181–190 of 245 posts
I was curious and just looked it up: Germany reached 36.8% in 2024 ( https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung... ).
Spain is at 96.79% (June 2025), up from 94.79% a year before. See [0] I think France and Spain are the best of the big European countries regarding coverage, but also adoption: If we look at the adoption ranking globally, Spain sits fourth at 90%, behind the UAE, China and South Korea and ahead of France at 83.6%. Very few European countries convert coverage into subscriptions that efficiently, and I think it's drive…
Damn, we pay $110 for 5Gbps in Seattle only because the 2Gbps would be $100. Cellular plans are also a lot cheaper in Europe :(
It's pretty insane. Our family has a holiday home in a fairly mountainous region in central-southern France. Dwindling population, no major tourist activity, wine production. We'd long suffered the worst imaginable 56k but in 2018, the local ISP just ran fibre out to everyone . I think the current service is cheaper than the 56k was too, and far cheaper than any of the 4/5G options back then. What I mean (vis á vis i…
Wonder how many thousands of taxpayer dollars was spent for this. Does not seem efficient.
$0. It's taxpayers euros.
But it's not inefficient if this fixes a chicken-egg problem: overcrowded big city and underpopulated rural area sucks.
Nobody can/wants to go in rural area if they can't make a living there. A fiber speed Internet unlocks lifestyle for many.
It's the same as investing in say a high speed railway between major cities A and B and adding a middle-of-nowhere stop C midway. That C then can flourish to become a medium/major city... So while the initial investment looked like a waste, it's beneficial to provide a better life for people living in both A,B, and C.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wonder how many thousands of taxpayer dollars was spent for this. Does not seem efficient.
How is it inefficient? This is the whole point of government: how much economic activity is happening over 56k? Virtually none. You could make the same argument for paving the street and repairing the sidewalk in front of your house . Chances are the property taxes from the average single family home don't cover just the basic street repairs, let alone all the other services your local government provides. Yet we do…
Currently typing this from my vacation house in France, in a rural area, with vineyards nearby. Closest highway is a 45 minutes drive (!). Now, sure, it is a fancy place in that it's Provence's seaside and, well, I can see big yachts from my couch but it's still in the middle of nowhere . At night it's wild boars (which my cat hates), snakes (which my wife hates) and toads everywhere. It's a very sparsely populated a…
And here in SF we have like 55%? Been waiting for it for 10 years in my hood.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wonder how many thousands of taxpayer dollars was spent for this. Does not seem efficient.
> how many thousands of taxpayer dollars $0. It's taxpayers euros. But it's not inefficient if this fixes a chicken-egg problem: overcrowded big city and underpopulated rural area sucks. Nobody can/wants to go in rural area if they can't make a living there. A fiber speed Internet unlocks lifestyle for many. It's the same as investing in say a high speed railway between major cities A and B and adding a middle-of-now…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Glad that France built it out now. From now on the fibers price will rise significantly like HBM, NAND chips, power line transformers due to the AI boom.
Any evidence of this happening? I imagine that fiber manufacturing is much easier to scale up than chip manufacturing (of course, the devices that attach to the fiber might be a different story).
Ooh just got 99.9% coverage
Ooh we just got 99.9% coverage