ISP says using the internet is like eating Oreos

[Mira Yurizaki]

17 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

This makes perfect sense. Its exactly what I was telling you. IF they let everyone download 32MBps 24/7, no one would be able to get even 800kbps. I'm not saying 250GB is enough, or that its even fair, I'm saying it has to be done that way because that just makes sense. Your reasoning is going to be that "well yeah, but I won't utilize it 24/7"... but most people will (or at least everyone would make use of it during daytime hours). without this cap the internet would simply be too full and it would be unpleasant for the customers, which would then raise hell with the ISP, which would interfere with them actually working towards a fix for the problem because they would be too busy holding the hands of their customers who are too ignorant to understand the cause of the problem.

Then I need proof that most people will do what you're saying.

 

And I'm not being facetious, because telecommunications will do studies on their customer base in order to provide "just enough" infrastructure to meet the expected demands:

Here's the thing, if they don't provide "just enough" to meet expected demands during peak hours, someone else will and they won't have much business.

 

But then again I'm thinking in a decent capitalist society. Not one where the incumbents are sleeping with the government to prevent other companies (or the lower level government itself) from supplying their own internet.

[zMeul]

12 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

They are physically smaller, making it cheaper, easier, and quicker to upgrade their internet. Being that they're smaller, they also have greater population densities, resulting in cheaper access to more customers/money for ISP's to expand their networks on. All the American "greed" in the world cannot circumvent this problem.

that's not it

here, and mostly in the Eastern Europe, it is the wild west of the internet - not like in The US where some piece of shit ISP can claim an entire city because he made a deal with the Local Government

[Zyndo]

28 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Then I need proof that most people will do what you're saying.

The only way to really get that proof is to work for an ISP. You will get all the proof you need within 48 hours.

 

I'm not sure where you got that video from, but that shopping cart analogy nonsense is simply incorrect. hypothetically is sounds reasonable, but in practice its just wrong. Mythbusters tested that myth directly, and found that in real world scenarios and that in actual practice, a single que to multiple tills resulted in longer customer service per customer on average (because each customer has to walk from the que, to the till, resulting in inactive downtime for each till every time it finishes with a customer), but that each customer thought it was better and more fair and more enjouable than having to having individual ques for each till (directly the opposite of what this guy's theory was). Mythbusters got it wrong from time to time, but I think their testing methodology and conclusions were pretty accurate for that episode.

 

Also, the beginning of that video (when talking about the phone lines for each person). 1 line was too few because it causes issues if more than one person wants to use. 1 line for each person was "expensive and wasteful"... if this makes perfect sense to you, then why do you have a hard time understanding the exact same thing when it comes to internet? (if you do not agree or this doesn't make sense, then why are you linking me that video?)

 

25 minutes ago, zMeul said:

that's not it

here, and mostly in the Eastern Europe, it is the wild west of the internet - not like in The US where some piece of shit ISP can claim an entire city because he made a deal with the Local Government

I'm not familiar with foreign policy, but the fact that you have good internet infrastructure has very little to do with having great competition between ISP's. the "backbone" that your ISP's run off of is very likely not owned/maintained by any of them, they are just companies reselling internet services to you from a primary larger company(s) network (this larger company likely isn't an ISP either, and they make their money selling their internet to actual ISP's)

[zMeul]

1 minute ago, Zyndo said:

but the fact that you have good internet infrastructure has very little to do with having great competition between ISP's. the "backbone" that your ISP's run off of is very likely not owned/maintained by any of them,

yeah ... you got it exactly wrong

the infrastructure was built and owned by the ISPs themselves

 

if a new ISP comes into town, they'll have to put their own infrastructure in the ground

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

Amazing how poor European countries manage to get way better internet to their people.

Over much less area with generally much more forgiving terrain. Oh, also, the U.S. built the backbone for it at the end of WWII...

[Zyndo]

19 minutes ago, zMeul said:

yeah ... you got it exactly wrong

the infrastructure was built and owned by the ISPs themselves

 

if a new ISP comes into town, they'll have to put their own infrastructure in the ground

yes. locally. that makes sense. most companies in NA are likely to do the same (or to use some existing line already in place like a phone line). But what i meant was for the backbone between "locally" that isn't maintained by your smaller ISP's (unless your population density down there is even greater than I gave it credit for). If your regional/national internet services IS run by smaller individual ISP's that can only mean one of a few things:

 

1. You have very little space between towns/cities, so setting up connections between service areas is relatively inexpensive (something that isn't really possible in NA with how spread out everything is). There is no business model for an ISP to be making long runs of cable to places that do not have need of them. Its literally throwing money away. (there are wireless technologies that can be used for areas like this, but that involves its own unique costs to implement)

2. They have some sort of agreement with each other to share the costs of building/expanding/sharing the backbone infrastructure that each of them make (no company will spend a ton of money to reach a new location and then just give those lines up for free to the competition, but its unlikely to even sell that to the competition as its just giving up on their monopoly they invested so much money to get)

3. "You don't know what you're talking about"

[zMeul]

3 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

But what i meant was for the backbone between "locally" that isn't maintained by your smaller ISP's

yes it is! locally, the ISP owns the infrastructure no matter how small they are

 

my 1st ISP came into town laying their own fucking optic cable - they didn't lease it

 

---

 

4. I absolutely know what the fuck I'm talking about - don't assume shit because the ISPs in your country / region are scum

when I see how ISPs in North America are still on DSL and cable ... what the shit?! we're over that stuff like 10y ago

[Zyndo]

4 minutes ago, zMeul said:

yes it is! locally, the ISP owns the infrastructure no matter how small they are

 

my 1st ISP came into town laying their own fucking optic cable - they didn't lease it

Yes. Internet companies will often lay their own lines for local purposes and customers. you are 100% correct about that.

 

But how do you think they get the internet out of their town and out to the rest of the world?

[zMeul]

2 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

Yes. Internet companies will often lay their own lines for local purposes and customers. you are 100% correct about that. How do you think they get the internet out of their town and out to the rest of the world?

what now!? you're telling me that hey don't have carrier contracts to EuroWeb?! this is news to you

and I'm talking about local ISPs - they don't exist anymore; the ISPs in our country have become regional or even country wide; hell .. some even went international

 

--

 

even Soviet Russia has better internet than you

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/internet-data-is-like-oreos-isp-claims-while-defending-data-caps/

 

I think I found something dumber than Trump.

 

(Basically some ISP is trying to justify data caps )

Not only the analogy is terrible, but also the same person goes on to give an example of exactly what he claims doesn't exist ("all you can eat restaurants") 

 

1 hour ago, Zyndo said:

They are physically smaller, making it cheaper, easier, and quicker to upgrade their internet. Being that they're smaller, they also have greater population densities, resulting in cheaper access to more customers/money for ISP's to expand their networks on. All the American "greed" in the world cannot circumvent this problem.

That's both wrong and irrelevant.

It's wrong because you are treating "Europe" as a uniform, densely populated area, but I assure you from Lisbon to Vladivostok you'll find all sorts of things. Each country (excluding former Soviet Union) may be smaller, some are densely populated, but if it's all about small sizes and heterogeneous areas, then you are basically saying the US could achieve the same by slicing the ISP market into European-sized slices...

It's irrelevant because when someone from Tromso watches a video from an American server, recorded by a Canadian media group, the bulk on the infrastructure required is outside Tromso, Norway, and to some extent even Europe.

[mvitkun]

1 hour ago, Zyndo said:

95%? not a chance. Not a chance in hell lol.  

He's talking about this article.

 

[Zyndo]

Just now, SpaceGhostC2C said:

That's both wrong and irrelevant.

It's wrong because you are treating "Europe" as a uniform, densely populated area, but I assure you from Lisbon to Vladivostok you'll find all sorts of things. Each country (excluding former Soviet Union) may be smaller, some are densely populated,

Its not "wrong", and its certainly not "irrelevant"

 

That is a map I just found on google (no telling how accurate it is or isn't, but lets assume its reasonably accurate) that super-imposes NA onto Europe. Europe and Canada are about the same size (EUR = 10.18m KM2, CAN = 9.985m KM2, according to google). Canada has approximately 35-40 million people living in it. Europe has about 750 million people living in it. Its an area about the same size with more than 20x additional people living in it. If you look at USA (320mill, 9.857m KM2, according to google)  compare to Europe, you have about 2.35x as many people in about the same area. (the size parameters are based on landmass since no people or internet lives on water).

 

I'm not saying Europe doesn't come with its own challenges to overcome, I'm saying there is a lot more return on investment for building infrastructure since it takes less time and money per person you hookup with service. so its easier to grow and manage.

 

10 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

but if it's all about small sizes and heterogeneous areas, then you are basically saying the US could achieve the same by slicing the ISP market into European-sized slices...

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that if you want to lay fiber in Canada from the east coast to the west coast you need to have someone who will pay for 5000KM+ worth of fibre(times by however many lines you need to support the bandwidth that is going to be traveling between those points, and the bandwidth that is going to be going in/out out to the rest of the world through these lines). My local ISP in Saskatchewan isn't going to invest money in laying lines in British Colombia or Nova Scotia (especially since my ISP doesn't exist in those areas, and their ISP's don't exist in my area). That problem may not exist where you live, and where you live things may be run differently than where I live, but this conversation has gone too far off topic for me to spend any more effort on this.

 

Gave up my whole evening trying to help people understand why things are the way they are, coming from first hand experience in this field. But the keyboard warriors who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about and less than 0 experience with understanding how things work are just too numerous for my noble efforts. GG forum. GG

 

 

TL;DR "You don't know what you're talking about"

 

6 minutes ago, mvitkun said:

He's talking about this article.

 

I find myself too worn out tonight after the nonsense of this thread to really look into that article. is there any way you could sum it up for me? (at a quick glance I would just wager that its 97% on the monthly income without accounting for installation, maintenance, or upkeep costs... but I've not read the article, so who knows. I don't really know what I'm talking about)

[SpaceGhostC2C]

31 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

Its not "wrong", and its certainly not "irrelevant"

 

That is a map I just found on google (no telling how accurate it is or isn't, but lets assume its reasonably accurate) that super-imposes NA onto Europe. Europe and Canada are about the same size (EUR = 10.18m KM2, CAN = 9.985m KM2, according to google). Canada has approximately 35-40 million people living in it. Europe has about 750 million people living in it. Its an area about the same size with more than 20x additional people living in it. If you look at USA (320mill, 9.857m KM2, according to google)  compare to Europe, you have about 2.35x as many people in about the same area. (the size parameters are based on landmass since no people or internet lives on water).

 

I'm not saying Europe doesn't come with its own challenges to overcome, I'm saying there is a lot more return on investment for building infrastructure since it takes less time and money per person you hookup with service. so its easier to grow and manage.

 

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that if you want to lay fiber in Canada from the east coast to the west coast you need to have someone who will pay for 5000KM+ worth of fibre(times by however many lines you need to support the bandwidth that is going to be traveling between those points, and the bandwidth that is going to be going in/out out to the rest of the world through these lines). My local ISP in Saskatchewan isn't going to invest money in laying lines in British Colombia or Nova Scotia (especially since my ISP doesn't exist in those areas, and their ISP's don't exist in my area). That problem may not exist where you live, and where you live things may be run differently than where I live, but this conversation has gone too far off topic for me to spend any more effort on this.

 

Gave up my whole evening trying to help people understand why things are the way they are, coming from first hand experience in this field. But the keyboard warriors who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about and less than 0 experience with understanding how things work are just too numerous for my noble efforts. GG forum. GG

 

 

TL;DR "You don't know what you're talking about"

 

I find myself too worn out tonight after the nonsense of this thread to really look into that article. is there any way you could sum it up for me? (at a quick glance I would just wager that its 97% on the monthly income without accounting for installation, maintenance, or upkeep costs... but I've not read the article, so who knows. I don't really know what I'm talking about)

That's a map that excludes like the whole Russia?

That's still ignoring the fact that you don't want to connect Berlin with Bremen, but Berlin with California? Or with Saskatchewan all the same? The local ISP won't build lines all the way there, but they'll have to pay to whoever did, or they won't have anything to sell in the first place.

 

You are not trying to explain anything. You are just saying "trust me, I know, you don't" over and over. Maybe you were trying back with the road analogy (which was the right one to use as opposed to the oreo one), but now you moved through condescension all the way to plain rant about everyone being ignorant and not listening to your wise voice.

Get some anger management, dude. You're getting triggered by people you don't know in an internet forum. Think about it. Do you really need that much everyone's validation, that even the last 12-year old troll agrees with your rightful argument, and every little sub-argument within it, to feel indignation when it doesn't happen? You've been claiming all day to work in the ISP industry, so you do your job, and apparently people in your company, and by extension your industry, values your skills and knowledge, and you are raging about complete strangers not accurately assessing your understanding of these matters?

Save some energy for the day we all agree with you but instead your boss or your colleague doesn't.

[Zyndo]

44 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

1.That's a map that excludes like the whole Russia?

2.That's still ignoring the fact that you don't want to connect Berlin with Bremen, but Berlin with California? Or with Saskatchewan all the same? The local ISP won't build lines all the way there, but they'll have to pay to whoever did, or they won't have anything to sell in the first place.

 

3.You are not trying to explain anything. 4. You are just saying "trust me, I know, you don't" over and over. Maybe you were trying back with the road analogy (which was the right one to use as opposed to the oreo one), but now you moved through condescension all the way to plain rant about everyone being ignorant and not listening to your wise voice.

5.Get some anger management, dude. You're getting triggered by people you don't know in an internet forum. Think about it. Do you really need that much everyone's validation, that even the last 12-year old troll agrees with your rightful argument, to feel indignation when it doesn't happen? You've been claiming all day to work in the ISP industry, so you do your job, and apparently people in your company, and by extension your industry, values your skills and knowledge, 6. and you are raging about complete strangers not accurately assessing your understanding of these matters?

7. Save some energy for the day we all agree with you but instead your boss or your colleague doesn't.

1. The majority of Russia is in Asia, not Europe.

2. People were saying their local ISP's made every line for their entire countries, which they very often do not (certainly there are exceptions to that, but it wouldn't be the industry as a whole). That was my more recent point, so I'm glad we agree about something.

3. I'm am going through a great deal of effort to explain everything. each of my posts have been nearly essays explaining to people why certain misconceptions of theirs are wrong. I'm not sure how much more you want.

4.Yes, you should trust me. I have a large amount of first hand experience in this field (I'm by no means an expert, but i know a great deal more about it than the average bear) No, you don't know unless you have first hand experience with it (which they very large vast majority of people in the world do not). But I'm not "just" saying only that, I'm providing in depth examples as to how/why people don't know what they're talking about. "The only evil in the world is ignorance. the only cure for ignorance is knowledge." (horrible paraphrase of some famous quite from some famous dude). I've never escalated from condescension. my message has always been the same: "You don't know what you're talking about"... because you don't. there is nothing wrong with being uninformed/misinformed. There are absolutely subjects in the world of which I'm ignorant (such as the ISP situation in Romania). that is simply how it is. I figured this was a good place to help a couple people become less ignorant about this topic.

5. I'm Canadian. We don't get angry, we get apologetic (lol). But for real, nothing I've said in this post has been out of anger. I'm just trying to help others (another great Canadian trait) understand what they clearly do not. I don't need anyones validation or approval. I don't care if the 12 yr old troll gets a kick out of me, i'm not here for them. I'm here for the person who genuinely doesn't understand why ISP's operate the way they do.

6. I'm not raging at complete strangers. I'm not raging at all. You should hear some of the language people call us with at work (did you know I work at an ISP? cool story right?). they call in when their internet is unsatisfactory for them (even if its working 100% correctly within the boundaries of their plan) and they yell, and they swear, and they give out death threats, and so on. That is what rage sounds like. that is what anger sounds like. Just because I'm informing you about how it is and how it isn't, doesn't mean its angry. It just is how it is. My apologies if that has somehow not translated well in text.

7. Nobody has to agree with me. I'm not going to fix this problem for everyone. I cannot educate everyone. Someday there will be enough internet for everyone and my efforts will have almost nothing to do with that. But if even 1 person who reads this forum becomes a bit more enlightened, then the next time their friend rages about their internet, they may have a similar conversation with them. and then if that friend has a similar conversation with another friend, and so on, and so on, then maybe I'll get lucky enough to have one less death threat when I go into work Monday morning..... and that would be nice =)

 

P.s. "You don't know what you're talking about" and have a nice day

[MilkJugg24]

Not even going to bother reading the article.

 

I'll just use my own metaphor...

 

"Making consumers pay for data caps is like f***ing retarded."

 

/thread

[IhazHedont]

32 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

2. People were saying their local ISP's made every line for their entire countries, which they very often do not (certainly there are exceptions to that, but it wouldn't be the industry as a whole). That was my more recent point, so I'm glad we agree about something.

 

If I'm correct, this is the case in France.

 

We currently have 4 ISP's:

Free which is using xDSL (once installed by France Telecom for the phone lines) and FTTH fiber (they are actually cabling it, vertically, and horizontally); 

Orange which was France Telecom and Bouygues Telecom, both using xDSL and FTTH (they're both cabling their own network);

Then comes SFR/Numericables, using exclusively coaxial cables, for both "regular", and fiber clients (FTTla); in both cases, they installed it.

 

Please note that the network is not shared between ISP's (which is sometimes a problem for underground management). Therefore, except xDSL which is using all copper phone lines, every French ISP is cabling his own fiber network, aren't they ?

[AlTech]

6 hours ago, Ramamataz said:

No no no. How about shut your fucking mouth you greedy asses. You make more than enough money to fix and implement more cabling and equipment to provide better internet.  If I keep paying you for data or internet, you shouldn't be able to limit my ass, unless IT CLEARLY STATES " THIS IS A LIMITED INTERNET PLAN " and none of that fine little print bullshit either where a consumer is tricked into purchasing a internet plan that does't look limited but in the end is. 

 

Stop with the BS companies. 

 

 

Please. Tell those damn stupid ISPs that they can kiss goodbye to people's contract if this behavior continues.

[Fetzie]

4 hours ago, Zyndo said:

They are physically smaller, making it cheaper, easier, and quicker to upgrade their internet. Being that they're smaller, they also have greater population densities, resulting in cheaper access to more customers/money for ISP's to expand their networks on. All the American "greed" in the world cannot circumvent this problem.

They also didn't have any infrastructure prior to the installation of the new stuff, so they skipped copper entirely and installed fibre everywhere.

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, Zyndo said:

They are physically smaller, making it cheaper, easier, and quicker to upgrade their internet. Being that they're smaller, they also have greater population densities, resulting in cheaper access to more customers/money for ISP's to expand their networks on. All the American "greed" in the world cannot circumvent this problem.

By that logic, areas like New Jersey should have some of the best Internet in the entire world.

Tokyo, which has some of the fastest Internet in the world, is not even in the top 40 most dense populated cities.

 

 

Some of the blame for the US's terrible Internet infrastructure can be blamed on geography, but it seems to me like the vast majority of the blame should fall on the ISPs, or more specifically a lack of competition. Where I live, several municipalities got together to create an organization that built and does maintenance on fiber connections. ISPs are then allowed to use these connections. As a result of this, I can choose between 25 different ISPs, and they are all competing against each other to provide the best possible deal for me as a customer. Do you think any of them got bandwidth caps? Of course not. Even the thought of introducing that would be a business suicide since I got 24 other companies all offering me unlimited bandwidth (and I use that library, often reaching ~1.5TB a month from my desktop alone, not counting my TV, laptop, phones, or other devices and users).

 

 

 

The problem I see with bandwidth caps is that they are nothing more than a way for ISPs to extract more money from their customers. For cellular and satellite Internet I agree that they are necessary, but for fiber, ADSL and cable? No way. The most common excuse seems to be that they are there to prevent users from using too much bandwidth. The problem with this excuse is that there is already a way for ISPs to handle that, and it's to make different plans have different speeds. If their network can't handle their users using the plan they are actually being sold then you should not sell it to begin with. It's like making a road with a speed limit of 60Mhp, but then tell everyone "please don't drive faster than 10Mph because the road might break". If you want people to drive slower then lower the speed limit. 

If your speed limit becomes pathetically slow then it's time to upgrade your network. Don't pretend like these ISPs can't afford to build better networks either. AT&T recently spent over 1.3 billion dollars building a sports stadium.

 

But when you sell a 32Mbps data plan and your network supposedly can only handle 800Kbps then you have bigger issues than "our customers are using too much data".

 

ISPs are double dipping, and they are getting away with it because of monopolies. You can not compare Internet connections to water or electricity because while they are "pay for as much as you use", ISPs has an additional "pay for how fast you want it to be" fee. Even on cellular where they have a bandwidth cap they generally don't have a speed cap.

 

 

People would be outraged if your water company started charging for how fast you wanted the water to be delivered on top of how much water.

Different types of water subscriptions:
 

Quote

 

Low tier - The affordable option. The flow rate is limited to the average flow rate a person uses to fill a glass of water. If you got a few hours to spare then it will be fast enough to take a bath with. Although, the water might be very cold when the tub is actually filled.

Medium tier - We have discovered the optimal amount of pressure needed to shower, and that is the flow rate we limit you to with this tier! In order to shower while someone else in the house for example taps up a glass of water we recommend our "medium + low tier" option which gives you a decent rebate.

Big user tier - For the user who wants to use a lot of water. Tired of not being able to wash your car or water your garden on the medium plan? Then this plan is for you! This plan is perfect for someone with a garden or who doesn't want to wait 40 minutes to take a bath!

 

*Additional fees depending on amount of water used will apply.

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Fetzie said:

They also didn't have any infrastructure prior to the installation of the new stuff, so they skipped copper entirely and installed fibre everywhere.

Bullshit. Do you seriously think that most European cities were built after, or never had access to telephone lines? ADSL is very widely used for a reason... Same with cable Internet.

May I remind you that cities in the US are often newer than European cities? Hence the "New" in names like "New York", "New Jersey" and "New Hampshire".

[patrickjp93]

6 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

By that logic, areas like New Jersey should have some of the best Internet in the entire world.

Tokyo, which has some of the fastest Internet in the world, is not even in the top 40 most dense populated cities.

 

 

Some of the blame for the US's terrible Internet infrastructure can be blamed on geography, but it seems to me like the vast majority of the blame should fall on the ISPs, or more specifically a lack of competition. Where I live, several municipalities got together to create an organization that built and does maintenance on fiber connections. ISPs are then allowed to use these connections. As a result of this, I can choose between 25 different ISPs, and they are all competing against each other to provide the best possible deal for me as a customer. Do you think any of them got bandwidth caps? Of course not. Even the thought of introducing that would be a business suicide since I got 24 other companies all offering me unlimited bandwidth (and I use that library, often reaching ~1.5TB a month from my desktop alone, not counting my TV, laptop, phones, or other devices and users).

 

 

 

The problem I see with bandwidth caps is that they are nothing more than a way for ISPs to extract more money from their customers. For cellular and satellite Internet I agree that they are necessary, but for fiber, ADSL and cable? No way. The most common excuse seems to be that they are there to prevent users from using too much bandwidth. The problem with this excuse is that there is already a way for ISPs to handle that, and it's to make different plans have different speeds. If their network can't handle their users using the plan they are actually being sold then you should not sell it to begin with. It's like making a road with a speed limit of 60Mhp, but then tell everyone "please don't drive faster than 10Mph because the road might break". If you want people to drive slower then lower the speed limit. 

If your speed limit becomes pathetically slow then it's time to upgrade your network. Don't pretend like these ISPs can't afford to build better networks either. AT&T recently spent over 1.3 billion dollars building a sports stadium.

 

But when you sell a 32Mbps data plan and your network supposedly can only handle 800Kbps then you have bigger issues than "our customers are using too much data".

 

ISPs are double dipping, and they are getting away with it because of monopolies. You can not compare Internet connections to water or electricity because while they are "pay for as much as you use", ISPs has an additional "pay for how fast you want it to be" fee. Even on cellular where they have a bandwidth cap they generally don't have a speed cap.

 

 

People would be outraged if your water company started charging for how fast you wanted the water to be delivered on top of how much water.

Different types of water subscriptions:
 

 

At least in Ringoes, NJ, you can get 130Mb down/40 up despite being on a 50/10 plan, and from Comcast no less.

 

ADSL really just can't handle much better than 20Mb/s total.

[Sakkura]

6 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

Over much less area with generally much more forgiving terrain. Oh, also, the U.S. built the backbone for it at the end of WWII...

Not true.

 

The US has a population density of 33 per square km, and 45% agricultural land, 33% forest, 22% other.

 

Sweden has a population density of 22 per square km, and just 8% agricultural land, with 69% forest and 24% other.

 

And yet, Sweden has better internet service for lower prices than the US. The Akamai ranking for Q3 2015 had Sweden in second place globally, with an average speed of 17.4 mbps. The US was in 14th place with an average speed of 12.6 mbps. And OECD data for 2015 showed lower broadband prices in Sweden than the US.

[patrickjp93]

3 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Not true.

 

The US has a population density of 33 per square km, and 45% agricultural land, 33% forest, 22% other.

 

Sweden has a population density of 22 per square km, and just 8% agricultural land, with 69% forest and 24% other.

 

And yet, Sweden has better internet service for lower prices than the US. The Akamai ranking for Q3 2015 had Sweden in second place globally, with an average speed of 17.4 mbps. The US was in 14th place with an average speed of 12.6 mbps. And OECD data for 2015 showed lower broadband prices in Sweden than the US.

Sweden is population-dense along the coasts with far fewer people in the middle of nowhere. It's easy to lay fiber for that. More people in the U.S. live in rural areas proportionally vs. Sweden and over a VASTLY larger area, and then you have our mountain ranges and tougher rock to deal with (and the major rivers), not to mention the total distance.

[Sakkura]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

Sweden is population-dense along the coasts.

And so is the US, genius.

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

It's easy to lay fiber for that. More people in the U.S. live in rural areas proportionally vs. Sweden and over a VASTLY larger area, and then you have our mountain ranges and tougher rock to deal with (and the major rivers), not to mention the total distance.

Most people in the US live in densely populated areas. Both countries are about equally urbanized.

 

Sweden has a mountain range too, and overall the proportion of poorly accessible land is greater in Sweden than the US.

[patrickjp93]

1 minute ago, Sakkura said:

And so is the US, genius.

Most people in the US live in densely populated areas. Both countries are about equally urbanized.

 

Sweden has a mountain range too, and overall the proportion of poorly accessible land is greater in Sweden than the US.

Sweden more so. Just because its cities are not as dense does not mean a greater majority of people cannot live in them vs. the total population (and it does, btw).

 

And that poorly accessible land is largely not lived in in Sweden, and even where it is, they just get satellite.

[Sakkura]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

Sweden more so. Just because its cities are not as dense does not mean a greater majority of people cannot live in them vs. the total population (and it does, btw).

 

And that poorly accessible land is largely not lived in in Sweden, and even where it is, they just get satellite.

No, not more so. Sweden's cities are just as dense, the fact of the matter is they make up the same portion of the population as the US, and Swedes are just as liable to live in rural areas as Americans.

 

Yeah and that poorly accessible land is also not inhabited in the US.

 

The evidence is clear: When it comes to physical accessibility and population density, Sweden has it tougher than the US when it comes to providing internet access. Yet Swedes on average get significantly faster internet for significantly lower prices than in the US. That conclusively proves the geography/demography excuses wrong.