5G is supposed to fix all those "last mile" access issues. Won't be cheap though, investment will need to be amortized...

SoNic675G is supposed to fix all those "last mile" access issues. Won't be cheap though, investment will need to be amortized...

I hope US Cellular doesn't ever get their hands on 5G. They can't even do 3G or 4GLTE correctly. Its pathetic. Where I live, they are still using their ORIGINAL tower. Its not even 100ft tall. They put it in back in 2001. So we barely get service here.

Thankfully, Verizon has put up a tower just about 1 mile outside of town which offers JUST 4GLTE. (no 3G or 1XRTT as they shut down both of those networks here) Where I live, US Cellular in their HOME NETWORK in Northeast Missouri, only offers 3G or 1XRTT. (ughh, 1X RTT... It sucks badly... Lucky to even get 30Kbps with it)

The fun bit is that they have to do the work to enable this. The way the Internet is constructed means you can't be guaranteed that the packets travel the same path every time. This is nonsense, and thank you Great Fighter For Liberty for showing us the way.

SoNic67Then move there.

And find out that even if the "price" of the Internet you think is better, the wages are also so much lower. So all in all, it costs you an equal amount of time in your life to pay for that service.
Plus you have to live in crowded cities, in blocks next to blocks, to allow for the economy of that cheap service delivery to work too.

Hang on. This is very much not general. The median income in the US is lower than many EU nations, and at least in Sweden you can generally get fiber in many, many small towns (and villages), with prices ranging from <€10/month and €30 (depending on who owns the local fiber network) for 100/100. In many places (and remember we don't have many big urban areas) you can at this point get Gb for €50ish, all without data caps. And the wages are all fine.

FrickHang on. This is very much not general. The median income in the US is lower than many EU nations, and at least in Sweden you can generally get fiber in many, many small towns (and villages), with prices ranging from <€10/month and €30 (depending on who owns the local fiber network) for 100/100. In many places (and remember we don't have many big urban areas) you can at this point get Gb for €50ish, all without data caps. And the wages are all fine.

The speeds and services available has all to do with political decisions, and little to do with population densities.

UK population density: 275/sq km2 Internett service: BAD
US population density: 36/sq km2 Internett service: BAD
Norway population density: 15/sq km2 Internett service: God
Sweden population density: 24/sq km2 Internett service: God

As evident by the original news story, US policies allows for a internet with more “products” like the gaming service form COX.
I am not saying that either Norway or Sweden are some utopian paradises, but when it comes to internet legislation I get the impression that the end result is better here.

Crazy stuff... I've always wanted to visit Norway & Sweden...
Maybe because I have some Norwegian heritage? or maybe
because the women look better on average?....

BrusfantometThe speeds and services available has all to do with political decisions, and little to do with population densities.

UK population density: 275/sq km2 Internett service: BAD
US population density: 36/sq km2 Internett service: BAD
Norway population density: 15/sq km2 Internett service: God
Sweden population density: 24/sq km2 Internett service: God

As evident by the original news story, US policies allows for a internet with more “products” like the gaming service form COX.
I am not saying that either Norway or Sweden are some utopian paradises, but when it comes to internet legislation I get the impression that the end result is better here.

Those two European countries are also much smaller than the USA.

BrusfantometThe speeds and services available has all to do with political decisions, and little to do with population densities.

UK population density: 275/sq km2 Internett service: BAD
US population density: 36/sq km2 Internett service: BAD
Norway population density: 15/sq km2 Internett service: God
Sweden population density: 24/sq km2 Internett service: God

As evident by the original news story, US policies allows for a internet with more “products” like the gaming service form COX.
I am not saying that either Norway or Sweden are some utopian paradises, but when it comes to internet legislation I get the impression that the end result is better here.

Ayep. The point was that sonics post was pretty strange to me. The government here poured money into fibre development during the IT boom.

SlizzoThose two European countries are also much smaller than the USA.

Many forget this, and it matters. But many densely populated places in the US has bad service as I understand it, because there's no competition. As I understand it.

Sweden and Norway don't offer internet everywhere in their country. Their whole country density is low, but there are only small centers of urban population, highly concentrated in terms of population. Also when you have huge revenues from oil, reported to the total population, you can give away free stuff.

We need to consider the density of residential areas here, the areas that actually have wired Internet users.

Easy RhinoI'm not seeing anything wrong with this. Cox can choose to build out fast lanes in whatever manner they believe will make them the most money. It is their business. You can find another provider if it bothers you.

Look, I understand where you're coming from with free-market talk, but ISP's don't exist in a free market. It's the same as saying communities should privatize water, or deregulate power companies.

Much like water & power, many people in the US don't have a choice of internet providers, or don't have a reasonable alternative. Hell, some places only have 1 reliable provider(satellites can still go out fairly easily, some urban places don't allow satellites).

So in many places, it only takes a few ISP's to decide to also create fast lanes for all types of services and, unsurprisingly, all of a sudden you have an absolute anti-consumer crapshoot with no alternative other than to leave, but that doesn't hurt the provider, does it? People will just move into the vacated home/apartment/condo and eventually someone will just have to live with it because there's no alternative, and the likelihood of there being an alternative is slim-to-none because broadband infrastructure is limited(or they attempt to suea city for trying to build it's own).

SoNic67Sorry, you said everything right there. Competition works... when politicians don't get in the way. I won't say what party, but it can be found on wiki. We have the politicians that we elect. You feel you have different needs from your neighbors... maybe is time to move.


Helps that the urban areas are dense. In 80's the communists demolish large swaths of houses to build blocks in that place. So, early in the 90's, when capitalism started to flourish, it was very cheap to wire a lot of customers with cheap labor rates (wasn't part of EU yet).
Also there was a lack of IP law, so everyone wanted fast Internet to download games and videos... wild west times.

Yup lets just up and move to a different state giving up work and benefits, family, friends etc for faster internet.

Keep in mind. My road has Fiber, they ran straight up the road (not a customer line just to carry data) the customer lines are a few thousand feet apart. Spectrum / TWC / Adelphia as they were known literally laid the fiber out about 6-7 years ago, saw a stretch of road with 60 homes and just said fuck it lol. No competition insane prices etc.

Consolidated / Fairpoint well their DSL does offer up to 100 mbps but only in select areas, that said when they were owned by Verizon the lines here made them a large sum of money, They used that cash to improve infrastructure out of state. Once the lines were in need of repair (capitalism) they divested themselves of the company making it a separate entity after taking all its liquid assets. Leaving a shell that can't even maintain its basic business responsibilities.

But yeah lets just toss ones life away to move for better internet. I could move to the next big city and pay 3x the rent for less space, pay for parking etc. To be honest my biggest problem here is internet speeds. It has nothing to do with what my neighbors want. We all want faster speeds Spectrum just says fuck you same as Consolidated this is because some genius for the town signed a contract some 50 years ago with a previous company that is still valid after said companies are bought out. Contract valid cant do anything really. I mean yeah town could sue but town doesnt have the money for that so it wont happen.

I mean i guess I could pay for Hughes net i do live on a massive hill overlooking a huge chunk of blueberry fields and beautiful scenery signal would be good but meh high pin latency problems oh and $150 for 50GB data at which point its basically dial up speeds after that lol.

Hell in the end i would pay up to $100 a month for just 50 mbps when i used to pay around 45 for 100, now I pay 45 for 7 i get 3.5 with an unused DSL cabinet 100 ft away (wiring is in place but its deactivated even the head tech has no idea why instead the company insists on a 2 mile run from the main road through town. I also find it funny that Spectrum ran fiber up a multi mile less populated dirt road that offshoots from the one I live on giving customers service but left about a 1 mile stretch of dead mans land with more even more homes and customers untouched.

If capitalism is all about maximizing profit, why run fiber through a bog and no mans swamp land but avoid 60+ easy to access homes.

crazyeyesreaperBut yeah lets just toss ones life away to move for better internet. I could move to the next big city and pay 3x the rent for less space, pay for parking etc.

Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too... Do you think that those super cheap, super fast internet clients in Romania live on a 5 acres piece of land?

Lol most houses here are on an acre of land. again fiber was already run transmission lines on all roads and then service lines from both directions that stop just about a mile apart if that.

Then again could also be because TWC was incompetent hired third party contractors to "save money" only for the Fiber connectors used to be wrong and they had to redo a bunch of their "fiber loop" all over again. You know bad business decisions one after the other lol. But yeah long windy dirt road avg is about 2 ppl per mile vs 1 mile section that is 60 per mile. Where they did 99% of the work said fuck it on the 1% go figure. If i setup a house in a swap in the middle of nowhere i can get high speed straight section of road with 60 homes yup enjoy your 3.5 mbps DSL lol.

But i know why it was done this way. Local ISPs lobby our state for funding to develop last mile infrastructure in rural communities via vast grants. they point to dirt roads and bogs with few homes as an example of the customers they are attempting to service. Makes for good PR.

SoNic67Read a little about population density.

And sure, every one of those "evil" companies should give away free stuff... You start first, go to work and demand not to be paid for what you do. Oh, wait, probably you are not working anyway...

You keep going on about population density as though that actually justifies imposing limits on traffic or most of anything else that is actually happening. It doesn't. Sure, there's less incentive to get the infrastructure to cover sparsely populated areas. But once said area is covered, especially since there are so few users, given current technology, there is NO technical justification whatsoever regarding traffic limits. None. Higher ping/lag because of distance? Maybe, if they use obsolete equipment that was due to be scrapped a couple of decades ago. But traffic limits... just no... Heck, not even speed limits when so few users are serviced.

And yet, 'Merica has all sorts of limits imposed by ISPs all over the place, and ridiculous ones at that. If anything, densely populated areas would be the place where you'd ever encounter traffic so high that setting some sort of limit would theoretically, and at first glance only, make any sort of sense. Real life practically proves that DOESN'T happen though. The technology can easily handle the load, even in the U.S. of A. (as is clear from previous posts made by other users right on this topic).

But let's take a rather extreme example: Bucharest, Romania's capital city. You get 1Gbps fiber for a measly $9.5 (taxes included). You can choose from either one of five major ISPs. Although some of them don't cover some areas of the city just yet, you can still pick from at least three anywhere you may be. Either way, getting 1Gbps fiber connections is nothing and this service is available to literally everyone. And since you're so caught up on population density, you have about 8449 people per kilometer squared, that's about 21882 people per mile squared. New York has 26403 people per square mile. Managing the sheer amount of traffic requires some serious routing hardware along with sheer bandwidth. Cables aren't the issue here anymore. But what limitations are there in place for landlines as a result? None whatsoever. Speed? Hell yeah!!! Anywhere, anytime. Basically, you can use your internet connection whenever you want, for as long as you want, however you want. You can max out the damn thing 24/7 and nobody will bat a single eyelid. The only real bottleneck for Romanians nowadays are the speeds that can be sustained by the gear of the content providers (although Steam does a pretty good job, for example).

Now let's have a little look at the hardware. It's mostly the same hardware U.S. companies use. It's not like we get a price cut because we're from the EU or anything. Your circular logic regarding services being crap because the cost for the infrastructure for remote areas is high doesn't hold up: major population centers still get the crap services and crap limitations for ridiculously high prices that are in no way justified by the cost of the hardware. Sure, wages are a lot higher in the U.S., but saying that the entire amount the users pay goes into wages is like saying that the purchase price of a product should only cover manufacturing costs.

Let's get real here. I don't know what you think about Romania, but business owners here are even more resolute about getting the highest profit they can. What you're all (maybe willfully) ignoring is that what we get here in Romania was made possible by companies having to actually compete to attract users. What y'all get in the U.S. of A. is a result of collusion, price fixing and price gouging. That is, ISPs there have clearly made an arrangement NOT to compete to anywhere near the extent of their possibilities so that they can invest the bare minimum into the networking infrastructure/equipment/etc. while keeping prices sky-high. Cue everything Ferengi.

Y'all probably need a couple more decades of this to realize something that's obvious to people from ex-communist countries: progress won't happen if there's no incentive for it, the lack of progress leads to stagnation, which in turn leads to extinction. That's what happened to the commies: they couldn't compete because the system didn't reward those with the will to strive and improve. They fell behind technologically and when the gap was wide enough it led to the collapse and extinction of the entire system. Finding excuses for the companies' blatant anti-consumerist behavior does the same thing. The capitalist system only works so long as profit is a reward for competitiveness, which can only be gained and sustained by constant progress. People should enforce this by voting with their wallets, but this is impossible without the proper education. With the collapse of education, people can no longer enforce their end properly and that's when you need regulation: laws to ensure that companies hold up their end of the bargain.

And what do you do? You choose to empathize with companies and blame people, mistakenly thinking that as long as there's profit, everything works fine. And when the fall comes, and come it will should you stay this course, you won't even see it coming. It's not democracy that failed you, but your inability to empathize with humans and your over-eagerness to find excuses for corrupt behavior. Thieves have to make money too, not just companies, but you're far too willing to forgive a company for breaking the law.

Later Edit: Just for a bit of background, I work for one of those huge American corporations and part of what I do is to handle the local side of networking projects at all stages in Romania. I work with a lot of top-tier equipment and experts and I've been working since I was 19, which was a rather long time ago.

AssimilatorThis is how it should be done. If you make a internet access a utility like electricity and water, then it becomes mandatory for everyone to have internet access - in other words, exactly what Net Neutrality intends to achieve. It also allows you to have a government company that is responsible for building out and maintaining the network, which creates guaranteed jobs - ISPs can only rent parts of said network.

Alowing ISPs to build and own their own parts of the fibre network is a nice idea, but the problem is that they're never going to make provision for getting fibre to rural communities, because it isn't cost-effective. If you make internet access a utility, and require providers to set aside money to ensure rural communities are connected, then nobody gets left out. Fees overall will be higher, because the urban areas essentially end cup subsidising the rural ones, but that's the tradeoff you make for equal access.

As for Cox's "fast lane" service, it's not even snake oil, it's worse: they are essentially deprioritising gaming traffic for no other reason than they can, then charging people to get back to normal priority. Net Neutrality will prevent that too.

You, Sir, have the right idea here.

scorpion_amd13there is NO technical justification whatsoever regarding traffic limits. None.

Really? How about the specs of that technology?
Gosh... we are talking about DOCSIS with a chronically penury of upload bandwidth... shared too.

Collusion is just a conspiration theory. If it was that easy, over night 10 people would start up internet companies giving away free stuff. Like Google. There is nothing stopping you...
As for Romania, all the small investors from 90's got gobbled up by four big pocket guys: Telekom; Digi RCS&RDS; UPC; Orange. It's all the same, you step outside a big metropolis, you get jack...
Peace out!

SoNic67Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too...

In this case you can, if congress gets off its butt.

I mean you are talking about a thing way over 75% of the population support (net neutrality). How'd it even get repealed in the first place?

Oh yeah, the FCC head literally came from big telecom.

No problemo, A-OK, this is just capitalism at work to you?

If so, wow.

SoNic67Really? How about the specs of that technology?
Gosh... we are talking about DOCSIS with a chronically penury of upload bandwidth... shared too.

Yeah, and if there was competition, DOCSIS and copper would be pretty much the dead worst you can get in America. As it stands, it's often the best. Woo.

SoNic67Collusion is just a conspiration theory.

ISP collusion for maximal profit you mean? No, no it's not. I live in a friggin' "collusion zone." It's a comcast only hellhole. Qwest/century link used to offer... something, but comcast paid to make them go away... by gifting them a section of downtown.

it's friggin orchestrated man.

SoNic67Sweden and Norway don't offer internet everywhere in their country. Their whole country density is low, but there are only small centers of urban population, highly concentrated in terms of population. Also when you have huge revenues from oil, reported to the total population, you can give away free stuff.

We need to consider the density of residential areas here, the areas that actually have wired Internet users.

Um. What? If you mean "we don't have fiber up here" then yeah, but we do have fiber here, here and here. And here, but that's because they built a big wind park in the area so they needed fiber. DSL covers smaller villages, and at this point this is our 4G cover from our biggest phone service provider and if you're desperate you have this wonderful 450 Mhz net which is the oldest cell network in the world, which now can do up to a few Mb/s in good spots. The last one has no data caps.

Hey guys, access to the Internet is not a right in the US. If you are talking about ISPs in the US you can stop because you cannot make any legal argument that forces a business to provide you a specific level of service. Thanks for playing and stay safe out there.

Easy RhinoHey guys, access to the Internet is not a right in the US. If you are talking about ISPs in the US you can stop because you cannot make any legal argument that forces a business to provide you a specific level of service. Thanks for playing and stay safe out there.

That justifies no Net Neutrality how?

SoNic67Sweden and Norway don't offer internet everywhere in their country. Their whole country density is low, but there are only small centers of urban population, highly concentrated in terms of population. Also when you have huge revenues from oil, reported to the total population, you can give away free stuff.

We need to consider the density of residential areas here, the areas that actually have wired Internet users.

Yeah, no, that is not how it is here in Norway.

I can also point to the fact that the percentage of the population living in uran araeas is the same in Norway as the US, at 82 % according to the world bank.

Link: data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?year_high_desc=true

AssimilatorThat justifies no Net Neutrality how?

If you don''t have a legal right to something you cannot legally demand a level of service that net neutrality supposedly regulates.

SoNic67Really? How about the specs of that technology?
Gosh... we are talking about DOCSIS with a chronically penury of upload bandwidth... shared too.

Yes, really. Who's forcing them to use tech that's obsolete? I don't get it. Is there some international law that states that you folks positively have to use stuff that sucks or something? We stopped using that stuff quite a long time ago and never looked back.

And I'll just say it again, maybe you somehow missed it the first time around. Just because internet services aren't the best smack in the middle of nowhere is one thing. Saying that because of that internet services should suck just as hard in the biggest cities in the country is quite another, and a daft one at that. Care to clarify that for me?

SoNic67Collusion is just a conspiration theory. If it was that easy, over night 10 people would start up internet companies giving away free stuff. Like Google. There is nothing stopping you...
As for Romania, all the small investors from 90's got gobbled up by four big pocket guys: Telekom; Digi RCS&RDS; UPC; Orange. It's all the same, you step outside a big metropolis, you get jack...
Peace out!

You're just stuck on the "free stuff" conspiracy theory, aren't you? Did it ever cross your mind that, umm, maybe the companies are... LYING TO YOU? You know, just like Google and the rest are. Maybe, just maybe, since ISPs in the quite a few countries DON'T impose retarded limits on their users, upgrade the infrastructure to cutting edge constantly and still manage to churn out a heavy profit, maybe your ISPs are talking out of their rears and clearly LYING to the lot of you? You're all so hell-bent on hating commies and socialism, things that you don't even understand and can't define, that you gobble up any and all BS your companies are showering you with like there's no tomorrow. Maybe you should actually learn what communism, socialism and capitalism really are, what their weaknesses are and how things got to this point. It may jump-start your brains into actually thinking for a change (pun intended) and with that, you could actually improve your lives or at the very least stop the downward spiral you've entered quite a while ago.

As for Romania, you forgot Vodafone. Yes, the small investors got gobbled up. And that's a damn good thing because it gives clients quite a few advantages such as better prices and support and services. Having five major ISPs hard at work attracting clients to their side is worlds better than having hundreds of small ISPs, each with their own little parcel. If I want to move to the other side of the city all I have to do is call my ISP and have them route the fibre to the new location for the router I already have. Nothing else whatsoever. Support is 24/7 and I have had cases when the support team arrived to my place one hour after I called in. And that's for a home user, corporate support is quite a lot faster.

Outside a big metropolis you get a lot more than jack. Most villages get 100Mbps ADSL and it works pretty well. Basically, if they have a phone line (and they all do), they can also get TV and internet services. No limits on total download/upload either, although speeds can vary if there is high traffic. It still sounds a whole helluva lot better than a lot of what people in this thread have said that's available is major cities in the U.S.

Easy RhinoIf you don''t have a legal right to something you cannot legally demand a level of service that net neutrality supposedly regulates.

You don't seem to get how this debate works.

we are debating whether that should be a legal right (AKA net neutrality)