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The curious case of Romanian broadband

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Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#41

Post by zajio1am »

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:…

> European cities are typically built for denser living - far fewer McMansions, far more well built, sound proofed apartment

Well, here (Prague) you can have small flat in city for the same price as full-sized house with garden in suburbs (villages around Prague), so it is mostly question of preferences.

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#42

Post by miahi »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #36
mgkimsal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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. Often in apartment rentals in Romania, the link to the apartment is a fast fiber one, but 1) the installers didn’t properly connect all eight pins to the ethernet cable, and/or 2) the apartment’s owner has installed a slow router. Gigabit routers have until recently…

The 2.4GHz band is saturated (in an apartment building you'll see tens of networks, there's no free channel even if you want to optimize. And there are not many 5GHz-capable devices or they have the 5GHz band disabled (not sure why - I found this also whilst renting/airbnb in other countries, the wifi was bad but the old "admin/admin" login worked on the router, so we could switch it to 5GHz).

And yes, the install teams are outsourced and the quality varies wildly.

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#44

Post by rayiner »

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:…

I’m not really disagreeing with what you’re saying. My point is that people are voting in their own interest. If you’re employed, 30+, married married, and in the top 60% of the income distribution, then in terms of quantifiable income and consumption metrics you’re probably better off than you’d be in say France. And these are the people who vote.

As to housing patterns, I’m sure it’s a combination of preference, availability, and affordability. I know Germans from suburbs in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg and they drive everywhere and enjoy the convenience. These are the same preferences of folks in the US.

As to health care: for people who have decent insurance, you’d be surprised by how nice American healthcare is. When my son had chronic ear infections, in sometimes went down to the pediatricians office multiple times a day. It’s not free at the point of use, but it’s cheap enough where it might as well be. It’s not obviously something that needs fixing.

Again, it’s not like the American left hasn’t been making the pitch for socialized medicine for decades now. At this point Americans probably have an overly rosy picture of European healthcare. They don’t know that French national healthcare has 20% coinsurance, or that many European countries still have insurance companies. It’s just that most voters either have insurance from their employer, and it actually tends to be pretty good, or they have Medicare, which also tends to be pretty good. The fact that some people don’t have that doesn’t motivate the average voter very much, and they don’t want to pay more taxes. Americans don’t have the same sense of solidarity Europeans have, and are much more individualistic.

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#45

Post by mgkimsal »

miahi wrote: post #19
mgkimsal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

About pricing in .ro: I have a business link with 1000 down / 200 up and static public IP for $25. A similar speed home link is $9. Adjusted for big mac index (2.5x) they would be around $60 / $22.

Thanks for the BMI number. I didn't pay too much attention to pricing of things when I was there (bit of a working holiday), but those numbers help put things in perspective. I've seen some areas in the US with similar speeds like that for business cases be ~$100/month - still more than your .ro pricing, but I think most places that can get those speeds will still have somewhat higher pricing.

Home - most folks I know don't have those sorts of home speeds, nor have access to those speeds in their areas. Often people bundle internet/tv/phones/etc, so they may get a 'better' price thinking about individual components, but... $9 is pretty darn good. My home prices have gone down a bit over the years as speeds have gone up a bit, but I'm still tied to whatever's offered in this geography.

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#46

Post by stefantalpalaru »

jbirer wrote: post #2

As 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 always saw America as superior and something to aspire to as a kid.

That was propaganda from CIA's radio stations: Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.

This is America: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-low...

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#47

Post by tzs »

rayiner wrote: post #11
EdwardDiego wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that exceptionalism rote taught explains a lot of America's inherent conservatism - why change if you're already the best?

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…

Too bad that poll on healthcare didn't break it down by whether or not you pay for it yourself.

I was quite pleased with my costs when I got it through my employer and so didn't actually see the cost of insurance. I'd indirectly see it when every few years my employer would change providers, and then I'd have to worry about whether or not my doctor was in the new provider's network.

Co-workers who wanted to add spouses to their plan did have to pay for it themselves on some of the plans, and they grumbled about the cost.

Now that I buy insurance myself on my state's health insurance exchange, cost is one of my top complaints.

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#48

Post by a2tech »

miahi wrote: post #19
mgkimsal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

About pricing in .ro: I have a business link with 1000 down / 200 up and static public IP for $25. A similar speed home link is $9. Adjusted for big mac index (2.5x) they would be around $60 / $22.

I have gigabit up and down in my house in Michigan for $49/month. Fiber, a new ISP. We got lucky in my town because the city owns the phone poles and is very open to leasing space.

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#49

Post by londons_explore »

There are 2 key things you can do to reduce regulatory burden:

* Have a time limit for responding to licensing requests. Eg. 14 days. If the government can't accept or reject a request in that time period, it is auto accepted. If it is rejected, a resubmitted request must be accepted if it addresses the rejection reason.

* Allow a business to operate for 30 days before, during, and after submitting a license request, and with no penalty if 'in good faith' they believed it was reasonably likely their request would be accepted.

Re: The curious case of Romanian broadband

#50

Post by rayiner »

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…

Again, it’s easy to tell yourself that Americans are just irrational, harder to reconcile that with the facts. It’s not just a minority that’s richer and more comfortable: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2017/04/24/middle-class-f...

A middle income household in the US has $15,000-25,000 more per year in disposable income than a middle income household in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, or the UK (comprising 70% of the EU population).

You can say that some of that goes to employee-paid premiums and things like that, which are excluded from the OECD analysis. But for households with employer-paid health insurance (which is the vast majority of middle income households), the typical out of pocket costs for those things is a fraction of the income differential: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/2019-05...

The median spending on premiums and out of pocket costs in the US is $3,700. And note that European countries also have out of pocket expenses of $500-1,000: https://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/OECD-Focus-on-Out....

So at the end of the day, a middle income American household with employer-paid health insurance has $12,000-22,000 more in their pocket each year. (You could adjust for other social services, but those tend to be a drop in the bucket by comparison. For example, the average student, of the minority of Americans that graduates college, is $30,000. Thats a one-time debt, compared to a lifetime of earning thousands of dollars more.)

Fox News manipulating people into “voting against their interests” is mostly a myth. The poorest people do in fact vote Democrat. If you look at profiles of Trump voters, they tend to be non-college-educated people who are doing well in places with low cost of living. In my county, the guys that own a little contracting or construction company vote for Trump. This is entirely in their interest. They would not be personally better off paying a lot more taxes to get marginally more benefits. I spent several weeks in East Texas last year. This is Trump country. It’s also quite prosperous. The men work in the oil industry and the women work in healthcare. They have big trucks and big houses and shiny new stores and restaurants.

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