# Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government



## lotuseclat79 (Sep 12, 2003)

Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government.

Bring on the local loop unbundling - please! More competition just makes plain sense to get faster speeds at a more affordable rate! We've got to get a movement going to influence our members of Congress and Senators to make this happen - or, elect them out of office with the will of the people.

-- Tom


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Faster? Why do so many people seem to have issues with BT? Isn't 10+MB fast enough?


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## lotuseclat79 (Sep 12, 2003)

Hi Rockn,

When you have to share a fiber optic cable between home and Central Office, even though you are supposed to get up to 15MBPS, you are lucky if you can sustain a 2MB download rate when downloading a 700MB ISO file. Then again, that seems to say that with a 15MB/2MB download/upload contract - that is is pretty certain you will never see the high side of 10MB download speeds given the current state of constipation in what the ISPs are providing in the US these days.

BT is over in UK - i.e. not a carrier in the US afaik. Please correct me if I am wrong on that point.

-- Tom


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## DaveBurnett (Nov 11, 2002)

BT is in the UK. It is the owner and provider of the vast majority of the wires. There is an old NTL cable network that covers some areas and that is owned now by Virgin. There are other cable networks in some cities.
BT are supposed to be rolling out fibre to the cabinet at least, but even that can be hit and miss. For example, I live in an area that has cable except that the street I live in was being dug up by another utility company at the time and the NTL cable did not and now never will get installed and BT won't do just the one street.


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Then the title of your posting makes no sense. How can you compare apples to oranges in comparing US service to European service? Making more carriers will not make the infrastructure faster. You seem to thing there is a monopoly going on in the internet world. Besides your upload and download speeds are ot guaranteed and they are defined by the technology. If you are using fiber between home and the office do you have a guaranteed rate of service and are using a residential service you really can't complain. I am sure it states very clearly in the ISP's TOS what you can expect for a connection speed and that it is not a guaranteed rate. You really want governmet to get involved in the workings of the internet?


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## DaveBurnett (Nov 11, 2002)

I should have mentioned that I am 4Km from the exchange and NOT on fibre optics Or cable. I am on ADSL and get 6.3Mbps download and 0.83Mbps upload.


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## ProHermit (Feb 4, 2004)

I would happily pay loads if I could get super fast broadband, but where I live in the UK (out in the sticks in Somerset) all I can get is half a meg. This just about streams Youtube clips at a push but it does my head in not being able to get top speeds and not being able to get on X-Box live, what with all the old antiquated cables between our village to the nearest telephone exchange. A BT engineer had to come to our house once and I asked about speeds, he said it will never be updated in our village and this more than sucks, seeing as I'm paying the same internet access costs as the local town who get speeds around 10MB. It's just not fair or right.


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## lotuseclat79 (Sep 12, 2003)

Rockn said:


> Then the title of your posting makes no sense. How can you compare apples to oranges in comparing US service to European service? Making more carriers will not make the infrastructure faster. You seem to thing there is a monopoly going on in the internet world. Besides your upload and download speeds are ot guaranteed and they are defined by the technology. If you are using fiber between home and the office do you have a guaranteed rate of service and are using a residential service you really can't complain. I am sure it states very clearly in the ISP's TOS what you can expect for a connection speed and that it is not a guaranteed rate. You really want governmet to get involved in the workings of the internet?


If you had bothered in the first place to read the article to which the title refers, then you would have discovered that it was comparing/contrasting why the US broadband is so awful and high priced - it should have been named:
Why is European broadband faster and cheaper (than USA broadband)? Blame the (USA)government.

-- Tom


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## ProHermit (Feb 4, 2004)

* {Spam quote deleted}*

Salute.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Broadband internet is considered a birthright in Japan. Every citizen is entitled to it. And their speeds are much higher than ours.

But "The Government" is us. If there were as many citizens lobbying in Washington as there are special interests, we would all have broadband, too.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

ProHermit said:


> Salute.


You can make that a "good-bye" salute.


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## ProHermit (Feb 4, 2004)

Their infrastructure had to be recently rebuilt following certain circumstances and they opted to lay down the latest fibre optics technology, while rest of the world has to rely on old copper cable laid down years ago.


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## ProHermit (Feb 4, 2004)

Elvandil said:


> You can make that a "good-bye" salute.


UH, why
do ascertain?


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

ProHermit said:


> Their infrastructure had to be recently rebuilt following certain circumstances and they opted to lay down the latest fibre optics technology, while rest of the world has to rely on old copper cable laid down years ago.


Every citizen had broadband long before the latest earthquake. Japan is a much older country that the US. They have just as many old copper wires as anyone.

Korea is another example. Every small child has a cell phone. Every car has geolocation. They may be the most wired country on Earth. Even China now has more people on broadband internet at any given time than there are people total in the US. And that is a country with an average income of something like $30/year. (Not that all these things are necessarily inter-related. They are illustrative.)



ProHermit said:


> UH, why
> do ascertain?


That was his first post. I can see he won't be contributing anything useful to the forum. He has been ejected.


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## ProHermit (Feb 4, 2004)

you're a mod, so ok, hmmmm

and just to add, you felt compelled to adjust and add extra to your post later on.

Just saying.


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## Frenz (May 15, 2008)

I cant believe you people are complaining about 15mb - 2mb, as if that isnt fast enough! (What you have to wait a few on a 1gig file?)

I am in Australia, and our internet is twice as expensive and MUCH slower. Well at least that remains true until they finish rolling out the new nbn.


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## ProHermit (Feb 4, 2004)

Think about me then Frenz. I'm forced to pay my ISP the same broadband cost as my local town who get over 10Mb when I can only get half a Mb. 

Internet access cost isn't an issue for me, it's the principle, due to living out in the lovely countryside in the UK, I'm subject to never getting those sort of speeds upgraded in my life time and I begrudge paying it and should be paying less, based on this.


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## SevenUp132 (Oct 22, 2010)

why do i pay 65$/month for a 15 DOWN / 5 UP internet only, when europe have a 100/10 +phone+tv for 40$!!!! that makes no sense!......
And I have a 90Gb UP/DOWN combined cap/month...coming with a ~5$/Gb if i break the cap!
greedy greedy??


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## Squashman (Apr 4, 2003)

I am Jealous of people who have FIOS in the US. That is by the best ISP and the best bang for your buck.

My only complaint with most of the ISP's is the lack of upload Bandwidth. You can probably go back 10 years and see people writing articles about why ISP's should be providing symmetrical bandwidth. If the Big 3 are going to start policing our activities they might as well give us more upload bandwidth.


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## Squashman (Apr 4, 2003)

I just started reading the article. This is the exact problem we have in most U.S. cities. 


> A duopoly of telephone and cable service wasn't enough.


Having only one cable and one telephone provider doesn't provide enough competition.


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## Squashman (Apr 4, 2003)

I like this comment about the article


> In Norway a energy supplyer found that since they was already digging up the ground for powerlines, "why not put fiber in there aswell".


My wife's father runs a small Municipal utility. He did the same thing many years ago when there was no broadband. Whenever he had to make new underground runs for whatever he would lay New Fiber and Cable at the same time, figuring he would use it at some point.


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## Squashman (Apr 4, 2003)

Let us not forget that Google started buying all kinds of Dark Fiber after the dot com busts. Alot of this Dark Fiber was also bought up by researchers who are using it for testing Internet2.
Google is now testing out their new internet service. Suppose to be 1Gbps. They are at least trying to force the FCC and ISP's to change.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/02/10/googles-ultra-fast-broadband-plan-puts-u-s-isps-on-notice/


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