It's 2019. For a first world country even the BASIC package, within an actual city, should fulfill the "minimum broadband" definition of 25Mbit/sec down and 3-5Mbit/sec up; even during peek hours.

If it isn't being selected, then clearly there's insufficient competition to drive better prices and better packages.

Akamai's speed test reports are getting a bit dated, but in Q1 2017, no country had more than 40% at 25 mbps+: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... The U.S. was #10 at 21%. The only European countries to make the list were Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway. Putatively first world countries like France and Italy were at 18% and 12% with 15mbps+.

Even today, I'd wager that for the vast majority of the EU (by population, so the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain), 25 mbps is closer to the median than the floor.

That's quite interesting. I live in rural Japan and have fiber, so I get well above those speeds. I had a quick look at the document and I think things certainly have changed in a few years -- at least in Japan. These days there is virtually nowhere that you can't get 4G as far as I know. The vast majority of people here use the internet on their phone so I'm willing to bet that percentage has gone up a lot. Feature phones used to be popular, but now if you don't have a smart phone it's pretty darn unusual. There is very little free wifi here as well, so almost everybody who has a phone has a 4G data plan.

In terms of availability, even fibre is ubiquitous now. At least in the Tokai region, I would be shocked if there was a single town that didn't have fibre now. NTT rolled it out aggressively about 10 years ago. When I got hooked up in my apartment 4 years ago they didn't even bother to check availability.

It would be super interesting to see what the numbers are like now. Of course it's apples and oranges. The US is much harder to serve than Japan (although I guess the many earthquakes keep the fibre repair guys busy). But I think you'll see SE Asian countries having nearly ubiquitous coverage in the next handful of years.

I always wonder how much of this is availability vs what the market wants. I'm constantly surprised how many people just don't pay for faster internet even today even though they have the option.

>If it isn't being selected, then clearly there's insufficient competition to drive better prices and better packages.

No, not everyone is going to have your use patterns or knowledge. Most ordinary folks are just price sensitive. "What's the lowest price thing I can get that's not dialup."

I agree there need's to be more competition, but so long as there exits cheaper packages bellow the "minimum broadband" definition there will be many normal people who buy them.

Good point. I live in an area that has broadband availability, and I choose to be on Comcast’s cheapest tier (18/3) because I don’t need faster speed and it would cost $250/yr to be at a higher tier.

If there were more competition (Comcast has a monopoly in western SV), prices would likely be lower and I’d probably be at/above 25mbps for the same price I’m paying now.