5 ms·

In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered. That doesn't mean automatically that one gets fiber. First at all, if someone doesn't need to download heavy stuff

In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered. That doesn't mean automatically that one gets fiber. First at all, if someone doesn't need to download heavy stuff and has a good coverage a 5G SIM with unlimited data (something you can get for 10/15 euros a month) is cheaper than a fiber connection (that starts from 25 euros). Second a lot of people has still FTTC even if it has FTTH, mostly because FTTC offers a speed that is enough for most people (100Mbit/s) and upgrading may have costs (the installation of the fiber is at the expense of the ISP, but if you need to make modifications, such as put a pipe from your house to the street in which they will put the fiber, it's at your expense). In some cases even if fiber is present it's difficult/not possible to get it into your house (for example you live in a condo and the other tenants doesn't want to spend money to make the modifications that are needed to pass the wires). In any case they have started to switch off copper (since it costs money to maintain an infrastructure that has decades), so either way customers will be forced to move to fiber or 5G network in the upcoming years. In any case a fault on a copper line is likely not to be repaired...

epistasis 1mo ago
> a 5G SIM with unlimited data (something you can get for 10/15 euros a month) is cheaper than a fiber connection (that starts from 25 euros). These sorts of prices are unheard of in the US, so incredibly low. Something has gone deeply wrong with US telecommunications.
- richwater 1mo ago
  State sanctioned and encouraged anti trust behavior will do that
- manacit 1mo ago
  You can use any one of many MVNOs to get unlimited data for around that price, say less adjusted for household income, in the USA. A favorite of mine is https://www.usmobile.com/ https://www.usmobile.com/ which is $25/mo list price (and less if you pay for the year, or if they're having a sale) which will give you Unlimited Data and 1GB a month of global roaming data If you pay $45 you can get unlimited data from Mint for $15/mo: https://www.mintmobile.com/plans/ https://www.mintmobile.com/plans/ It's not unheard of! It's actually the high speed internet at home that is less competitive - the prices in Europe are unheard of.
  - jorvi 1mo ago
    Only some places. Netherlands is €45-60 for 1 gbps (we don't make 4x-6x the money Spaniards do), unless you live in an area that actually sees multi-line competition. We do have an interesting sidegrade: 5G Klik & Klaar from Odido (formerly T-Mobile / Deutsche Telekom) for €26. If you point it the right way out your window, you can get 700-1000 mbps down and 150 (capped) mbps up. Ping is around 35ms. Horrid modem firmware though, you get ping spikes up to 400-850ms (!!) under load due to bufferbloat, but you can of course solve that with your own router and SQM :+)
    - reillyse 1mo ago
      Is this line of site to a very high mast? Enabled because the Netherlands is so flat?
  - epistasis 1mo ago
    I do use US Mobile, and I recently switched to it because T-mobile made it so difficult to pay a bill, it was nearly impossible to get them to accept money. And a ~decade ago in SF I did have Sonic 1Gbps symmetric fiber for something like $40 or $50/month, but that too is twice the cost of Italy.
  - PaulHoule 1mo ago
    In the U.S. I perceive MVNOs to be a scam. Like Tracfone was OK in 2011 but somewhere afterwards it became normal to go around rural upstate NY and no service and go around NYC and no service and go to LA and no service. This year I got a real phone with a real plan and I have coverage in many places now me I can finally see why people get excited about apps.
    - ericd 1mo ago
      That's kind of a broad brush, Google Fi is great, especially the fact that they work mostly seamlessly for the same price in like every country, and they're an MVNO.
      - 1mo ago
- hylaride 1mo ago
  Can't speak for Italy, but there have been some consequences in many EU jurisdictions. The EU has been pushing HARD for competition, etc, but it has left many European telecoms in debt-heavy financial situations that has caused issues around future investment and in some countries the (mobile) coverage is good on paper, but the networks are themselves actually terrible (looking at you Germany). But yeah, it's otherwise a problem with competition enforcement.
- ricardobayes 1mo ago
  At the same time a software developer earns 40-50k, perhaps a little higher in Milan or Rome.
- tuckerpo 1mo ago
  Gone? It started rotten with Bell and hasn't gotten much better.
- drnick1 1mo ago
  > These sorts of prices are unheard of in the US, so incredibly low. The EU also has incredibly low salaries.
hocuspocus 1mo ago
The main issue with copper comes from the active infrastructure rather than the physical lines. I work at an ISP that gets DSLAM equipment from Huawei, we run one of the few G.fast VDSL deployments in the world using this particular hardware. Huawei has stopped manufacturing this product line (the Swiss market is a rounding error ;), which will force us to fully migrate some neighborhoods, only for backup inventory. Germany being 15 years late, I assume you can still buy similar hardware from AVM though.
sph 1mo ago
> In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered > UK is at 85% FTTH [on a sibling comment] Meanwhile I have 1 Gb/s FTTH in an Italian village of less than 100 souls, while I couldn’t reach 300 Mbit/s on copper in London zone 4. I have been surprised at how well they have improved the situation in Italy, and in dismay at how terrible it is in UK.
- sonar_un 1mo ago
  The UK is absolutely terrible. I've noticed this quite a bit in my travels there.
- Symbiote 1mo ago
  Average speeds are higher in the UK than Italy. My brother in the UK has 1Gb/s fibre in a village of less than 100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...
  - sph 1mo ago
    Well I guess I must have been unlucky in 13 years in 5 flats around London with an average broadband speed of ~150 Mb/s
    - Nekobai 1mo ago
      No, you're totally right. I'm currently in Zone 4, maximum _theoretical_ speed is 67 Mbps.
    - Symbiote 1mo ago
      Clearly, yes. Unless you're claiming your personal experience invalidates a long running, well regarded statistical analysis.
- rsynnott 1mo ago
  It’s not uncommon for cities to be worse than rural areas now. In Ireland, nearly all rural premises have 10gbit-capable fibre available (will be literally all by early next year) but parts of central Dublin are stuck with VDSL. Retrofitting in cities can be quite slow and expensive.
thefz 1mo ago
> In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered Complete bullshit. BUL maybe is close to that percentage P1G is nowhere near and is never going to reach full coverage in 2030.
sonar_un 1mo ago
I am in Italy right now, in fact, spent a lot of time here. I can safely say, the 5G sim coverage is extremely spotty, and when you can get internet from a physical line, it's generally pretty poor speeds. I am pretty sure a lot of that 78% includes 1 bar of LTE coverage, so it's "technically" true.
_mpn_ 1mo ago
Because deploying fiber is so hard in NYC, I use Calyx Institute (https://calyxinstitute.org/membership https://calyxinstitute.org/membership) on a MikroTik Chateau 5G R16. Calyx uses T-Mobile towers. I use the internet via L2TP to a VPS to give me a static IPv4 and IPv6 /56 block. This is only for upload speeds. I get 45-80 Mbps uploads. I used Spectrum for four months but because of my L2TP setup, DOCSIS ACK suppression doesn't work; it's TCP inside L2TP UDP and then ACKs are then sent over the wire. This meant sluggish internet under load. Spectrum did install a high-split amp but it's still not turned on afaict. Row townhouses in Brooklyn and Queens have Fios, but not in Manhattan. I wish I could just do a NYT ad but that'd force me to liquidate a decent chunk of my E*Trade and J.P. Morgan accounts. I am right now visiting Belgium and I saw multiple towns, including historic neighborhoods with Proximus fiber splitters: Brussels, Antwerpe, Ghent and Bruges. The fiber and Telenet Coax is so well organized when compared to NYC's coax mess. However, where Fios is available, Verizon does an okay job with organizing fiber. Verizon said killing line sharing would bring more fiber. Yet Proximus built fiber in historic cities more than Verizon did. I don't believe Orange France legally has to share fiber, but in return Orange can't block Free/SFR with payola deals.
juliendorra 1mo ago
Several of the issues you point have been solved in France via regulations (on the ISP and on the tenants of condos). It tools several years, even decades, but we ended up with fiber regulations that are good (could have been better and faster).

epistasis 1mo ago

> a 5G SIM with unlimited data (something you can get for 10/15 euros a month) is cheaper than a fiber connection (that starts from 25 euros). These sorts of prices are unheard of in the US, so incredibly low. Something has gone deeply wrong with US telecommunications.

richwater 1mo ago
State sanctioned and encouraged anti trust behavior will do that
manacit 1mo ago
You can use any one of many MVNOs to get unlimited data for around that price, say less adjusted for household income, in the USA. A favorite of mine is https://www.usmobile.com/ https://www.usmobile.com/ which is $25/mo list price (and less if you pay for the year, or if they're having a sale) which will give you Unlimited Data and 1GB a month of global roaming data If you pay $45 you can get unlimited data from Mint for $15/mo: https://www.mintmobile.com/plans/ https://www.mintmobile.com/plans/ It's not unheard of! It's actually the high speed internet at home that is less competitive - the prices in Europe are unheard of.
- jorvi 1mo ago
  Only some places. Netherlands is €45-60 for 1 gbps (we don't make 4x-6x the money Spaniards do), unless you live in an area that actually sees multi-line competition. We do have an interesting sidegrade: 5G Klik & Klaar from Odido (formerly T-Mobile / Deutsche Telekom) for €26. If you point it the right way out your window, you can get 700-1000 mbps down and 150 (capped) mbps up. Ping is around 35ms. Horrid modem firmware though, you get ping spikes up to 400-850ms (!!) under load due to bufferbloat, but you can of course solve that with your own router and SQM :+)
  - reillyse 1mo ago
    Is this line of site to a very high mast? Enabled because the Netherlands is so flat?
- epistasis 1mo ago
  I do use US Mobile, and I recently switched to it because T-mobile made it so difficult to pay a bill, it was nearly impossible to get them to accept money. And a ~decade ago in SF I did have Sonic 1Gbps symmetric fiber for something like $40 or $50/month, but that too is twice the cost of Italy.
- PaulHoule 1mo ago
  In the U.S. I perceive MVNOs to be a scam. Like Tracfone was OK in 2011 but somewhere afterwards it became normal to go around rural upstate NY and no service and go around NYC and no service and go to LA and no service. This year I got a real phone with a real plan and I have coverage in many places now me I can finally see why people get excited about apps.
  - ericd 1mo ago
    That's kind of a broad brush, Google Fi is great, especially the fact that they work mostly seamlessly for the same price in like every country, and they're an MVNO.
    - 1mo ago
hylaride 1mo ago
Can't speak for Italy, but there have been some consequences in many EU jurisdictions. The EU has been pushing HARD for competition, etc, but it has left many European telecoms in debt-heavy financial situations that has caused issues around future investment and in some countries the (mobile) coverage is good on paper, but the networks are themselves actually terrible (looking at you Germany). But yeah, it's otherwise a problem with competition enforcement.
ricardobayes 1mo ago
At the same time a software developer earns 40-50k, perhaps a little higher in Milan or Rome.
tuckerpo 1mo ago
Gone? It started rotten with Bell and hasn't gotten much better.
drnick1 1mo ago
> These sorts of prices are unheard of in the US, so incredibly low. The EU also has incredibly low salaries.

hocuspocus 1mo ago

The main issue with copper comes from the active infrastructure rather than the physical lines. I work at an ISP that gets DSLAM equipment from Huawei, we run one of the few G.fast VDSL deployments in the world using this particular hardware. Huawei has stopped manufacturing this product line (the Swiss market is a rounding error ;), which will force us to fully migrate some neighborhoods, only for backup inventory. Germany being 15 years late, I assume you can still buy similar hardware from AVM though.

sph 1mo ago

> In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered > UK is at 85% FTTH [on a sibling comment] Meanwhile I have 1 Gb/s FTTH in an Italian village of less than 100 souls, while I couldn’t reach 300 Mbit/s on copper in London zone 4. I have been surprised at how well they have improved the situation in Italy, and in dismay at how terrible it is in UK.

sonar_un 1mo ago
The UK is absolutely terrible. I've noticed this quite a bit in my travels there.
Symbiote 1mo ago
Average speeds are higher in the UK than Italy. My brother in the UK has 1Gb/s fibre in a village of less than 100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...
- sph 1mo ago
  Well I guess I must have been unlucky in 13 years in 5 flats around London with an average broadband speed of ~150 Mb/s
  - Nekobai 1mo ago
    No, you're totally right. I'm currently in Zone 4, maximum _theoretical_ speed is 67 Mbps.
  - Symbiote 1mo ago
    Clearly, yes. Unless you're claiming your personal experience invalidates a long running, well regarded statistical analysis.
rsynnott 1mo ago
It’s not uncommon for cities to be worse than rural areas now. In Ireland, nearly all rural premises have 10gbit-capable fibre available (will be literally all by early next year) but parts of central Dublin are stuck with VDSL. Retrofitting in cities can be quite slow and expensive.

thefz 1mo ago

> In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered Complete bullshit. BUL maybe is close to that percentage P1G is nowhere near and is never going to reach full coverage in 2030.

sonar_un 1mo ago

I am in Italy right now, in fact, spent a lot of time here. I can safely say, the 5G sim coverage is extremely spotty, and when you can get internet from a physical line, it's generally pretty poor speeds. I am pretty sure a lot of that 78% includes 1 bar of LTE coverage, so it's "technically" true.

_mpn_ 1mo ago

Because deploying fiber is so hard in NYC, I use Calyx Institute (https://calyxinstitute.org/membership https://calyxinstitute.org/membership) on a MikroTik Chateau 5G R16. Calyx uses T-Mobile towers. I use the internet via L2TP to a VPS to give me a static IPv4 and IPv6 /56 block. This is only for upload speeds. I get 45-80 Mbps uploads. I used Spectrum for four months but because of my L2TP setup, DOCSIS ACK suppression doesn't work; it's TCP inside L2TP UDP and then ACKs are then sent over the wire. This meant sluggish internet under load. Spectrum did install a high-split amp but it's still not turned on afaict. Row townhouses in Brooklyn and Queens have Fios, but not in Manhattan. I wish I could just do a NYT ad but that'd force me to liquidate a decent chunk of my E*Trade and J.P. Morgan accounts. I am right now visiting Belgium and I saw multiple towns, including historic neighborhoods with Proximus fiber splitters: Brussels, Antwerpe, Ghent and Bruges. The fiber and Telenet Coax is so well organized when compared to NYC's coax mess. However, where Fios is available, Verizon does an okay job with organizing fiber. Verizon said killing line sharing would bring more fiber. Yet Proximus built fiber in historic cities more than Verizon did. I don't believe Orange France legally has to share fiber, but in return Orange can't block Free/SFR with payola deals.

juliendorra 1mo ago

Several of the issues you point have been solved in France via regulations (on the ISP and on the tenants of condos). It tools several years, even decades, but we ended up with fiber regulations that are good (could have been better and faster).