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I am currently on a farm in a very rural area, in a central EU country. 900mbps symmetric, $25/month fiber. The fiber run was subsidized/possibly entirely fund

I am currently on a farm in a very rural area, in a central EU country. 900mbps symmetric, $25/month fiber. The fiber run was subsidized/possibly entirely funded by EU money. > EU support to rural revitalisation through broadband roll-out and smart solutions https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/eu-support-rural-revitalisation-through-broadband-roll-out-and-smart-solutions https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/eu-support-rur...

msgodel 1y ago
In the US fiber has started to show up in very rural areas now as well. My parents got it last year and I never thought that would happen in my hometown. It's some small company I never heard of before, back when I lived there Verizon got a ton of government money to do this and just never did, everyone was pissed about that.
- consumer451 1y ago
  It's a huge difference isn't it? When I used to stay here in the past, the DSL was awful. It made it very annoying to work online. Now, it's as good as back in Seattle.
  - msgodel 1y ago
    Oh lol there wasn't even DSL, everyone wanted that. The options were dialup (over ISDN for a while which was one of the best options until that went away), geosynchronous satellite, or LTE if you're even near a tower. That's why I'm so surprised they have fiber all of a sudden.
    - connicpu 1y ago
      Starlink is now kind of a global baseline that ISPs have to compete against regardless of location. In rural areas it's very reasonable to expect 200-400mbps downloads and 20-40mbps uploads for $120/month. A bit pricey but it's a level of service that DSL and GEO sats can't even think about matching, so companies have to build cable, fiber, or 5G towers if they want to have a comparable offering.
- abuani 1y ago
  I'm still pissed about Verizon pocketing billions in subsidies and not finishing their work. My area was next up for fiber installation before Verizon stopped, and so I'm stuck with Comcast or DSL. Comcast claims to offer symmetrical GiB up/down, but I've yet to get that. Now I can't even get in touch with a human for support without spending 30 minutes with a bot.
  - kotaKat 1y ago
    Weird opposite experience. I’m suuuper rural NY (what others have described as ‘American Siberia’) and for some reason Verizon quietly started building out their fiber network in the past several years again, something even I didn’t anticipate happening. I always knew they had Syracuse and Rochester as major FIOS markets, but I was blown away to see the trucks all the way this far north and on my very road. Last I’d known they’d said they had stopped all buildout. Next thing I know, they pick back up their pace, then pick up the homework they let Frontier finish for them with the Frontier FIOS buildout, too.
- quantified 1y ago
  In Vermont you can get GB fiber to the house but it will cost you $90/month after the intro period. Vendor: Fidium.
- BenjiWiebe 1y ago
  Our nearest town, Durham Kansas (population 100) got buried fiber optic recently. The company is actually planning/hoping to expand to the rural area around town as well, so maybe we'll get it as we're only two miles out of town. They do offer 1gig symmetric but I think it's $200/month. I'd just like the reliability and low latency of fiber vs our current WISP.
- thfuran 1y ago
  My parents for fiber in a rural area too. It's roughly $100/mo for something like 20/20.
FirmwareBurner 1y ago
Which country? In Germany and Austria you still have DSL cable because the telco monopolies are golf buddies with the politicians.
- consumer451 1y ago
  I hear complaints about German internet connections all the time, and it blows my mind that this could still be the case. What an utter self-own. I am currently in Poland, the very SW corner. Close enough to get both German and Czech radio in the car.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >What an utter self-own. Which self own? Besides the one making your industry dependent on energy from your military opponent? Besides the one putting all your eggs in selling diesel engines when China and the US were betting on computer driven battery powered EVs? Besides the one where you open your borders to unvetted illegal immigrants leading to a rise in crime, terror attacks and right wing extremism all over Europe? Because I lost track.
    - consumer451 1y ago
      > Which self own? Besides the one making your industry dependent on energy from your military opponent? Yeah, that too I suppose. How could Schroeder have known? :/
- herbst 1y ago
  I was taking a train from somewhere in Bavaria to Austria. More than half of the ride the train lady was chilling next to us because "there is no internet, I cannot check tickets" the whole ride you could see houses out of the window. People are actually living there. This was like 6 years ago but I am still baffled by this. In Switzerland it's very unlikely you find a mountain or road without 4g
  - morsch 1y ago
xattt 1y ago
Same deal in Prince Edward Island. Very rural, near the coast, cows across the road, but gigabit fibre from Xplorenet who took advantage of government funding.
kjkjadksj 1y ago
I live in the second largest city in the US. In the distance I can see a switching station that carries a large amount of telecom and internet traffic. Should be easy to get fiber no? Turns out they want a couple thousand dollars from me to run fiber up my street. Coax it is!
- genewitch 1y ago
  coax was $5,000 a mile, here, 5-6 mile run (i forget), and they said "there's no guarantee it does anything except TV" - that is, no internet. fiber loop from cogent or centurylink was $15,000. even though they have a loop a half mile up the road. Dark fiber is probably cheaper, but i cannot remember the pricing to run my own fiber via some legit company. i had DSL (6mbit), switched to my own CPE with cellular wireless, then their CPE after they stopped selling the SIM plan i was using, then starlink after they stopped selling their fixed wireless for some newer one that isn't supported anywhere but metro areas. There's a tree interfering with satellites at my location, and it's still 20x faster and better than anything before; except my own CPE solution, starlink is only 2x as good as that.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
viccis 1y ago
The US doesn't generally do new things anymore. We just shuffle money around into peoples' pockets. So we have plenty of societal wealth to do something like this, even given how large and rural many areas are, but we just don't. Because no one gets reelected because they rolled out bandwidth. They get reelected based on however their party is faring in the battle of the spectacle going on nationally.
- beauzero 1y ago
  Depends on the place. Live in rural Georgia (Carroll County). Within the last two years have had Spectrum fiber and Carroll EMC fiber run by the house. First is underground and second is on pole.
  - hvb2 1y ago
    Have you ever wondered why each provider needs their own wire? You could have the wire be owned by a utility and let companies compete with services?
  - qingcharles 1y ago
    I live in an insanely rural no-stop-light town, and they just ran 5gbps fiber outside my door. I already have 1gbps from another company. Can't justify the 5gbps, though - it's like $170/mo + taxes.
- consumer451 1y ago
  To be fair, there will be plenty of people using EU funded fiber over here, to complain about how the EU does nothing and is pure evil, and that the country should leave the union.
- thehappypm 1y ago
  I don’t think this is even remotely true.
  - viccis 1y ago
    Feel free to take a ride in the high speed cross country rail to argue about it with me to my face. Oh...
philjohn 1y ago
I'm in the UK on a 900Mbps symmetric for £40 a month. Turns out regulation can be a good thing - first of all, OpenReach (the infrastructure part of BT that was split up post privatisation) are regulated in how much they can charge other providers for last mile FTTP/C[1] But then there's also Access to Infrastructure regulation[2], which means duct and pole access isn't up to the telco's (and after all, existing infra was publicly funded, and new infra is often paid for by housing developers). This means I have 2 providers of FTTP to my property - CityFibre and OpenReach (and a third offering DOCSIS cable in Virgin Media). These combined have led to a thriving market with genuine competition. Whilst most ISP's use the two providers with the most footprint (OpenReach and CityFibre) they compete on things like technical chops (AAISP), Price (the PlusNets of the world) and a mix of the two (Zen). Regulation, when well designed, leads to more competitive markets. [1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-infrastructure/2021-26-wholesale-fixed-telecoms-market-review https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-infra... [2] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2016/700/contents https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2016/700/contents
- rjh29 1y ago
  Japan has no regulation and you can get 10 Gbps for the same price or lower. The main reason is it skipped ADSL completely and went staight to fiber.
  - philjohn 1y ago
    Well, there's also cultural reasons. If the government of Japan entrusts you to self regulate on the basis of open access and no restrictions a Japanese business will understand the weight of expectations that have been placed on them. A US telco would pop the champagne and then plan how best to screw their customers, safe in the knowledge that they have few competitors after they got local governments to ban municipal broadband.

msgodel 1y ago

In the US fiber has started to show up in very rural areas now as well. My parents got it last year and I never thought that would happen in my hometown. It's some small company I never heard of before, back when I lived there Verizon got a ton of government money to do this and just never did, everyone was pissed about that.

consumer451 1y ago
It's a huge difference isn't it? When I used to stay here in the past, the DSL was awful. It made it very annoying to work online. Now, it's as good as back in Seattle.
- msgodel 1y ago
  Oh lol there wasn't even DSL, everyone wanted that. The options were dialup (over ISDN for a while which was one of the best options until that went away), geosynchronous satellite, or LTE if you're even near a tower. That's why I'm so surprised they have fiber all of a sudden.
  - connicpu 1y ago
    Starlink is now kind of a global baseline that ISPs have to compete against regardless of location. In rural areas it's very reasonable to expect 200-400mbps downloads and 20-40mbps uploads for $120/month. A bit pricey but it's a level of service that DSL and GEO sats can't even think about matching, so companies have to build cable, fiber, or 5G towers if they want to have a comparable offering.
abuani 1y ago
I'm still pissed about Verizon pocketing billions in subsidies and not finishing their work. My area was next up for fiber installation before Verizon stopped, and so I'm stuck with Comcast or DSL. Comcast claims to offer symmetrical GiB up/down, but I've yet to get that. Now I can't even get in touch with a human for support without spending 30 minutes with a bot.
- kotaKat 1y ago
  Weird opposite experience. I’m suuuper rural NY (what others have described as ‘American Siberia’) and for some reason Verizon quietly started building out their fiber network in the past several years again, something even I didn’t anticipate happening. I always knew they had Syracuse and Rochester as major FIOS markets, but I was blown away to see the trucks all the way this far north and on my very road. Last I’d known they’d said they had stopped all buildout. Next thing I know, they pick back up their pace, then pick up the homework they let Frontier finish for them with the Frontier FIOS buildout, too.
quantified 1y ago
In Vermont you can get GB fiber to the house but it will cost you $90/month after the intro period. Vendor: Fidium.
BenjiWiebe 1y ago
Our nearest town, Durham Kansas (population 100) got buried fiber optic recently. The company is actually planning/hoping to expand to the rural area around town as well, so maybe we'll get it as we're only two miles out of town. They do offer 1gig symmetric but I think it's $200/month. I'd just like the reliability and low latency of fiber vs our current WISP.
thfuran 1y ago
My parents for fiber in a rural area too. It's roughly $100/mo for something like 20/20.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago

Which country? In Germany and Austria you still have DSL cable because the telco monopolies are golf buddies with the politicians.

consumer451 1y ago
I hear complaints about German internet connections all the time, and it blows my mind that this could still be the case. What an utter self-own. I am currently in Poland, the very SW corner. Close enough to get both German and Czech radio in the car.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >What an utter self-own. Which self own? Besides the one making your industry dependent on energy from your military opponent? Besides the one putting all your eggs in selling diesel engines when China and the US were betting on computer driven battery powered EVs? Besides the one where you open your borders to unvetted illegal immigrants leading to a rise in crime, terror attacks and right wing extremism all over Europe? Because I lost track.
  - consumer451 1y ago
    > Which self own? Besides the one making your industry dependent on energy from your military opponent? Yeah, that too I suppose. How could Schroeder have known? :/
herbst 1y ago
I was taking a train from somewhere in Bavaria to Austria. More than half of the ride the train lady was chilling next to us because "there is no internet, I cannot check tickets" the whole ride you could see houses out of the window. People are actually living there. This was like 6 years ago but I am still baffled by this. In Switzerland it's very unlikely you find a mountain or road without 4g
- morsch 1y ago

xattt 1y ago

Same deal in Prince Edward Island. Very rural, near the coast, cows across the road, but gigabit fibre from Xplorenet who took advantage of government funding.

kjkjadksj 1y ago

I live in the second largest city in the US. In the distance I can see a switching station that carries a large amount of telecom and internet traffic. Should be easy to get fiber no? Turns out they want a couple thousand dollars from me to run fiber up my street. Coax it is!

genewitch 1y ago
coax was $5,000 a mile, here, 5-6 mile run (i forget), and they said "there's no guarantee it does anything except TV" - that is, no internet. fiber loop from cogent or centurylink was $15,000. even though they have a loop a half mile up the road. Dark fiber is probably cheaper, but i cannot remember the pricing to run my own fiber via some legit company. i had DSL (6mbit), switched to my own CPE with cellular wireless, then their CPE after they stopped selling the SIM plan i was using, then starlink after they stopped selling their fixed wireless for some newer one that isn't supported anywhere but metro areas. There's a tree interfering with satellites at my location, and it's still 20x faster and better than anything before; except my own CPE solution, starlink is only 2x as good as that.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

viccis 1y ago

The US doesn't generally do new things anymore. We just shuffle money around into peoples' pockets. So we have plenty of societal wealth to do something like this, even given how large and rural many areas are, but we just don't. Because no one gets reelected because they rolled out bandwidth. They get reelected based on however their party is faring in the battle of the spectacle going on nationally.

beauzero 1y ago
Depends on the place. Live in rural Georgia (Carroll County). Within the last two years have had Spectrum fiber and Carroll EMC fiber run by the house. First is underground and second is on pole.
- hvb2 1y ago
  Have you ever wondered why each provider needs their own wire? You could have the wire be owned by a utility and let companies compete with services?
- qingcharles 1y ago
  I live in an insanely rural no-stop-light town, and they just ran 5gbps fiber outside my door. I already have 1gbps from another company. Can't justify the 5gbps, though - it's like $170/mo + taxes.
consumer451 1y ago
To be fair, there will be plenty of people using EU funded fiber over here, to complain about how the EU does nothing and is pure evil, and that the country should leave the union.
thehappypm 1y ago
I don’t think this is even remotely true.
- viccis 1y ago
  Feel free to take a ride in the high speed cross country rail to argue about it with me to my face. Oh...

philjohn 1y ago

I'm in the UK on a 900Mbps symmetric for £40 a month. Turns out regulation can be a good thing - first of all, OpenReach (the infrastructure part of BT that was split up post privatisation) are regulated in how much they can charge other providers for last mile FTTP/C[1] But then there's also Access to Infrastructure regulation[2], which means duct and pole access isn't up to the telco's (and after all, existing infra was publicly funded, and new infra is often paid for by housing developers). This means I have 2 providers of FTTP to my property - CityFibre and OpenReach (and a third offering DOCSIS cable in Virgin Media). These combined have led to a thriving market with genuine competition. Whilst most ISP's use the two providers with the most footprint (OpenReach and CityFibre) they compete on things like technical chops (AAISP), Price (the PlusNets of the world) and a mix of the two (Zen). Regulation, when well designed, leads to more competitive markets. [1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-infrastructure/2021-26-wholesale-fixed-telecoms-market-review https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-infra... [2] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2016/700/contents https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2016/700/contents

rjh29 1y ago
Japan has no regulation and you can get 10 Gbps for the same price or lower. The main reason is it skipped ADSL completely and went staight to fiber.
- philjohn 1y ago
  Well, there's also cultural reasons. If the government of Japan entrusts you to self regulate on the basis of open access and no restrictions a Japanese business will understand the weight of expectations that have been placed on them. A US telco would pop the champagne and then plan how best to screw their customers, safe in the knowledge that they have few competitors after they got local governments to ban municipal broadband.