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Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

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Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#91

Post by arethuza »

smutticus wrote: post #88

There is a direct correlation between competition and lower prices in this market. The US has little to no decent competition in many markets. Therefore ISPs rip people off. If you think Western Europe has cheap broadband try going to small countries in Eastern Europe like Croatia, Slovenia, Latvia or Estonia. I've never seen cheaper BW in Europe than in Latvia.

Wow - 200Mbps fiber for about £25 a month - that's pretty good!

http://www.lattelecom.lv/majai/internets/optiskais_internets...

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#92

Post by miahi »

bobo888 wrote: post #78
ojbyrne wrote: post #2

For those who think this is going to be an anti-government regulation, libertarian orthodoxy type article, here's the tl;dr: "government regulators who have forced more competition"

Well this is how it happend in Romania: ----------------- 2000 - 2002 There was NO regulation. We just threw UTP cables from building to building, and bought external connectivity from bulk sellers. We didn't pay any taxes. We didn't have any signed agreements with "customers". We didn't have any permits from the city council either. There were no employees... heck, we weren't even registered as a business. We just t…

The interesting thing in the report is that they blame Romania for introducing "noise" in their statistics, so they did not include it. In one place they actually blame the ad-hoc networks for this, probably thinking that most of the country still has the pseudo-ISPs that were usual back in 2003.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#94

Post by americandesi333 »

masklinn wrote: post #29
americandesi333 wrote: post #16

This is a very interesting article, especially 'dummifying' the complexities of US telecom markets. I used to always wonder why US was so behind in terms of broadband deployment and the answers that we given to me were always around 'density'. However, there are densely populated areas in US that can create better broadband experience. The challenge here is that the larger telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon) are requir…

> On the other hand, European telecom companies are allowed to charge extra for higher bandwidth usage. These are getting rarer and rarer these days. And the countries which raced ahead dropped quotas early, or never had quotas in the first place (France for instance, second ADSL market in Europe, standard ADSL contracts are all unmetered and metered never represented any significant portion of the market). Even Belg…

Masklinn, If my first point was not correct, then why is there so much lobbying effort and dollars being spent on the 'net neutrality' issue?

Also, just out of curiosity, want to know why the 'No' for the two barriers and if you identified something different that would change the landscape.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#95

Post by richcollins »

tzs wrote: post #43

In the "Need to Know" version of this story they talked with a BT representative about how things had worked out for BT after they were forced into local loop unbundling. It worked out great for BT. They make more money leasing out the lines and leasing out space in their switching centers for the third party ISP's equipment than they were making providing monopoly ISP services directly. It truly is a case of everyon…

If they were truly interested in promoting competition, they would make it easier for new companies to offer broadband rather than forcing them to go through an incumbent.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#96

Post by americandesi333 »

afterburner wrote: post #31
americandesi333 wrote: post #16

This is a very interesting article, especially 'dummifying' the complexities of US telecom markets. I used to always wonder why US was so behind in terms of broadband deployment and the answers that we given to me were always around 'density'. However, there are densely populated areas in US that can create better broadband experience. The challenge here is that the larger telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon) are requir…

You do realize the telecoms want tiered pricing because it would allow them to gouge captive customers even more?

That is exactly whats being done in the countries referenced in the article.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#97

Post by fourk »

arethuza wrote: post #87
fourk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After looking at the options available that were linked in the article, I'm unsure that I agree that everyone wins. Specifically, consumers looking for the higher end of the spectrum. At least, the only higher-end provider linked in the article, Demon [1], seems to offer abysmally low bandwidth caps on almost every plan, and generally low max download speeds (20Mb or less). How well are their bandwidth caps enforced?…

BT Infinity (40Mbps down, 10 up) is £18 a month with a 40GB cap and £25.60 for unlimited.

Thank you, as much I tried to resist believing it...the grass certainly is greener on the other side.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#98

Post by DCoder »

arethuza wrote: post #91
smutticus wrote: post #88

There is a direct correlation between competition and lower prices in this market. The US has little to no decent competition in many markets. Therefore ISPs rip people off. If you think Western Europe has cheap broadband try going to small countries in Eastern Europe like Croatia, Slovenia, Latvia or Estonia. I've never seen cheaper BW in Europe than in Latvia.

Wow - 200Mbps fiber for about £25 a month - that's pretty good! http://www.lattelecom.lv/majai/internets/optiskais_internets...

Lithuania here - 25 pounds/month gives me unrestricted 100 Mbps, next month they're tripling all speeds for no additional costs. The one-step-cheaper option is 90% of the cost for only 10% of the speed, so I opted for this one instead.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#99

Post by timthorn »

richcollins wrote: post #95
tzs wrote: post #43

In the "Need to Know" version of this story they talked with a BT representative about how things had worked out for BT after they were forced into local loop unbundling. It worked out great for BT. They make more money leasing out the lines and leasing out space in their switching centers for the third party ISP's equipment than they were making providing monopoly ISP services directly. It truly is a case of everyon…

If they were truly interested in promoting competition, they would make it easier for new companies to offer broadband rather than forcing them to go through an incumbent.

The incumbent is split into separate organisations, which are effectively not allowed to communicate behind closed doors. BT Openreach provides access to the local loop, whereas BT Retail sells broadband to consumers. The setup is designed so that other ISPs have exactly the same interface to BT Openreach as BT Retail.

BT offered this arrangement to avoid being broken up - look up the "General Conditions of Entitlement" for more detail.

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