Internet Connectivity Outside of the United States 504
Ant writes "A Yahoo! news story says that nearly 60 publications in countries bear the PC World name, or are associated with it in some way. The editors at several of them were asked to report how their readers get online. Not surprisingly, the report indicates that many countries are substantially ahead of the United States in online access." From the article: "For example, in the United Kingdom, you can buy DSL service with a download speed of up to 24 megabits per second. In Denmark, some people have fiber-optic connections as fast as 100 mbps. And in Italy and Spain, broadband service is cheap, and dial-up service is free (except for the cost of the local call). Still, many countries have their own connection quirks ..."
Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's for this reason that the United States, with fewer government controls has a superior and chepaer broadband, telecoms network...oh what? Crap.
Turns out for some things regulation is better - look at how a poor country like Cuba has better healthcare (with lower infant mortality rates) than the wealthy US.
Oh, and I note they don't have sweden on the list where (last I heard) you could get 100Mbps for something like 30 euros/month in a large city.
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A: Higher population density
B: Government OFFERED internet access (As opposed to regulated, as you stated)
or
C: A combination thereof.
Nah, it's better to be flamebait and blame it on 'the market'.
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Informative)
From the CIA factbook: Sweden [cia.gov]: land area 410,934 square km, population 9,016,596, so density=21.94/sq km ; USA [cia.gov]: land area 9,161,923 square km, population 298,444,215, so density=32.57/sq km. No, internet access is not `offered' by the government. [wikipedia.org]
In any case, it's the population density in the cities which matters. I'll leave it up to you to figure out whether New York City has a lower density than Stockholm.
Perhaps you should check your own facts? Nah, much better to make them up based on your own prejudices.
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:4, Informative)
The price is about EUR 20/month, although you have to pay for the "last mile" of fibre (a one-time payment of about EUR 700), since you own that yourself.
More information about it is available here [ac-net.se], although only in swedish it seems (sorry).
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I live in Finland. I didn't read the article, so I don't know if we're on the list, but my current connection has 8128 kbps down / 928 kbps up bandwidth. 40 euros per month, no transfer limits, servers are forbidden but no one seems to be actively monitoring them. No firewall, NAT or closed ports (or at least I haven't noticed any).
This connection began as a 512/512 one a few years back, so I'd say that the development has been quite good :).
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:4, Informative)
A decent measure would be to calculate the population density for a typical resident, perhaps by weighting by population density. So you have (residents*density)/area. That would be a lot more interesting than just comparing the different population densitys.
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Insightful)
So how do internet access services in, say, Birmingham [wikipedia.org] (3739 people per square kilometre) compare to, say, Philadelpha [wikipedia.org] (4,208 per square kilometre)? The 24 megabit broadband described in TFA is available cheaply in most of Birmingham. How about Philadelphia?
Confluence of factors (Score:3, Informative)
I really doubt that there is anything keeping the cable providers from putting down broadband similar to Birmingham's in Philadelphia, except for cost. They're not going to do it, unless they think there's a market for it.
Let's say that a cable provider did put out a high-speed network like that: they started offering 10MB/s service or something. They'd have to recoup the cost of their infrastructure rollout somehow, so the new HS service would have to cost more than
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not in the least. The population concentrations are concentrated enough to be independent entities. Yes, the entire US doesn't compare well to any individual European country, but many states have similar area and distribution as European countries, and Europe as a whole can roughly compare to the US. Regardless of how you measure it, the USA is well behind other similar places around the world. Or are you saying that NYC should have crappy access because Montana is spread out?
I imagine that Sweden's population is highly concentrated around the southern portion of the country with it being very sparsely populated to the north, and then typically in isolated pockets of towns. How many people who live in Sweden do not live in a large city?
Sounds like it isn't too far from the Alaska layout. Care to guess what we get for speeds and prices? I'll give you a hint, take whatever you have, half the speed, double the price, and put a monthly cap on usage, and that's what I have access to. Yay for population concentrations!
I'm not throwing rocks, just pointing out facts and how/why it may be easier to give most of the people in Sweden better Internet access than most of the people in the USA.
And I'm just pointing out that the US is diverse enough that every arguement I have heard is refuted by some specific state in the US. The population density in California is greater, so their prices should be lower, but aren't. The population in Alaska is more concentrated than Sweeden, yet has higher prices. Montana is more spread out and has higher prices. The difference is that the USA has private monopolies. Private monopolies have always worked to screw the customers. And it was the free market that brought us to those monopolies. The FCC wasn't involved until long after AT&T was formed.
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Insightful)
No...no..no ...wrong. Your simplistic approach is laughable. You are like the Swedes who always talk about how much "free" stuff they have...and this goes right along with that. take a look at how much they pay in tax...starting with that lovely little 90% + inheritance tax.
You're the one making unwarranted assumptions here. Sure the Swedes pay more in taxes, but they provide less in subsidies to Telia and the other local telecoms than the US does. The US has spent billions of our tax dollars laying fiber then selling it off for pennies on the dollar to telecom companies in the US. More importantly, since Sweden is one of the companies with very open records it has repeatedly been used in studies and comparisons as an example case, providing piles of data showing that Swedish telecom providers are collecting much smaller margins than their American counterparts with local monopolies.
In this particular instance, Sweden's policies of subsidies to benefit the people are a lot more effective and beneficial than the US's policy of subsidies to big companies who are likewise empowered by the state to gouge citizens. The Swedes have cheap, high speed access and less money from each citizen is spent subsidizing it than is spent for each US citizen.
I'll take our capitalist system over any of their socialist ones any day.
Every nation on the planet has an economy that is a mix of socialism, capitalism, and communism, the US included. If you want to see the sweet spot for the best mixture, take a look at where the quality of living is the highest.
Socialism creates worse people time and time again.
The number one, most effective correlation we can draw with violent crime is income disparity. Socialism, especially inheritance tax is simply mitigating income disparity. Strangely enough when everyone starts out life with more similar amounts of money and no one is born into extreme wealth people are less likely to feel justified in using violence to redress that imbalance. Further, since so few people start out life moving into huge amounts of debt they must borrow from those born wealthy, they are less desperate and less likely to take extreme actions. Sweden, like most countries with a slightly higher rate of socialism, better directed socialism, and without a long established, wealthy ruling class has but a tiny fraction of the violent crime in the US.
I'd say that argues against your absurd assertion that socialism makes for "bad people."
Good for you, but a whole lot of people work really hard. Statistically, that is not the path to success in the US. Being born wealthy is the path to success. For every dollar you earned working hard, inventing new things, or making the right moves, some person in the top 1% wealth class makes 1 million bucks by doing nothing but letting the banks use his money to gouge those who started with nothing. Every time someone invents a great new invention and makes a million dollars, a hundred other people who did nothing but be born rich made 10 million each funding the development and distribution of that invention.
I suggest you look at the wealth disparity in the US and the condensation of wealth principal before you start badmouthing large inheritance taxes. Without them you end up in the same boat as many nations like the US, where a tiny percentage of the population controls more than half the wealth and gets rich by making everyone else borrow it. These systems usually end in an abrupt revolution where the poor kill the rich, redistribute the wealth, and the cycle starts anew. Unless the US reforms its misuse and underuse of socialism, some day you or your descendants will either be the elite being killed or the poor and desperate reduced to near slavery, despite your abilities and hard work.
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Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:4, Insightful)
In Denmark, some people have fiber-optic connections as fast as 100 mbps.
Well, hell, here in the US some people have fiber-optic connections as fast as 100 mpbs (Verizon's FIOS). It's a very very small percentage of people, but it still falls under the header "some people."
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe how often this is used as a legitimate justification for the US's crap broadband.
Manhattan island is one of the most densely populated parts of the world. And Broadband is still expensive and slow. If population desnsity is the problem, why does this happen?
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And actually one of the few places in the US where you can get 24 Mbps, Vermont, has a very low population density. It probably helps that VTel [vermontel.com] is an independent telephone company. 24 Mbps isn't available everywhere in the state yet and does cost $50/mo, probably more than people in the UK are paying, but 24 Mbps DSL does exist in America. And if it hasn't arrived in your corner of Vermont yet, you can still get 8 Mbps for $35/mo while you wait.
And when you sign up for it, you get two t-shirts featurin
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah no kidding... population density really has very little to do with how easy it is to offer proper internet.
If the argument were to hold true then why are there many countries (including Canada) with a significantly lower population density that offer better internet access for a lower price?
And if you really think about it almost the entire infrastructure is already in place in the united states (cable and telephone lines). I know it's not that simple, equipment has to me upgraded or modified, but it's not like they have to roll out new wire to all the communities.
If you ask me the whole problem is the states overly capitalistic government. All of the infrastructure is controlled by a select few companies (with little regulation compared to the countries that rank high in internet access). The companies set the rates and the little guys have to live with it. While they're making a profit there's not much anyone can do about it.
Government control would most certainly help the situation, but that isn't the american way. I suspect the american public will have to wait for a new infrastructure to be built for the rules to change (perhaps WiFi). And even then, if it's rolled out by the same companies that control the wires, it may not help.
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Informative)
When you have massive corporations dominating an infastructure heavy industry like telecoms then it is often not the government who 'meddles' but the corporations themselves.
The reason the UK has such cheap and high-speed internet is because the government forced the main telecoms company who owns all the "last mile" wires (the ones going down your street and into your house) and exchanges to allow other companies to install equipment in their exchanges and use their "last mile" wires.
It is almost completely due to this "unbundling" that internet in the UK is now so cheap and fast. Believe me, 6 or 7 years ago, before this was done, internet in the UK was slow and crap.
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Assuming that the corporations don't simply decide to cooperate and divide the potential customer base between themselves. This is beneficial to them both, since competition has a tendency to drive prices down, and that lessens corporate profits. See: cartel.
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I personally can't wait(though it's many many years away) for the day when power and communications are transmitted through a hybrid cable(think fiber optic communcations line wrapped by Power conductors)You have one connector, and you get power and access to the net.
But there is way to much crap in the old
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Think of the ease of maintenance on that one! I can just imagine that line workers tool bag.
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Interesting)
I suggest that most countries and their citizens do benefit from street lights.
To the free market worshippers: the free market only works when not all people choose to be totally selfish and greedy. Once there are too few of those "salt of the earth" types, the whole thing starts falling apart.
No matter what system you have, if you want something good from it, you will need good people.
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Yes - you're quite right, the only thing the extra tax is going to do is subsidise internet connections for crack whores. Never mind subsidised health care, housing, a social net (so the children of said crack whores won't end up stabbing you for the $2 in your pocket), etc etc et
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Italy: 58,750,000 people and 301,000 sq. km
Spain: 43,000,000 people and 506,000 sq. km
UK: 60,200,000 people 244,820 sq. km
(I mention population, only because articles like this usually list "X% have dialup/broadband/etc." as a proving factor. I mention
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Some countries considers that if they invest in cheap internet connection for everyone, that will boost its economy and eventually pay off like a Road system. As a part of the economy yourself, you may pay more for the
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:4, Insightful)
The FCC was more interested in lining the pocket of the small companies that would provide "competition". At the same time they let the cable companies do whatever they wanted.
The dream team that runs the FCC ignored the simple fact that real competition requires people competing not leaching off the work of others. They ignored that internet connection is an internet connection. Competition isn't between DSL providers but between ALL internet providers. DSL,Cable,wireless etc.
Finally a few years back the FCC changed the rules. No longer requiring the Baby Bells to lease all equipment. Suddenly the phone companies started competing with the cable companies. For the consumers this was a good thing.
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:4, Insightful)
The phone companies (of which there become fewer and fewer every year) _must_ be heavily regulated, because the entire phone system was built through government intervention. The phone system was built as a heavily subsidized monopoly; if it wasn't for Uncle Sam and AT&T, we may have had the cable companies replace the phone system entirely much earlier on.
Instead, vast sums of money were spent on the behemoth.
Until you can demonstrate that the current phone system remains a competitive landscape, heavy regulation will be necessary to maintain some kind of consumer fairness. I'm quite a libertarian, but until we see a true free market in the phone system, we'll have to keep up the red tape.
The phone companies are making billions of dollars utilizing a system that the U.S. government built for them. They didn't invest in it, we, the people, did. The phone companies should be nationalized into one giant entity, have all of their assets stripped by the federal government, and then privatize the physical access region by region. That _might_ be enough shock treatment to resolve the current, ugly situation.
As it is, we've spent billions upons billions of dollars, we we're promised fiber optics years ago, and the primary phone comany (SBC/AT&T) is deploying a "fiber" solution that is not speed competitive with the cable providers (6 Mbps, max, 1 HD stream). Something's broken here, and something smells funny. The problem is regulation; the ugly frankenstein monster we've built needs to be ripped apart and sold for parts.
In short, the AT&T anti-trust ruling didn't go far enough, because the old AT&T, as an entity, was only broken up, not completely destroyed. It should have been privatized, and have it assets redistributed by the market. Trolls like you do not seem to understand that the history of the phone system in the U.S. reads like an anti-free-market textbook.
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Interesting)
When British Telecom was the only ADSL supplier, it didn't bother to invest anything in competing with the cable companies. And the cable companies (which are also regional monopolies) didn't bother to invest anything in competing with BT. So we all had a choice of 512k broadband from either supplier.
Then the government forced BT to lease equipment to competitors. Suddenly we have 24M broadband from those competitors, and BT has suddenly discovered that its own equipment can do 8M instead of 512k.
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason that DSL/fibre has lagged in the US while cable surged ahead was because of the FCC. The FCC REQUIRED the phone companies to lease thier equipment at a loss to competitors. Guess what? The phone companies decided it didn't make sense to lose money so they didn't install the equipment.
Horseshit. The government required the incumbent local exchange carrier to lease their lines to the competition because the government subsidized its installation to begin with. Having multiple line providers in most areas simply isn't practical because 97% of the U.S. by area is rural with very low population density.
Further, despite the fact that the required line leasing for ILECs ensures availability of those lines for low prices to the competitors, most of those competitors STILL don't compete in rural markets, and without competition, the telcos have zero incentive to improve their offerings. More to the point, the fact that they don't compete means that the leasing requirement has had no effect on fiber in those areas.
Finally, the telcos want to compete with cable and want to be able to provide TV services. They can only do this via fiber. Thus, in markets where fiber will pay for itself through cable subscriptions, the telcos will put in fiber regardless of line leasing rules. In areas where the human density is low enough that a competing cable company couldn't survive (97% of the U..S. by area), though, they still won't do it because the telcos don't see any real advantage to simply providing more bandwidth unless they will lose users to another service that is faster.
The line leasing rules forced competition to be possible in markets where it would simply never have existed were it not for those rules. The only reason ISPs have improved their speeds at all has been in response to threats from competitors, including those leased line services. If the FCC had not put in rules that required ILECs to require them to lease their lines, in markets where the cable company doesn't provide service, there wouldn't be ANY competition in the market. Many would would still be paying $50/month for 128k/64kbps down.
The dream team that runs the FCC ignored the simple fact that real competition requires people competing not leaching off the work of others. They ignored that internet connection is an internet connection. Competition isn't between DSL providers but between ALL internet providers. DSL,Cable,wireless etc.
Satellite internet is a joke (minimum half second round trip packet latency due to the laws of physics). Wireless is only practical in large cities with high population density. BPL hasn't been approved for general roll-out. So in your ideal world of "competition", consumers would have two options: the telephone company (note that there is not enough human density to have more than one) and the cable company (and again, not enough density to support a second cable company). Explain how a duopoly exhibiting a Nash equilibrium is competition.
Short of government intervention forcing the issue, the only thing that will cause consumers to see better internet service is the introduction of a disruptive force. That means adding new competitors. As has been repeatedly shown, this is not possible if the customers must lay down a wire infrastructure because this is unprofitable in the vast majority of cases even when viewed over a relatively long term (>20 years) period. As such, short of a new, disruptive tech like BPL, there is no incentive for corporate-sponsored telcos to compete in the U.S..
Finally, note that for the purposes of comparison, Europe has a population density comparable to America's average cities even when you look at the entire countries in Europe as a whole. Competition is possible there where it is not practical in the U.S. Therefore, by definition, you cannot use Europe as a model for understanding U.S. telcos. The mere fact that a free market will work in a high population density ar
Re:Superiority of the Free Market. (Score:4, Insightful)
Later = better (Score:2, Interesting)
The USA were the first ones with access to the Internet. Every other country got their infrastructure built later. When the more recent infrastructures were built, they used the latest technologies available, which are obviously better than the early ones. So the result of this study is not surprising in my opinion.
Some countries who are building their Internet infrastructure these days are going straight to wireless. I'm thinking
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I don't see how this adds up. The US has a huge amount of dark fibre, so the long-haul links are not constrained by early development. And many countries built out consumer broadband before th
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Of course, I'm not saying everyone would have cheaper internet access if the telecom were truly deregulated. The point of a free market is effeciency, not cheap internet. And, of course, TANSTAAFL. Max marginal tax rate in 1990: Sweden: 65%; US: 33%.
Oh, and regarding Cuba: http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2002/000019
Marginal tax rates: ht [econlib.org]
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Density (Score:5, Insightful)
However.. I must say, after RTFA that Sweden is _miles_ ahead of most countries, even our close naighbours, Denmark and Norway. I would've guessed that they would have been in front of us, but they're not. I cant say why really. We've had some pretty vocal individuals/visionaries in the late 90s who really have set the stnadard of the market an made policy. 100 Mbps for everyone is the goal. Perhaps this was a necessity?
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The telecom industry in this country is cockblocked by several factors:
1. There is an existing infrastructure. It works. Not very well, but well enough. This isn't the case in a lot of recently developed (last 20 years) nations with infrastructures designed for modern telecom.
2. The US is much larger in land mass than any European/SE Asian country. This means fixing #1 is very expensive.
3. It was a regulated monopoly for much of its existence, and the infrastructure that was bui
LOWER INFANT MORTALITY RATES??? (Score:3, Informative)
Bottom line: the US counts premature babies that die into the infant mortality rate, while nearly every other country counts a dead baby only if it is a full-term birth. If you compare apples-to-apples, the US has one of the lowest infant mortality rates.
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Consider pollution (Cuba's a small island nation less industrialized that the U.S.)
Consider obesity (Cubans are by and large less overweight than Americans)
Consider climate (Cuba's weather is significantly better than most of the U.S.)
There are definitely alternate factors, and I'd argue that Cuba has quite a few in its favor. Cuba, the island within the Carribean, is quite close to heaven. The problem is Cas
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1. Castro is not a Spaniard, his father was. Fidel was born in Cuba.
2. Spain is not the poorest country in western Europe (it's only the most annoying country). Per-capita GDP is lower in Liechtenstein, Greece, Malta, and Portugal. And of course Spain's economy is larger than these as well.
3. What a stupid argument. You are basing expectations of someone's professional co
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I guess its a little unrealistic for such a poor country to have better healthcare than the US.
Holy internet traffic... (Score:5, Funny)
In defense... (Score:2)
In any major city in the USA, if you drive 20 minutes you're in the middle of no where.
It's just not feasable to provide high speed broadband everywhere.
Now... There is a lot that can be done in the areas that already have broadband... I agree we can
Re:In defense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not in Chicago (Score:3, Funny)
Small vs large countries (Score:4, Informative)
I.e. in a small country with a mall and distributed population, the average cost per custumer will be much higher than in the US.
Here in Norway it is friday afternoon and I'm about to drive up to our small mountain cabin for the weekend. At this cabin the local power company (Rauland Kraft) _by default_ pulls along an optic fibre (or at least a pvc tube where they can subsequently blow in the fiber) on every new installation.
The result is that I have IPTV over a 300 Mbit/s connection, but as of now I can only use up to 10/10 (up/down) Mbit for regular Internet traffic.
If you want to check your maps or GoogleEarth, you'll notice that Rauland is located in the Vinje community on the central mountain plateau of southern Norway: This is one of the least densely populated areas in the entire country, but we still get fiber to every home & cabin.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=11&ll=59.698935
Terje
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It's not so much the issue of grade separated dual carriageways all over the place as the amount of space wasted on junctions to make the curve radii acceptable to drive at that speed.
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Can't speak for the rest of the US, but 20 minutes isn't anywhere NEAR enough time to "clear" the philadelphia metropolitan area, and last I checked we were only #6 in terms of largest cities. (Phoenix just passed us.)
From center city philadelphia, 20 minutes west on I-76 will have you out near the conshohocken/King of Prussia area (still very much a metro area) 20 minutes north, you're looking at northeast philadelphia, 20 minutes south you're on your way to wilmington, passing the philadelphia airport.
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What's THE REAL speed though? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, my provider tells me I have the download speed of 15 mbps. And they charge me for that. And that's how fast it is in print.
But whe
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http://speedtest1.ks.ks.cox.net/speedtest/ [cox.net]
UK story a little optimistic (Score:4, Interesting)
Almost everyone I know is on broadband but none are on 24mbit and most on 1Mb.
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Yes. In the UK, we call it NTL...
(don't get me started)
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UK isnt that good (Score:2, Insightful)
They get "online" the same way WE do: (Score:2)
Old or inaccurate data for Denmark (Score:4, Informative)
You can get ADSL2+ in [some parts of] Denmark. You can get 10 Mbps/512 Kbps for 299 DKK (~52 US$) or 20 Mbps/512 Kbps for 499 DKK (~86 US$), and that includes free telephony...
I'm "stuck" with what my employer wants to pay for, which for the moment is 4096 Kbps/512 Kbps, which is not bad at all. I'd love to get 20 Mbps down though ;)
France DSL is pretty good, too (Score:4, Informative)
That's strange, because France has one of the best European DSL, if not the best.
For 30 euros per month, you get the maximum of what your line can technically support (up to 24Mbits if you are near the ISP equipment), with lots of services included.
That's with the Freebox, a DSL modem made by Proxad, based on Linux. Among the free services, you have:
- unlimited net access (no quota)
- unlimited phone calls to land lines in France, and many lines in countries (it costs zero to call a mobile phone in USA for example)
- tv access if you are in a "degrouped" area (sorry I don't have the english term)
That's what we call "triple play offer". And they are now migrating to "quadriple pay offers", the new boxes are wifi, and a wifi-gsm phone can be bought.
Pretty cool, no ? I wonder why this is not in the article.
Yann
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I'm in France and I work about 40 hours a week, but I have more than 7 weeks of holidays, not counting holidays such as Christmas or Labor day.
grass, greener (Score:5, Informative)
You have to keep in mind that when people say "in Denmark" or "in the UK", that doesn't mean universal availability, it means that in some places, you can get that. You also have to keep in mind that nations like Denmark or the UK have a larger middle class than the US as percentage of the population, so that, across the whole population, they may be better off, but the actual group for whom things like Internet access matters, may be served about equally in both places.
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Some of us aren't (even close to being) so lucky. Where do you live? What does that connection cost? What is the provider?
Yes, yes... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why compare? (Score:3)
I'd love to have a better connection here in the States. But what does that have to do with the bandwidth in the UK? Am I supposed to use this information in some valuable way?
Cheap broadband (Score:4, Informative)
At my condo we have gigabit fiber to the house, and 100MBit to the apartments. All apartments can buy either 10Mbit (for 210 SEK, 22.46, or $28.62), or 100Mbit (for 399 SEK, 42.68, or $54.38). And those speeds aren't "up to", they are guaranteed.
Central America (Score:2)
Easy fix (Score:2, Funny)
Just let ISPs and Telcos charge more than once for each packet, depending on where its going and what its for. That way everybody's connectivity slows down, nobody really gets anything faster, and they pay more for that improvement.
That should fix things up nicely.
[/astroturf]
Spain (Score:4, Informative)
I moved recently from the US to Spain, and I can't begin to tell how bad broadband providers are in this country compared to the US. It is WAY MORE EXPENSIVE (in absolute terms, but even more when you factor in the fact that here salaries are smaller), WAY LESS RELIABLE and the customer service is so BAD that congress had to pass a special law to deal with these very specific companies. For example, in most of the cases they charge you when you make a customer service call beyond (and I'm not talking about the cost of the local phone call, I mean that they actually make money out of this, even if the problem is on their side). And there is more, much more...
I have not read the article, but as far as Spain is concerned, I can tell it sucks.
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Let's face it, broadband providers have partial monopolies, and so they can get away with poor service. I'm sure this is just as true in many places in the USA as it in Europe.
Sweden, Finland (Score:2)
My parents live in countryside and have to make do with 24 with one IP adress, for a bit less/month.
The same situation in most areas in Finland, although it seems they have more cable in the cities, and better DSL in the rural areas.
The thing that makes me laugh about the US tech (Score:2)
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Most men carry phones in their pockets or if you don't mind looking like a nerd, on a belt clip. hence small is convenient.
I agree with you about the flip/camera/color screen etc. Its all a redundant waste of money & battery power to me. I jsut want a basic but tiny phone. Can't get one in the US.
Let's Switch Slogans (Score:3, Funny)
Current Currency? (Score:3, Funny)
Has the UK changed its currency again?
Amazing how clueless online news sites are about character set issues.
Re:As expected (Score:5, Interesting)
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I do have to ask, though...does your government subsidize that? Canada has quite the reputation down here for taxing heavily and subsidizing things, and I'm genuinely curious whether you're paying more for that connection than you realize.
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No.
Canada has quite the reputation down here for taxing heavily and subsidizing things
Yes, almost as much as the US has for taxing and subsidizing things. (The US oil companies are one that comes to mind.)
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I'm paying $40 american for 3G/768M. What gives with that?
Fucking... I'm moving to Canada.
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Broadband in rural areas is expensive. It requires the same investment for a fraction of the returns, and often would be run at a loss for more than a decade. The US has a substantial rural population, and it's nigh impossible to get them broadband right now. Cable and DSL don't reach them, and the cost of running any sort of high speed service to those locations is prohibitive.
Even our cities aren't as densely-packed as those in many
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I am in a rual area.. I'm sitting in a CO (Central Office) in a town that has maybe 850 people. I provide SIP, MGCP, ADSL/ADSL2+, soon Video, etc. We have a Metaswitch (http://www.metaswitch.com), and we use Occam gear (http://www.occamnetworks.com). We have fiber that links a bunch of local towns around here, and everywhere in between we stick little remote terminals to feed people with highspeed internet access. I can get 27mb DSL service here. My
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Yes, but what about countries which who's land mass is large - but a non-pure alloy of some sort?
(Countries like Australia are a similar size to the US minus alaska, but with a population of only 20 million if you want to play the 'big open country' game).
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right, but 50% of australia's population lives in 5 cities - 75% in 15 cities. in the u.s. 6% of the population lives in the 5 largest cities. not only do you have to look at land mass but also population distribution and localized density.
Re:As expected (Score:5, Interesting)
42% lives in urban areas with more than 1 million people (2005)
compared to Italy (67%/20%), Spain (78%/23%) and Norway (76%/?), it doesn't look like there's an inherent disadvantage.
source: http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdipdfs/table3_10.pd
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Its still stuck at 1997 prices.
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It has been regulated for a long time because france telecom was owned by the government, but it was privatized something like 5 years ago. Which gave birth to a myriad of internet providers and wanabe telcos.
So it's more an exemple of free market than anything else... And it's certainly n
Re:where do you think the money is coming from (Score:4, Informative)
100 MB ? LOL ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Cost is announced @ 70 Euro / month, no caps...
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/internet/0,39020774
Right now I have a 24 Mb DSL for 30 Euro/month. I regularly max up the connection.
In September the fiber offer will be available in my district, I will have to upgrade to PCI-x or something and get a 2 GB fiber card for the router. 4Gb cards are still too expensive, and that netwo
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is incorrect. Simple economics would dictate that, for the same monetary equivelent, a provider could serve more people in the US. Why? Because you are counting Montana and Alaska in with the rest of the US. Take out the least dense 5 states, and the US has a greater density than Europe. So, NYC should be nearly free while MT would be expensive. But