Take Norway; here all the copper lines used for DSL used to be owned by the national phone company. Then competition was established by forcing the national phone company to sell access to the lines at a set rate to anyone that wanted to deliver internet access. A monthly "line rental" is charged to the end customer - so that the cost is transparent. "Line rental" is about $13/month and a 20Mb/1Mb ADSL is $50/month (Cheapest 100Mb/100Mb (fiber) is $80.)
There is a site for comparing prices (telepriser.no) run by the equivalent to the FCC, showing all the suppliers offerings.
Sweden here: 15 years ago we were happily renting a 1.5Mbps internet connection in a very small village in the desolate areas of northern sweden. The network was fiber though and was quickly upgraded to 10 and 100 Mbps. Cost was about $60 per month in the start, now it is $38 per month. No limits the last 10 years.
For the same reasons those countries implement things like universal health care. The crux of the issue with the US however is that being powerful here can mean greater power elsewhere. For example, if I have 100% market share in Sweden, it doesn't necessarily give me the capital and muscle to become the biggest internet provider in all of Europe. Whereas if you become the superpower in the US, expansion (read -> growth) is much easier to obtain.
Sprawl makes infrastructure investment orders of magnitude more expensive. For example, a small business [1] provides the fastest consumer access in the city of Seattle, but they refuse to do business outside of extremely high density buildings. There is no way a small business could do the same in McSuburbia. In the sprawly world outside of the US's dense cities, only municipal governments with a lot of political willpower have the resources to invest in the infrastructure needed for fast internet.
I don't have direct experience with the state of the internet in the U.S., but isn't it terrible in large, metropolitan cities as well? I'm really just using the anecdata I've been reading on HN.
Furthermore, afaik many small towns even in eastern europe(while making great strides, no particularly huge cities) boast 100 mbit connections.
Assuming both of those statements are true, It doesn't seem to me like the economies of scale argument is valid here.
You're absolutely correct. Population density is a red herring in this issue. The broadband situation is no better in the major cities of the U.S than it is in the rest of the country. Major cities in the rest of the developed world have much better connections somehow.
One of the first deployments of gigabit fiber in the U.S. was in Chatanooga TN, with a population density of 471.9/km2. New York City has a population density of 10,640/km2. Romania's third largest city, Timișoara, with population density of only 2,446.58/km2 is considered the city with the fastest internet in the world.
Density is not something that can be described adequately in a single number. It is entirely possible to have high residential densities in cities with remarkably low average densities. Moscow is a great example of this...their plazas and parks drive down average density way beyond the density that the average person experiences.
Everybody talks about the last mile being the most expensive part of infrastructure, but if the last meter is 90% of the cost of the last mile (I don't know what the exact proportion is, but it is definitely close), then 100 houses in 10 sq km census block is going to be in a cost category that is orders of magnitude higher than 100 apartments in a tower with a 9.9 sq km park around it.
That still doesn't explain why there's no gigabit FTTH in NYC, with its high average density.
It sure as heck doesn't explain why there's no gigabit FTTH in Manhattan proper--by your reckoning the borough should have a residential density even higher than its overall average would suggest by virtue of Central Park taking up so much of the upper half.
High density doesn't eliminate millions of other reasons that a given city doesn't have it. It just provides a floor for cost competitiveness, and a major input into ROI. Even in Kansas City, google has stated they won't roll out FTTH to every neighborhood, even in the long term...and in the short term, they have focused on the neighborhoods with the fastest ROI. I'll let you guess whether the high density or the low density gets built first.
Then why did you bring up density in the first place?
Unless you're saying that urban and suburban America each lack FTTH for their own wholly unrelated reasons, an explanation that seems rather lacking in parsimony.
Because a huge and significant chunk of America lives at a density that is prohibitive for small competitors to provide FTTH. The only way to get it is through municipal funding, because the large broadband providers certainly aren't going to provide it.
Density either prevents better infrastructure in the US, or it doesn't. My use of statistics was merely to show that density has no relation to the existence of fiber internet infrastructure. The US cannot be too sprawling for fiber if areas with lower density in other countries have better internet. Major cities cannot also be too dense when cities with higher densities abroad also have better internet.
This is a commonly repeated argument in favor of the status-quo in the US, and I'm just trying to refute it whenever possible.
Your use of statistics is meaningless because average density is meaningless. It suffers from the same resolution problem as the coastline paradox [1]. I'm an example of this: If you measure density by the block, I live in a density of 120,000 persons/km2, but if you measure density by the city, I live in a density of 1720 persons/km2, and if you measure density by the MSA, I live in a density of 168 persons/km2. I have gigabit, and the fact that I live in an MSA with 168 persons/km2 is in no way a refutation of the fact that density matters for infrastructure costs.
Saying average density is meaningless is like saying, because of the coastline paradox, even a small island's coastline is the same length as a large continent's coastline -- they're both infinite!
Correct. However, if you can define a level of resolution to measure the coastline/density, then then it can be compared. Average density/coastline is meaningless without context.
>> I don't have direct experience with the state of the internet in the U.S., but isn't it terrible in large, metropolitan cities as well?
It depends on where you are. Two different apartment buildings in DC or NYC could differn, one getting FIOS and the other on a congested cable network or low-speed phone company DSL circuit.
But don't get the idea that the internet is generally terrible in the USA. I'd imagine my situation is similar to most others - I live in a smaller town (population < 50,000) and about 90 miles from the nearest 'big' city (Detroit), but for $39.99 I get 30mb cable internet which I'm more than happy with. They offer 60mb and 100mb packages but I don't see the sense in spending any more.
Population density is a complete red herring in this context. It is the excuse that telecom and cable companies rely on for their lack of investment. See my comment below for the hard numbers of how this is simply not true.
Population density in NYC and SFO actually hurt new rollouts. That is why those places and Los Angeles will probably be dead last on a Google Fiber rollout (if ever).
The old NYC infrastructure and all of the physical work (and permits, contracts, everything else) means a huge overhaul would most likely not be worth doing in dense and already wired places like these.
Also rayiner pointed out in another thread that according to Akamai the US already is pretty high up in the list of overall bandwidth. Also I think the HN / Reddit / tech echo chamber overplays the demand for gigabit internet. Most of America has no need for this, nor the willingness to pay for a connection this fast. 10-25 Mb is fine for most people. Browse Facebook, surf the web, stream a couple of movies, play games.
Look, you can't have it both ways. Either population density helps or hinders a fiber rollout--if it helps, then why is the urban U.S.A. just as far behind as the rest? If it hinders, then why do HK and SK have it when NYC doesn't?
As for the remainder--well of course they're not making use of a service that they have no way to buy in the first place...and your insinuations remind me of the people in the early 19th century who howled that the first locomotives' 10 mph crusing speed was far faster than any sane person would ever want to travel.
The urbanized parts of the U.S. aren't behind in general. If the east coast states were countries, a number would be top-5 on Akamai's list for highest average bandwidth. As for HK and SK: there is only one city in the U.S. as dense as Hong Kong or Seoul, and that's NYC. And it has FIOS. So why does everywhere in NYC not have FIOS? Is it because of lobbying? No, its because building infrastructure in dense places requires coordination, and its just not a big political priority the way it is in Asian countries. Its why infrastructure projects of all kinds cost more in the U.S. from trains to telecom. In other countries, the government makes it a priority to remove roadblocks to infrastructure development, in a top down way. In the U.S., every infrastructure project becomes mired in NIMBYISM. Look in the back yard of Silicon Valley. Why isn't SF wired with gigabit. Is it because Comcast had more lobbying muscle than tech in tech's own back yard? Its an absurd proposition. The roadblock is instead the same dysfunctional government and the voters that complain about Google busses.
I would be willing to pay for a gigabit connection if the prices were lower. In Japan and South Korea for instance, a consumer can get a gigabit connection for the equivalent of about 40USD. I currently pay more for a connection 1/20th the speed. If their telcos can do it, ours can too. However ours want us to pay more (much, much more) for gigabit, which is why there is the argument that Americans don't want to pay for gigabit. Yeah, charge a reasonable price and you'll have more demand for gigabit speeds.
Also: I know my dissent in pointing out that gigabit internet for $30/month everywhere in the USA isn't going to magically happen isn't popular around here, but you shouldn't down vote something you disagree with.
A single city in another country is apples and oranges, it is wrong to assume that since a single city in another country can do it, then it should be simple to implement across the USA or in cities which are wholly different politically in the US.
Its a combination of density, economics, and politics. Japan/Korea are best case scenario. Not only very dense, but people believe in tech as a way forward economically. In the U.S., the places that are dense also have intractable politics. Outside the tech set, you're not going to sell San Franciscans on the idea that gigabit should be an important priority. They couldn't care less.
> Japan/Korea are best case scenario. Not only very dense, but people believe in tech as a way forward economically.
This is a common misconception. When it comes to actually using technology, the Japanese are at least a decade behind the West, thanks to their aging, collectivist, and risk-averse society. Fax machines continue to be widely used[0].
The primary difference is that in Japan, the government nationalized the last mile, resulting in a ton of competition. You can pick between a dozen ISPs in Tokyo.
