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Faster internet is coming, but only for a few

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Re: Faster internet is coming, but only for a few

#11
> Signals from space have to travel a long way, so the connection is slower than earth-bound internet options. But in unserved places, it's better than nothing.

Is this true for LEO projects such as Starlink and OneWeb? I thought the latency characteristics were much more reasonable there. Or is this speaking about bandwidth? The wording is a bit vague.

Re: Faster internet is coming, but only for a few

#12
post #6

Interesting, but purely US focused. Anybody have good data on progress in the rest of the world?

UK Has good coverage except in rural areas, and in some rural areas they've done their own FTTP (B4RN for example).

There's a big "full fibre" push from various different providers (Hyperoptic (FTTB), GigaClear, CityFibre, BT OpenReach).

Most densely populated areas have the choice of FTTC (the infrastructure is ALL BT OpenReach, however you have a choice of providers who piggy back on this), and in bigger cities/towns Virgin Cable up to 380Mbps down 37Mbps up.

Pricing is very competitive, because even with areas that are all BT FTTC lots of providers use their infrastructure and OfCom regulates how much OpenReach are allowed to charge.

I have a truly unlimited cable package for £50 a month, 384 down 37 up.

Re: Faster internet is coming, but only for a few

#13

> Signals from space have to travel a long way, so the connection is slower than earth-bound internet options. But in unserved places, it's better than nothing. Is this true for LEO projects such as Starlink and OneWeb? I thought the latency characteristics were much more reasonable there. Or is this speaking about bandwidth? The wording is a bit vague.

The Wikipedia article for Starlink says 35ms ping:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellat...

Re: Faster internet is coming, but only for a few

#14
post #7

I live very far from any major town(10 miles from post office, 15 miles from a high school, 20 miles from a major retail outlet). Our current internet is $35 for a 5Mb connection and the best I can currently get is $70 for a 10Mb connection. But sometime next year I will have fiber available to me. IIRC, it'll be something like $60 for a 250Mb connection and $110 for a 1Gb. It'll be interesting to see how fiber trans…

There is a weird dynamic in the US where many rural areas have garbage level internet access ... and some pockets have insanely high levels of service. Somehow some random telcos have found a way (presumably government subsidies (I don't think that is bad)) to provide some amazing service, while others wallow in absolute trashy telco service. I know folks with consistently low latency 1Gb service that is just amazing…

It would be interesting to overlay a map of high service levels on top of railroads and universities. Naturally, the backbone of the Internet has to travel through rural areas to reach urban centers, but universities (especially research universities) were also among the earliest sites connected and they tend not to be in urban centers. Railroad right of ways are great for long-distance cables, so they would likely be heavily used early in the construction of the Internet.

Re: Faster internet is coming, but only for a few

#15

> Signals from space have to travel a long way, so the connection is slower than earth-bound internet options. But in unserved places, it's better than nothing. Is this true for LEO projects such as Starlink and OneWeb? I thought the latency characteristics were much more reasonable there. Or is this speaking about bandwidth? The wording is a bit vague.

No, LEO satellite meshes can be faster than terrestrial options. Light travels faster in a vacuum than fiber optic cables.

Re: Faster internet is coming, but only for a few

#16
post #6

Interesting, but purely US focused. Anybody have good data on progress in the rest of the world?

UK Has good coverage except in rural areas, and in some rural areas they've done their own FTTP (B4RN for example). There's a big "full fibre" push from various different providers (Hyperoptic (FTTB), GigaClear, CityFibre, BT OpenReach). Most densely populated areas have the choice of FTTC (the infrastructure is ALL BT OpenReach, however you have a choice of providers who piggy back on this), and in bigger cities/tow…

Hahahahahaha.

Openreach is utter shit outside of very very lucky areas. I live in London (zone 6) and we get 30/8 (after fighting with BT support for two months to fix it from 22/1). If you're not covered by VM and win the postcode lottery as to not have it drop constantly, you're lucky to get "tolerable" speeds.

Re: Faster internet is coming, but only for a few

#18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK Has good coverage except in rural areas, and in some rural areas they've done their own FTTP (B4RN for example). There's a big "full fibre" push from various different providers (Hyperoptic (FTTB), GigaClear, CityFibre, BT OpenReach). Most densely populated areas have the choice of FTTC (the infrastructure is ALL BT OpenReach, however you have a choice of providers who piggy back on this), and in bigger cities/tow…

Hahahahahaha. Openreach is utter shit outside of very very lucky areas. I live in London (zone 6) and we get 30/8 (after fighting with BT support for two months to fix it from 22/1). If you're not covered by VM and win the postcode lottery as to not have it drop constantly, you're lucky to get "tolerable" speeds.

Just count yourself lucky that you don't have an Exchange Only (EO) line, that doesn't have a cabinet and runs directly to the exchange.. I'm in Whitechapel (Zone 1) and get 8/1

Re: Faster internet is coming, but only for a few

#19

Verizon sold most of its landline business to Frontier over the past decade. While the few remaining Verizon FiOS customers got upgraded to gigabit, the Frontier FiOS customers were left with the old technology. Our Frontier contract just expired and we’re upgrading from 150 mbps to 500 mbps for about $5 more tomorrow. But I’m not optimistic about the speed. I tried paying $150/mo for the Frontier 500 mbps package tw…

Very few websites are going to serve anything with that much bandwidth for a single connection. You’re limited by their upload.

Try a few 4K YouTube videos and see what happens.

Re: Faster internet is coming, but only for a few

#20
post #7

I live very far from any major town(10 miles from post office, 15 miles from a high school, 20 miles from a major retail outlet). Our current internet is $35 for a 5Mb connection and the best I can currently get is $70 for a 10Mb connection. But sometime next year I will have fiber available to me. IIRC, it'll be something like $60 for a 250Mb connection and $110 for a 1Gb. It'll be interesting to see how fiber trans…

There is a weird dynamic in the US where many rural areas have garbage level internet access ... and some pockets have insanely high levels of service. Somehow some random telcos have found a way (presumably government subsidies (I don't think that is bad)) to provide some amazing service, while others wallow in absolute trashy telco service. I know folks with consistently low latency 1Gb service that is just amazing…

I feel like it's more likely impacted by simple time: rural areas tend to see changes at a much slower rate, and I believe a (very) large chunk of the infra cost is just digging into the ground, and by the time it's being done for a rural area, it turns out fiber has become fairly cheap to produce...

So when the upgrades do finally roll around, it's not incremental -- it leapfrogs 2 decades or whatever of technology upgrades. A single upgrade places you far ahead of your peers, creating the dynamic you describe (and yet, your peers aren't actually that far behind, if they wanted to catch up)

The same thing occurs with third-world countries getting first-world tech; they get it sporadically, and so see large jumps of change instead of slow, incremental shifts; this also gives a bit of an advantage, as they don't have stale infrastructure from the incremental change, and so can make much more extensive use of the new tech. For example, China skipped credit cards and went directly to mobile payments -- and with only cash to compete, mobile took over entirely.

And so when these rural counties finally see an upgrade.. they see rapid full fiber coverage. There's simply no competing technology in the area, since its so far behind, and fiber keeps the county prepped for the next 20 years of no upgrades..

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