I live in the absolute arse end of nowhere Portugal - the nearest city is 60km away, over mountains, and the entire district (~50x50km) has a population of 3000.

They have symmetric gigabit fibre in all of the villages, for €20 a month.

In my apartment in the U.K., in a city of 300,000, the best I can get is 0.25/15Mbps - for £80 a month. It craps out completely every evening, down to 200kbps or so, as everyone streams netflix at potato quality.

> They have symmetric gigabit fibre in all of the villages, for €20 a month.

I often wonder at observations like this whether it's the result of massive subsidies or massive over-subscription of the infrastructure. How is actual bandwidth/jitter on that line? Romania also has bold claims about infrastructure penetration, it's a fair example of somewhere I'd have good reason to doubt their credibility.

A stable loss/jitter-free FTTP connection at 50 GBP/mo. is very much value for money compared to an equivalent line featuring loss/latency/jitter at even a tenth of that price and with 10x the claimed line rate.

Separately, I have put off gigabit installation numerous times over 6 years simply because I can't really benefit from it on contemporary WiFi.

(Also yes, on re-reading my comment I realize I am a bit jealous of your setup in Portugal ;)

Having worked with a remote dev team in Romania it was actually pretty solid. Fast to services locally peered, slower to elsewhere, but still miles better than what I had in the UK at the time.

And for telecommunications, which are definitely in the "utility" category now, subsidies for the up-front capital costs are warranted IMHO, especially as it can act as an economic accelerator.

As for contemporary wifi, that's why I had my house wired for Cat 6 a few months back - I've got 3 Wifi 6 access points as well (PoE powered, ceiling mounted) and can saturate my 500/70 FTTP connection.

>whether it's the result of massive subsidies

I think the key thing here is that probably yes, however it is essentially once off. Not that expensive to keep shooting photons down the fibre once its in the ground.

So from a country perspective that's a pretty grand deal compared to say farming subsidies that you need to do annually.

In Ukrainian rural areas people use mostly ADSL, 3G, and pay much more than usual for city area 5$ per unlimited 20/100mbit.

     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
  ==============================================================================
  ua.pool.ntp.org .POOL.          16 p    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
  *62.149.0.30     .GPS.            1 u  353 1024  377    0.702    0.063   0.105
  +91.236.251.13   105.240.56.33    2 u   40 1024  377    3.825   -0.068   0.466
  -195.78.244.50   91.198.10.4      3 u  171 1024  377   17.445    3.617   0.251
  -162.159.200.1   10.132.8.165     3 u  615 1024  377    0.460    2.218   0.115
  -162.159.200.123 10.132.8.165     3 u  806 1024  377    0.489    2.212   0.104
  -91.236.251.12   105.240.56.33    2 u   46 1024  377    3.879   -0.522   1.551
  -91.236.251.129  118.188.39.164   2 u   58 1024  377    5.025   -0.056   0.293
  -193.106.144.7   31.28.161.68     2 u  368 1024  377    6.991    1.203   0.120
  +31.28.161.68    .GPS.            1 u  961 1024  377    0.543    0.152   0.134

Yeah, it was heavily subsidised - they’ve been on a big push over the last several years to get digital infrastructure into the boondocks. Contention is low, given the population - and I don’t directly use it, as I live quite a way off grid - but it’s the backbone for our LTE connection, which gets a comfortable and consistent 150 down and 50 up - plenty good enough.

We in Ukraine have cheapest home internet in Europe, normal something like 5$ for 100mbit copper, with 20mbit to abroad; 10$ gigabit, with 300mbit abroad.

But this is on "home-network" technologies - they have their equipment distributed over buildings and have not central core, so this is cheaper, but lacks some things which seem normal for telecoms.

It is very reliable, easy achieve less than 5 hours of downtime per month. Most downtime because somebody steal equipment from attic, or somebody tried to steal fiber cables, thinking it is copper.

Example trace (skipped not necessary info):

traceroute -q 2 -w 1 --resolve-hostnames www.amazon.com

traceroute to d3ag4hukkh62yn.cloudfront.net (52.84.115.95), 64 hops max

  2   94.244.0.210 (rusanovka-uaix.elan-ua.net)  0.519ms  0.432ms 
  3   193.239.72.201 (ae2-166-gw0.g50.kv.dataline.ua)  0.556ms  0.550ms 
  4   10.204.215.47 (10.204.215.47)  45.048ms  8.404ms 
  5   193.239.74.62 (amazon.dataline.ua)  27.452ms  27.259ms 
  6   *  * 
  7   *  * 
  8   150.222.27.44 (150.222.27.44)  41.083ms  41.283ms 
  9   150.222.27.197 (150.222.27.197)  40.665ms  40.495ms

Example ntpq -np remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter ============================================================================== ua.pool.ntp.org .POOL. 16 p - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000 *62.149.0.30 .GPS. 1 u 353 1024 377 0.702 0.063 0.105 +91.236.251.13 105.240.56.33 2 u 40 1024 377 3.825 -0.068 0.466 -195.78.244.50 91.198.10.4 3 u 171 1024 377 17.445 3.617 0.251 -162.159.200.1 10.132.8.165 3 u 615 1024 377 0.460 2.218 0.115 -162.159.200.123 10.132.8.165 3 u 806 1024 377 0.489 2.212 0.104 -91.236.251.12 105.240.56.33 2 u 46 1024 377 3.879 -0.522 1.551 -91.236.251.129 118.188.39.164 2 u 58 1024 377 5.025 -0.056 0.293 -193.106.144.7 31.28.161.68 2 u 368 1024 377 6.991 1.203 0.120 +31.28.161.68 .GPS. 1 u 961 1024 377 0.543 0.152 0.134

BTW could somebody give link, on what template engine uses HN, so I will post structured text. Thanks in advance!

> result of massive subsidies

very much. In early 2000 I consulted for small defense contractor trying to win bids providing internet to rural Spain. They made me cobble together an absolute garbage solution of slow early Sat (the ~1 second latency kind) internet with Wifi last mile. It barely worked for anything other than mail, browsing web was pure suffering, gaming was out of the question. Thankfully this venture went nowhere, but even with very expensive Satellite uplink finances still made some sense considering the remoteness of locations.

In Romania you can get for 3€ a month and you have overpaid then. I think it's no wonder why so many bright tech talent comes from the Cental Eastern European region. Accessible fast connections must have played a huge role.

> Accessible fast connections...

Must admit, your suggestion is very close to reality.

In reality, need complex - good basic education + accessible from early school computers + low level of income in country, so smart people must figure out, how to flee out of poor.

For example, in Brasilia, all people play football (soccer) at least once per week (many play every day), and they have best football team in world.

Another example, China was so poor, they have not seen home computers before late 2000s, so now they have not hackers culture at all, and so their startup system looks weird.

Another example, I grow in Ukraine, with access to ZX Spectrum, and now I'm here :)

Coool. That means you can ask for a quote for 1.25Gbps which they'll likely have to deliver using 10Gig equipment at both ends and then *synthetically* cap, which will likely have appreciably lower overhead than running 1 gig through 1 gig PHYs :D

Yes I'd imagine they are thinking 10 gigs split among a handful (5?) of people to give 3gig effective after contention.

Would take a 24 month contract though so practically I'm just going to sit tight on my 1gig

In my area OpenReach is planning to roll out their ultrafast fibre "by 2026". Not great. Couple miles out of Newcastle so not exactly middle of nowhere either.

The situation in the UK is shockingly bad. Openreach need to pull their finger out.

It's patchy - I've got FTTP in Warwickshire, and also have the option of Virgin Cable (I'd rather not).

But yes, if an area is in a "not spot" you're stuffed - which is why things like B4RN took off.

Southern England is also doing quite well, with multiple competing FTTx operators. But it highly depends where you live (dense centre vs residential districts).

Around me in south devon we got fairly fast broadband actually pretty quickly (faster than my family who lived in the prime ministers constituency at the time), but then the progress (certainly for the same price) basically just stopped.

Luckily there are a few new ISPs popping up now.

I lived on Dartmoor last year. I can testify that the broadband rollout stopped. We managed to get 5mb which wasn't so bad, the real problem was the connection would drop 2/3 times an hour. Fine for casual use but terrible for remote work.

The house we stayed in is now in the starlink queue.

We're stuck on 18/1mbs up in the rural north (and that's with AAISP, so we're getting the most the line can provide), B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North - which would have been 1gbs fibre) has stalled because of Politics.

I've just stuck an external antenna up and we're getting a decent 4G signal from EE so that will have to do for the time being. It's peaking at 50mbs with a bit higher latency, but the upload is 25x faster than the landline which does make for far more responsive usage.

Annoyingly, there's a full Fibrus fibre rollout about 10 miles south, but apparently there's no money in running a line up the main trunk road between the two major population centres for this area.

AAISP will also do line bonding, but you’ll obviously be paying more and I’d imagine it’s not going to be that much better.

I switched over to their FTTP offering recently and, while it’s not super fast compared to what others are claiming, having a router with a weird intermittent hardware issue reminded me of how good it is to be able to immediately jump on a call with technical people who actually care.

Just curious, for what you really use this bandwidth?

- I now see, 100mbit for one person is enough, I very rare see it is limiting factor (few times per month I doubt), but I can't imagine how I will utilize gigabit :)

A big chunk of it is just nice to have - 250 or 500 would be just fine. I do however benefit from 1gigabit on some fronts:

* Usenet - easily maxes out 1g

* I've got a hypervisor here so lots of ISO templates, docker images, package pulls

* I host various things from home. Seeding (actual) linux images, sheep-it render server, crypto node

* Game file downloads - steam etc.

So definitely a luxury, but not entirely pointless

> Seeding (actual) linux images...

Ah, yes, I'm now limited by small drives (I have 256G SSD and 1000G HDD) :)

Before, when paid per mb, I created accounting system, and seen very clear, after my hdd seem full, bandwidth usage dropped.

But something broken in dependencies, and I moved from FreeBSD to Ubuntu, and on current unlimited channel it was not need to account, so I just don't bother, but I see difference when need to download ISO :)

Now I just for curiosity thinking about create accounting, make smart reports, etc, but on Ubuntu for this have to do much more work and much less art than on BSD.

Yup - seeding linux ISO was the first thing I tried when I realized I've got more uplink & compute capacity than needed.

It is still surprisingly thin...I set the limit at 5% of my pipe...and I don't think it has ever been hit. Not sure why but nobody is pulling down even close to what I could push

Sheep-it on the other hand...(think crowdsource blender renders) does actually push gear hard.

>But something broken in dependencies, and I moved from FreeBSD to Ubuntu

Do have a look at proxmox if you can.

Proxmox + ansible was a paradigm shift for me. (Proxmox has a CLI so you don't need any funky third party module anything...you can just deploy VMs/LXC via straight CLI)

> Proxmox + ansible was a paradigm shift for me

Sure, I use virtualization when possible, but I prefer Docker.

But for me now problem, that some vendors prohibit usage of their devices in virtual environment, so I have to stay semi-desktop. For example, nvidia official drivers for desktop (game) cards, don't work in virtual env, and server cards are slow in games and have worse performance/$ rate.

In some distant future, I believe, will buy dedicated server machine, but now using desktop, to save money and space.

I've had some problems in London where blocks of flats weren't kitted out properly. I believe that's why Hyperoptic started.

Still on 330 Mb FTTC in North London, FTTH nowhere to be seen yet. Thankfully it's good enough and the cabinet is pretty close.