61–70 of 118 posts
ATT has made it plain that they would be more than happy if everyone on their street canceled their internet. They've stated the network my parents are on is legacy, won't be maintained and you can't sign up for it today.
1 Singapore 262.20 2 Hong Kong (SAR) 254.40 3 Monaco 242.89 4 Switzerland 222.00 5 Thailand 221.00 6 Romania 217.91 7 South Korea 216.67 8 Denmark 216.13 9 Chile 209.83 10 France 201.61 11 Hungary 201.55 12 United States 199.00 First of all, Singapore, Hong Kong and Monaco really can't be compared to the US. Two of them are wealthy city-states and Monaco is very small (and wealthy). Once you get to #4 Switzerland, th…
Agreed. It's hard to really know how useful these stats are. First, who are the people using speedtest.net? I'd assume there is some kind of bias in the person using speedtest.net. But also, if you can't get any broadband, does that count against the stats?
Second, what's the distribution? Is it some people with 10Gbps+ and then some with 1Mbps?
Third, how is upload factored in? With e.g. video conferencing/home office/remote learning, symmetric internet is becoming more important, and latency plays a part.
And finally, how expensive is it? Personally, I think it's not great claiming e.g. Monaco has amazing speeds if a lot of people can't afford it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's cheaper to do point to point relays from that far. I would encourage you to look into this more, if you haven't already. I set up such a connection for my in-laws who live in rural Oklahoma, and it's been a resounding success. It still has issues, but it's worlds better than the antiquated satellite options they had before. They'll likely transition to using Starlink when it's available as the point to point con…
I prepaid for Starlink 4 or 5 months ago and just waiting for my turn to get it. We did talk about setting up a community point to point system but the 'old guys' that run the area are more interested in getting (forcing) more people on to 'city' water than anything actually useful because city water fees are the only thing keeping this town alive.
I often see people commenting on the poor quality of America’s internet compared to European countries, but how much of that is due to the physical size of America? I imagine it’s much more difficult to build out a larger network especially when many parts of America are not very populated.
While it's a point that intuitively makes sense, I'm not too sure of its true relevance. The US is just too rich for size to be an excuse. At least it can't be the only reason. It may be anecdotal, but all the complaints I've ever seen about broadband/fibre in the US have been in relation to local monopolies and the general fragmentation of the nation-wide network. In most EU countries, we have laws that force networ…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the usual argument against doing large infrastructure in the USA, and I think it’s kind of missing the point: the USA also has much larger financial and physical resources than those countries. We also have counterarguments: we have a universal electrical network. We built a large railroad network across the entire country. We have an interstate highway system reaching every continental state (and with “inter…
Railroads, highways, and power/cable lines all go hand in hand. It's an amazing network and they were all built a long time ago with little improvement. The problem is shoveling money to other "universal" slush funds while ignoring actual infrastructure for decades. ISPs should have been a utility and they should treat it like Texas treats its grid. Have a company that manages the actual lines, and have multiple prov…
like garbage that falls apart when people actually need to use it? or like a regressive money funnel to line the pockets of an oligarchical captured regulatory body?
texas' power grid is not a goal any serious advocate can advance as doing anything right.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The top 3 - Singapore, Hong Kong (SAR), and Monaco - are smaller than Rhode Island, the smallest state - even when you add them together.
My gigabit internet in HK was similarly priced to my gigabit internet in suburban USA (like US$80/mo). That said, in HK areas with robust competition between ISPs, some of the offerings were shockingly cheap. A friend of mine got 10Gbps for less than US$100/mo after negotiating. I don’t remember if HK lines were symmetric or not - my US line certainly isn’t.
For example, at my home on a residential PON connection a recent speedtest today showed ~990Mbit down, ~978Mbit up. At my office's new business coax connection just a few miles away, I usually get ~980Mbit down, 30Mbit up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Railroads, highways, and power/cable lines all go hand in hand. It's an amazing network and they were all built a long time ago with little improvement. The problem is shoveling money to other "universal" slush funds while ignoring actual infrastructure for decades. ISPs should have been a utility and they should treat it like Texas treats its grid. Have a company that manages the actual lines, and have multiple prov…
> they should treat it like Texas treats its grid like garbage that falls apart when people actually need to use it? or like a regressive money funnel to line the pockets of an oligarchical captured regulatory body? texas' power grid is not a goal any serious advocate can advance as doing anything right.
Maybe all California homes should have A/C for these heat waves. Sometimes it doesn't make sense economically.
I'm talking about having a transmission provider and having ISPs compete on the same lines.
It keeps prices down (unless you tricked into buying variable wholesale via startups like Griddy) and it keeps lines in good shape.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's cheaper to do point to point relays from that far. I would encourage you to look into this more, if you haven't already. I set up such a connection for my in-laws who live in rural Oklahoma, and it's been a resounding success. It still has issues, but it's worlds better than the antiquated satellite options they had before. They'll likely transition to using Starlink when it's available as the point to point con…
I prepaid for Starlink 4 or 5 months ago and just waiting for my turn to get it. We did talk about setting up a community point to point system but the 'old guys' that run the area are more interested in getting (forcing) more people on to 'city' water than anything actually useful because city water fees are the only thing keeping this town alive.
That’s…not terrible? Getting broadband in rural America is rough, and the permissive atmosphere for monopolistic behavior by ISPs is maddening. Pricing for internet access is way worse than in East Asia or western and central Europe. Some folks can’t get real broadband at all, and they’re disproportionally lower down on the socioeconomic spectrum. That’s not fair. These issues are real. But overall, 12th sounds…prett…
It's shockingly good. I'm actually very proud of this statistic. Most won't see material difference between 200mbps vs #1 spot of 250mbps. It's negligible. However. I think there's a rather huge sampling bias, because the data is gathered from people who come to Speedtest.com to run the test.
I guess the closest would be "In September-October 2019, the weighted average advertised download speed was 146.1 Mbps among the measured ISPs, which represents a 100% increase from 2017 and a 8% increase compared to the average in September-October 2018 which was 135.7 Mbps."
For comparison, the best data I found[2] on US FTTH situation is that there are about 40M homes passed and 14M subscribers for FTTH out of 125M households, giving 32% coverage and 11% penetration.
[1] https://www.ropa.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/FTTH-Council-...
[2] https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/ftth-will-pass-60-mill...