3 ms·

Sad. I'm Swedish and we get un-metered 24mbit up/down for $40/month. Many of my friends have 100mbit down at home. A large chunk of the population also have 5m

by gustaf 18y ago

Sad. I'm Swedish and we get un-metered 24mbit up/down for $40/month. Many of my friends have 100mbit down at home. A large chunk of the population also have 5mbit usb-cards of over 3G network in their laptops. You can get it for $30/month. The crappy Internet infrastructure in the US is one of those things that I really don't understand. What is the reason for this? Failure of market forces? - Gustaf

jpcx01 18y ago
Population density and a free market.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Actually, population density and lack of a free market. We keep accepting broadband as a natural monopoly or duopoly, rather than deregulating it and getting some competition. As long as you have only one or two choices, the market cannot force competition. Give us 10 potential ISPs to choose from and watch what happens.
  - silencio 18y ago
    No. kidding. In my area, I get to choose between: AT&T DSL at less than 1500/256 (although that is what I would be "paying" for) more realistically 1000/200 or so...Time Warner cable at cheaper than the AT&T price at 10/1 (megabits). That's not a choice. And I live in Los Angeles proper, not even some neighboring suburb or anything. That's..it. Excluding dialup, excluding wireless services, excluding ridiculously expensive alternatives (e.g. speakeasy). If I had 10 potential ISPs to choose from that all charged a reasonable price for fast speeds, it would be amazing.
silentbicycle 18y ago
I talked about this with a Swedish coworker a couple months ago. I'm trying to leave the details vague where I don't remember them (long conversation, this was a small part of it), so please correct me if I'm wrong. He said that the population distribution in Sweden is vastly more favorable for setting up networking infrastructure than in the US (more urbanized), and that, several years ago, when the government was digging up cables for some other utility infrastructure (power lines?), they decided it was a good idea to also lay inexpensive optical fiber while the holes were already dug. Such an initiative would almost certainly be politically infeasible in the US, except at a local level. Tax dollars, you know. It's probably somewhat comparable to public transit systems. Subways systems take a lot of work upfront, so many cities only have buses, if anything. City wi-fi initiatives have had rather mixed results, too, and those don't even involve digging to lay cables.
kajecounterhack 18y ago
I think the same is in Taiwan, high quality service, like 5mbit lines for $30/month or so (converted currency of course) Uhgh 250gb for a cap is a little bleh. I have 20gb website backups I make every week. Thats already 80gb used in what, 4 days worth of downloads? Maybe I'll move to Sweden ;)
- mseebach 18y ago
  > I have 20gb website backups I make every week. Well, don't use your private cable-line for that. You could push it to Amazon S3 instead?

by gustaf 18y ago

jpcx01 18y ago

Population density and a free market.

mattmaroon 18y ago
Actually, population density and lack of a free market. We keep accepting broadband as a natural monopoly or duopoly, rather than deregulating it and getting some competition. As long as you have only one or two choices, the market cannot force competition. Give us 10 potential ISPs to choose from and watch what happens.
- silencio 18y ago
  No. kidding. In my area, I get to choose between: AT&T DSL at less than 1500/256 (although that is what I would be "paying" for) more realistically 1000/200 or so...Time Warner cable at cheaper than the AT&T price at 10/1 (megabits). That's not a choice. And I live in Los Angeles proper, not even some neighboring suburb or anything. That's..it. Excluding dialup, excluding wireless services, excluding ridiculously expensive alternatives (e.g. speakeasy). If I had 10 potential ISPs to choose from that all charged a reasonable price for fast speeds, it would be amazing.

silentbicycle 18y ago

I talked about this with a Swedish coworker a couple months ago. I'm trying to leave the details vague where I don't remember them (long conversation, this was a small part of it), so please correct me if I'm wrong. He said that the population distribution in Sweden is vastly more favorable for setting up networking infrastructure than in the US (more urbanized), and that, several years ago, when the government was digging up cables for some other utility infrastructure (power lines?), they decided it was a good idea to also lay inexpensive optical fiber while the holes were already dug. Such an initiative would almost certainly be politically infeasible in the US, except at a local level. Tax dollars, you know. It's probably somewhat comparable to public transit systems. Subways systems take a lot of work upfront, so many cities only have buses, if anything. City wi-fi initiatives have had rather mixed results, too, and those don't even involve digging to lay cables.

kajecounterhack 18y ago

I think the same is in Taiwan, high quality service, like 5mbit lines for $30/month or so (converted currency of course) Uhgh 250gb for a cap is a little bleh. I have 20gb website backups I make every week. Thats already 80gb used in what, 4 days worth of downloads? Maybe I'll move to Sweden ;)

mseebach 18y ago
> I have 20gb website backups I make every week. Well, don't use your private cable-line for that. You could push it to Amazon S3 instead?