I was curious and just looked it up: Germany reached 36.8% in 2024 ( https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung... ).
Not sure if I'm surprised negatively or positively by the fact. My apartment (Germany) was built in 2017 and coax in every room was the choice planners made :_)
Collusion between Virgin and other companies and the developers. Just plain old corruption and ineptitude. Our 2019 new build apartment had coax too, which resulted in some really crap internet that was expensive.
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…
If we assume $20k to run the fiber, you could do starlink for a long time. There are internet options other than fiber. Unless there is no other options in France than fiber. What if France got a contract with starlink? Brought the cost down of that.
Why should Starlink get that business? Why shouldn't France run its own fiber that it controls that isn't dependent on a US-based corporation?
And you said it yourself: Starlink already exists. They don't need a subsidy. You bring the cost of Starlink down by forcing them to compete on the merits of their own service, not by throwing money at them.
Yeah I'm sorry massive infrastructure projects with mandates to properly map access and measures to prevent fraud don't fit neatly into a four year presidential term before being effectively yanked away.
The cause of the delay or the blame doesn't really matter. The fact is Starlink could serve all of these users' internet now with no extra build-out cost at a 50th of the price. It's almost certainly time to rethink the plan and have the government take some of the money back.
Any money given to Starlink now for subsidies is burnt up in the atmosphere in 5 years.
Any money given to fiber rollout is still paying dividends in 40 years.
> Usually, this is money taken from people that aren't well off either... So it's not a clear cut positive. Well in France I tend to think the taxes are pretty progressive, so the money isn't taken from poor people. But yes, somehow the ultra-wealthy people always manage to escape what they owe.
Less progressive than in the USA, believe it or not…
Indeed this is hard to believe : a common theme here on HN is how EU and particularly France taxes too much people earning money.
Average speeds are higher in the UK than Italy. My brother in the UK has 1Gb/s fibre in a village of less than 100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...
Well I guess I must have been unlucky in 13 years in 5 flats around London with an average broadband speed of ~150 Mb/s
Clearly, yes. Unless you're claiming your personal experience invalidates a long running, well regarded statistical analysis.
QQ: Who owns / operates the fiber? 100% private co? Partially subsidized?
In rural areas it's publicly owned by local authorities (and then opened to the various internet providers). In suburban / medium density areas it's privately owned by one single internet provider (most of these areas where assigned to either Orange or SFR) but they must open access to others. In cities / high density areas each internet provider has it's own fiber.
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…
If we assume $20k to run the fiber, you could do starlink for a long time. There are internet options other than fiber. Unless there is no other options in France than fiber. What if France got a contract with starlink? Brought the cost down of that.
Starlink goes out of business and ... you don't have Internet anymore.
The local fiber guy goes out of business... you still have the fiber line there.
> 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…
You can bring internet to these other places other than by running a 1km fiber cable, which may be more efficient. Think about it, run. A cable super long to one house or use a dish? Unless there is truly no other options in france
You keep saying Starlink may be more efficient without providing any actual evidence that it is.
Also ignoring the political implications of a country spending tax money to buy services from a highly political company from a country whose politics and world influence are in flux right now.
Starlink is good because it is easy to deploy quickly. But the entire constellation and service will be dead within 5 years without constant launches of new satellites.
Forget efficiency. That sounds like a very poor investment of tax dollars to me. The fiber laid will provide lower latency and higher bandwidth connections for the next 40 years.
That's kind of a broad brush, Google Fi is great, especially the fact that they work mostly seamlessly for the same price in like every country, and they're an MVNO.
It proves that you can’t trust the claim that “it is the same network”, I mean it is the same network but you may find yourself riding the back of the bus and there is no independent way to check what service you are actually getting.
Well I never expected it to be treated exactly the same as their first party customers, did you? Especially if I’m paying a much lower rate. Just have to evaluate the actual results, and hop if you’re unhappy. I’ve been extremely happy with mine, so I’ve stuck with it. It’s a bad choice if you’re out and about a lot, since it’s not cheap when you go unlimited data, but working from home on WiFi, the metered option, I end up paying like $30-$40/mo, and there’s no need to go get a new sim when I travel. For a different lifestyle shape, I’d be shopping for one that fit that better.