4 ms·

> 90 USD per month for 1.5Mbit DSL I can’t believe it. I paid an equivalent of couple dollars per month for that 15 years ago in Eastern Europe.

• lostmsu 5y ago
  Rural?
  • BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    Yes
  • iso1210 5y ago
    OP said he was in a town
• joshspankit 5y ago
  There’s both a legitimate challenge (the land masses are huge in countries like Canada and the US) and functional monopolies that are leveraged by the companies who own the infrastructure that stretches out over those land masses. Canada is an easier example because it’s essentially serviced by 3 companies who then lease out to the smaller “competitors”: for rural areas some people have the choice of either DSL over oxidized above-ground lines or tower-to-dish internet where the tower is daisy-chained from another tower or from it’s own oxidized lines. There is no cell coverage at all, and poor phone service. If someone in an area like that wants internet the company says that ~”the cost of the service must cover all the infrastructure and maintenance” and then they base that cost on only a few percent of people actually using it. In that way it’s hard to argue against “well, it costs us $1500/mo to provide service to 10 users, so we’re losing money when we charge a ‘reasonable’ $120”. But what’s really happening is that people in those areas are bandwidth starved, signing up for anyone who can provide decent service, and signing up in bulk while the company oversubscribes. It’s easy for them to still show losses publicly, but on the back end they are collecting government subsidies and using free capital to extend the network as far as they can.