The curious case of Romanian broadband
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The curious case of Romanian broadband
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Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband
#2As a Romanian person I am baffled hearing the speed and data cap woes of American people. I always saw America as superior and something to aspire to as a kid. What your ISPs are doing is pure robbery and I am surprised there's not more backlash about this.
Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband
#3It's awesome what happens in the absence of laws written by ISP lobbyists & passed by their purchased legislators.
Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband
#4As a Romanian person I am baffled hearing the speed and data cap woes of American people. I always saw America as superior and something to aspire to as a kid. What your ISPs are doing is pure robbery and I am surprised there's not more backlash about this.
I'm a romanian too and happen to agree with you. Our own publicly traded company DiGi has around a 2% dividend yield while At&t has a 7% dividend yield, a bad product and a high price.
Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband
#5This was pretty much the case across Eastern Europe.
In Kiev, I ordered an internet connection and to my surprise I was told that it was all done and ready to go without any visits to my apartment. I was surprised.
The wall outlet was an Ethernet port. No TV cable. No phone line. Direct RJ45.
Later I learned that everything is in the central wiring closet somewhere in the building. And many buildings are just connected roof to roof with cables.
I had 100/100 mbit connection, with unlimited data, for $15 USD/mo. Don’t remember having any issues. That was 5 years ago.
Back in the early days buildings often had their own LAN for sharing warez and gaming. Sometimes adjacent buildings were connected for extended network.
Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband
#6As a Romanian person I am baffled hearing the speed and data cap woes of American people. I always saw America as superior and something to aspire to as a kid. What your ISPs are doing is pure robbery and I am surprised there's not more backlash about this.
I was in Bucharest a couple of years ago and used wired broadband in an apartment. It was good - not terribly faster than what I get here, or at least ... not faster such that I'd notice. I suspect the price was cheaper, although unsure what the 'big mac price' might be for people who live there day to day.
I have a 200 down / 20 up connection at my office for $80/month - roughly the same at home for ~$50/month. At home, we don't normally get that unless actually wired in, as the wifi stuff around the house is bad (boosters don't help much). At the office, even over wifi, it can often be over the 200 - the wifi is probably a bottleneck there.
The town where the office is is offering 'gigabit to the home', but only in new construction homes. The downtown spot I'm in won't get upgrades for a while, from what I'm hearing.
I'm in the suburbs of a moderately large tech area, and almost rural by some measures. That said, I know some friends a bit further out aren't served very well at all, and are struggling with satellite connections as their last hope for 'fast' internet (6-10m from what I remember).
> I am surprised there's not more backlash about this.
FWIW, we (USA) get hosed around on so many things (healthcare, net, etc) and are also fed a patriotic diet of "America is the best" growing up. Because we're so large and isolated, many folks never travel, and a couple generations ago, most didn't have access to international publications/media like we do today. All that combines to give many of my fellow citizens a somewhat distorted view of our own standing and quality of life. There's little reason to 'backlash' when you think you're already "the best".
Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband
#7This was pretty much the case across Eastern Europe. In Kiev, I ordered an internet connection and to my surprise I was told that it was all done and ready to go without any visits to my apartment. I was surprised. The wall outlet was an Ethernet port. No TV cable. No phone line. Direct RJ45. Later I learned that everything is in the central wiring closet somewhere in the building. And many buildings are just connect…
> The wall outlet was an Ethernet port.
Huh, never thought of this as weird. I remember using a dial-up modem in the early 2000s in Romania, but since then I've just had a normal Ethernet port coming out of the wall everywhere, including Western Europe.
Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband
#8As a Romanian person I am baffled hearing the speed and data cap woes of American people. I always saw America as superior and something to aspire to as a kid. What your ISPs are doing is pure robbery and I am surprised there's not more backlash about this.
I was in Bucharest a couple of years ago and used wired broadband in an apartment. It was good - not terribly faster than what I get here, or at least ... not faster such that I'd notice. I suspect the price was cheaper, although unsure what the 'big mac price' might be for people who live there day to day. I have a 200 down / 20 up connection at my office for $80/month - roughly the same at home for ~$50/month. At h…
I think that exceptionalism rote taught explains a lot of America's inherent conservatism - why change if you're already the best?
Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband
#9As a Romanian person I am baffled hearing the speed and data cap woes of American people. I always saw America as superior and something to aspire to as a kid. What your ISPs are doing is pure robbery and I am surprised there's not more backlash about this.
Its not just ISPs. It’s part of a larger problem with building infrastructure due to our regulatory environment and high labor costs. In my state, they’re building a tram line through the suburbs that is costing as much per mile as Copenhagen’s new fully automated circle line subway. That’s a public project, but costs are still insanely high.
Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband
#10The final digs about Verizon Fios in Hell's Kitchen are pretty fucking rich, if you ask me.
There's no need for "telephone poles." That is complete nonsense, not least because Verizon has the monopoly on underground conduit in Manhattan. They literally own the Empire City Subway, the ostensibly vendor-neutral central conduit system that runs under every single street in Hell's Kitchen.
For some "mysterious" reason, no one other than Verizon can ever get conduit space in the ECS. Gee I wonder why that is. At the same time, Verizon has no interest in using that space for fiber -- they'd rather leave hundred year old dead copper lines sit than admit competitors OR upgrade their own infrastructure
Fios isn't failing to deploy to his building because it's hard to negotiate with landlords -- they are failing to deploy because they do not believe the city will enforce the terms of their franchise. It's more profitable to wire a few high-density buildings, and leave everyone else to rot, assuming the city never fines them. (That looks like a safe assumption from where I am sitting.)
Verizon has ample capability and they choose not to live up to their obligations.