US broadband one of the most expensive in the world

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#133648 29-Oct-2013 14:44

US broadband one of the most expensive in the world... when talking Mbps. Obviously the research doesn't include data caps, or New Zealand would be up there with Canada in expensive ones.

Men's haircuts, loaves of bread... it is surprising how much more expensive some things are in the US than the UK. Now home broadband can be added to that list.

The price of basic broadband, TV and phone packages - or bundles as they are known - is much higher in American cities than elsewhere, suggests the New America Foundation think tank, which compared hundreds of available packages worldwide.

Looking at some of the cheaper ones available in certain cities, at lower to mid download speeds, San Francisco ($99/£61), New York ($70) and Washington DC ($68) dwarf London ($38), Paris ($35) and Seoul ($15).

Research here, BBC commentary here.

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#923570 29-Oct-2013 14:44

Hello... Our robot found some keywords in your post, so here is an automated reply with some important things to note regarding broadband speeds.

If you are posting regarding DSL speeds please check that

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Most of the problems with speed are likely to be related to internal wiring issues. Read this discussion to find out more about this. Your ISP is not intentionally slowing you down today (unless you are on a managed plan). Also if this is the school holidays it's likely you will notice slower than usual speed due to more users online.

A master splitter is required for VDSL2 and in most cases will improve speeds on DSL connections. Regular disconnections can be a monitored alarm or a set top box trying to connect. If there's an alarm connected to your line even if you don't have an alarm contract it may still try to connect so it's worth checking.

I recommend you read these two blog posts:

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#923651 29-Oct-2013 16:38

PeterReader: Hello... Our robot found some keywords in your post,

Down boy...

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#923660 29-Oct-2013 16:47

I always knew the US was expensive, Australia is too (to a degree), people in NZ don't understand that our broadband actually isn't that expensive.

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1080p

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#923664 29-Oct-2013 16:53

Skip to "Table 3: The Best Bang for Your Buck for $35 (Wired)" (follow the research link) and you'll see San Francisco, CA is the fourth cheapest city in the world when it comes to a stand alone internet connection at $37.50 per month for 100/100.

As always, be careful when reading news headlines.

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#923687 29-Oct-2013 17:29

1080p: Skip to "Table 3: The Best Bang for Your Buck for $35 (Wired)" (follow the research link) and you'll see San Francisco, CA is the fourth cheapest city in the world when it comes to a stand alone internet connection at $37.50 per month for 100/100.

As always, be careful when reading news headlines.

i wonder how much isp's in the US shape their traffic though, would it be the same as us? better? worse?

*Insert big spe*dtest result here*

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#923688 29-Oct-2013 17:33

hamish225:
1080p: Skip to "Table 3: The Best Bang for Your Buck for $35 (Wired)" (follow the research link) and you'll see San Francisco, CA is the fourth cheapest city in the world when it comes to a stand alone internet connection at $37.50 per month for 100/100.

As always, be careful when reading news headlines.

i wonder how much isp's in the US shape their traffic though, would it be the same as us? better? worse?

Seeing as most content is also served from the US... I would say bandwidth contention isn't much of an issue as it's only going to be limited by your peering arrangements

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#923705 29-Oct-2013 18:15

Many US ISPs have been shown to under provision their peering links in order to artificially slow down streaming video services such as youtube and twitch.tv. They do it to make their own in house video streaming services seem better.
There's nothing the customers can do because their only choices are ADSL at 1.5mb/s from one company or Cable at 10-30mb/s from another.
Many regions have been bought out through exclusivity agreements with the local government, so even if another company wanted to set up shop in the area it'd be rather difficult for them to do so. Unfortunately many of the companies have unspoken agreements to not compete, since it's more profitable for them to stick to their chosen areas and rake in the profits.
In some areas there have been cities trying to bring municipal fibre networks online, but few have succeeded due to the big companies throwing money at lawyers to prevent it happening.
There have also been some states which have been lobbied by the big companies to pass laws making it illegal to provide municipal broadband services.

Unregulated capitalism at its finest.

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#923706 29-Oct-2013 18:15

1080p: Skip to "Table 3: The Best Bang for Your Buck for $35 (Wired)" (follow the research link) and you'll see San Francisco, CA is the fourth cheapest city in the world when it comes to a stand alone internet connection at $37.50 per month for 100/100.

As always, be careful when reading news headlines.

Is that 100/100 a symmetric connection - if so, we don't get that here, and also we get charged traffic for upload as well as download, so again it is very hard to compare across countries unless one uses the same terms of reference.

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#923797 29-Oct-2013 21:07

I spent 11 days in the US a few weeks ago. Hotel WiFi was terrible, T-Mobile was terrible, and all I heard at tech conference for 3 days was how terrible US internet is.

The whole VoIP / hosted PBX market in the US is very underdeveloped because of the poor quality connections making it unusable so people are having to stick with POTS lines.

Yes some people have good internet, but when you've speaking with large VoIP providers who have tens of thousands of customers telling me how bad things are I tend to believe them.

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#923812 29-Oct-2013 21:30

TwoSeven:
1080p: Skip to "Table 3: The Best Bang for Your Buck for $35 (Wired)" (follow the research link) and you'll see San Francisco, CA is the fourth cheapest city in the world when it comes to a stand alone internet connection at $37.50 per month for 100/100.

As always, be careful when reading news headlines.

Is that 100/100 a symmetric connection - if so, we don't get that here, and also we get charged traffic for upload as well as download, so again it is very hard to compare across countries unless one uses the same terms of reference.

thatsthejoke.jpg

The headline claims that US broadband is the most expensive on Earth but it is fourth cheapest globally on the only metric that actually matters (a lone broadband connection).

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#923843 29-Oct-2013 22:09

1080p:
TwoSeven:
1080p: Skip to "Table 3: The Best Bang for Your Buck for $35 (Wired)" (follow the research link) and you'll see San Francisco, CA is the fourth cheapest city in the world when it comes to a stand alone internet connection at $37.50 per month for 100/100.

As always, be careful when reading news headlines.

Is that 100/100 a symmetric connection - if so, we don't get that here, and also we get charged traffic for upload as well as download, so again it is very hard to compare across countries unless one uses the same terms of reference.

thatsthejoke.jpg

The headline claims that US broadband is the most expensive on Earth but it is fourth cheapest globally on the only metric that actually matters (a lone broadband connection).

Well, it shows that in one city it is 4th cheapest. But that isn't really a fair comparison.

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#923857 29-Oct-2013 22:27

why doesnt their government do what we did here with UFB?

*Insert big spe*dtest result here*

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#923894 29-Oct-2013 23:46

They tried to in the 1990s. The companies that received the subsidies to build out fibre networks either pocketed the money, or built infrastructure and have left it sitting in the ground doing nothing.
It's more profitable for them to milk as much as they can out of their old copper (which sounds somewhat familiar).

Another consideration is the US is a very strange place politically. If the government tries to do something that'll benefit their citizens, someone will scream socialism and that'll be the end of it. Just look at how much trouble their healthcare reforms have had.

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#923897 29-Oct-2013 23:56

Lorenceo: They tried to in the 1990s. The companies that received the subsidies to build out fibre networks either pocketed the money, or built infrastructure and have left it sitting in the ground doing nothing.
It's more profitable for them to milk as much as they can out of their old copper (which sounds somewhat familiar).

Another consideration is the US is a very strange place politically. If the government tries to do something that'll benefit their citizens, someone will scream socialism and that'll be the end of it. Just look at how much trouble their healthcare reforms have had.

strange that their government didn't make sure they couldn't do that.

here i was thinking it was a governments job to help its citizens, my bad!

*Insert big spe*dtest result here*

1080p

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#923905 30-Oct-2013 02:07

NonprayingMantis:
1080p:
TwoSeven:
1080p: Skip to "Table 3: The Best Bang for Your Buck for $35 (Wired)" (follow the research link) and you'll see San Francisco, CA is the fourth cheapest city in the world when it comes to a stand alone internet connection at $37.50 per month for 100/100.

As always, be careful when reading news headlines.

Is that 100/100 a symmetric connection - if so, we don't get that here, and also we get charged traffic for upload as well as download, so again it is very hard to compare across countries unless one uses the same terms of reference.

thatsthejoke.jpg

The headline claims that US broadband is the most expensive on Earth but it is fourth cheapest globally on the only metric that actually matters (a lone broadband connection).

Well, it shows that in one city it is 4th cheapest. But that isn't really a fair comparison.

The research was only measuring cities.

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