7 ms·

I think this comes across as shocking to Americans but the thing is the rest of the world treats internet as a utility so most governments try to get cheap and

I think this comes across as shocking to Americans but the thing is the rest of the world treats internet as a utility so most governments try to get cheap and fast internet for as large a portion of the population as possible. Where as US cities and towns are stuck under its isp corporate monopolies.

mperham 4y ago
Yep, it doesn't need to be treated as a utility, there just needs to be competition. Our Xfinity internet was locked at 150 Mbps for years until the local DSL provider (Centurylink) rolled out gigabit fiber. Suddenly Xfinity started offering gigabit also. Capitalism doesn't work if the market is captured by rent-seekers. Unfortunately this describes most American industries these days.
- baq 4y ago
  to be precise: monopoly is peak laissez-faire capitalism; regulation is what makes this local maximum easy to get out of instead of dealing with an East India Company situation.
- dantheman 4y ago
  Capitalism doesn't work when the government grants monopolies to local companies.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    The monopolies in question are natural monopolies (basically any infrastructure which is physically constrained), so the only way of lessening the damages from them is via government regulations.
    - dantheman 4y ago
      Nope, the monopolies in question are granted by the local towns to specific providers so that they will be unprofitable connections to extremely rural recipients. It's a way to subsidize those who don't want to pay for what it would actually cost by secretly taxing everyone in the community by granting monopolies to certain businesses.
- xbmcuser 4y ago
  No it is not just about competition it needs to be treated as utility. Do you have 5-10 different companies bring their electricity wire or water pipes to your home of course not. It should be the same most cities should get fiber to the home themselves they can and let isp provide services over them for price let them compete on services. 10 different companies puting fiber all over a city won't be cost effective as they will do 10 times the work and 15-20 times the capital costs.
drstewart 4y ago
[flagged]
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  Come on now, surely you know that when Europeans compare 'the rest of the world' to America, 'the rest of the world' is a slang term that means "Europe".
- waboremo 4y ago
  Why did you select those countries specifically?
  - pb7 4y ago
    Why not? Are they not part of the rest of the world?
  - ketralnis 4y ago
    Because they're trying to make a point without coming out and saying it and they're hoping that you recognise... whatever it is that those have in common
- jacquesm 4y ago
  This is a pretty annoying way of commenting. If you have something to say then say it, don't pretend to make a point by asking someone else to do a whole pile of stuff. They're not in your pay.
  - pb7 4y ago
    [flagged]
- throw_pm23 4y ago
  Not sure about the countries you mentioned. The link shows top 5 for broadband speed: - Monaco - Singapore - Hong Kong - Romania - Switzerland
- dang 4y ago
grammers 4y ago
Yet, it is a utility by now. Who could live or work without it? A country cripples its economy in the long run if they do not realize that.
pkaye 4y ago
Though UK median speed is well below US according to speedtest. https://www.speedtest.net/global-index https://www.speedtest.net/global-index
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  UK has their own problems when it comes to ISPs. One of the biggest ones is that it's legal to advertise and sell VDSL or DOCSIS as fibre, so as a result most people have absolutely no way to compare the market and pick real fibre when everything is "fibre", and there's no market pressure to deliver it when you can simply sell cheaper copper-based tech as "fibre". Another one is that speeds are always expressed in bullshit terms such as "superfast", "ultrafast", etc and raw numbers are avoided, making shopping around difficult.
lazide 4y ago
It isn't shocking to Americans. It's frustrating. Keep in mind however, we're really talking about 50 different 'countries', when we're talking about laws like this so far. The EU for instance has no such Europe wide mandate. The populations are roughly equivalent.
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  > Keep in mind however, we're really talking about 50 different 'countries', when we're talking about laws like this so far. You're not though. You know other countries also have states, provinces and territories, right? And these have their own laws? It's not an American only concept.
rayiner 4y ago
Internet infrastructure regulation varies quite dramatically across the developed world. Canada, Germany, Switzerland, etc., do not “treat the Internet like a utility” for the most part. Also, “treating Internet like a utility” actually means a “corporate monopoly” nearly everywhere. The situation in the UK is very similar to the situation in much of the northeast US. You have a former monopoly provider (there BT, here Verizon) that is a private company that was incentivized to build out fiber. Its like PG&E in California, not like your municipal water or sewer service.
- simonbarker87 4y ago
  Not really the same though, we have many options that ride on top of the BT OpenReach network so most urban places get many cheap options for internet. If you want fibre to the home then Virgin Media is still your main option which is a little annoying.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    But what are your options for fiber to the home? It seems to me like whether you have FTTP available to me depends on whether BT decides to build fiber to your house. Yeah, telephone loop unbundling adds some additional competition for the actual internet transit portion. But when people say “like a utility” I think they are thinking about something like sewer/water utilities in the US, where a municipal entity builds and runs the infrastructure with taxes.
    - simonbarker87 4y ago
      The FTTP roll out is slow for sure but it’s getting there. OpenReach have a lot of funding from the government to do it but it’s wrapped up in complicated requirements is my understanding. Unless you want to go with virgin media in which case you can usually get fttp with them - but only them.
icelancer 4y ago
Australia and Canada famously have awesome, fast, and cheap Internet access compared to the United States.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  /s missing, right?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fleddr 4y ago
Sometimes. I live in a small, sleepy, insignificant town in the Netherlands. Usually in these kind of places, there's an attempt to arrive at a democratic decision regarding the installation of fibre to the home in a collective way. This almost always fails. The people already have broadband by means of cable internet which is pretty fast over here. There isn't really any normie application that requires fibre, which leaves only one immediate benefit: competition. The cable internet providers are region locked and monopolistic. They'll even spam your mail box with propaganda suggesting you don't need fibre. Anyway, our municipality took a rare stance: you may not think you need it, but we're going to do it anyway. But...what about that odd farmer living 1 mile from everybody else? Makes no economic sense? Yes, him too. Everyone. By principle. But you'll need to open the streets? Yes, and we will. And here's the schedule by the day about which street opens when. The schedule was met. In the course of 2 months, an entire ring of small towns got fibre to the home. This includes opening up people's drive way and other custom arrangements. So now in the middle of nowhere we have fibre, and we can pick from 3 providers on this single cable. A rare case of long term government smarts, and competent execution. Then again, this example is far from universal.

mperham 4y ago

Yep, it doesn't need to be treated as a utility, there just needs to be competition. Our Xfinity internet was locked at 150 Mbps for years until the local DSL provider (Centurylink) rolled out gigabit fiber. Suddenly Xfinity started offering gigabit also. Capitalism doesn't work if the market is captured by rent-seekers. Unfortunately this describes most American industries these days.

baq 4y ago
to be precise: monopoly is peak laissez-faire capitalism; regulation is what makes this local maximum easy to get out of instead of dealing with an East India Company situation.
dantheman 4y ago
Capitalism doesn't work when the government grants monopolies to local companies.
- sofixa 4y ago
  The monopolies in question are natural monopolies (basically any infrastructure which is physically constrained), so the only way of lessening the damages from them is via government regulations.
  - dantheman 4y ago
    Nope, the monopolies in question are granted by the local towns to specific providers so that they will be unprofitable connections to extremely rural recipients. It's a way to subsidize those who don't want to pay for what it would actually cost by secretly taxing everyone in the community by granting monopolies to certain businesses.
xbmcuser 4y ago
No it is not just about competition it needs to be treated as utility. Do you have 5-10 different companies bring their electricity wire or water pipes to your home of course not. It should be the same most cities should get fiber to the home themselves they can and let isp provide services over them for price let them compete on services. 10 different companies puting fiber all over a city won't be cost effective as they will do 10 times the work and 15-20 times the capital costs.

drstewart 4y ago

[flagged]

LarryMullins 4y ago
Come on now, surely you know that when Europeans compare 'the rest of the world' to America, 'the rest of the world' is a slang term that means "Europe".
waboremo 4y ago
Why did you select those countries specifically?
- pb7 4y ago
  Why not? Are they not part of the rest of the world?
- ketralnis 4y ago
  Because they're trying to make a point without coming out and saying it and they're hoping that you recognise... whatever it is that those have in common
jacquesm 4y ago
This is a pretty annoying way of commenting. If you have something to say then say it, don't pretend to make a point by asking someone else to do a whole pile of stuff. They're not in your pay.
- pb7 4y ago
  [flagged]
throw_pm23 4y ago
Not sure about the countries you mentioned. The link shows top 5 for broadband speed: - Monaco - Singapore - Hong Kong - Romania - Switzerland
dang 4y ago

grammers 4y ago

Yet, it is a utility by now. Who could live or work without it? A country cripples its economy in the long run if they do not realize that.

pkaye 4y ago

Though UK median speed is well below US according to speedtest. https://www.speedtest.net/global-index https://www.speedtest.net/global-index

Nextgrid 4y ago
UK has their own problems when it comes to ISPs. One of the biggest ones is that it's legal to advertise and sell VDSL or DOCSIS as fibre, so as a result most people have absolutely no way to compare the market and pick real fibre when everything is "fibre", and there's no market pressure to deliver it when you can simply sell cheaper copper-based tech as "fibre". Another one is that speeds are always expressed in bullshit terms such as "superfast", "ultrafast", etc and raw numbers are avoided, making shopping around difficult.

lazide 4y ago

It isn't shocking to Americans. It's frustrating. Keep in mind however, we're really talking about 50 different 'countries', when we're talking about laws like this so far. The EU for instance has no such Europe wide mandate. The populations are roughly equivalent.

TheHappyOddish 4y ago
> Keep in mind however, we're really talking about 50 different 'countries', when we're talking about laws like this so far. You're not though. You know other countries also have states, provinces and territories, right? And these have their own laws? It's not an American only concept.

rayiner 4y ago

Internet infrastructure regulation varies quite dramatically across the developed world. Canada, Germany, Switzerland, etc., do not “treat the Internet like a utility” for the most part. Also, “treating Internet like a utility” actually means a “corporate monopoly” nearly everywhere. The situation in the UK is very similar to the situation in much of the northeast US. You have a former monopoly provider (there BT, here Verizon) that is a private company that was incentivized to build out fiber. Its like PG&E in California, not like your municipal water or sewer service.

simonbarker87 4y ago
Not really the same though, we have many options that ride on top of the BT OpenReach network so most urban places get many cheap options for internet. If you want fibre to the home then Virgin Media is still your main option which is a little annoying.
- rayiner 4y ago
  But what are your options for fiber to the home? It seems to me like whether you have FTTP available to me depends on whether BT decides to build fiber to your house. Yeah, telephone loop unbundling adds some additional competition for the actual internet transit portion. But when people say “like a utility” I think they are thinking about something like sewer/water utilities in the US, where a municipal entity builds and runs the infrastructure with taxes.
  - simonbarker87 4y ago
    The FTTP roll out is slow for sure but it’s getting there. OpenReach have a lot of funding from the government to do it but it’s wrapped up in complicated requirements is my understanding. Unless you want to go with virgin media in which case you can usually get fttp with them - but only them.

icelancer 4y ago

Australia and Canada famously have awesome, fast, and cheap Internet access compared to the United States.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
/s missing, right?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fleddr 4y ago

Sometimes. I live in a small, sleepy, insignificant town in the Netherlands. Usually in these kind of places, there's an attempt to arrive at a democratic decision regarding the installation of fibre to the home in a collective way. This almost always fails. The people already have broadband by means of cable internet which is pretty fast over here. There isn't really any normie application that requires fibre, which leaves only one immediate benefit: competition. The cable internet providers are region locked and monopolistic. They'll even spam your mail box with propaganda suggesting you don't need fibre. Anyway, our municipality took a rare stance: you may not think you need it, but we're going to do it anyway. But...what about that odd farmer living 1 mile from everybody else? Makes no economic sense? Yes, him too. Everyone. By principle. But you'll need to open the streets? Yes, and we will. And here's the schedule by the day about which street opens when. The schedule was met. In the course of 2 months, an entire ring of small towns got fibre to the home. This includes opening up people's drive way and other custom arrangements. So now in the middle of nowhere we have fibre, and we can pick from 3 providers on this single cable. A rare case of long term government smarts, and competent execution. Then again, this example is far from universal.