changing this, very quickly.
derobert 15y ago
Currently, in my area, there are at least four different choices: FiOS, Comcast, DirecTV, DISH Network. At yet all four offer similar programming packages (big blocks of channels). This seems to be evidence against your hypothesis.

jarin 15y ago

On one hand, more government regulation brings things like Sarbanes-Oxley. On the other hand, you get faster, cheaper Internet access, and arguably more jobs from that. This is why I cannot bring myself to identify with a political party.

EliRivers 15y ago
Both of those sound like good things.
- jerf 15y ago
  Sarbanes-Oxley seems to be a pretty solid example of a regulation whose costs exceed its benefits by quite a bit.
  - jbooth 15y ago
    Want to put a dollar figure on the Enron/Worldcom implosions? How about if we threw a couple of those into the 2008 disaster, same time as Lehman collapsed? What's the cost there? People are really, really bad at pricing catastrophic events. Not to say that the bill couldn't be cleaned up, probably. But the conservative half of the aisle seems to be more interested in talkshow ideological invective than sucker's games like "fixing stuff".
    - jerf 15y ago
      First, you assume without proof that Sarbanes-Oxley will actually prevent the next Enron. Goals aren't results. I do not accept this as unarguably obvious. The rule of thumb is that it is easier to undetectably game complex systems than simple ones. Second, you've not mentioned the fact that Sarbanes-Oxley has real costs, not just in terms of direct compliance but also the business that they've simply shut out in advance because the businesses knew they couldn't afford compliance. Finally, the really relevant metric is not merely "How can we as a society purchase assurance against another Enron at any cost?", but "How can we as a society purchase assurance against Enron in the most cost-effective manner?" I am deeply skeptical that SOX is the correct answer to this question, or even within spitting distance. You've also implicitly bought into the political duality and assumed that if I'm not for it I must be in the "conservative half", even after I just said I'm libertarian quite nearby. I don't particularly care about whether it's "liberal" or "conservative" solutions, I care about working in the most cost-effective manner. SOX is almost certainly not it. People are bad about accounting for disasters, people are really really bad at accounting for regulations. The twin specters of mistaking goals for results and counting only benefits without the costs loom over pretty much every discussion.

hammock 15y ago

It blows my mind that anyone in a startup community, which is all about creating value and making good investments, would suggest that the government tax him (!) and invest in broadband infrastructure instead of that person investing in it himself.

forensic 15y ago
Monopolies and duopolies are not free markets. In order to create value, monopolies need to be checked.
- rawsyntax 15y ago
  We have checks on monopolies here in the US. The only problem is that often the people checking on the monopolies are the same people who run the monopolies.
barrkel 15y ago
I've read your sentence perhaps 10 times and I can't figure out what it means in relation to the article. Are you saying telecom incumbents are startups? Does the "him" refer to telecom incumbents? Are you suggesting that the government is taxing startups that are trying to invest in telecoms? Or that the government is investing in telecoms (which is very much not what the article is about)?
- hammock 15y ago
  I actually did read the article. I wrote that comment before there were any comments, in anticipation of comments in support of subsidized broadband. It was a risky venture, for sure. Heh
tybris 15y ago
Read the article. No tax money was spent.
isleyaardvark 15y ago
I'm sorry, did you not read the article? > Not government spending. The UK's administration hasn't invested a penny in broadband infrastructure, and most of the network in the Netherlands has been built with private capital.

bjelkeman-again 15y ago

The report which is referenced by Endgaget says about fiber penetration in Sweden: "Fiber and fiber-LAN networks have a slightly bigger share of the market than cable, holding 14% and 13%, respectively. Sweden trails only South Korea and Japan in household fiber penetration rates.” "Municipal networks alone control 20 to 25% of the coverage. Among the more than 150 local fiber/LAN networks in 2008, a majority are owned by municipal authorities or municipally run companies.” And I think this is probably one of the key factors to high fiber penetration. My local government owns the fiber, and I paid to connect to it from my house, so I own the last 40 meters. :) And now I can chose from seven companies offering IP services (four which offer services for homes, the others are company offerings only) and four which offer digital-TV services. 92% of apartments in our local community are connected to the fiber network and 37% of the individual houses are. The other houses are likely to use DSL.

mseebach 15y ago
It's not a silver bullet, though. In Denmark, electrical utilities (semi-private) spend obscene amounts of money digging down fiber, but when fiber arrived at my in laws, it took all of a minute comparing their offer with what they could get over DSL before ticking the "no thanks" box. (The price was at best comparable, and then there was the several hundred dollar connection fee).

americandesi333 15y ago

This is a very interesting article, especially 'dummifying' the complexities of US telecom markets. I used to always wonder why US was so behind in terms of broadband deployment and the answers that we given to me were always around 'density'. However, there are densely populated areas in US that can create better broadband experience. The challenge here is that the larger telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon) are required by law to sell their loops to other carriers, but there is a lot of CAPEX needed even with the fiber/copper look. It costs around $1000 per subscriber to bring a broadband TV service home even from the neighborhood (connecting from neighborhood to home and all the equipment in the home). This high CAPEX is a barrier for new entrants in this market. Another reason why US is behind is that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is not allowing the telecom companies in US to charge users based on their tiered internet usage. Therefore, price per mbps is flat no matter how much bandwidth you use. On the other hand, European telecom companies are allowed to charge extra for higher bandwidth usage. Once these two barriers fall (cloud based home TV management and tiered pricing) there will be more competition in US.

masklinn 15y ago
> On the other hand, European telecom companies are allowed to charge extra for higher bandwidth usage. These are getting rarer and rarer these days. And the countries which raced ahead dropped quotas early, or never had quotas in the first place (France for instance, second ADSL market in Europe, standard ADSL contracts are all unmetered and metered never represented any significant portion of the market). Even Belgium, historically one of the worst countries in europe quotas-wise (supposedly due to the very low level of computer-based production, meaning ISPs can get no peering), is moving away from quotas. > Once these two barriers fall (cloud based home TV management and tiered pricing) there will be more competition in US. No.
- americandesi333 15y ago
  Masklinn, If my first point was not correct, then why is there so much lobbying effort and dollars being spent on the 'net neutrality' issue? Also, just out of curiosity, want to know why the 'No' for the two barriers and if you identified something different that would change the landscape.

afterburner 15y ago

Free markets need government regulation in order to create competitive environments where the customer is served best. (The "blame the government" in the title refers to blaming the US government for not creating those conditions, and crediting the European governments for doing so.)

Apocryphon 15y ago
I think it's a clever, ironic use of blaming the government- in the U.S., big government is always seen as an impediment and to be dreaded, but the problem is not for meddling bureaucrats, but hands-off ones who allow corporations free rein.
- arecibodrake 15y ago
  You mean the governments that constrain through force the market so that only a few monopolistic entities are present?
  - Apocryphon 15y ago
    The problem is caused by bad government, but the solution is good government, as exemplified by the BT story. A completely free market would lead to a monopoly in broadband anyways. The irony here is that the government is not doing anything to solve the problem.
    - arecibodrake 15y ago
      Government getting the hell out of the way of people voluntarily interacting the marketplace is the best situation. For example: cable easements. Get rid of them. Get rid of all easements. Without them, you would have a variety of options and methods of gaining access to a number of utilities (internet, power, etc) as well as new services that have not yet been created.
      - prodigal_erik 15y ago

r00fus 15y ago

So this is basically more evidence that government regulation does work (when it's not captured - oil and nuke reg agencies are horribly corrupt). If there's anything that all folks of political bent should agree on, it should be greater transparency where government and business (ie, moneyed interests) interact - otherwise you get the mess that is the US government "regulation" efforts.

tzs 15y ago

In the "Need to Know" version of this story they talked with a BT representative about how things had worked out for BT after they were forced into local loop unbundling. It worked out great for BT. They make more money leasing out the lines and leasing out space in their switching centers for the third party ISP's equipment than they were making providing monopoly ISP services directly. It truly is a case of everyone wins. BT makes more money. Third party companies can start ISPs and make money. Consumers get plans that fit their needs better and cost less.

fourk 15y ago
After looking at the options available that were linked in the article, I'm unsure that I agree that everyone wins. Specifically, consumers looking for the higher end of the spectrum. At least, the only higher-end provider linked in the article, Demon [1], seems to offer abysmally low bandwidth caps on almost every plan, and generally low max download speeds (20Mb or less). How well are their bandwidth caps enforced? I ask because Comcast does not seem to enforce their bandwidth caps in San Francisco, at least for customers on their >$99/mo Home plans. I realize that this is an extremely small sample size, how well does this trend describe other UK providers? Personally, given the option between any of the plans Demon has to offer, I'd still prefer my 50Mbps down/10 up Comcast line that has effectively no cap, for which I pay 100/mo. Is Demon the exception and not the rule when it comes to pricier third party providers in the UK? [1]: http://www.demon.net/broadband http://www.demon.net/broadband
- arethuza 15y ago
  BT Infinity (40Mbps down, 10 up) is £18 a month with a 40GB cap and £25.60 for unlimited.
  - fourk 15y ago
    Thank you, as much I tried to resist believing it...the grass certainly is greener on the other side.
    - 15y ago

themal 15y ago

It's worth highlighting that although broadband over-the-phone is competitive in the UK, the cable internet service (which was built with US money) is a virtual monopoly and there's no sign of its network being unbundled.

chopsueyar 15y ago
It is also the least expensive way to build out infrastructure (US cable).

maxharris 15y ago

Here's why: population density is much higher in Europe. The price per mile to put cables into the ground has a lower bound that cannot be breached. The same length of cable will connect far more customers in high-population areas than it will in rural Wyoming. It is not valid to compare Europe with the USA in this regard because they truly are apples and oranges geographically. I assert that broadband would be faster and cheaper anywhere given true capitalism (that is, a system where people trade honestly, at a profit, with the only government involvement being the courts [no regulation to give corrupt businesses and activists the upper hand].)

Apocryphon 15y ago
The article actually mentions that point: Meanwhile, the size of the U.S. may be a red herring. Most of the region between Boston and Washington is as densely populated as most of Europe and the UK. So is the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego. And so is the region of the Midwest centered on Chicago. Those areas are home to about a quarter of all Americans. In other words, we live in a big country, but a lot of it is relatively empty space.
- maxharris 15y ago
  I don't buy that. One reason is that the article fails to account for the taxes that are put on phone bills that subsidize rural telecommunications. Another is that the regulations that force American telcos to support low-density projects have direct effects (someone subsidizes folks in Wyoming, and that invariably ends up being people living elsewhere) as well as indirect ones (regulating a business changes its culture for the worse. Risk takers get pushed out.)
  - dalke 15y ago
    The Federal USF Surcharge is what, US$1 per residential line per month? That's the only nationwide subsidy program I know of. Even if it's more - $5/month? $20/month? - that's nowhere near enough to account for the disparity in network performance in the Northeast seaboard states compared to, say Sweden. I'm an American living in Sweden. I'm in a city and can get 200Mbit/s for US$80/month. Checking Comcast for Boston and I don't see any option above 105Mbit and that costs US$105/month. That's not a simple difference in subsidies. In any case, Sweden is not a densely packed country. It's about 54 people/sq. mile and the US is 83 people/sq. mile. Massachusetts is 830 people/sq. mile. Why doesn't Boston have better internet service than here? It can't be subsidies for universal access for a far-flung population since the surcharge isn't that high. It can't be population density since otherwise Boston or any other large US city would have better connectivity than here. The point of the survey is to analyze those reason, and you drew your conclusion after only reading a summary of it. The objections you raise come up every time there's a cross-national comparison of internet access. They are accounted for, and the US is still behind, and falling further behind.

arecibodrake 15y ago

The only reason we don't have most metropolitan areas with gigabit fiber to the door is almost entirely teleco/cable easements. The day you stop government from mandating one company per area or delimiting it to a small few monopolistic entities and allow a free market is the day we stop dealing with the hell that is becoming us. The answer is quite simply LESS government, dammit.

seabee 15y ago
That clearly isn't the answer, as the article spends many paragraphs explaining. The answer is "do things that encourage competition and investment". The US government fails at this, but it is neither a limitation of government per se or easily achieved by private enterprise alone.
- arecibodrake 15y ago
  The article argues that good situations resulted from government action. The reality is that while these situations are viewed as good, they are not neccessarily the best. Only when individuals are able to voluntarily interact in the market do the best services and products meet the best prices and innovation is at its highest. One of the main factors that does not permit government from being able to exist in a market in a positive way in comparison is due to a complete lack of price model interaction. Government (by its very nature) does not depend on consumer response (price model). It thus has no way of allocating resources as efficiently as it would were it to exist without tax dollars (confiscated property, not gained through competition or voluntary interaction). As such, it cannot gauge weather or not the things it is doing are the best or the most effective to meet the demand. There are mountains of writing on the basics of free markets and Austrian Economics, if you would like me to link you to some resources.
  - arecibodrake 15y ago
    Ah yes! -2! Let's outpace reddit down the website memory hole! I mean really people, this is basic economics.

tobylane 15y ago

1. Foreign call centers. My parents are now too scared to move because they (foolishly) assume everyone uses them. Talktalk and BT do, low quality lines to South Africa and India. 2. I practically live on the dividing line between two exchanges. The one I'm not on is really advanced, lots of choice, but not the one I am on. There are various ideas floating around, which I've never heard of since, such as iPlayer and Steam caches at every exchange. I wish they'd stop caring so much about speed (I get 5.5mb/s in speedtests, over 1.2 (directly, the line isn't) miles of copper) and move onto ping and caches.

Apocryphon 15y ago

When Black was named Telecommunications Adjudicator in 2004, he fought on two fronts to break the BT logjam. First, he used his own experience as a former employee of the telecom giant to push for change from the inside. When that wasn't enough, he used the bully pulpit provided by his government post to embarrass BT in public. He publicized the company's failure to meet goals. Reporters loved the story of the government regulator holding the giant firm's feet to the fire. I wonder if there are similar tales in the U.S. of the brave little bureaucrat against the hulking titan of industry. Seems rather countercultural.

biturd 15y ago

Where can I find out more about the "last mile" wireless links near the end of the video? I will be moving to an retirement area that has a summer population of a few hundred and a winter population of many thousands. There is no internet currently aside from cellular. I wanted to look into long link wifi, but only have found expensive point to point solutions that are multiple thousands of dollars. I don't even know if it is possible. The closest town is only a few miles, but I doubt Comcast is going to let me share a few business class accounts to all those users. I was going to try to keep it free to near free, a few bucks a month and cover the equipment costs on my end up to a few thousand dollars. If I can't hook into cable without violation of TOS, then I have to go right to the telco and lease a line, which I have no idea the costs of these days. I would need at least several hundred Mb/s I believe. Hopefully there is a datacenter or ISP nearby that would allow me to work with them to put something on the roof or on a neighbors property. Suggestions on resources?

wmf 15y ago
Start here: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/wisp/2_How_to_start http://www.dslreports.com/faq/wisp/2_How_to_start

absconditus 15y ago

This does not seem like much of an explanation. CLECs have existed in the US for over a decade now. In Chicago many of us have about a dozen options. None of them are very competitive with EU providers when it comes to price. A few are probably comparable when it comes to speed. I have noticed that even when there is competition most people will stick with Comcast or AT&T and bitch about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carrier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carr...

smutticus 15y ago

There is a direct correlation between competition and lower prices in this market. The US has little to no decent competition in many markets. Therefore ISPs rip people off. If you think Western Europe has cheap broadband try going to small countries in Eastern Europe like Croatia, Slovenia, Latvia or Estonia. I've never seen cheaper BW in Europe than in Latvia.

arethuza 15y ago
Wow - 200Mbps fiber for about £25 a month - that's pretty good! http://www.lattelecom.lv/majai/internets/optiskais_internets/ http://www.lattelecom.lv/majai/internets/optiskais_internets...
- DCoder 15y ago
  Lithuania here - 25 pounds/month gives me unrestricted 100 Mbps, next month they're tripling all speeds for no additional costs. The one-step-cheaper option is 90% of the cost for only 10% of the speed, so I opted for this one instead.
sbalea 15y ago
Romania: 100mbps fiber + 5GB 3G bundle, about $13/mo http://www.rcs-rds.ro/internet-digi-net/fiberlink/pachete http://www.rcs-rds.ro/internet-digi-net/fiberlink/pachete

richcollins 15y ago

Government regulation is the cause of slow US broadband. The laws are set up to prevent competition. If these laws were removed speeds would increase dramatically for those that desired them.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

MaysonL 15y ago

Or more specifically, blame the government we get because of the way we finance and run political campaigns.

naner 15y ago

An issue that appears to be overlooked is that the US is much less densely populated and has a much higher overall population and land area to cover. I favor the way many European countries are able to handle things like this (and healthcare, and transportation, etc) but the US is hardly similar to any of those countries. We're operating at a completely different scale here. Not to mention political and cultural differences and issues of states' rights versus the federal government's rights.

masklinn 15y ago
> An issue that appears to be overlooked It wasn't overlooked in the article, you overlooked it in your reading: > Meanwhile, the size of the U.S. may be a red herring. Most of the region between Boston and Washington is as densely populated as most of Europe and the UK. So is the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego. And so is the region of the Midwest centered on Chicago. Those areas are home to about a quarter of all Americans. In other words, we live in a big country, but a lot of it is relatively empty space. > The argument that the U.S. is too spread out is nonsense, according to Herman Wagter, one of the Netherlands' most prominent evangelists for next-generation broadband. He thinks there's something else going on in Verizon's and AT&T's opposition to competition at home: They're afraid of it.
nitrogen 15y ago
The potency of the population density argument is seriously diminished by the fact that rural municipal broadband initiatives frequently provide much higher performance than available commercial offerings. Blaming the government is reasonable. Before the FCC shut it down, I had a 6mbit up/160kbit down wireless cable modem from Sprint Broadband Direct in a rural area in 2000, connecting to a tower 30 miles away.
anghyflawn 15y ago
What do you think is the population density of Sweden, Norway, or Finland? There is still very decent broadband to be had up here at 70 degrees northern latitude.

skrebbel 15y ago

This article surprises me. I'm Dutch and I always thought that in the US, everybody had super awesome broadband for nearly no money. Not sure why, though.

forgotmyuser 15y ago

This needs to be the #1 story on HackerNews for a week. I AM SICK AND TIRED OF MONOPOLIZING CABLE COMPANIES. The article hits right on the spot, word for word. It's time we do something about this, it's time we have some competition and reasonable prices. IT'S TIME TO ACT!

iVy 15y ago

It is somewhat weird reading about DSL in 21 sentury. Atleast i hope ISDN is dead. Down here, in Lithuania, 50% of population (or maybe even more) has the ability to use 300 mbps fiber for only 30 eur/month. No data caps, no shaping.

leppie 15y ago

Global report (excludes Africa). US is dirt cheap compared to internet pricing here...

trystero 15y ago

France is one of the most regulated countries and the price for internet access is still the cheapest in Western Europe. So, no, I wouldn't blame the government for your prices.