9 ms·

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, 25 Gb/s fiber (symmetric) is rolled out around Zurich. Is this slow broadband in US a country wide thing or only certain areas?

gizdan 5y ago
Not a US citizen so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to be mostly country wide. A US colleague of mine lives less than 10 mins from our office (which is close to many other offices), and he is struggling to get anything beyond 20mbps.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  Median download speeds in the US are generally 50-70mbps with a few outliers. Here’s a state map. https://www.pcmag.com/news/state-by-state-the-fastest-and-slowest-us-internet https://www.pcmag.com/news/state-by-state-the-fastest-and-sl... Cities will of course be higher, typically ranging from 100-900 for non-gigabit. Rural is more frustrating, and will hopefully be alleviated by the new satellite ISPs coming online.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    you must not live in a city -- older homes and older sections of a city are very late to get physical upgrades.
    - 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
      Used to live in Philly. Had fiber gigabit in old building. Please stop making assumptions.
    - 1123581321 5y ago
      I’ve lived in many kinds of places. But please focus on the data I provided. There are of course exceptions to the general trend of speeds being higher in more densely connected areas.
    - quickthrowman 5y ago
      S/older/poorer/g Here is the fiber map for a Minneapolis ISP laying their own fiber: https://usinternet.com/fiber/coverage-map/ https://usinternet.com/fiber/coverage-map/ The unwired parts of the city are where poor people live, the wired parts are where not poor people live.
      - asia92 5y ago
        it makes sense though, can poorer people afford faster speeds?
  - kube-system 5y ago
    That map is pretty close to being a population map: https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ I think that speed by state is a pretty bad measure for conveying anything useful. Speeds vary within each state by orders of magnitude, depending on whether you can get a connection to a particular medium or not. I bet the full data set of speeds is not a bell curve. There are probably huge peaks for each medium, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the mode and mean are significantly different.
    - 1123581321 5y ago
      Yes, it’s not great, but I hoped it would serve to correct the misperception that such slow speeds are typical in the US. I hope I can find better data next time.
DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
How does that work when even 10Gbps ethernet is still cost-prohibitive for SOHO applications and "real" 1Gbps+ Wi-Fi just doesn't happen in thick-walled european houses...
- Aardwolf 5y ago
  It requires getting some relatively expensive hardware, and you wouldn't use this wirelessly https://www.englishforum.ch/tv-internet-telephone/304268-init7-25gbits-sec.html https://www.englishforum.ch/tv-internet-telephone/304268-ini...
- Dah00n 5y ago
  It should be obvious but it isn't meant for WiFi. I use fibre and cat6 in my house for everything except smartphones.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    > I use fibre and cat6 in my house for everything except smartphones. I assure you that your customer profile is not representative of the vast majority of your ISP's customers.
    - tolien 5y ago
      > I assure you that your customer profile is not representative of the vast majority of your ISP's customers. The top tier is almost always a tiny minority [1] of any ISP's customers but it's convenient marketing and usually has by far the highest margins. It's like arguing Bugatti buyers aren't the majority of Volkswagen Auto Group's customers: it's true but what difference does that make? 1: Virgin Media offers tiers from 100Mbps to 1Gbps but "The average speed across our U.K. broadband base continues to increase and was 186 Mbps at the end of Q1", https://www.libertyglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Fixed-Income-Q1-2021-Release.pdf https://www.libertyglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Fix...
      - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
gaudat 5y ago
Woah. Is it like available to everyone in the city area? How's the price?
- vinay427 5y ago
  Not the OP but as a resident, it's available at my address near the edge of the city, albeit in a larger building rather than an older individual home, so I imagine it's accessible to most people in the city limits. The city has municipal connections into homes that ISPs can then lease, allowing them to compete for customers without competing over infrastructure rights, so it seems to have the benefits of both ends of a public-private partnership. One of the most well-known providers of the fastest speeds, Init7, charges 64.75 CHF/mo (~70 USD) with a 333 CHF (~365 USD) setup fee. It's fairly easy nowadays to find 10 Gbps symmetric plans for 50 CHF/mo, although they used to cost more a few years ago.
floatingatoll 5y ago
It’s country-wide, except in the very few areas where municipal broadband or community-local ISPs have stepped in and run their own fiber. There’s a fiber loop a hundred feet away that’s restricted to businesses, but it still scares Comcast (because it’s a fiber run by one of those local ISPs) enough that my price for a symmetric is half what it would be on the other side of town.
kube-system 5y ago
It’s mostly a population density thing. Most mid or large US cities have gigabit options, sometimes multiple options (in which case prices will be affordable) Small cities and towns probably won’t have fiber. If you’re lucky and the cable infrastructure is new, you might be able to get gigabit cable, but it’s more likely that the affordable options are 25-300mbps. If you are in a rural village, you may or may not have cable availability. (Likely depending on your proximity to other populated areas) Without cable, you may be relying on LTE or DSL. And finally, if you’re in an area more rural than this, the only utilities that come to your house are likely electricity and copper phone. You’re either choosing between satellite or a (likely weak) cell signal.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ta988 5y ago
  The problem in US with cable isnt download speeds, it is that the major providers limit uploads rather drasticaly (they never talk about how much upload they can give and talk about "gig" internet). I've had a 300/12 Mbps connections, that's pretty insane...
  - nfriedly 5y ago
    That's, at least partially, a technical limitation. The cable television network was designed and built for massively more signal going to homes (vudeo) than coming back from them (authentication or whatever). DSL does it more by choice, but the main problem there is that there's just so little bandwidth all together (upload and download combined). That's not to say I disagree with you. I dropped cable internet and switched to fiber the moment it became available, because it gave me symmetric speeds.
- rasz 5y ago
  It isnt about density, it is about monopoly power. There are parts of Manhattan on ADSL, in 2021.
  - 5y ago
nwallin 5y ago
Varies widely. I could be fantastic in one town, but terrible in the next town over, even if the towns are similar in terms of size, density, demographics, and wealth. But in general, more places than not have pretty poor broadband. From what I understand, most European countries have some sort of system in place where one company owns the copper/fiber line to your house, and another company connects that line to the backbone. (I'm oversimplifying because I don't understand it) The US doesn't have that- the same company that maintains the copper maintains the connection to the backbone. And if there's only one line to your house, that company has a monopoly on you, and they have no financial reason to better their service. Thankfully, my house/neighborhood is serviced by at least three broadband providers. I pay $60 a month for 150Mb/s up, 150Mb/s down. Customer service is pretty good. I'm very happy with it. 25Gb/s though, that's wild. I have difficulty imagining it just from a technical perspective.
- nickik 5y ago
  Trying to generalize across Europe is not very practical.
  - waterglassFull 5y ago
    The poster was fairly explicit about that, no need to nitpick. They provided good information on the US system.
AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
Who is doing 25gbit to the home?
- detaro 5y ago
  Init7 offers it since a few weeks ago.
  - AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
    I need to move to Switzerland. Here I was feeling fancy with my 10G/10G at home.

gizdan 5y ago

Not a US citizen so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to be mostly country wide. A US colleague of mine lives less than 10 mins from our office (which is close to many other offices), and he is struggling to get anything beyond 20mbps.

1123581321 5y ago
Median download speeds in the US are generally 50-70mbps with a few outliers. Here’s a state map. https://www.pcmag.com/news/state-by-state-the-fastest-and-slowest-us-internet https://www.pcmag.com/news/state-by-state-the-fastest-and-sl... Cities will of course be higher, typically ranging from 100-900 for non-gigabit. Rural is more frustrating, and will hopefully be alleviated by the new satellite ISPs coming online.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  you must not live in a city -- older homes and older sections of a city are very late to get physical upgrades.
  - 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
    Used to live in Philly. Had fiber gigabit in old building. Please stop making assumptions.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    I’ve lived in many kinds of places. But please focus on the data I provided. There are of course exceptions to the general trend of speeds being higher in more densely connected areas.
  - quickthrowman 5y ago
    S/older/poorer/g Here is the fiber map for a Minneapolis ISP laying their own fiber: https://usinternet.com/fiber/coverage-map/ https://usinternet.com/fiber/coverage-map/ The unwired parts of the city are where poor people live, the wired parts are where not poor people live.
    - asia92 5y ago
      it makes sense though, can poorer people afford faster speeds?
- kube-system 5y ago
  That map is pretty close to being a population map: https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ I think that speed by state is a pretty bad measure for conveying anything useful. Speeds vary within each state by orders of magnitude, depending on whether you can get a connection to a particular medium or not. I bet the full data set of speeds is not a bell curve. There are probably huge peaks for each medium, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the mode and mean are significantly different.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    Yes, it’s not great, but I hoped it would serve to correct the misperception that such slow speeds are typical in the US. I hope I can find better data next time.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago

How does that work when even 10Gbps ethernet is still cost-prohibitive for SOHO applications and "real" 1Gbps+ Wi-Fi just doesn't happen in thick-walled european houses...

Aardwolf 5y ago
It requires getting some relatively expensive hardware, and you wouldn't use this wirelessly https://www.englishforum.ch/tv-internet-telephone/304268-init7-25gbits-sec.html https://www.englishforum.ch/tv-internet-telephone/304268-ini...
Dah00n 5y ago
It should be obvious but it isn't meant for WiFi. I use fibre and cat6 in my house for everything except smartphones.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > I use fibre and cat6 in my house for everything except smartphones. I assure you that your customer profile is not representative of the vast majority of your ISP's customers.
  - tolien 5y ago
    > I assure you that your customer profile is not representative of the vast majority of your ISP's customers. The top tier is almost always a tiny minority [1] of any ISP's customers but it's convenient marketing and usually has by far the highest margins. It's like arguing Bugatti buyers aren't the majority of Volkswagen Auto Group's customers: it's true but what difference does that make? 1: Virgin Media offers tiers from 100Mbps to 1Gbps but "The average speed across our U.K. broadband base continues to increase and was 186 Mbps at the end of Q1", https://www.libertyglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Fixed-Income-Q1-2021-Release.pdf https://www.libertyglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Fix...
    - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago

gaudat 5y ago

Woah. Is it like available to everyone in the city area? How's the price?

vinay427 5y ago
Not the OP but as a resident, it's available at my address near the edge of the city, albeit in a larger building rather than an older individual home, so I imagine it's accessible to most people in the city limits. The city has municipal connections into homes that ISPs can then lease, allowing them to compete for customers without competing over infrastructure rights, so it seems to have the benefits of both ends of a public-private partnership. One of the most well-known providers of the fastest speeds, Init7, charges 64.75 CHF/mo (~70 USD) with a 333 CHF (~365 USD) setup fee. It's fairly easy nowadays to find 10 Gbps symmetric plans for 50 CHF/mo, although they used to cost more a few years ago.

floatingatoll 5y ago

It’s country-wide, except in the very few areas where municipal broadband or community-local ISPs have stepped in and run their own fiber. There’s a fiber loop a hundred feet away that’s restricted to businesses, but it still scares Comcast (because it’s a fiber run by one of those local ISPs) enough that my price for a symmetric is half what it would be on the other side of town.

kube-system 5y ago

It’s mostly a population density thing. Most mid or large US cities have gigabit options, sometimes multiple options (in which case prices will be affordable) Small cities and towns probably won’t have fiber. If you’re lucky and the cable infrastructure is new, you might be able to get gigabit cable, but it’s more likely that the affordable options are 25-300mbps. If you are in a rural village, you may or may not have cable availability. (Likely depending on your proximity to other populated areas) Without cable, you may be relying on LTE or DSL. And finally, if you’re in an area more rural than this, the only utilities that come to your house are likely electricity and copper phone. You’re either choosing between satellite or a (likely weak) cell signal.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ta988 5y ago
The problem in US with cable isnt download speeds, it is that the major providers limit uploads rather drasticaly (they never talk about how much upload they can give and talk about "gig" internet). I've had a 300/12 Mbps connections, that's pretty insane...
- nfriedly 5y ago
  That's, at least partially, a technical limitation. The cable television network was designed and built for massively more signal going to homes (vudeo) than coming back from them (authentication or whatever). DSL does it more by choice, but the main problem there is that there's just so little bandwidth all together (upload and download combined). That's not to say I disagree with you. I dropped cable internet and switched to fiber the moment it became available, because it gave me symmetric speeds.
rasz 5y ago
It isnt about density, it is about monopoly power. There are parts of Manhattan on ADSL, in 2021.
- 5y ago

nwallin 5y ago

Varies widely. I could be fantastic in one town, but terrible in the next town over, even if the towns are similar in terms of size, density, demographics, and wealth. But in general, more places than not have pretty poor broadband. From what I understand, most European countries have some sort of system in place where one company owns the copper/fiber line to your house, and another company connects that line to the backbone. (I'm oversimplifying because I don't understand it) The US doesn't have that- the same company that maintains the copper maintains the connection to the backbone. And if there's only one line to your house, that company has a monopoly on you, and they have no financial reason to better their service. Thankfully, my house/neighborhood is serviced by at least three broadband providers. I pay $60 a month for 150Mb/s up, 150Mb/s down. Customer service is pretty good. I'm very happy with it. 25Gb/s though, that's wild. I have difficulty imagining it just from a technical perspective.

nickik 5y ago
Trying to generalize across Europe is not very practical.
- waterglassFull 5y ago
  The poster was fairly explicit about that, no need to nitpick. They provided good information on the US system.

AdamJacobMuller 5y ago

Who is doing 25gbit to the home?

detaro 5y ago
Init7 offers it since a few weeks ago.
- AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
  I need to move to Switzerland. Here I was feeling fancy with my 10G/10G at home.