4 ms·

In an extreme ironic twist, me, the techie nerd guy, has the slowest internet of the regular-folk friend group of mine. Everyone has got 1Gbps and here I am wit

In an extreme ironic twist, me, the techie nerd guy, has the slowest internet of the regular-folk friend group of mine. Everyone has got 1Gbps and here I am with 300Mbps.

vladslav 3y ago
My friends in third-world countries get faster and less expensive service than me in Silicon Valley. On top of that, there is no fiber connection in my neighborhood, and they've been on fiber for over 5 years. And there is a data cap also. It's just crazy and sad.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Are they in geographic region that is more densely populated? Or an area that was built out more recently? In my last house (also in SV) the choices were between Comcast and AT&T copper. The latter went up to 6/1, so was effectively useless. I'm sure it was laid down decades ago.
  - thumbsup-_- 3y ago
    Yes. Providers in India offer far more speed at far cheaper prices than US. The key to this is competition. There are many providers available in each major city which helps consumer. It's sad that in many US' major cities there is usually one or two providers only for a building or neighborhood. My building in SF only has comcast, so they have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    You can find fiber connection in some remote vilage in slovakia. Consolidation is the cause - US had 2-se as many listed companies 30 yeats ago. Now US capital is buying up independant businesses across easterm Europe and developing countries, killing competition and the local economy.
  - vladslav 3y ago
    They are in a densely populated area. The city had issues with internet service for quite a while. The government started to invest heavily in fiber tech around the 2010s, and fast forward to now, almost everyone in the city can get a fiber connection to their home or apartment building. The cost is around ~28$ for 300Mbs and $80 for 1Gbs.
  - Fatnino 3y ago
    Much of residential silicon valley was built very quickly in the 50s
- Fnoord 3y ago
  Check this out: > Broadband penetration as of June 2017: 23.5 broadband connections for every 100 people. > Distribution of broadband connections by type, as reported by Ancom, is as follows 94% FTTx (FTTH/FTTB/FTTC/FTTN) internet access connections, 4.8% Coaxial cable, 0.2% other. Now guess the country. Answer in ROT13 at [1]. Hint: it ain't a first world country. Another hint: Latine loquitur. Oh and it ain't a recent development either. They've been at it like forever. [1] uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Vagrearg_va_Ebznavn
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  If you develop later you can leapfrog countries that ground through all the necessary phases for the development to happen for everyone globally. But that doesn't mean you can keep pace. Hopefully your area gets an upgrade, or a Starlink, soon.
- arllk 3y ago
  I live in Perú, and I have 400Mbps internet FTTH with no data cap, and the price is 37 USD [1], the competition of the internet providers is incredibly good for the consumers. The lowest plan that mi ISP offers is 100Mbps and is at 21 USD. [1] https://www.movistar.com.pe/hogar/internet/solo-internet https://www.movistar.com.pe/hogar/internet/solo-internet (Link in Spanish)
  - vondur 3y ago
    According to wikipedia the average monthly salary in Peru is $502 US. $37 per month doesn't seem that cheap to me.
    - nicoburns 3y ago
      As another point of comparison, a new ISP in my area of London is offering symmetric gigabit fiber for £25/month or around $30/month (USD).
      - ZoomerCretin 3y ago
        Your country requires ISPs to share and rent lines. That does a great deal for competition and lowering prices
      - vondur 3y ago
        $30/month USD compared to the average salary in London is pretty good. We unfortunately don't have much competition among ISP's here in the US.
- Fatnino 3y ago
  Palo Alto just unveiled another fiber to the home plan to be ready by Jan 2025 in one select neighborhood (that I live just outside of, dammit). This plan will definitely come to fruition just like all the other ones since the 90s
  - msmith 3y ago
    It boggles my mind that Google Fiber has been available in Austin, TX for 10 years but is still not available in the communities next door to Google HQ.
    - ZoomerCretin 3y ago
      Probably due to the extreme level of veto-ism in the Bay Area. Everyone wants internet, but if 5 people complaining about yards or roads being dug up can get work to stop indefinitely, costs are going through the roof. There's far more uncertainty in that political environment than anywhere else. For reference, I live in a small town of ~6,000 people, and we're getting fiber laid. For the longest time we only had 25mbps, and then a new provider came in with coaxial and offered 200mbps (with a data cap), and now a third is laying fiber. Our average income is $34k/year, so it's not because we have more money than the opulent Bay Area.
      - Workaccount2 3y ago
        It could simply be that poor people don't complain about infrastructure projects like rich people too. Or they don't have the tools/connections to effectively stop it.
        I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        I imagine if you are renting a property, you are less likely to complain about things going on around the property because it's not your property to "defend." If you own (and especially if you are part of an HOA) you might be more likely to complain if there is construction going on for 3+ months in your neighborhood. So it probably does fall into rich vs poor in the same way that renters may be less likely to be rich.
- 867-5309 3y ago
  "faster" here is relative. unless you live in eastern USA or western Europe, you'd be lucky to see half the quoted "speed", since that is where the majority of the internet resides
warner25 3y ago
Me too. I tell everyone who will listen that they should look at their actual bandwidth usage. I've looked at the detailed statistics on my Google Nest WiFi router, and my family's peak usage never exceeded about 30 Mbps. That's with me working from home as a CS PhD student and my wife homeschooling our kids during the day. I have 300 Mbps (down) because that's the lowest, cheapest tier that my ISP offers. Maybe people are actually using their 1 Gbps bandwidth if they have multiple 4K TVs and do serious gaming? I don't know, I doubt it. I tell everyone to look at their actual cellular data usage too. I think all middle class Americans just buy unlimited plans now, but I do just fine with 500 MB per month for $5.
- pests 3y ago
  I have 3 days left in my billing cycle on phone and I've used 8.5GB of data. I have WiFi everywhere I go too. 500 for $5 would cost me about $50 - unlimited makes perfect sense.
  - warner25 3y ago
    What do you do with all that, especially with WiFi everywhere? Are you continuously streaming video while on-the-go between WiFi networks? That's fine, it's just stunning. I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day. Especially when I'm on-the-go, it's just calls and text messages, some driving directions, and maybe looking up a phone number or business hours. If I use it to listen to an audiobook or podcast, I download those ahead of time on WiFi. Using only 200 MB per month is normal.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      > I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day. That's about 5 - 10 times the amount of unlocks I do. Not what I'd consider minimal, at all. :D
      - warner25 3y ago
        Nice! I have a few days in the past month with only 1-2 unlocks, but those are outliers. At a minimum, my wife and I will exchange a couple messages per hour when I'm out of the house. I like to think that I could live as a total weirdo without a phone (just my Google Voice line from my laptop) if I were single.
isilofi 3y ago
Non-techie notices "internet is slow" because their youtube video is blocky or pages load slowly. Non-techie goes to ISP to complain. ISP upsells to a more expensive plan. The actual reason in almost all cases: non-techies are clueless about their slow and shitty WIFI. Picking empty or less busy channels, using 5GHz, using gasp cables, all black magic and never done. Sometimes the upselling actually helps because the better plan comes with a maybe-better AP...
- gosub100 3y ago
  > their slow and shitty WIFI I'm still embarrassed about the time I called my ISP and complained that the new Xmbs package they just installed is capped at only Ymbps only to realize I had run the speed test over wifi (back in the wireless-g,maybe n days)...
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  I live with the shitty wifi because the yak-shaving that comes with "ok, I will set their router to be pass through, now I need to install openwrt on that 100$ recommended router, and run a cable behind my drywall upto the second floor, and install anothe openwrt and bang goes a weekend and really I am only do that once I order a second line because taking out my family's internet for the whole weekend because I will fuck it up at least once .. ok. Next month honest
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Yeah, the Comcast sales reps spin ridiculous tales about how much speed you need. People who don't know better are fooled by this, and end up paying way too much for speeds they don't remotely need.
- doubled112 3y ago
  And some techies regret our choice to have both a Mikrotik AP and walls. You can have decent WiFi and one of those, but not all three. That'll teach me to stay consistent.
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  When I had the fiber connection for my new internet run to my house, I told the tech I want the router/modem combo installed in the basement. The guy strongly insisted I not do it, but then when I persisted I had to sign two waivers acknowledging that my wifi will probably be shit and the basement is a terrible spot. I was just using their router/modem as a pass through, but man, they really don't want people putting routers in their basement. I can totally understand why too.
Terr_ 3y ago
As someone who plays games a lot more than watches movies, I don't need much bandwidth, what I really want is low latency.
xattt 3y ago
It might be that you’re informed enough to consider that 300 Mbps is more than enough.

In an extreme ironic twist, me, the techie nerd guy, has the slowest internet of the regular-folk friend group of mine. Everyone has got 1Gbps and here I am with 300Mbps.

vladslav 3y ago

My friends in third-world countries get faster and less expensive service than me in Silicon Valley. On top of that, there is no fiber connection in my neighborhood, and they've been on fiber for over 5 years. And there is a data cap also. It's just crazy and sad.

gnicholas 3y ago
Are they in geographic region that is more densely populated? Or an area that was built out more recently? In my last house (also in SV) the choices were between Comcast and AT&T copper. The latter went up to 6/1, so was effectively useless. I'm sure it was laid down decades ago.
- thumbsup-_- 3y ago
  Yes. Providers in India offer far more speed at far cheaper prices than US. The key to this is competition. There are many providers available in each major city which helps consumer. It's sad that in many US' major cities there is usually one or two providers only for a building or neighborhood. My building in SF only has comcast, so they have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  You can find fiber connection in some remote vilage in slovakia. Consolidation is the cause - US had 2-se as many listed companies 30 yeats ago. Now US capital is buying up independant businesses across easterm Europe and developing countries, killing competition and the local economy.
- vladslav 3y ago
  They are in a densely populated area. The city had issues with internet service for quite a while. The government started to invest heavily in fiber tech around the 2010s, and fast forward to now, almost everyone in the city can get a fiber connection to their home or apartment building. The cost is around ~28$ for 300Mbs and $80 for 1Gbs.
- Fatnino 3y ago
  Much of residential silicon valley was built very quickly in the 50s
Fnoord 3y ago
Check this out: > Broadband penetration as of June 2017: 23.5 broadband connections for every 100 people. > Distribution of broadband connections by type, as reported by Ancom, is as follows 94% FTTx (FTTH/FTTB/FTTC/FTTN) internet access connections, 4.8% Coaxial cable, 0.2% other. Now guess the country. Answer in ROT13 at [1]. Hint: it ain't a first world country. Another hint: Latine loquitur. Oh and it ain't a recent development either. They've been at it like forever. [1] uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Vagrearg_va_Ebznavn
robertlagrant 3y ago
If you develop later you can leapfrog countries that ground through all the necessary phases for the development to happen for everyone globally. But that doesn't mean you can keep pace. Hopefully your area gets an upgrade, or a Starlink, soon.
arllk 3y ago
I live in Perú, and I have 400Mbps internet FTTH with no data cap, and the price is 37 USD [1], the competition of the internet providers is incredibly good for the consumers. The lowest plan that mi ISP offers is 100Mbps and is at 21 USD. [1] https://www.movistar.com.pe/hogar/internet/solo-internet https://www.movistar.com.pe/hogar/internet/solo-internet (Link in Spanish)
- vondur 3y ago
  According to wikipedia the average monthly salary in Peru is $502 US. $37 per month doesn't seem that cheap to me.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    As another point of comparison, a new ISP in my area of London is offering symmetric gigabit fiber for £25/month or around $30/month (USD).
    - ZoomerCretin 3y ago
      Your country requires ISPs to share and rent lines. That does a great deal for competition and lowering prices
    - vondur 3y ago
      $30/month USD compared to the average salary in London is pretty good. We unfortunately don't have much competition among ISP's here in the US.
Fatnino 3y ago
Palo Alto just unveiled another fiber to the home plan to be ready by Jan 2025 in one select neighborhood (that I live just outside of, dammit). This plan will definitely come to fruition just like all the other ones since the 90s
- msmith 3y ago
  It boggles my mind that Google Fiber has been available in Austin, TX for 10 years but is still not available in the communities next door to Google HQ.
  - ZoomerCretin 3y ago
    Probably due to the extreme level of veto-ism in the Bay Area. Everyone wants internet, but if 5 people complaining about yards or roads being dug up can get work to stop indefinitely, costs are going through the roof. There's far more uncertainty in that political environment than anywhere else. For reference, I live in a small town of ~6,000 people, and we're getting fiber laid. For the longest time we only had 25mbps, and then a new provider came in with coaxial and offered 200mbps (with a data cap), and now a third is laying fiber. Our average income is $34k/year, so it's not because we have more money than the opulent Bay Area.
    - Workaccount2 3y ago
      It could simply be that poor people don't complain about infrastructure projects like rich people too. Or they don't have the tools/connections to effectively stop it.
      - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        I imagine if you are renting a property, you are less likely to complain about things going on around the property because it's not your property to "defend." If you own (and especially if you are part of an HOA) you might be more likely to complain if there is construction going on for 3+ months in your neighborhood. So it probably does fall into rich vs poor in the same way that renters may be less likely to be rich.
867-5309 3y ago
"faster" here is relative. unless you live in eastern USA or western Europe, you'd be lucky to see half the quoted "speed", since that is where the majority of the internet resides

warner25 3y ago

Me too. I tell everyone who will listen that they should look at their actual bandwidth usage. I've looked at the detailed statistics on my Google Nest WiFi router, and my family's peak usage never exceeded about 30 Mbps. That's with me working from home as a CS PhD student and my wife homeschooling our kids during the day. I have 300 Mbps (down) because that's the lowest, cheapest tier that my ISP offers. Maybe people are actually using their 1 Gbps bandwidth if they have multiple 4K TVs and do serious gaming? I don't know, I doubt it. I tell everyone to look at their actual cellular data usage too. I think all middle class Americans just buy unlimited plans now, but I do just fine with 500 MB per month for $5.

pests 3y ago
I have 3 days left in my billing cycle on phone and I've used 8.5GB of data. I have WiFi everywhere I go too. 500 for $5 would cost me about $50 - unlimited makes perfect sense.
- warner25 3y ago
  What do you do with all that, especially with WiFi everywhere? Are you continuously streaming video while on-the-go between WiFi networks? That's fine, it's just stunning. I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day. Especially when I'm on-the-go, it's just calls and text messages, some driving directions, and maybe looking up a phone number or business hours. If I use it to listen to an audiobook or podcast, I download those ahead of time on WiFi. Using only 200 MB per month is normal.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    > I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day. That's about 5 - 10 times the amount of unlocks I do. Not what I'd consider minimal, at all. :D
    - warner25 3y ago
      Nice! I have a few days in the past month with only 1-2 unlocks, but those are outliers. At a minimum, my wife and I will exchange a couple messages per hour when I'm out of the house. I like to think that I could live as a total weirdo without a phone (just my Google Voice line from my laptop) if I were single.

isilofi 3y ago

Non-techie notices "internet is slow" because their youtube video is blocky or pages load slowly. Non-techie goes to ISP to complain. ISP upsells to a more expensive plan. The actual reason in almost all cases: non-techies are clueless about their slow and shitty WIFI. Picking empty or less busy channels, using 5GHz, using gasp cables, all black magic and never done. Sometimes the upselling actually helps because the better plan comes with a maybe-better AP...

gosub100 3y ago
> their slow and shitty WIFI I'm still embarrassed about the time I called my ISP and complained that the new Xmbs package they just installed is capped at only Ymbps only to realize I had run the speed test over wifi (back in the wireless-g,maybe n days)...
lifeisstillgood 3y ago
I live with the shitty wifi because the yak-shaving that comes with "ok, I will set their router to be pass through, now I need to install openwrt on that 100$ recommended router, and run a cable behind my drywall upto the second floor, and install anothe openwrt and bang goes a weekend and really I am only do that once I order a second line because taking out my family's internet for the whole weekend because I will fuck it up at least once .. ok. Next month honest
gnicholas 3y ago
Yeah, the Comcast sales reps spin ridiculous tales about how much speed you need. People who don't know better are fooled by this, and end up paying way too much for speeds they don't remotely need.
doubled112 3y ago
And some techies regret our choice to have both a Mikrotik AP and walls. You can have decent WiFi and one of those, but not all three. That'll teach me to stay consistent.
Workaccount2 3y ago
When I had the fiber connection for my new internet run to my house, I told the tech I want the router/modem combo installed in the basement. The guy strongly insisted I not do it, but then when I persisted I had to sign two waivers acknowledging that my wifi will probably be shit and the basement is a terrible spot. I was just using their router/modem as a pass through, but man, they really don't want people putting routers in their basement. I can totally understand why too.

Terr_ 3y ago

As someone who plays games a lot more than watches movies, I don't need much bandwidth, what I really want is low latency.

xattt 3y ago

It might be that you’re informed enough to consider that 300 Mbps is more than enough.