As I learned in New Zealand, the data rate to the ISP is largely irrelevant. I had a 100mbps+ connection in NZ, but rarely got over 2mbps to any international location. It would speedtest at full line rate.

However, here in the US, I've got a 50mbps connection, and I regularly get 50mbps.

US broadband interconnects with the rest of the network are pretty terrible.

Reference: those name-and-shame articles a while back from a network company (Level 3, from memory?) that produced hard numbers on how little $ US cable/DSL internet companies were willing to put into improving their capacity at the peer link.

[Edit] Yup, Level 3. I thought they were interesting because hard numbers at this level seem difficult to come by. Here are the articles from 2014:

http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/chicken-game-played-chi...

http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/observations-internet-m...

These are mostly real international data transfer rates, at least for torrents/CDN servers/S3.

Average salary in Kiev is also, what, 400 Euros per month? With LA's (generously median) 3000 Euros per month that turns out to be the same (if 15$ is taken into account). Vast difference is in speed. So, what's up LA?

Ukraine and Romania successfully avoided Deutsche Telekom monopoly.

Thank you brave Soviet soldiers of the Great Patriotic War.

this is for 'business class' service, which is often in office buildings. metro fiber and ethernet is really, really, really expensive in these buildings because of other monopoly factors - the cable companies wish they could compete here, but they sometimes can't.

for example, symmetrical 10mbps metro ethernet is close to $2k/month here in LA. yes, for real.

commercial service has higher SLA's (which really doesn't mean a damn thing, it's just tradition) and is more expensive.

it's highly dependent on your office building's location. cable companies and fiber operators do not canvas entire commercial districts like they do residential areas.

ISP competition in Kiev is intense. Business rates for symmetrical ethernet are around $50-200/month for 100 Mbit and $300-500/month for 1Gbit eth/fiber. Monopoly sucks.

Most of the cost of deploying fiber is labor, and that costs 5-10x more in the U.S. Also, eastern European countries see fast Internet as a competitive advantage. American cities don't see the need.

I bet in Kiev, a fiber provider wanting to lay fiber wouldn't be turned down for not agreeing to wife up the poor neighborhoods that couldn't afford it any way. That's what happens here.

Right, that's why Netherlands, Sweden and South Korea have similarly slow data transfer rates and high prices as US. /s

Also most high speed connections in Kiev are not fiber but ethernet cables.

Broadband deployment in the U.S. is almost entirely a matter of state and municipal-level rather than national-level policies. For example, Virginia, where my parents live, has significantly faster average speeds than either Sweden or the Netherlands: http://www.amic.media/media/files/file_352_841.pdf (see pp. 18, 32).

the truth can't be literally unbelievable by definition.

My least favorite aspect of these stories has to be all the people who like to list out the price of internet connectivity as if it lives in a vacuum. It's not really a meaningful datapoint on its own for a number of reasons, and the conversation it engenders is almost never worth reading.

> the truth can't be literally unbelievable by definition.

Why? How does the truth of a story have any bearing on its believability.

(Eg some people are literally unable to believe some scientific facts.)

I should move to Ukraine. Need a roommate?!

Ukraine is insanely cheap for digital nomads. $2000/month will get you a very high quality of life, including a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment in a city center, great food from restaurants, adequate access to modern healthcare and diverse nightlife/culture venues.