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The curious case of Romanian broadband

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Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#21

Post by vladvasiliu »

Fnoord wrote: post #18
moltar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In North America you get either a TV Cable (coaxial) outlet, which then needs a cable modem (DOCSIS). Or you get a phone outlet, for which you need a DSL modem. For both cases, back in the day, you still needed a router. Nowadays it’s usually a modem-router combo, and usually they are terrible. Everyone always has a rats nest of wires somewhere behind a TV or couch. :D

Same in other Western countries like The Netherlands and Germany. The cable network is from the time cable TV was rolled out (70s/80s). The phone network is older, and also more unreliable. VDSL and DOCSIS are mostly FttC though. I believe EU demands people to be allowed to freely pick their own router. Whatever brand it is and whoever owns it you can put it near your demarcation point (in Dutch called ISRA for phone…

> I believe EU demands people to be allowed to freely pick their own router. Whatever brand it is and whoever owns it you can put it near your demarcation point

Do you have a reference for that? I have FTTH in France from SFR and I suspect there's some funny business going on where you have to jump through hoops in order to replace the provided router. Not only won't they provide a DHCP lease if you don't ask with the right options, but lately the dhcp server seems to actually stop providing anything at all once it saw an un recognized request. Support has to intervene to make it work again and the issue doesn't seem common because it usually takes them a week to find out what's up. They would even try replacing the router at your house...

Edit: found the EU regulation : https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

Indeed, it states that the providers should not impose restrictions on the use of terminal equipments, and that users should be free to chose them. (§5 on the second page).

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#22

Post by bobthepanda »

moltar wrote: post #12
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In North America you get either a TV Cable (coaxial) outlet, which then needs a cable modem (DOCSIS). Or you get a phone outlet, for which you need a DSL modem. For both cases, back in the day, you still needed a router. Nowadays it’s usually a modem-router combo, and usually they are terrible. Everyone always has a rats nest of wires somewhere behind a TV or couch. :D

New build apartments definitely have both coax or ethernet. Most housing stock just isn't that new in the US.

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#23

Post by sunshinerag »

Fnoord wrote: post #16
rayiner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. We have the highest disposable income in the OECD: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/14773.jpeg . The median household income of a married couple with kids is $95,000. And the taxes are extremely low in that bracket. Our unemployment rate in the midst of Trump’s botched handling of COVID is less than what France’s unemployment rate is in a normal…

Do all of these cars and TVs make you happy? Rhetorical question; if they did you wouldn't need more more more . A minority is rich and comfortable. This elite uses propaganda rhetoric such as polarisation by a platform such as Fox News to manipulate people into a political candidate which, ultimately, does not serve in their benefit but in the benefit of the elite majority. Then there's the other party who are only…

2 cars and 3 TVs seem to be enough. Who said more more more?

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#24

Post by miahi »

What the article does not mention is that most of those networks are now gone. They started around 2000 as ad-hoc networks (a few friends that shared files through SMB and maybe an Internet connection) but around 2002 they evolved to be real businesses, with networks spanning tens of buildings and hundreds of apartments, sharing an expensive business link and even starting to do peering across networks. Most used copper cables across buildings, so they were quite often hit by lightning and network switches and cables had to be replaced (fiber was hard to install and maintain, as in some cases the physical security of the network equipment was low and media converters could be stolen).

Starting with 2005 the bigger/"normal" ISPs started to buy these networks (the businesses that maintained them), and migrate the customers to a more standardized / legal (and more expensive) network link.

Also, in the last years an underground fiber backbone was installed in Bucharest, and the fiber above ground started to migrate (not really willingly) to that. The problem is that there is no incentive to uninstall unused fiber from the poles (it's not valuable as a second-hand object and hard to recycle) so that fiber just stays there, in many cases broken.

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#25

Post by NuDinNou »

The good an cheap internet is one reason that makes romanians proud. You can get 940 Mbps down, 450 Mbps up for about $9/month (included in the price is also 50 GB cloud storage in their Google Drive type of service) [0]

For internet on your smartphone you have an option of ~ 2$/month for 50 GB, 4G speeds [1] You can check the coverage here [2]

[0] https://www.digiromania.ro/servicii/internet/internet-fix/fi...

[1] https://www.digiromania.ro/servicii/telefonie-mobila/optim/d...

[2] https://aisemnal.ro/home

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#26

Post by Fnoord »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #21
Fnoord wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in other Western countries like The Netherlands and Germany. The cable network is from the time cable TV was rolled out (70s/80s). The phone network is older, and also more unreliable. VDSL and DOCSIS are mostly FttC though. I believe EU demands people to be allowed to freely pick their own router. Whatever brand it is and whoever owns it you can put it near your demarcation point (in Dutch called ISRA for phone…

> I believe EU demands people to be allowed to freely pick their own router. Whatever brand it is and whoever owns it you can put it near your demarcation point Do you have a reference for that? I have FTTH in France from SFR and I suspect there's some funny business going on where you have to jump through hoops in order to replace the provided router. Not only won't they provide a DHCP lease if you don't ask with th…

Thanks for the link.

It is a directive which EU members must implement. The Netherlands is going to implement it in 2021. [1] I am unsure about the deadline for implementation.

You can try something like putting your router in bridge mode. For example Ziggo here allows that. KPN already allows free choice of "modem" (read: router). And a Fritz!box can be used as bridge if you use PPPoE client elsewhere. There's even PCI(e) DSL modems. A recent example [2].

[1] https://www.acm.nl/nl/publicaties/acm-consumenten-mogen-eige...

[2] https://www.draytek.co.uk/products/business/vigornic-132

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#27

Post by vladvasiliu »

Fnoord wrote: post #26
vladvasiliu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe EU demands people to be allowed to freely pick their own router. Whatever brand it is and whoever owns it you can put it near your demarcation point Do you have a reference for that? I have FTTH in France from SFR and I suspect there's some funny business going on where you have to jump through hoops in order to replace the provided router. Not only won't they provide a DHCP lease if you don't ask with th…

Thanks for the link. It is a directive which EU members must implement. The Netherlands is going to implement it in 2021. [1] I am unsure about the deadline for implementation. You can try something like putting your router in bridge mode. For example Ziggo here allows that. KPN already allows free choice of "modem" (read: router). And a Fritz!box can be used as bridge if you use PPPoE client elsewhere. There's even…

I've dug a bit more into this, and apparently the law is not yet in effect in France either, but still being discussed. The curious can track the progress at [0].

Regarding bridge mode, I'm only aware of one ISP in France whose box allows doing that (Free). In my case there's no such option, it can only work as a router.

[0] https://www.senat.fr/dossier-legislatif/ppl19-048.html

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#29

Post by inglor_cz »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #7
moltar wrote: post #5

This 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.

I live in an apartment block built in 2008 (Czechia) and we have ADSL/VDSL only.

Given that my work has 1Gb connection, I just download the really big things at work.

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#30

Post by NicoJuicy »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #13
rayiner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. We have the highest disposable income in the OECD: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/14773.jpeg . The median household income of a married couple with kids is $95,000. And the taxes are extremely low in that bracket. Our unemployment rate in the midst of Trump’s botched handling of COVID is less than what France’s unemployment rate is in a normal…

> We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. Some of you are. You're only surpassed by Romania, Costa Rica, and South Africa in this chart: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm Romania, Italy, South Africa in this one: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-c... Doing better in this one, in that now you're behind Bulgaria, Turkey, Chile, Costa Rica and South Africa. https:…

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu...

Fyi, an interesting statistic is that Eg. Houses in Belgium are more expensive to buy and way cheaper to rent.

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