The author misses a few key points about the American model:
First, in exchange for the local territorial monopoly, the providers are supposed to be heavily regulated by the local (or State) government, with controls in place to prevent abuse of the monopoly and promote the interests of its residents. Of course, we all know how business interests influence government to make business- friendly regulations. Governments have the ability to enforce more user-friendly practices, if they choose to do so.
But the more important point is that in the US, we hand out different monopolies based on the connection type. For instance, where I live we have one company that owns the twisted-pair POTS landlines, a different company that owns the coaxial cable TV service, and another company that owns the direct fiber to the home. Three companies, three connections to each home, all three (theoretically) capable of delivering the same services, since there is no longer any real differentiation between voice, video, and data service: it’s all just bits.
We just got our FTTH provider only recently. Before that, our choices were only the cable company or the telco’s astonishingly show DSL. So I subscribed to the Cable company, and their pricing model tried to force you into a bundle for the other services. Their speeds were also quite slow for broadband, until the Fiber company started digging. Then I got all sorts of emails saying “we’re increasing your speed – for free!” And sure enough, I was getting better bandwidth. But all that did was piss me off. These losers could have given me that better service all along, but didn’t bother until they were forced to.
So I’m on the fiber now. But I know how it works, this service will be awesome at first, but once this company finishes building out they won’t sign on any new capacity and it will gradually get shittier over time. It’s the American Way!
(And I still pay the local telco way too much money for a POTS landline. What can I say, I’m an old.)
Thanks. I just woke up, and now I’m several different kinds of angry instead of just one kind of angry.
Why bother with coffee?
Would it help if you knew we paid providers billions of dollars in the 90s for fiber and they ran off with the profits, and we got nothing? So it took almost 2 decades after we paid them, to finally get gigabit speeds, on top of paying them again to do it for reals this time.
They didn’t respond due to aneurysm
Especially no, mostly because I actually finally got fiber when I lived in New York City, but, due to a family emergency, I recently had to move to Florida, where… Well… Florida…
Have you considered porting your landline to a VoIP provider?
Yes, I have. But when I noted I was old, I should have added I am also lazy.
😂 Haha, well I can’t help you there on account of my own!
Yep. Infrastructure shouldn’t be privately owned.
Note This article is written by me and spell checked with AI. Many of the images are generated by AI. They are mostly to explain certain points and break up the wall of text.
Well FUCK YOU!
Use your word processor to spell check, and buy stock photos taken by humans, which have probably been ripped off to train that AI.
Your disclaimer doesn’t legitimize anything.
Yep I saw that it had AI slop and immediately closed the window.
Frankly idgaf what an AI user has to say.
In Spain many towns have some tiny local ISP that offers fiber. My town (population 30k) has two local ISPs. I can get 10Gbit for 30 euros/month. Even remote villages have fiber.
And then there’s germany: I pay 43 Euros a month for only 100 MBit/s via cable. Nice to see how fckn far behind we are lol.
Pro tip: move to Schleswig-Holstein, where every village has fiber lol. 86% availability vs the german average of 12%
But do they also have reasonable prices? When Telekom finally put fiber at our street their offers were so stupid, that basically everybody kept cable.
For starters they limit upload for no reason. Then they capped at 1 GB and wanted like 130€ for that. At the time I had the very same on cable for only 45 € or such, so I basically told them “give me prices and speed like in Switzerland and you have a deal”. The sales guy only asked me “why do you want that much upload?”. Like, because there’s no reason for you to limit it at all, only greed.
Lot’s of places have local ISPs wth very reasonable pricing. Unfortunately the scamlords from Telekom also own some of the regions.
I don’t think that’s too bad, sounds like Germany has come a long way.
My 1Gbps would be around 50 in Denmark (if I didn’t work for an isp lol)
1Gb/s symmetrical fibre 9eur/month here in Romania… And happy to say it’s rock solid/advertised speed.
Alas, Digi’s 10Gb/s product seems to be mostly vapourware (the installer asked if I wanted it - for an extra eur/month IIRC - but any mention has disappeared from the website.) That said, I said no anyway because the thought of upgrading all my equipment to actually do anything with it doesn’t make me at all happy…
Our economy is a bit different, no offense, and that pricing seems fair to me :)
I can download whatever I need in <5 minutes and that’s totally sufficient for me.
Of course; that’s why PPP is the only sensible way to compare economies when you’re discussing individual experience.
There are much more interesting reasons than “ugh, me big rich western man, proud overpay not europoor” why Romanian internet is cheaper than western though; after all, GDP PP PPP in Romania is 60% of Denmark or half of Switzerland (and only a shade off the EU average these days), but fibre internet is between one fifth and one eighth of the price apparently. Particularly surprising when you consider that Denmark must be the easiest country to wire up in the world (very small and geographically unremarkable.) I would think a curious mind would want to know why…
geographically unremarkable
True, but ouch
Don’t sweat it to much. That’s almost the same pricing and speed I have in Finland, but it’s no fiber and there is just 1 internet service provider for the physical cable.
I pay that much for 500 Mbit on cable Internet. Sadly it has carrier grade NAT.
But here in merica cable internet providers have done everything they can to stop fiber from happening.
They do this through legal injunction. They don’t play fair they have the courts stop compilation for them.
because America keeps giving money to broadband companies, who promise to improve internet speeds and access… give the money to executives as bonuses, do shit all with speeds or access, and their reward is another dumptruck of money to expand access and speeds… Which they 20 return to 10 and give it all out as executive bonuses again and do fuck all for the customer/citizens
oh, and when municipalities try to run their own broadband, they force them to shut down because its not fair for them to compete with the monopolistic internet companies. 🙄
I wish this was just in the USA but numerous countries in the EU handed out billions upon billions to private companies to roll out VDSL and then fibre connections (GPON) and the public owns none of what has been made despite paying for it all and the bonuses on top. Now the higher speeds are grossly more expensive than the old DSL lines used to be and they are turning those all off and getting to pocket the increased prices.
corporatism is a plague all over the world.
Because America is a Banana Republic with nukes and wall street.
This isn’t particularly unique. India, Pakistan, France, UK, Israel and Russia would match that description. Many of the listed countries are better at doing internet than the states.
And fweedum!
fweedumb*
Lmao. I have 25 Mbps. Let alone 25 Gbps. Thanks Malcolm turnballs
I’m out in the country in Colorado. I have a small local ISP. I can get 10Gb if I want it. I have 100Mb because that’s all I need. Honestly, for most people, I really don’t know what you’d do with 25Gb. Even 10Gb is tough for alot of home users. The equipment is out there and not even that expensive, but its also not something most people own. Most people who own that sort of stuff are either home labbers or tech enthusiasts. And even if most people did, they would rarely use it to its full potential. For most people 2.5Gb is far more practical. Oddly enough it can be harder and more expensive to get your hands on than 10Gb because it’s just starting to really penetrate the consumer market, where 10Gb was common in datacenters for a long time, so used equipment is quite reasonable.
The biggest issue with ISPs in the US is that you have legacy players entrenched in a market and unwilling to spend the money to do upgrades. The main reason I have what I have is because a local company saw an opportunity to go into a space others were failing badly at and used a state grant to help fund the buildout. Soon, I may have a second option because my electric co-op is working on their own build. Since they answer to their members and not the stock market, now that fiber is cheap, they can build this stuff widely. We need more of all that.
Man, all I want is square speeds. I’d be happier with 100Mbps square than I am with my current 400/40Mbps down/up, even if it was the same price. I’m a video creator and self-hoster, 40Mbps up is not enough.
Any fiber internet is generally symmetrical. I have yet to see any that isn’t
I live in a big city in the US and the best internet option I have is 1Gb through Verizon, and my apartment complex is making a deal with Comcast so that’s going to go away leaving only 100Mb. I have a homelab setup which is why I was willing to pay more for the 1Gb.
Oh wow not going to lie I’m kind of jealous. I’d pull the trigger on 10 gbps in a heartbeat. I’m in CA and crapcast offered me overpriced 1 gbps down & 40 mbps up. Yes, you read that right, 40 mbps up in 2026. Didn’t have much of a choice so I bought it. I have my own homelab, download a lot of 4k linux isos, and completely saturate my both download & upload bandwidth around the clock
To make you even more jealous, the 100Mbps I pay for tests as that, both up and down. For $48/month, no billing shenanigans. I had 1Gbps for a bit and it was testing near gigabit ethernet’s theoretical maximum, both up and down. Fiber to the rack is kind of awesome. Oh and when I call for tech support, I get somebody local. I’ve actually gotten one of the owners before. And they do a yearly Halloween party/customer appreciation day. Talking with one of the owners, it’s like he practically expects that people are going to be downloading those 4k Linux isos.
You’d probably like what I had before - awful DSL. I was near the maximum limit for DSL. The technician said the line could do 15Mbps. I usually ended up around 12. And I was the lucky one. Some of my neighbors were like 1.5. So glad to dump Centurylink.
I would be happy to have any fiber at all. The only options here are satellite and DSL. The DSL is basically unusable and only available to existing customers. I’m pretty sure the ISP wants to make everyone cancel so they don’t have to maintain the copper lines anymore.
They do. Copper lines are all converted to digital and fiber upstream, but the government says they have to maintain the copper for now because some people still rely on it.
Same here. I have 80-90 Mbps download with up to 20 Mbps upload max at best conditions. Still better than no internet.
Lol mine is 9M/1M and that’s an improvement from the 500k/500k I use to pay CenturyLink $60/month for
That sucks, honestly.
Here in Sweden I have over 20 choices of providers, many with specific a focus. One that is superb, which is the one I have, don’t do any tracking or information gathering at all. They are fully focused on privacy, an open Internet and have helped countries in need, like Ukraine, with hardware to keep Internet access on. They’ve been raided and taken to court over not following the required IP address storage laws and some other things of deliberately not collecting information. Their newsletter is so good too, all about privacy and relevant tech news. Seriously couldn’t dream of a better ISP.
ISP name?
the ISP name is [redacted to maintain anonymity]
Now we just need some decentralised stuff so that we can communicate directly with one and another.
Interesting!
Do you know where people discuss things like this? ( I have my own similar protocol.)
Unfortunately I don’t. I’ve only seen a couple youtube videos covering it and other similar mesh networks (LoRa). I’m getting more and more tempted to buy some hardware and find out how it actually works though.
I sifted through the site and checked out the git repo but the only real information I found is that it’s made by some Mark Qvist. The search goes on, I’m very curious about how they do the “DNS”/address propagation.
Lemmy is so volatile, I’d love some old forum where information like this piles up 😁.
On a side note, here’s my shameless plug for my “P2P” sharing protocol Tenfingers if you would like to check it out ☺️.
Cries in German
So?
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah, warum??? Warummmm???”
Kohl
I suppose there’s a long German word that describes that feeling.
Yeah but the Swiss say it wrong.
Neuland
1Gbit for 40€ per month here in Germany, the US is much worse afaik.
For me 1 Gbit fiber is 70 €, only copper is cheaper with 45 €
I’m paying for fiber, copper here would be more expensive for less speed lol.
They put it in a few years ago in the whole neighnorhood.
If the internet had been around back when the U.S. Constitution was written, instead of post offices, the framers would have put in ISPs.
I’m sure this will be lost in the comments but you CAN get 25GBit here in 'murica. My ISP offers it… But this ISP is also considered one of the best in the world so… https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/#choose-your-plan
Lol $1500 a month. JFC.
Right? I’d rather get 3x10gbit and bond them together.
Just for reference Init7 offers 25 Gbit/s for 65 CHF a month. Thats about 83 USD.
They have the same monthly price for 1 Gbit/s 10 Gbit/s and 25 Gbit/s. Only the initial install for the higher speed optics costs 77 CHF or 222 CHF more respectively.
I’m still on their 1Gbit/s service because I’m too lazy and cheap to replace my router and LAN with 10 Gbit/s equipment.
Most hardware does 2.5Gbps out of the box these days.
I’ve had 1Gbps for 13 years now (in Denmark) and can comfortably say: it’s plenty
True most motherboards, even the normal ones, now come with 2.5G included. But upgrading to 2.5 G feels like a wasted middle step if the next tier of external connectivity is at 10G, so I’ve not done that either haha
Those are insane prices. I live in Brazil and I have gigabit internet for 32-ish dollars.
Are those converted to USD?
How much do you make in salary after taxes?Because as far as I read everywhere about US and salaries, it’s not that unusual for regular skilled jobs to achieve 6-figure yearly salaries.
it’s not that unusual for regular skilled jobs to achieve 6-figure yearly salaries.
This is a… very messy and complicated area to talk about and there are plenty of stats and data setsyou can cherry pick to make things sound better than they are. Consider things like median vs average, whether or not you excluded retired folks, etc.
This graphic is a decent toe in the water:
It costs me $120 for internet after discount for 2 gig Xfinity, and the upload isn’t symmetric. America is a ripoff.
That’s daylight robbery, how is that one of the best in the world ?
Dang I pay $900 for 5gbit
$30/mo for 10 Gbit here in Japan. They just started offering 25 Gbit in parts of Tokyo this month for $200/mo
I really am hoping to leave the US in the next year or so, unfortunately Japan wasn’t on my list but…maybe for that…
Your casually picking a country to move to based on internet speed is nuts lol.
Why do you want a 25 gbps speed if you’re not running a data centre?
Nice. Used to live in chat. Miss epb internet.
Google tried to break regional US monopolies with Google Fiber, which to my surprise is still going despite Google’s best efforts to kill off projects that aren’t immediately successful and is active in 19 US states or around 40 different cities.
The only way I can see this catastrophe ending is one of three ways:
- Satellite internet - Elon Musk would need to massively drop the price of Starlink to encourage others to switch, or a competitor would need to pop up and offer similar service at a lower price point, likely through Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic.
- The US collectively vote the Republicans out of office by a landslide and bring in a left-wing Democrat leader. Won’t happen for so many reasons.
- Mesh networks. Something like Freifunk but on a much bigger scale.
Not only is Google Fiber still going, it actually has begun expanding service again after being stuck in limbo for a while.
It’s a strange one, to be sure, but I guess they see a benefit to the infrastructure they built.
Google Fiber unfortunately got sold to a private equity company and merged with Astound.
Google Fiber is massively expanding in my state. They blew through my neighborhood in about a week getting the lines installed at the street. Then a month or so later were setting up the per house installs. I’ve only had it a few months now.
I got this email on March 26th though. Once their expansion slows and the number of new subscribers starts to taper off I expect the full enshitification process to begin.
Interesting. So ultimately Google is divesting itself of the responsibility and cost of the network.
Given that the pricing is already pretty high compared to what it used to be, I won’t be surprised if it begins to creep up again in due time.
