> Many American city governments see ISPs as companies they can shake down for fees and concessions, not realizing they're only hurting their own citizens by limiting choice and increasing costs.

And yet your typical American on the Internet still blames greedy companies for their slow speeds. As if companies elsewhere with faster Internet were less greedy.

European internet is better because of regulation, forcing competition, and government investment in infrastructure, not the free market

European Internet, according TFA, is for the most part not better. The largest country above us on the list has 17 million people. The big European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, which together comprise 70% of the EU) have slower Internet.

The fastest country on the list, Denmark, has almost no competition in the sector: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Denmark. And it’s been a model of deregulation: https://reason.com/2017/10/24/how-denmark-has-overtaken-the-...

> Regulators around the world took notice and strove to emulate the success of the U.S. approach. Denmark in particular styled its own telecommunications regulations on the U.S. model, slashing its chief telecom regulator altogether and assigning small regulatory functions to other departments.

Denmark is basically the situation where you have a “benevolent former monopoly,” like Verizon here in the mid Atlantic US.

Switzerland, right behind Denmark in that chart builds the physical networks either entirely with public money or public/private partnerships, but sets a fixed rate at which the fiber must be leased out to any interested party.

This worked too. A small ISP came along (init7, they're awesome https://www.init7.net/) and started offering symmetric gbit at $65 per month, disrupting the ISP market. The big ISPs were scrambling at first, now there's actual competition, with offers like 10git for ~$40 a month (https://fiber.salt.ch/en). Granted that's marketing 10gbit and not real 10gbit, because it's XG-PON [0], so "up to 10gbit/s" and it's a shitty ISP. But still way better than you used to be able to get.

So it would seem to me that many roads lead to rome. Eitherway I'm pretty happy because I don't hate my ISP anymore, something that was unimaginable 10 years ago.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10G-PON

+1 for init7. Bring your own Infrastructure is a big plus too! Crappy branded modems are nearly always the bottleneck

It depends what your values are. To my values most or all of Europe has better internet. A few things I care about:

- No bandwidth caps.

- ISPs competing to offer the best service in a system similar to how health care is done in Japan.

- Being able to switch ISPs without issue.

- Being able to run my own hardware instead of being required to use their routers.

- Net neutrality. I pay for gigabit duplex but if I'm not uploading to a fast lane I'm limited to 10mbps, or 1% of what I pay for. This is terrible for VPNing for work, and other work related tasks.

Exactly.. I'm on 1Gbit down/1Gbit up at home, there are no caps, and the full speed is always available. It's not throttled, it's equally fast at all times as far as I can tell. It's not expensive, there are no hidden charges. I use my own router (though I'm also using the equipment that came from the provider, for the fiber-to-Ethernet part). All of this I could get in Japan years ago, we're finally catching up in Europe.

Net neutrality is brilliantly named, but it's not a good regulation to force on providers for various reasons. See eg https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regu...

(However, a provider deciding on some kind of 'neutrality' by itself and offering that as a selling point to customers is perfectly fine.0

The linked analysis is rather outdated - it mentions that if video over IP becomes popular, perhaps the conclusions might change.

And the article itself points out that it might be important for ISPs to feel the threat of net neutrality regulations.

It's hard to claim that the ISP market, at least in many locations, isn't subject to plenty of market failures that need some kind of remedy.

Lol Cato finds regulation is bad, you don't say?

Linking to Cato is like linking to those "Ludwig van Mises"-inspired think-tanks.

I don't think it's a reputable source for analysis, their bias is obviously apparent and not necessarily based in reality, it's an ideology.

Having one of the Koch brothers as founder just adds fuel to the fire...

I live in Sweden, saying that CNN or NYT are left-wing is a terrible joke to my ears...

Communism is authoritarian, the opposite of the liberal Democrats in the US.

You wouldn’t know it by reading their periodicals: cancel culture, right vs wrong thinking, evil multinationals, class struggle against the exploiting "rich", the inhuman capitalism, the wonderful socialist utopias and it goes on and on...

This is quite rant-ish. There is a class struggle, there is a rich powerful few who can use their leverages to affect millions of people that have almost no voice. What is your point?

For someone complaining about divisiness you seem to be quite deep down into the rabbit hole.

The world is a large place. With 7.8 billion people in the world today there is bound to be 1 or 2 who go off the deep end. To say those represent the majority is insulting. It's like you're saying, "You wouldn’t know it about the US right wing by reading their periodicals: antisemitic, pro-fascist, anti humans rights, pro totalitarian, and more."

That wikipedia article is very outdated. For example, the two most common offers in Spain are symmetric 100mbps and 600mbps FTTH.

The most important player indebted itself with ~50k million € and it's basically replacing all the copper coverage with FTTH.

Other HFC players are turning into FTTH too, as HFC won't be able to compete with +600mbps FTTH offerings, and symmetry is more and more valued over time.

Also, I don't have the figures at hand, but the coverage in Spain is extraordinary. FTTH is reaching places that barely had 3mbps ADSL, and it's probably going to cover places that had nothing in the long run.

Public money is paying for capital costs in places that would be impossible to make a profit otherwise, but still the main obstacle are municipalities and nimbys.

I've seen some pretty stupid stuff, like blocking FTTH deployment in historical centers under aesthetic concerns, where they already have ugly copper wires in the facades. In reality what those municipalities expect is ISP to bury the cables and pay for the whole renovation of such streets, which no one in his right mind will. So this people will not have FTTH unless their municipalities change their mind, but they blame ISPs.

I have really cheap fiber in the Basque Country.

And then you have our case here in Sweden [1] with a thought out plan to roll out broadband to the whole country as a strategic need.

The infrastructure is public and leased to private companies, avoiding the tragedy that happens in the US where laying down cables is the most expensive part and which shuns away competition, leaving with oligopolies where each company got their turf and that increases the barrier of entry significantly.

[1] https://www.government.se/496173/contentassets/afe9f1cfeaac4...

That wikipedia article is somewhat wrong. There is a lot of competition in denmark.

There are 3 separate 4G networks with very high coverage selling mobile broadband rather cheaply (you can fx get 1 TB a month for approx 36 USD a month).

TDC was also forced to give competitors access to their PSTN, coax and fiber network so resellers can compete on selling on their physical network.

The power companies have also been aggressive in recent years rolling out fiber, so several places people can choose either infrastructure from TDC, their power company or one of the mobile providers.

Interesting, sounds very similar to the situation in Switzerland. So maybe there's something to this competition thing after all ;-)

In Denmark,the former state-owned, TDC has to provide equal access to their network for other competitors, meaning they can only charge the cost of maintaining the infrastructure, which has mostly been build through governmental funding

They have on multiple occasions tried to force competitors out of the market by making unfavorable pricing models or straight up blocking third parties from using their infrastructure

They are in no way a "benevolent former monopoly" and there's a lot of regulations in place to avoid them exploiting their market position, since they in the past have tried exactly that

Denmark has cheap, fast internet because of the regulations enforced on the market, which makes it possible for me to get a 1gbit symmetric connection from a small provider for 120 DKK (approximately $20) per month

I moved from Texas (Comcast) and while living in Sweden I assumed internet in the EU was much, much better compared to the US. Then I tried living in Germany for 3 years and it felt like I had Comcast again. I couldn't believe it takes a month for a technician to come to your apartment in Germany to flip a switch so your DSL works but that was reality there.

In Germany, it’s a mix of politics and greed that made us the running joke wrt to internet quality.

A weird notion I see is that

"Countries who jumped on the Internet earlier can't have fiber because of existing competition"

Fiber is actually MUCH, MUCH CHEAPER to deploy for higher speed networks than any high speed copper, because the later almost always implies to deploying a fibre network too to do everything other than the last mile.

Copper is not expensive to deploy given that it already runs to peoples home for their phone line.

It is:

1. You have to build your fibre backbone anyways. That's an even bigger trouble in countries with no culture to share fibre. And you would usually have to get much "brainier," and more expensive fibre equipment in this case.

2. You still need to wire the fibre fairly close to premises.

3. High speed copper network equipment costs huge sums, more than commoditised GPON.

4. Copper often needs to be torn, to be replaced with higher grade copper

5. You still need to drill buildings to install niches for copper equipment.

6. You need to put extra equipment into equipment closets.

7. Copper needs more equipment overall

8. Copper has lower reliability overall, and costs more to maintain

So, in the end, you just do the same FTTH, just with copper as the last few tenths of metres. This is so obvious, but people keep dogmatising over "it's already wired with copper."

GPON by comparison does not require anything in the closet, but a piece of glass passive optical slitter.

You can easily have 1024 end-users on a single powerful GePON OLT, covering few square kilometres of 100% passive net.

Interesting how all these companies in countries that are stuck on ADSL are not aware of your arguments, or they would switch to fiber.

They are aware. That's why you get 20Mbit/s, maybe 50 if you're lucky. Cheaper in the short term and it's not like you have a choice.

AFAIU, GP is talking about FTTC (or VDSL), which is moderately faster than typical ADSL via existing phone exchanges or (far away) cabinets, while being much more expensive. FTTC can be cheaper than FTTH, but silly IMO - any increase in bandwidth will be expensive.

Fiber equipement is damn expensive.

Please check for how much you can buy a cheap olt, ont, and amplifiers today

Neuland.

It’s especially bad with mobile data caps. I had a 500mb cap in ~2014.

That wikipedia page on Internet in Denmark is years old, and way obsolete. It talks about internet speed in the range of a few tens of megabits.

Curious why population is even a factor here. If it legitimately should be... why not compare states of the US with states of the EU? (Seems a roughly equivalent thing to do)

Bigger and more diverse countries have a wider variety of political issues and priorities. When was the last time broadband even registered as a political issue in the news, except in the context of some other more important political debate (urban/rural, racial disparity, etc.) And in the US, construction of infrastructure is mostly a municipal level issue, so its both low priority and varies dramatically by state.

Here in Maryland (which is a small, politically homogenous, rich state, just like Denmark), most of the state has fiber or gigabit cable and broadband speeds are very fast: https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/fastest-internet-connect...

> In fact, the next state on the list, Maryland, is nearly tied with Denmark for the second-fastest Internet speed on Earth.

Well, we can argue against that.

It's best to say that both USA, and EU are very, very bureaucratised, and regulated. It's just one is marginally better at not introducing damaging regulations than the other.

Japan too had 100mb/s since nineties for example, and theeeen..... they stuck. Speeds there not been rising by much since because regulations froze in nineties, and so did the market.

Countries which had near zero telecommunication regulations covering the Internet, or had no Internet as such did advance more uniformly.

I can have a 500mb/s over GPON, or even a symmetric gigabit over 1000BASE-LX even in *stan countries, and Africa these days. Fiberlink has 1Gbs for $30 a month in Lahore. PCTL is starting a 10Gb/s GPON trial in Islamabad.

Single mode fibre based tech is much cheaper to deploy, and maintain than any legacy tech, and properly designed GPON net probably being the cheapest option ever.

I had (and still have, when I get back after Corona) fiber to the home in Japan. That fiber was installed some fifteen years ago, it was just a phone call away and then the fiber was hitched on the poles and into the house (everything goes on poles in Japan..). This is a nearly rural area by the way. Japan is not 'stuck' on 100Mbit - 1Gbit was only approximately 2-3 dollars more per month, compared to 100Mbit/s a few years ago.

>everything goes on poles in Japan..)

Ah yes, the infamous wired mess in the Japanese media.

>Japan too had 100mb/s since nineties for example, and theeeen..... they stuck. Speeds there not been rising by much since because regulations froze in nineties, and so did the market.

https://hothardware.com/news/japanese-10-gbps-internet

You can get 1 Gbps service in Japanese farm towns.

The UK internet is worse because of forced competition. British Telecom started plans in the 1970s to roll out fibre optic connections to every household in the country. BT were even going to manufacture the fibre themselves. But the Thatcher government decided that competition was a good thing so shut that down and instead invited cable companies to lay competing infrastructure. A small handful of companies accepted the offer and proceeded to lay infrastructure during the 90s to compete with BT. They installed infrastructure only in highly lucrative towns and inner cities where cable runs are short and easy but subscriber counts are high. No rural infrastructure whatsoever. None of them have laid any infrastructure since the 90s and by now they have all merged into one company which has been rebranded as "Virgin Media". So much for competition.

So what we have now is primarily a copper infrastructure with zero to two fibre backbones to choose from depending where you live. It's a shambles.

The big mistake was not recognising that the physical infrastructure is a natural monopoly and, like any monopoly, should be state owned. Just like sewerage, electricity, water etc. it makes absolutely no sense to have parallel infrastructure. The UK shows that while it is possible, you make great sacrifices in the name of "competition" and "free market".

Well, we agree that people are roughly equally greedy in different parts of the world; and that the difference are in how well the regulation works.

There's not much free market in domestic internet in the US nor in Europe.

Competition is the free market, not regulation. Europe is massively different than America in size.

No, not really. Europe is a little bigger. The countries are more like eastern states. [1] This is somewhat important, considering most of the regulation on utilities are at a state level - and the utilities kind of are as well. Some of the countries are somewhat populous - you know, like states - and some have a pretty sparse population. You know, like states.

[1] https://www.tripsavvy.com/so-just-how-big-is-europe-compared...).

Greedy companies are still part of it. I have exactly one choice for high-speed internet service in my building, and that's Comcast - despite FiOS being available right across the street. My strong suspicion is it's because of this: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/the-new-payola-deals-landlords...

(My building's apparently an "Xfinity Community".)

Non-EU Europe, same issue. Only one company has cables in my building.

On the bright side, they're the fastest ISP in the country. On the bad side, they don't offer just the Internet, so I have to pay for cable + Internet, even though I don't use cable TV at all (not plugged into my TV at all).

My point is that the rest of the world also has greedy companies. Yet, some parts of that world manage to build infrastructure just fine.

The US also used to be able to build infrastructure. People weren't any less greedy back then. Other things changed. Things that are very important to look into.

that's more on your leasing company sadly...they get bundle discounts for referrals, but you still get screwed

i blame the half-assed infrastructure. finally got a solid fiber line, so i'm good now - but prior it was nothing but hell. every tech out would just say, welp - i don't know why they sold you this, we don't support it...even tho they buried the dang lines. and fwiw i'm in the middle of a decently sized metropolitan area...not out in the sticks

Can you expand on when competition came to Seattle and how? I've been using Condo Internet (now Wave Broadband) for something close to 5-6 years. When was the tipping point in terms of competition?

Centurylink now offers fiber gigabit to the home for about $65 or so a month.

It happened because a former mayor (Ed Murray, who has since left office after a personal scandal) made it easier for ISPs to build out their networks and removed homeowners and neighborhood groups from the process which previously allowed them to block things like communications boxes on sidewalks.

At the time, a bunch of local columnists moaned about this "corporate giveaway"[1] -- but it's pretty clear in retrospect it was the right move.

1. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/mayors-centurylink-giv...

Don't forget about Google Webpass, they started advertising heavily in Seattle area starting about a year ago. I switched to them earlier last year due to having periodic issues with WaveG in my new apt building about 8 months into my lease (their technician would come a week or two after I report constant outages, fix something in the server room of my building, and then the issues would start again in a few weeks; haven't had any issues with WaveG at my previous apt though).

Service has been great, pricing is even cheaper than WaveG (I pay about $50/mo for their gig fiber offering), no contracts or any other lock-in (unless you pick the option to pay for the whole year upfront for a small discount). It definitely does feel like there is a good amount of real competition in Seattle now.

Yup! My apartment building was pre-wired for fiber and I can get WaveG, Century Link, or WebPass. I can also get Comcast if I wanted to torture myself.

That’s the most options I have ever had in my entire life for an ISP. We’re with WaveG and have no reason to switch but the fact that I have multiple fiber options if I need to makes me really happy.

In Brooklyn, I couldn’t get FiOS in my building even though the building across the street and next door could do it. Something with the zoning and no matter how hard we (and Verizon) tried, nada. The upshot was Cablevision was an exceptional ISP (let me run a server out of the apartment as part of the written TOS, which was incredible), but it was still slower than FiOS.

In Atlanta, my parents’ house was prewired for fiber and gigabit but they have been stuck with not even the fastest available cable because of ISP tie-ups. It’s painful and they have zero choice.

> The upshot was Cablevision was an exceptional ISP (let me run a server out of the apartment as part of the written TOS, which was incredible), but it was still slower than FiOS.

This is no longer the case since Altice purchased cable vision/optimum. They jacked up the prices and Andy reduced quality of service.

I had WebPass in my first two apartments in San Francisco and it was my favorite ISP. I paid $500 for the year up front for 300/300 service.

Then I moved to a different unit where the absolute fastest option was 20/3 DSL for $70/mo.

Thankfully I’m now on Gigabit cable, but I can’t wait to get off Xfinity for something better.

Also Ziply Fiber bought Frontier’s network in WA, OR, and ID, and started investing in their infra and expanding areas.

Lest we forget the personal scandal, he molested young boys. Not to distract from the ISP progress, but I don’t think it should be papered over.

PUT YOUR PITCHFORKS DOWN!

Accused! Not proven. Murray maintains he has never abused anyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Murray_(Washington_politici...

I have no pitchforks, just trauma that hasn't been proven (nor tried by anything claiming to prove anything) but certainly happened.

How do you know? If you have proof why have you not share that important piece of evidence with the authorities?

How do I know that I’ve experienced trauma? Because I experienced it. I don’t need to prove it to you or anyone.

Your experiences are your own and nobody is asking you to prove yourself. You are valid as is.

However, one should not be saying someone IS a vile thing when they've only been ACCUSED (and not convicted) of being a vile thing.

I apologize for my last comment. I didn’t address the character or nature of Ed Murray. I addressed what he did. What he did do. He did do what he was accused of. I’m glad to take the downvotes to vocally say that I believe his victims. The vast majority of sexual assault victims never see a jury, and even if we do we never stand a chance of proof in that court.

As noble as your sentiment is, it's a dangerous and stupid approach to take on legal matters of that importance.

It’s not just a legal matter. I’m amazed that as a victim of sexual assault I’m repeatedly being lectured about the burden of proof of sexual assault. I suppose I can just assume y’all don’t believe me either unless I go to court to confront my assaulters and win?

CenturyLink fiber is relatively recent to the Seattle area (2017 or 2018) and serves a broader customer base than Wave née Condo.

Condo was historically only available in a small number of buildings very close to the Westin building downtown (site of the Seattle Internet Exchange). It is slightly broader now, but only slightly.

Here's a big old PDF of Seattle area internet service (2019)[1]. Most of Seattle is CenturyLink + Comcast. The second biggest portion is Comcast-only. Wave covers very little of the city.

[1]: https://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/broadband/gigabit-a...

Seems like I was hearing my Seattle friends brag about their Centurylink Fiber quite a long time ago -- I want to say 5 or 8 years. Maybe the initial rollout was small and it took awhile to get going?

I'm a Seattle native, down in the bay area now, and JUST got gigabit fiber. Couldn't be happier.

Maybe CenturyLink rolled out to a limited availability sooner than I'm remembering. There was also a very limited Verizon FTTH rollout on the east side some time earlier as well, but I don't know anyone who was in a service area for it.

The speedy providers are all jumping over each other to compete, now that the "gentlemen's agreement" between providers is no longer a thing... but they are cherry picking from people willing to pay and easily providing the service.

Seems like maybe 3 years ago when all the cable companies were able to compete without exclusivity by block?

In my condo building of 200+ units we have 5 providers now: - Wave broadband cable - Comcast cable - Wave G (10Gbps connection to the building) - Webpass Google Fiber (microwave to the building) - CenturyLink (DSL maybe?)

The bummer is outside the high-rise towers, there is not much competition in the neighborhoods and single family homes it seems.

I wonder whether the promise of faster Internet would diminish some of the NIMBY opposition to high rise towers?

I'm going to say "Probably not". You're talking about people who have chosen to live in lower-density housing with lower internet speeds. I'm sure they'd love higher internet speeds, but not so much that they'd give up the 'lower density housing' part :)

In my experience, new construction has access to fiber, and very little old construction has access to fiber.

I need to see whats out there. Still using Xfinity in the suburbs and it's pretty meh, terrible upload making wfh a pain.

Moved to Seattle earlier this year, was sad my internet went up $20/month. Currently paying $80/month for 1G/1G. I do agree though, having fiber to your place with single digit MS ping is quite lovely for all things internet.

If you call CL, you should be able to change the plan to $65/mo (one is pre-paid vs post?). I did that last year and saved $20/mo for exact same service. :-)

(1 Gpbs up/down)

I’ll avoid CL like the plague.

Seattle doesn't have competition, unfortunately. It's only in the very core of the city that has access to Centurylink fiber, mostly everywhere else is stuck with Comcast cable or laughably slow DSL.

I had CL 1Gbps fiber in Fremont/Ballard area for a couple years, and was able to transfer service to (very) North Seattle near Bitter Lake.

Though my friend in Central District still cannot get fiber (stuck on slow DSL).

Maybe I just got lucky?

Do you think that SpaceX would be considered competition by the carriers?

Given its infinitesimally small capacity relative to the major backbones (4,991 terabits per second) no.

Well in economics what often matters is what's happening at the margins. So the total capacity might not be that important.

Though you are right, even though the race isn't always to the swift, that's the way to bet.

Total capacity is clearly extremely important. Were it not the case nobody would be running new undersea cables to places that already have undersea cable connections.

By this logic should McDonald’s be worried if I start making burgers in my apartment and giving them to my friends for free?

Starlink is giving away free internet now?

Only in the super rural areas that either aren't wanted as serious competition areas anyway or smart enough to run their own local infra properly and lease out the video over IP stuff to a cable company to not deal with the licensing BS for content.