BBC asks: Why do Americans pay so much for broadband? - Polidicks

[QUOTE=sgman91;42675558]I'm pretty sure that's because the US just has a much higher population. The vast majority of Canada has almost no one living there: [IMG_THUMB][URL]http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-550/vignettes/img/map-2006-pop-density-canada-sz01-en.gif[/URL][/IMG_THUMB] While almost the entire US is populated: [IMG_THUMB][URL]http://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/71789-050-459169a6.gif[/URL][/IMG_THUMB][/QUOTE] Yeah but we're talking about providing internet to the entire country. Cities in Canada are hundreds of miles between each other, and sometimes they are in totally illogical spots when you're talking about building infrastructure. It's not quite as simple as running wires near the border as some imply. In the states you have cities that are reasonably close to each other so you can't really use infrastructure costs as an excuse for more expensive internet.

I'm lucky to get the 400-500mbps I get on the ethernet here at college. At home I was paying comcast out the nose and getting shit speeds and downtimes really often.

[QUOTE=Midas22;42675348]UK gets 60mbps lmao[/QUOTE] [img]http://www.speedtest.net/result/3063260454.png[/img] lmao its crazy though, if you go about 5 miles north of me the internet speeds are barely in the double digits

Rocking the 7Mb/s @ $50/mon for no good reason. My city has fiber tunnels installed, but only for businesses. We're getting a fucking datacenter next year, but still shitty internet through the lines.

[QUOTE=BrickInHead;42675040]All of these reasons are wrong, it's because of our freedom [editline]28th October 2013[/editline] and our internet is actually a vast network of bald eagles[/QUOTE] Yeah, isn't the U.S. where the internet originates from.. originally? But other than that, it seems to me that you guys pay more for less.

[QUOTE=Bat-shit;42675846]Yeah, isn't the U.S. where the internet originates from.. originally?[/QUOTE] that also means that the US has one of the oldest networks, which can't manage today's speeds and traffic, and is near impossible to update or replace those little europan perfect-countries have a lot of things easier because their cities are much more modern and well-planned.

[QUOTE=sloppy_joes;42675103] Not true, Rogers and Bell are actually decent with giving you the speed you pay for.[/QUOTE] And Bell has no Bandwidth caps on any of their services, so that is great as well. I switched from Eastlink to Bell, paying the same amount, but getting twice the speed and no cap. Eastlink I had a 250GB cap.

I've got 60Mbps broadband and it seems quite loosely capped. I rarely get 60Mbps, it's more like 63-72 depending on the connection. I also like how Virgin don't cut you off, you just get throttled a bit if you go over their cap. Downloading over 7GB in a day throttles you down to around 1/3 speed which is still pretty fast to me.

I'm not completely certain how much a month goes to my internet connection out of the cable/internet bill, since my family has a package and I'm not the one who manages the bills, but I'm able to say that we have a 35mb/s Download speed and we pay about $65 out of the package towards the internet, even though that is [b]total[/b] bullshit because I can never top 4mb/s even when downloading from amazing services like Steam. Upside is that I have no data cap; it seems relatively uncommon with services I have from around me. I also have these really fucking annoying little lag spikes that will happen about every 15 or so minutes when I'll completely disconnect for about 10 seconds. It always happens at really fucking inconvenient times when I'm playing League of Legends, DOTA 2, or SMITE, and I cannot fix this problem even to this fucking day. Also, AT&T does suck ass to whoever said that.

[QUOTE=Cabbage;42675402]"a lot" so.. city centres[/QUOTE] i live in the back end of nowhere and get 80/40 for £26/m it really depends where you live, not just how densely populated where you live is generally, northern ireland has good internet. not so sure about england

[QUOTE=Protocol7;42674374]Because the asshole companies that charge out the nose have a monopoly on the industry and there's fuck all we can do about it short of not paying for the services.[/QUOTE] But free markets and personal liberty is always the right path....

[QUOTE=latin_geek;42675083]I couldn't live with [URL="http://www.rogers.com/web/link/hispeedBrowseFlowDefaultPlans"]this, [/URL]for example, holy christ. Who cares if you get 150mbps down if you only get 250GB a month?[/QUOTE] [img]http://i.imgur.com/yvBQ63j.png[/img] almost had an aneurysm, I must have forgotten how bad the pricing was for their low-end packages

because many of the FCC chairpeople go one to take cushy jobs in the cable/internet company sector, in the past the FCC worked to push telephone prices down, while pushing for improved standards. now they kinda just screw around with auctioning off spectrum and keeping a lock down on who can do what in communications [editline]28th October 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=latin_geek;42675876]that also means that the US has one of the oldest networks, which can't manage today's speeds and traffic, and is near impossible to update or replace those little europan perfect-countries have a lot of things easier because their cities are much more modern and well-planned.[/QUOTE] fiber is like a shitton cheaper than copper lines per foot, instalation has never been cheaper as well, the equipment for fiber requires the same amount of maintinence as copper, to top it off, after the damage of huricane sandy, cable companies just didn't even want to rebuild their copper, but still refused to put up new lines. its the leaders at the top who are more worried about the bottom line profit margain and share prices than actual performance and competition. if you are the best guy on the block, espeacially in a city like new york, you will get more customers than the other guy by not being like the other guy.

South Korea had a massive infrastructure boom after the korean war, they went to town and revamped their utilities and stuff which is why they have some of the best internet providers in the world.

also copper has never been more expensive, which means they can take the old copper lines and scrap them for a small immediate payback on the instillation costs of fiber

short answer: because we can afford it.

If I move just a few miles north I can get full 1Gb/s (full-duplex) for about $65/mo, it's pretty good for them - the ISP in specific [url]https://xmission.com/utopia[/url] The only downside is you have to pay to get the fibop line installed (Which is like a $2,000 fee); but past that you can get a shitton of speed, and no caps. This is also that company I've talked about before that actually does [url=https://xmission.com/transparency]transparency reports for FISA requests[/url].

[QUOTE=rampageturke 2;42675756][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/3063260454.png[/IMG] lmao its crazy though, if you go about 5 miles north of me the internet speeds are barely in the double digits[/QUOTE] Do you have Virgin's fiber optic? [IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/3063511724.png[/IMG] (kill me)

-snip, i always reply to first-page posts :(-

[URL=http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3063528214][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/3063528214.png[/IMG][/URL] That's what I get here at university, but there's a 75GB a week cap, so I have to be careful.

Given enough time, any thread about the internet will turn into Post Your Speedtest

[QUOTE=Jimmyshimmy;42674438]Don't you all have data caps aswell? That shit gotta suck[/QUOTE] Time Warner Cable doesn't. Despite that it's still a shitty ISP. [img]http://www.speedtest.net/result/3063535230.png[/img] [editline]idk[/editline] Also, even though SK has extremely fast internet their government has tough restrictions placed onto it. You can barely get sites like YouTube to work unless you're using a VPN, which naturally slows down your speeds anyway.

[QUOTE=gav618;42676936]75GB a week cap, so I have to be careful.[/QUOTE] You poor neglected soul.

[QUOTE=Protocol7;42674374]Because the asshole companies that charge out the nose have a monopoly on the industry and there's fuck all we can do about it short of not paying for the services.[/QUOTE] this plus the fact that the US is incredibly geographically and climatically problematic

[URL=http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3063540376][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/3063540376.png[/IMG][/URL] I'm on Virgin Media and pay about £35 a month, includes line rental and a phone line. I usually always get my full 60Mb speed from things like Steam, PSN and torrents. Can't fault them really, there's no bandwidth cap at all and they keep giving me speed upgrades for free, I started off at 10Mb and haven't paid for a single upgrade.

Just hoping they're gonna double my upload speed soon like they did my download.

[QUOTE=frozensoda;42676762]short answer: because we can afford it.[/QUOTE] Just because you can afford it doesn't mean you should waste it on extortionately-priced ISPs. EDIT: Where in the feck did my merge go

[QUOTE=Adamhully;42677040][URL=http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3063540376][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/3063540376.png[/IMG][/URL] I'm on Virgin Media and pay about £35 a month, includes line rental and a phone line. I usually always get my full 60Mb speed from things like Steam, PSN and torrents. Can't fault them really, there's no bandwidth cap at all and they keep giving me speed upgrades for free, I started off at 10Mb and haven't paid for a single upgrade.[/QUOTE] That's more or less exactly my speeds. a loosely-capped 60Mb that tends to hit around 70, with around 3Mb for upload. I only get around 10-15 ping with Speedtest though.

[QUOTE=Sir Whoopsalot;42674429]Holy fuck, South-Korean internet confirmed for godlike.[/QUOTE] Only as long as you are inside of SK - once you have traffic out, you hit the great wall of SK (which is a lot less known than the chinese one but still exists) and your speed plummets.

[QUOTE=TheAdmiester;42677091]That's more or less exactly my speeds. a loosely-capped 60Mb that tends to hit around 70, with around 3Mb for upload. I only get around 10-15 ping with Speedtest though.[/QUOTE] Yeah, I love seeing the download speed hit 7.7MB when downloading a steam game. I'm guessing you got doubled from 30Mb like I did? Really wish my upload was a bit more beefy.