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On behalf of all tech-minded Americans, I would like to say... I hate you. I just got a notice in the mail that my ISP is "upgrading" their network so now I ca

On behalf of all tech-minded Americans, I would like to say... I hate you. I just got a notice in the mail that my ISP is "upgrading" their network so now I can pay $200 USD/month to get a whopping 2gbps, which I actually thought was pretty amazing until I read your post. So, thanks. In all seriousness, congrats! You made a good case for why one would need that much bandwidth. Also, we need to catch up here. :)

kingcharles 4y ago
AT&T called me. They said their technical guys think they might be able to upgrade the connection to my building from 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps if I want to sign-up with them. I'm in downtown Chicago.
- arcade79 4y ago
  I really, really hope you told them to fuck the hell off.
  - kingcharles 4y ago
    The guy on the phone was so cool. He was totally "in" on how hilariously awful it was that they could only get 1.5Mbps into my building. He had access to the system that let him see all the contracts of my neighbors and what connections they had and was floored that every building next me had gigabit.
FridgeSeal 4y ago
I feel you. Here in Australia: $90/month nets you “100/40mb”, which is really more like “~85mb down, 25 up but only a quiet night, if you’re next to the router, and it hasn’t rained within the last week”.
- joshschreuder 4y ago
  It’s much, much better than it used to be at least (depending on where you live + NBN technology choice of course). And yet still completely hamstrung by the mess the current government made of the original NBN plan. If you live in an area that can get HFC, FTTP, FTTN etc. it’s possible these days to get a pretty consistent 1000/50 for $150/month. Those fibre services are pretty stable in my experience, definitely a million times better than the old broadband which as you put got destroyed by bad weather and distance from the exchange.
  - evanjonr 4y ago
    Did you mean FTTC instead of FTTN? FTTN can rarely get close to the max of 100/40 in best case scenarios.
    - joshschreuder 4y ago
      I did indeed, thanks. Too many acronyms!
  - FridgeSeal 4y ago
    The area of Sydney I live in has HFC-based NBN offered only, and it still falls over if it rains too much. Apparently you can pay money to have fibre routed to your house from the nearest node/etc, but I rent, so I’m not going to do that.
    - joshschreuder 4y ago
      You can but it's EXPENSIVE. Something like $5k-20k depending on residence and technology choice you have.
- haydio 4y ago
  If you have to be "next to the router" than it's a problem with your infrastructure, not then NBN
  - FridgeSeal 4y ago
    The point is, that even if I were to plug my computer directly into the router, I'm not getting _good_ speeds, I simply wanted to head off comments like "have you tried 5Ghz networks? Have you tried a quieter band? Have you tried x/y/z other thing?".
300bps 4y ago
I’m a tech-minded American that pays $65 per month for a 1 Gbps up and down line that I am completely satisfied with. Until recently I paid $35 per month for a 300 Mbps line because I couldn’t justify the jump to 1 Gbps. Then I had to upload some local Hyper-V servers to AWS to convert them to AMIs and figured what the heck I’d upgrade the line. I would have no interest in upgrading beyond 1 Gbps right now though. There are too many infrastructure components that need to be upgraded to attain that and I don’t have a use case for it.
Existenceblinks 4y ago
I'm in a rural city in Thailand, fiber 2Gbps is $50 / mo. And this is just for normie. Like unimpressive.
- downrightmike 4y ago
  USA requires more raw materials to provide services. United States is about 19 times bigger than Thailand. Thailand is approximately 513,120 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km, making United States 1,816% larger than Thailand. And then there is the duopoly of ISPs where they carve out huge chunks and agree not to compete.
  - _Algernon_ 4y ago
    Sheer size isn't what you should compare. Population density is much more relevant. Granted, Thailand still comes out ahead, but by far less than your size comparison (33.6/km^2 vs 132/km^2)
  - Existenceblinks 4y ago
    I know. It's several factors, density, history of infra of telecom companies etc.
  - pirate787 4y ago
    I live in a metro area in the US and thousands of homes in my community do not have land-based broadband options. The US incumbents have totally failed and it isn't because there's a lot of desert in the West and Alaska. I'm sick of this argument which doesn't explain why city dwellers in most places in America have the worst internet in the developed world.
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      I live in a not-very-metro area in the usa and get gigabit fiber for $65/mo.
    - themitigating 4y ago
spaniard89277 4y ago
With a best effort connection Id rather have a well oiled setup, without cgnat, a good cpe, sensible throttling etc and 100mbps than whatever huge amount of gbps.
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  It's easy to get all the above and fast internet without much trouble. An old PC with OPNsense can do that.
duxup 4y ago
I get upgrade offers all the time. But it doesn’t matter because it isn’t actually offered in my area / the local telco can’t even notify the right people…
- ghaff 4y ago
  I don't think they do any longer but Verizon used to send me FIOS flyers on a fairly regular basis and when I went to their site it looked as if it wasn't actually available at my address (where I get Comcast). Also amusingly, both Comcast and Verizon have the very old (as in multiple decades) name for the street I live on as my address. It's only somewhat wrong (the name used to have a North on it)--but it is still wrong.
docdeek 4y ago
In a large French city with 10gb/s fibre connection at 50 euros à month (internet, TV, fixed line phone). More than enough for two people working from home + family.
gadrev 4y ago
On the other hand, try making 10-15k/month in europe in a regular tech job, esp. with little experience (0-3yr). It's orders of magnitude more uncommon than doing so in the USA. So bring all the hate :)
- avh02 4y ago
  It's hard to do, but at least I can get fired and not worry about health insurance.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  That’s all very well if you have a tech job. If you have a low paid job you’re utterly screwed in the US. I’d rather make less so my fellow citizens can live a decent life too.
lettergram 4y ago
Most cities >100k in the Midwest can get fiber for $55-$200/month at speeds 1-10Gb/s. Where I’m at it’s $80/month for a 5gb/s. If you want that in a major city, >1m people; good luck. Corruption, regulation and development costs are just too high. Rather sad to be honest.
mtalantikite 4y ago
Brooklyn here, my building still doesn’t have fiber — I’ve complained to the city for years! I get to pay $75/month for 200Mbps down, 10 Mbps up. I’ve been told fiber is coming for almost 15 years.
neitsab 4y ago
Reading this thread, I am reminded of how cheap telco prices are in France: e.g. in 2020, fibre internet plans averaged between €26 and €28.35 (USD 28-30 at current rates) per month.[0] Mobile plans are also on the cheap side, to the point of being competitive with many third world countries (for example, I wasn't that impressed with prices in Thailand in 2020 for comparable plans, only a 1-2€ difference with what I had at home). This is getting to the point that I find myself often suggesting fellows from border countries open a line in France, just so that they can enjoy the "European roaming data envelope" that comes with most plans (i.e. several gigabytes are free to use from anywhere in Europe, and you can make calls and texts to other EU countries when abroad...) after realizing how expensive and suckish mobile plans are in their country (Belgium in this instance). [0] https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/Best-and-worst-2020-prices-for-fibre-internet-and-mobile-in-France-revealed https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/Best-and...
- quelltext 4y ago
  You need a French address though.
  - neitsab 4y ago
    I was under the impression that they only requested an ID and a mean of payment, but after verification you are right, a proof of residency is also required for postpaid plans. If you know someone in France, you may ask them to make a "solemn declaration" that you live at their address; then you only need provide their own proof of residency (people living with their parents routinely do so). Tourist and prepaid SIM cards are still exempted and, depending on your case, can prove quite interesting.
- ornornor 4y ago
  > enjoy the "European roaming data envelope" Which provider would you recommend? I remember taking a look a while back and the most viable option was Free, but 15.99 EUR a month for when I need roaming 3–4 times a year seemed a bit excessive at 180.- per year.
kbenson 4y ago
There are other ISPs in the states that are much more competitive (I work at one). Unfortunately, if you're not in a fairly dense area, the chances they can deliver to you is minimal, since building your own network is expensive. For example, we offer $40 service, and if you're in our historical areas that's 1Gbit symmetrical, and if you're in newer areas we've turned up in the last year that's 10Gbit symmetrical. We're expanding (as I expect most ISPs that can undercut the major players that much are), but it requires actually stringing fiber through neighborhoods on poles, so it takes a while (but that can be scaled...). If you don't have telephone poles, it's much harder/more expensive to build out an area, so often those are skipped (at least initially) as areas cheaper to deliver to are prioritized. The is unfortunately a lot of new development, as they'll build neighborhood with underground utilities and pre-wire AT&T and Comcast, making it hard for others to deliver to the area without a lot of cost and work (trenching).
- hedora 4y ago
  I have a sometimes 12mbit connection, but there's a Fiber POP about 1 mile down the road. There are phone poles (with fiber on them) between here and there. What does it cost to string fiber on poles, and what are the hopes of getting right of way? Alternatively, is there some way to pay / force the telco to build out FTTH? Some people a few miles away have a fiber POP at the end of their shared driveway, and are trying to decide if they should pay the extra couple hundred per house to go from 1GBit to 25GBit symmetric to the houses.
  - kbenson 4y ago
    In the US I believe anyone can use the pole space as long as it's not taken, but I'm not an expert. I do know you have to fill out engineering documents per-pole to explain the load and propose (pay for?) fixing the load bearing attached cables. At the ISP I work for, I believe we spec out the cabling we need to a neighborhood and then order a special bundle with breakouts at specific locations along the length to serve locations, and then string that along the poles. I'm not sure why we wouldn't serve a house with one of those, but those go back to a central point in a neighborhood, and it's possible the backhaul from the central office to that central point in the neighborhood passes houses that aren't served. Where to build is all about ease of wiring an area and housi g density. It's all about cost per houses passed. The good news is that maybe your area is slated to get fiber since it goes by there, and it's just a matter of the lower hanging fruit being picked first.
AdrianB1 4y ago
One thing most people ignore: the prices these days for many thing don't have a direct correlation with the cost, but with how much people are willing to pay. This is happen especially in quasi-monopoly situations, like housing and internet services. For example I have 3 Internet connections at home that I pay ~ $30 in total, from 150 Mbps to 1 Gbps. I think the 1 Gbps is ~ $12/month, it is so cheap because there are so many options and I can afford to keep all 3 for redundancy (1 is a 4G mobile data capped at 200GB/month, it works even when there is a power failure in the entire neighborhood). But if there is no variety of options and no competition, then price is high. From what I read, most ISP in USA are squeezing as much as they can from their clients, sometimes to ridiculous levels.

kingcharles 4y ago

AT&T called me. They said their technical guys think they might be able to upgrade the connection to my building from 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps if I want to sign-up with them. I'm in downtown Chicago.

arcade79 4y ago
I really, really hope you told them to fuck the hell off.
- kingcharles 4y ago
  The guy on the phone was so cool. He was totally "in" on how hilariously awful it was that they could only get 1.5Mbps into my building. He had access to the system that let him see all the contracts of my neighbors and what connections they had and was floored that every building next me had gigabit.

FridgeSeal 4y ago

I feel you. Here in Australia: $90/month nets you “100/40mb”, which is really more like “~85mb down, 25 up but only a quiet night, if you’re next to the router, and it hasn’t rained within the last week”.

joshschreuder 4y ago
It’s much, much better than it used to be at least (depending on where you live + NBN technology choice of course). And yet still completely hamstrung by the mess the current government made of the original NBN plan. If you live in an area that can get HFC, FTTP, FTTN etc. it’s possible these days to get a pretty consistent 1000/50 for $150/month. Those fibre services are pretty stable in my experience, definitely a million times better than the old broadband which as you put got destroyed by bad weather and distance from the exchange.
- evanjonr 4y ago
  Did you mean FTTC instead of FTTN? FTTN can rarely get close to the max of 100/40 in best case scenarios.
  - joshschreuder 4y ago
    I did indeed, thanks. Too many acronyms!
- FridgeSeal 4y ago
  The area of Sydney I live in has HFC-based NBN offered only, and it still falls over if it rains too much. Apparently you can pay money to have fibre routed to your house from the nearest node/etc, but I rent, so I’m not going to do that.
  - joshschreuder 4y ago
    You can but it's EXPENSIVE. Something like $5k-20k depending on residence and technology choice you have.
haydio 4y ago
If you have to be "next to the router" than it's a problem with your infrastructure, not then NBN
- FridgeSeal 4y ago
  The point is, that even if I were to plug my computer directly into the router, I'm not getting _good_ speeds, I simply wanted to head off comments like "have you tried 5Ghz networks? Have you tried a quieter band? Have you tried x/y/z other thing?".

300bps 4y ago

I’m a tech-minded American that pays $65 per month for a 1 Gbps up and down line that I am completely satisfied with. Until recently I paid $35 per month for a 300 Mbps line because I couldn’t justify the jump to 1 Gbps. Then I had to upload some local Hyper-V servers to AWS to convert them to AMIs and figured what the heck I’d upgrade the line. I would have no interest in upgrading beyond 1 Gbps right now though. There are too many infrastructure components that need to be upgraded to attain that and I don’t have a use case for it.

Existenceblinks 4y ago

I'm in a rural city in Thailand, fiber 2Gbps is $50 / mo. And this is just for normie. Like unimpressive.

downrightmike 4y ago
USA requires more raw materials to provide services. United States is about 19 times bigger than Thailand. Thailand is approximately 513,120 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km, making United States 1,816% larger than Thailand. And then there is the duopoly of ISPs where they carve out huge chunks and agree not to compete.
- _Algernon_ 4y ago
  Sheer size isn't what you should compare. Population density is much more relevant. Granted, Thailand still comes out ahead, but by far less than your size comparison (33.6/km^2 vs 132/km^2)
- Existenceblinks 4y ago
  I know. It's several factors, density, history of infra of telecom companies etc.
- pirate787 4y ago
  I live in a metro area in the US and thousands of homes in my community do not have land-based broadband options. The US incumbents have totally failed and it isn't because there's a lot of desert in the West and Alaska. I'm sick of this argument which doesn't explain why city dwellers in most places in America have the worst internet in the developed world.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    I live in a not-very-metro area in the usa and get gigabit fiber for $65/mo.
  - themitigating 4y ago

spaniard89277 4y ago

With a best effort connection Id rather have a well oiled setup, without cgnat, a good cpe, sensible throttling etc and 100mbps than whatever huge amount of gbps.

xen2xen1 4y ago
It's easy to get all the above and fast internet without much trouble. An old PC with OPNsense can do that.

duxup 4y ago

I get upgrade offers all the time. But it doesn’t matter because it isn’t actually offered in my area / the local telco can’t even notify the right people…

ghaff 4y ago
I don't think they do any longer but Verizon used to send me FIOS flyers on a fairly regular basis and when I went to their site it looked as if it wasn't actually available at my address (where I get Comcast). Also amusingly, both Comcast and Verizon have the very old (as in multiple decades) name for the street I live on as my address. It's only somewhat wrong (the name used to have a North on it)--but it is still wrong.

docdeek 4y ago

In a large French city with 10gb/s fibre connection at 50 euros à month (internet, TV, fixed line phone). More than enough for two people working from home + family.

gadrev 4y ago

On the other hand, try making 10-15k/month in europe in a regular tech job, esp. with little experience (0-3yr). It's orders of magnitude more uncommon than doing so in the USA. So bring all the hate :)

avh02 4y ago
It's hard to do, but at least I can get fired and not worry about health insurance.
nicoburns 4y ago
That’s all very well if you have a tech job. If you have a low paid job you’re utterly screwed in the US. I’d rather make less so my fellow citizens can live a decent life too.

lettergram 4y ago

Most cities >100k in the Midwest can get fiber for $55-$200/month at speeds 1-10Gb/s. Where I’m at it’s $80/month for a 5gb/s. If you want that in a major city, >1m people; good luck. Corruption, regulation and development costs are just too high. Rather sad to be honest.

mtalantikite 4y ago

Brooklyn here, my building still doesn’t have fiber — I’ve complained to the city for years! I get to pay $75/month for 200Mbps down, 10 Mbps up. I’ve been told fiber is coming for almost 15 years.

neitsab 4y ago

Reading this thread, I am reminded of how cheap telco prices are in France: e.g. in 2020, fibre internet plans averaged between €26 and €28.35 (USD 28-30 at current rates) per month.[0] Mobile plans are also on the cheap side, to the point of being competitive with many third world countries (for example, I wasn't that impressed with prices in Thailand in 2020 for comparable plans, only a 1-2€ difference with what I had at home). This is getting to the point that I find myself often suggesting fellows from border countries open a line in France, just so that they can enjoy the "European roaming data envelope" that comes with most plans (i.e. several gigabytes are free to use from anywhere in Europe, and you can make calls and texts to other EU countries when abroad...) after realizing how expensive and suckish mobile plans are in their country (Belgium in this instance). [0] https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/Best-and-worst-2020-prices-for-fibre-internet-and-mobile-in-France-revealed https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/Best-and...

quelltext 4y ago
You need a French address though.
- neitsab 4y ago
  I was under the impression that they only requested an ID and a mean of payment, but after verification you are right, a proof of residency is also required for postpaid plans. If you know someone in France, you may ask them to make a "solemn declaration" that you live at their address; then you only need provide their own proof of residency (people living with their parents routinely do so). Tourist and prepaid SIM cards are still exempted and, depending on your case, can prove quite interesting.
ornornor 4y ago
> enjoy the "European roaming data envelope" Which provider would you recommend? I remember taking a look a while back and the most viable option was Free, but 15.99 EUR a month for when I need roaming 3–4 times a year seemed a bit excessive at 180.- per year.

kbenson 4y ago

There are other ISPs in the states that are much more competitive (I work at one). Unfortunately, if you're not in a fairly dense area, the chances they can deliver to you is minimal, since building your own network is expensive. For example, we offer $40 service, and if you're in our historical areas that's 1Gbit symmetrical, and if you're in newer areas we've turned up in the last year that's 10Gbit symmetrical. We're expanding (as I expect most ISPs that can undercut the major players that much are), but it requires actually stringing fiber through neighborhoods on poles, so it takes a while (but that can be scaled...). If you don't have telephone poles, it's much harder/more expensive to build out an area, so often those are skipped (at least initially) as areas cheaper to deliver to are prioritized. The is unfortunately a lot of new development, as they'll build neighborhood with underground utilities and pre-wire AT&T and Comcast, making it hard for others to deliver to the area without a lot of cost and work (trenching).

hedora 4y ago
I have a sometimes 12mbit connection, but there's a Fiber POP about 1 mile down the road. There are phone poles (with fiber on them) between here and there. What does it cost to string fiber on poles, and what are the hopes of getting right of way? Alternatively, is there some way to pay / force the telco to build out FTTH? Some people a few miles away have a fiber POP at the end of their shared driveway, and are trying to decide if they should pay the extra couple hundred per house to go from 1GBit to 25GBit symmetric to the houses.
- kbenson 4y ago
  In the US I believe anyone can use the pole space as long as it's not taken, but I'm not an expert. I do know you have to fill out engineering documents per-pole to explain the load and propose (pay for?) fixing the load bearing attached cables. At the ISP I work for, I believe we spec out the cabling we need to a neighborhood and then order a special bundle with breakouts at specific locations along the length to serve locations, and then string that along the poles. I'm not sure why we wouldn't serve a house with one of those, but those go back to a central point in a neighborhood, and it's possible the backhaul from the central office to that central point in the neighborhood passes houses that aren't served. Where to build is all about ease of wiring an area and housi g density. It's all about cost per houses passed. The good news is that maybe your area is slated to get fiber since it goes by there, and it's just a matter of the lower hanging fruit being picked first.

AdrianB1 4y ago

One thing most people ignore: the prices these days for many thing don't have a direct correlation with the cost, but with how much people are willing to pay. This is happen especially in quasi-monopoly situations, like housing and internet services. For example I have 3 Internet connections at home that I pay ~ $30 in total, from 150 Mbps to 1 Gbps. I think the 1 Gbps is ~ $12/month, it is so cheap because there are so many options and I can afford to keep all 3 for redundancy (1 is a 4G mobile data capped at 200GB/month, it works even when there is a power failure in the entire neighborhood). But if there is no variety of options and no competition, then price is high. From what I read, most ISP in USA are squeezing as much as they can from their clients, sometimes to ridiculous levels.