Re:How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the So...
by qaq on Monday May 02, 2016 @11:03AM
(#11611883)
Actually if you compare the cost and quality of internet service in US and some of the states formerly part of USSR it will make you very sad.
An equivalent of comcast $50 plan will run you $5
and that's with no caps or shaping . Looking at less then stellar origins of internet in USSR you
can see how monopolization f$%ed up US ISP market.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the So...
by PostOnce on Monday May 02, 2016 @08:43PM
(#11616998)
Former Soviet states have lower incomes, which means both a smaller ability to pay for services, as well as a lower cost of providing services (building and maintaining infrastructure, installation, support, those types of wages) on behalf of the ISP.
Other European states that were never Soviet also have much cheaper much faster average internet connections than the US... but these places are much smaller and more easily connected and maintained, I suppose.
Anyway, the picture isn't so black and white, maybe we get screwed in the US, but maybe we don't or not as badly as you suggest.
Tangentially, I am amazed you can get unlimited satellite cell internet for $125/mo from Iridium now, I'm sure that plan is slow as molasses but... its global and that's amazing to me.
Re:How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the So...
by nitrogen on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @01:00AM
(#11618033)
Other European states that were never Soviet also have much cheaper much faster average internet connections than the US... but these places are much smaller and more easily connected and maintained, I suppose.
If this were truly the cause of the US's bandwidth backwardness, then denser pockets of the US should have been wired with gigabit access around the year 2000. Instead, urban areas often have much worse speeds and prices.