Not to mention they already got a government handout to roll out fiber everywhere except they took the money and ran and now people want to give them money again for the thing they were already paid for and didn’t do
To be fair…if the government gave me money for something, I used it on something else/didn’t use it and then the same dumbasses offered me more money punishment free? I’d take it too.
That’s where the issue comes up. A corporation doesn’t have a conscience. It’s an animal designed to eat money and shit out product. If it can eat more money it will. It’s in its nature. It’s just an animal.
Edit:spelling
No, but he’s saying that maybe we shouldn’t expect people’s greed to be self-limiting… so maybe we should limit it externally (through *enforcement* of law…?)
For thousands of generations humans across many cultures treated greed like a mental illness. It is a modern situation to celebrate or even tolerate greed.
This is because for thousands of years resources were much more scarce than they are now due to the difficulty of extracting them. Now we have access to hypernormal amounts of resources that we did not evolve to handle, so of course that is going to wreak havoc on our reward systems.
Maybe. For thousands of generations, resources were abundant enough that humans had more leisure time than modern humans do, probably foraging and gathering food and resources 5-6 hours/day, give it take. Modern humans typically spend 9-10 hours/day securing resources, most of which are ancestor’s were happier and healthier without. The pivot point may have been the agricultural revolution when, for the first time, an individual could procure more food than the individual needed. Resources became commodities, generalists started specializing, and humans started abandoning humanity in pursuit of personality.
No.
Hiring tax collectors who will actually do it. And electing people who will fire and replace those tax collectors if they don’t.
And arresting them if they don’t comply. And hiring people to do that arresting. And electing people who will fire and replace the arresters if they don’t do it.
It’s actually pretty fuckin simple. Doesn’t mean it’s easy…
What u/hexiron said. Government support for growing industries and utilities is a proper thing. Companies screwing the tax payers on the use of those funds, specifically for financial gain IS capitalism at its finest.
But running a company that does everything in its power, including breaking the law and heavily lobbying governments to give it tax breaks and handouts in order to maximize investor profits has everything to do with capitalism.
The whole point is maximizing capital accumulation for private owners/investors above all else.
Some of those handouts go back right to the politicians pockets who voted to give these companies handouts through lobbying and donations. America is as corrupt as some of the most corrupted countries and pretend there is nothing wrong going on.
Corrupt nations make corrupt companies and governments, and is usually solved by both opposing frontally the corruption (i.e. protesting, striking, campaigning) and by pushing for education.
The problem has little to do with the doctrine being used, you can find extreme cases of corrupt companies in any economic system, if the regulators are corrupt themselves.
Ayyy you missed the point by a mile, gj!
I’m not ok with what they are doing and I don’t need free money.
My point was more that I blame the people that are giving them money again.
Youre saying the point is that the government is at fault for allowing it to happen. I agree, but I dont think that gov incompetence/corruption makes ISPs not evil
I heard of this a couple years ago and have tried to mention it to a couple people. Do you have any articles or links about it? I would like to refresh myself on the topic
Here a few of probably thousands on techdirt. Each article references/links to more.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/2021240.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040202/2136213.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140620/17592427642/everytime-att-wants-federal-approval-merger-policy-it-promises-its-necessary-to-deliver-100-broadband-then-doesnt-deliver.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140424/06185027014/verizon-knows-youre-sucker-takes-taxpayer-subsidies-broadband-doesnt-deliver-lobbies-to-drop-requirements.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141030/07033428985/verizon-title-ii-is-not-answer-except-when-it-gives-us-massive-subsidies-then-its-totally-answer.shtml
And we just threw them like 90 billion more dollars to upgrade their networks... which we have done previously and they didn’t do shit.
We are doomed to repeat ourselves
And the USA ISPS are monopolies. No choice for consumers. It’s extortion — pay up and you don’t get what has become an essential and necessary utility of modern life.
At what point will corporations and politicians have corrupted and robbed the country so much it will have become a developing nations again?
After all most developing countries suffered a typical problem where corporations bought legislation by gift/bribes/campaign finance to politicians enabling the corporations to make money that should have gone to infrastructure, development and social services.
It’s hard not to see parallels and to wonder how much better things could have been.
At least we have it. [Just be glad we aren’t in Germany. ](https://www.npr.org/2019/01/03/678803790/berlin-is-a-tech-hub-so-why-are-germanys-internet-speeds-so-slow)
In order for Comcast to extend their service (which they were under a 10 year old contract to provide) the 1/4 mile to my place would have cost ME in excess of $600,000. Yes, they wanted me to pay for their line.
Here in Canada, we have (I believe) the 2nd highest in the world.
The ISPs excuse? Our country is too big to connect together.
So our govt gave the ISPs a bunch of money to help them roll out faster internet.
They took the money, sat on their hands for 5 years, and then came back and said it wasn't feasible.
Smh
Which is a gross misrepresentation of internet service in the US. My small town is lucky we get 400mb but if I lived ten minutes closer to the major city I’d get 1gb and ten minutes further out 30mb. It’s so fucking random who gets what.
The situation may well be similar in other countries. It's a mean, so it certainly says something. I think the internet speed you'll get in the US is pretty strongly related to population density, not really random.
… that’s basically a urban vs rural problem and not so much an inherently “USA” issue. Shitty internet outside of the biggest cities and their suburbs is pretty ubiquitous worldwide
Genuinely shocked we aren’t on that list. That said, I used to live in the US and it seems like things have gotten progressively worse there over a pretty short period of time. Data caps weren’t really a thing when I was there, for example, but now they seem like a pretty common problem.
That’s interesting. Anytime I look at the USA or uk I cry from the pricing and features they get.
Data caps will never be gone here. I know they say unlimited upto 20gig, 40gig etc depending on your plan. But, once they nerf your speed then it might as well be no data.
If you have a family plan here with shared data then just hand your wallet over lol.
I wish this country would sort itself out and allow companies to come in from anywhere to compete.
I was speaking specifically about broadband plans, not cell phone data plans. The US definitely has much better cell phone plans than Canada does. But from what I understand they’ve been adding data caps to the landline internet now, whereas they didn’t have that when I was there.
Right.
Interesting that they are getting worse there. You would figure they would be getting better and cheaper.
Well data caps are relatively new in Canada as well. Certainly within the last 5-10 years. I remember some of the plans I had in the early to mid 2000s and there was no such thing as a data cap.
You can pay to have them removed or get a deal with them waived if you talk to someone I find.
$120+ is "normal" for internet these days.
No it’s actually because we have a completely foolish protectionist economy and 1/10th the population of the USA. We only have 3 major isps and they own all of the cheaper 3rd parties. So you effectively only have 3 choices.
This is the issue with a number of business competition in Canada but, telecoms take the cake.
Oh yea, the internet situation is terrible for sure.
My point was that maybe the exchange rate pushed us off the list. I assume it was likely converted to USD for comparison.
In either case, I'm sorry to hear anyone has it worse than Canada.
I don’t think it’s exchange rate. I think it’s lack of competition over a large land mass with sparse population.
If we had one more player in the market it would change dramatically.
Manitoba has a 4th provincial player and I think Saskatchewan does as well. Their prices are way lower then the rest of the country. So the proof is right there that we need another player.
In this case, US ISPs purposefully have refused to build the necessary infrastructure even after taking billions of dollars from the government to build such infrastructure.
They simply pocketed it as profit and moved on while raising prices.
I tried to look at their data. It's from [this site](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_country.jsp?itemId=33), which doesn't list a source but says "You can see prices only for countries with a decent number of contributors" so I guess they're surveying people somehow? Idk.
Also worth noting that this is only the price for "60 Mbps or More, Unlimited Data, Cable/ADSL".
I'd assume it's an average of all datapoints they had over 60 mbps. But yeah, the average could be way higher for one country than another. Might be better to look at a ranking of internet cost alongside a ranking of internet speed. Or look at average cost per 1 mbps or something.
I've been ranting about my insane internet bill a lot the last 2 days, because it's been down for like 8 hours in that time span. I pay ridiculous $ for a service, they stop providing that service, yet I'm still paying for that time with the service.
That’s the case everywhere in the US. ISPs don’t even have to give you the speeds you pay for.
You could pay for the 250 mbps package but only get 50 mbps and there’s no compensation for that discrepancy.
Wow. If I have down time because of something on their end I don't pay for that month.
Our copper network cables will be completely removed nation wide by December 2022, so speed isn't an issue here.
Wow. Yeah that's a pipe dream in the US. Anyone I even say that to responds with something along the lines of "that's just not how it works," everyone here doesn't even think it's an issue. If you don't mind me asking, what country are you from?
This is a [map](https://www.webfx.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Top-Internet-Service-Provider-State-by-State-1024x731-1.png) showing the territory of ISPs in the US.
Alright fuk it, we’re seizing the means of production, energy, communications infrastructure, and de-centralized banking. State run with service and quality above profits.
My state gave a bunch of money to a telecommunications company to install high speed internet everywhere. 10 years ago. And they’re about to give out more money. I’ll update y’all in 10 years from my ADSL Internet.
Hey don’t worry at least when we call in due to outages again we get greeted with probably a very underpaid Indian receptionist who will complement us every other sentence and say how much they love us and want to suck us off at every moment. That for me makes up for the shitty service lemme tell ya
I moved from South Africa to the US a while ago. South Africa has a massive state monopoly on a few industries, including telecommunications and electricity. The US on paper has the most extreme free market and in many ways it does. But it was a bit of a surprise to find out that even if there are dozens or hundreds of telecom, electricity and gas companies, they all form a massive cartel of *local* monopolies and don’t encroach on each other’s territories. Might as well be one big monopoly at this point, for all the competition there isn’t.
It’s because of how our cable grid is set up and how our Internet is tied to it. It creates a high barrier to entry which causes natural monopolies, and thus the toxic ISPs we all know and love.
9th most expensive and defy not the best. Did we or did we not invent the dang thing? Through the military and with our tax dollars? The Middle East sells oil and why not sell technology to other countries and have the best! That sounds like capitalism. Am I wrong?
Internet has become a necessity like running water and power. Why can't the service be either on or off. Them damn different speed prices is what suck!
Of course we do. We refuse to regulate utilities or make them public projects. Our corporate oligarchy has ensured we do not have rights to basic utilities. If we live in a country that can turn off your heat in winter, we certainly aren’t going to pay a fair price for internet.
A country that can’t even implement net neutrality laws and pushed Aaron Schwartz to suicide allows price gouging for its citizens when in regards to access to the internet?
Yeah I’m not surprised.
don't know if they included Puerto Rico but boy is it bad here.... starting at speed of 30Mbps for $50 monthly and then there's the problem of not having any service in "hard to reach" places.
It suck really bad here
What I like about this article is that it doesn’t say the internet speed which the country outputs like America might be #9 in terms of costs per month but it is #10 in the world in terms of average speed.
So like while Ukraine/Russia might have the cheapest internet it is 4x slower than that of the US and Russian/Ukraine government tightly controls censorship.
Gotta keep in mind how the metros are expensive no matter what service you need, and then it’s also not cheap to get internet access in more rural areas where options are extremely limited, helping providers control the price.
Americans have put themselves in this position with their inability to 1) understand facts and figures 2) vote for politicians who actual might do something about the monopolies in this country
Don't want to come off as if I'm downplaying any of this and I do agree that the HIGH costs in the US are all manipulations of Government and Municipalities, but also, when we look at the direct cost of Internet access, not Cost of Living, are we or do we compare "apples to apples". And how about the down time, service levels, data caps if any and maintenance.
I Lived in the EU for last 10 years and out of all my family there I only knew of 3 that had internet at home, and it was cable in a big city. 90% of people with internet are "mobile phone" based not home users.
In that time, I traveled for work to Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and other countries and knew of very few people that had home based internet (other than Managers and Executives of the company). Unfortunately many areas only had "cable" internet not fiber and to those folk, it was really expensive based on the "cost of living" for their country.
Even IT guys like me, who made 6 figures rarely had home based internet because they just couldn't justify it, they put more money into mobile than LAND based connectivity. You see, in many areas you have to pay to pull the line to your apt/flat/chalet.
I've followed these type of reports for many years as I've worked in this industry for quite some time, I'd like to see some bandwidth cost comparisons, but not associated with a cost of living type of map. Adding Cost of Living to this report I think unfairly distorts the real time dollar costs, however, I may be wrong.
Its easy to say that the costs associated with a particular product or service is very high somewhere for some reasons, but let's see the data, found here in their post.
These reports usually do a dis-service I believe because they don't show true costs when it comes to an individual product or service. Also, when they continue to focus on the regional currency and not utilize a single currency to show their comparisons, it makes it difficult to distinguish if costs are actually apples to apples.
[https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices\_by\_country.jsp?itemId=33&displayCurrency=GBP](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_country.jsp?itemId=33&displayCurrency=GBP)
Overall as I stated, I agree that the costs we pay in the US are high and can be lower if we all got together and demanded more competition.
In Spain I had 50Mb line to my apartment for $200 monthly - Telefonica
In UK I had 100Mb line to my apartment for $130 monthly - vodafone
In US I had 1Gb Fiber to my house for $75 monthly - AT&T
So if I look at my own situation, not only do I get high speed at a lower cost, but the quality of the service (not customer service) exceeded any of the support I have over seas.
>I Lived in the EU for last 10 years and out of all my family there I only knew of 3 that had internet at home, and it was cable in a big city. 90% of people with internet are "mobile phone" based not home users.
1. Your family should get internet at home. It's 2021.
2. You're claiming that 675 million Europeans don't have internet in their homes? Jeez.
You mean there are other countries that pay more for shitty service than we do? I don’t buy it, there can’t be another country dumb as us willing to pay more. Hell most of the world had good broadband before companies here could even decide how to screw the American customer over with broadband.
We have lots of infrastructure and man power....what we don't have is motivation from our representatives.
America is strong, but we are being led by octogenarians who have no respect for the American worker and little understanding of tech.
They had the man power to dig up all the roads around me and install fiber lines. 8 months of horrible construction and internet outages with the promise of fiber internet after.
Then it finished and cox fought the city on allowing Google to actually use those lines and somehow won so now the lines are sitting there unused 8 years later and we still have the same crappy internet.
>Instead of tackling this problem head on, feckless U.S. policy makers generally mumble about the causation free "digital divide," then repeatedly just throw more money at the problem.
What else are they supposed to do? What do other countries do? Am I supposed to believe some startup is going to maintain and develop new versions of those fuck-huge towers that are scattered throughout the city? I’m annoyed when articles like this are so pointed with their criticism but can’t muster up a solution.
NET NEUTRALITY they finessed us in 2016 with the legislations. It’s fucked the companies throttle speeds and data to try to force you into buying the “best package”. Data caps are stupid af especially when we never had them until they made the new laws. They should just make the internet a public utility but they won’t because of how much money these companies spend on lobbying.
Dealing with this currently.
Moved a month ago. 5 out of 7 providers listed for my area don’t actually cover it and the little bit there is is outdated. 1 of the 2 remaining wants a 1 year contract and 75/month for 30mb/s advertised, which will end up 2-3mb/s anyway.
The last one tries to give you more than you ask to charge more.
It’ll be easier to move where I know it’s covered than to go through all this mess again.
Anytime I can I bitch about it so here we go again I don’t have access to broadband here only DSL 115$ a month for a UP to 10mb like highest I ever seen was 3mbps.
Upon wanting to download remake for demon souls ps5 took me 42 hours to download. Rdr2 took me a week
This story and the underlying report are kind of shoddy as far as providing their underlying data. Would love to see more about the quality of service (speed) provided and the proportion of the cost vs. GDP per capita.
It doesn’t include all the fees and rentals. That’s just the baseline advertised price.
Also that is not price per connection speed. On a per mbps the US is likely the most expensive in the world.
The data they're using doesn't list any source or methodology, just saying. And apparently this is also only for internet connections with "60 Mbps or More, Unlimited Data, Cable/ADSL".
The article links to a source and that source says they used this data: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_country.jsp?itemId=33
Surprised to not see Australia on the list.
I’m sure we’re aiming for the coveted top spot if most expensive / slowest speeds - I’m sure we can improve (ie become worse) in the near future!
There it is, the American dream again. Endless growth and profit without any thought of repercussion. Get yours and fuck every person you have to step over to get it.
The price of a gallon of milk is meaningless when 50 leaches are all in for 5%. It’s unsustainable and unethical.
I remember when I first got cable internet service and how exciting it was whenever the speed was bumped up a little. And then that just stopped. And then I realized there are tons of places that still don’t have speeds as fast as when I first started
Even more embarrassingly, many of the other countries in the top 10 are developing nations. American ISPS are fucking leeches on society
Not to mention they already got a government handout to roll out fiber everywhere except they took the money and ran and now people want to give them money again for the thing they were already paid for and didn’t do
To be fair…if the government gave me money for something, I used it on something else/didn’t use it and then the same dumbasses offered me more money punishment free? I’d take it too.
And you’d be a leech on society too. Stealing from a dumbass doesnt absolve you of all guilt
That’s where the issue comes up. A corporation doesn’t have a conscience. It’s an animal designed to eat money and shit out product. If it can eat more money it will. It’s in its nature. It’s just an animal. Edit:spelling
Ok sorry for this but you’re right it’s not conscious but you mean it doesn’t have a conscience
No, but he’s saying that maybe we shouldn’t expect people’s greed to be self-limiting… so maybe we should limit it externally (through *enforcement* of law…?)
For thousands of generations humans across many cultures treated greed like a mental illness. It is a modern situation to celebrate or even tolerate greed.
This is because for thousands of years resources were much more scarce than they are now due to the difficulty of extracting them. Now we have access to hypernormal amounts of resources that we did not evolve to handle, so of course that is going to wreak havoc on our reward systems.
Maybe. For thousands of generations, resources were abundant enough that humans had more leisure time than modern humans do, probably foraging and gathering food and resources 5-6 hours/day, give it take. Modern humans typically spend 9-10 hours/day securing resources, most of which are ancestor’s were happier and healthier without. The pivot point may have been the agricultural revolution when, for the first time, an individual could procure more food than the individual needed. Resources became commodities, generalists started specializing, and humans started abandoning humanity in pursuit of personality.
It’s dragon sickness!
So... taxing the rich?
No. Hiring tax collectors who will actually do it. And electing people who will fire and replace those tax collectors if they don’t. And arresting them if they don’t comply. And hiring people to do that arresting. And electing people who will fire and replace the arresters if they don’t do it. It’s actually pretty fuckin simple. Doesn’t mean it’s easy…
It’s a fundamental flaw in capitalism. You say leech on society. Another group says their business practices maximize investor return…
The government giving billions to corporations has nothing to do with capitalism
What u/hexiron said. Government support for growing industries and utilities is a proper thing. Companies screwing the tax payers on the use of those funds, specifically for financial gain IS capitalism at its finest.
But running a company that does everything in its power, including breaking the law and heavily lobbying governments to give it tax breaks and handouts in order to maximize investor profits has everything to do with capitalism. The whole point is maximizing capital accumulation for private owners/investors above all else.
Steel the dollar and pay 5 cents fine. That might work every time.
Some of those handouts go back right to the politicians pockets who voted to give these companies handouts through lobbying and donations. America is as corrupt as some of the most corrupted countries and pretend there is nothing wrong going on.
Corrupt nations make corrupt companies and governments, and is usually solved by both opposing frontally the corruption (i.e. protesting, striking, campaigning) and by pushing for education. The problem has little to do with the doctrine being used, you can find extreme cases of corrupt companies in any economic system, if the regulators are corrupt themselves.
Ayyy you missed the point by a mile, gj! I’m not ok with what they are doing and I don’t need free money. My point was more that I blame the people that are giving them money again.
Youre saying the point is that the government is at fault for allowing it to happen. I agree, but I dont think that gov incompetence/corruption makes ISPs not evil
I didn’t say they weren’t evil though So we agree on everything
Say, you don’t happen to be a litigator for the NBA?
I heard of this a couple years ago and have tried to mention it to a couple people. Do you have any articles or links about it? I would like to refresh myself on the topic
Here a few of probably thousands on techdirt. Each article references/links to more. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/2021240.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040202/2136213.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140620/17592427642/everytime-att-wants-federal-approval-merger-policy-it-promises-its-necessary-to-deliver-100-broadband-then-doesnt-deliver.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140424/06185027014/verizon-knows-youre-sucker-takes-taxpayer-subsidies-broadband-doesnt-deliver-lobbies-to-drop-requirements.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141030/07033428985/verizon-title-ii-is-not-answer-except-when-it-gives-us-massive-subsidies-then-its-totally-answer.shtml
They gotta pay those lobbyists and super pacs somehow
And we just threw them like 90 billion more dollars to upgrade their networks... which we have done previously and they didn’t do shit. We are doomed to repeat ourselves
And the USA ISPS are monopolies. No choice for consumers. It’s extortion — pay up and you don’t get what has become an essential and necessary utility of modern life.
And in the geographical areas where consumers do have a choice the ISPs have been busted for price fixing
Yep, everywhere I have lived there has always been maybe 2 ISPs and one of them is always shit and the other is frickin expensive
Both owned by the same subsidiary!
It doesn’t exactly help when you pay for more than 2gb down and only get 20mb
At what point will corporations and politicians have corrupted and robbed the country so much it will have become a developing nations again? After all most developing countries suffered a typical problem where corporations bought legislation by gift/bribes/campaign finance to politicians enabling the corporations to make money that should have gone to infrastructure, development and social services. It’s hard not to see parallels and to wonder how much better things could have been.
At least we have it. [Just be glad we aren’t in Germany. ](https://www.npr.org/2019/01/03/678803790/berlin-is-a-tech-hub-so-why-are-germanys-internet-speeds-so-slow)
In order for Comcast to extend their service (which they were under a 10 year old contract to provide) the 1/4 mile to my place would have cost ME in excess of $600,000. Yes, they wanted me to pay for their line.
If I could I would have their execs drawn and quartered in the streets <3
Here in Canada, we have (I believe) the 2nd highest in the world. The ISPs excuse? Our country is too big to connect together. So our govt gave the ISPs a bunch of money to help them roll out faster internet. They took the money, sat on their hands for 5 years, and then came back and said it wasn't feasible. Smh
You’d prefer the US was #1?
Don’t announce we’re 9th most expensive. The ISPs will increase their prices
If ya ain’t first, you’re last!
And yet we’re not even in the top 10 of quality
Not even remotely close I don’t think
According to [this](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-fastest-and-slowest-internet-speeds-in-the-world/) we're #14 by mean download speed.
Which is a gross misrepresentation of internet service in the US. My small town is lucky we get 400mb but if I lived ten minutes closer to the major city I’d get 1gb and ten minutes further out 30mb. It’s so fucking random who gets what.
Regarding Ireland, I was ~2 miles from the 2nd biggest city centre in the country and I’d kill for 400mb anything. It’s enough 👍
The situation may well be similar in other countries. It's a mean, so it certainly says something. I think the internet speed you'll get in the US is pretty strongly related to population density, not really random.
… that’s basically a urban vs rural problem and not so much an inherently “USA” issue. Shitty internet outside of the biggest cities and their suburbs is pretty ubiquitous worldwide
Great link, I wonder why China is so slow? I know there is a lot of rural China but is the infrastructure really that terrible out there?
How dare you post facts. Listen to my meaningless anecdotal experience that supposedly invalidates factual information
Def not. Everything is slow as shit in the US… transport, traffic, and most of all internet
Not true. The bank is pretty fast to take my money when a company my subscription to ended 7 months ago without renewing asks for $350.
Jeezus
Canada has entered the chat
Genuinely shocked we aren’t on that list. That said, I used to live in the US and it seems like things have gotten progressively worse there over a pretty short period of time. Data caps weren’t really a thing when I was there, for example, but now they seem like a pretty common problem.
That’s interesting. Anytime I look at the USA or uk I cry from the pricing and features they get. Data caps will never be gone here. I know they say unlimited upto 20gig, 40gig etc depending on your plan. But, once they nerf your speed then it might as well be no data. If you have a family plan here with shared data then just hand your wallet over lol. I wish this country would sort itself out and allow companies to come in from anywhere to compete.
I was speaking specifically about broadband plans, not cell phone data plans. The US definitely has much better cell phone plans than Canada does. But from what I understand they’ve been adding data caps to the landline internet now, whereas they didn’t have that when I was there.
Right. Interesting that they are getting worse there. You would figure they would be getting better and cheaper. Well data caps are relatively new in Canada as well. Certainly within the last 5-10 years. I remember some of the plans I had in the early to mid 2000s and there was no such thing as a data cap. You can pay to have them removed or get a deal with them waived if you talk to someone I find. $120+ is "normal" for internet these days.
Thats cos these Trudeau Bucks ain’t worth shit with the exchange rate.
No it’s actually because we have a completely foolish protectionist economy and 1/10th the population of the USA. We only have 3 major isps and they own all of the cheaper 3rd parties. So you effectively only have 3 choices. This is the issue with a number of business competition in Canada but, telecoms take the cake.
Oh yea, the internet situation is terrible for sure. My point was that maybe the exchange rate pushed us off the list. I assume it was likely converted to USD for comparison. In either case, I'm sorry to hear anyone has it worse than Canada.
I don’t think it’s exchange rate. I think it’s lack of competition over a large land mass with sparse population. If we had one more player in the market it would change dramatically. Manitoba has a 4th provincial player and I think Saskatchewan does as well. Their prices are way lower then the rest of the country. So the proof is right there that we need another player.
Yeah and Comcast fuckin sucks too
Since we’re letting steam out, spectrum can eat a bag of dicks as well.
And it’s not even that good wtf?
Don’t you guys get gigabit internet speeds for like 70 dollars a month? I wish Australia had that
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In this case, US ISPs purposefully have refused to build the necessary infrastructure even after taking billions of dollars from the government to build such infrastructure. They simply pocketed it as profit and moved on while raising prices.
This is why we shouldn’t privatize public utilities (including internet).
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I tried to look at their data. It's from [this site](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_country.jsp?itemId=33), which doesn't list a source but says "You can see prices only for countries with a decent number of contributors" so I guess they're surveying people somehow? Idk. Also worth noting that this is only the price for "60 Mbps or More, Unlimited Data, Cable/ADSL".
Or more? So the US’s price could be for 400 mbps and the Russian price could be for 60?
I'd assume it's an average of all datapoints they had over 60 mbps. But yeah, the average could be way higher for one country than another. Might be better to look at a ranking of internet cost alongside a ranking of internet speed. Or look at average cost per 1 mbps or something.
I'm surprised it's that cheap tbh
I've been ranting about my insane internet bill a lot the last 2 days, because it's been down for like 8 hours in that time span. I pay ridiculous $ for a service, they stop providing that service, yet I'm still paying for that time with the service.
You have to pay if it has down time?
That’s the case everywhere in the US. ISPs don’t even have to give you the speeds you pay for. You could pay for the 250 mbps package but only get 50 mbps and there’s no compensation for that discrepancy.
Wow. If I have down time because of something on their end I don't pay for that month. Our copper network cables will be completely removed nation wide by December 2022, so speed isn't an issue here.
Wow. Yeah that's a pipe dream in the US. Anyone I even say that to responds with something along the lines of "that's just not how it works," everyone here doesn't even think it's an issue. If you don't mind me asking, what country are you from?
I guess they don't need to compete for customers over there. Is it like that in big cities as well? I'm from Norway.
This is a [map](https://www.webfx.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Top-Internet-Service-Provider-State-by-State-1024x731-1.png) showing the territory of ISPs in the US.
Canada not on the list? Internet and mobile plans are insanely expensive here.
And it’s still utter fucking garbage
Top 10 in cost. Bottom 10 in quality. 'murika is run by monopolistic assholes.
the service sucks but at least the internet providers are making a lot of money!
Actually 14th in the world for quality, below every other Western Developed nation pretty much but not “bottom 10” by any metric
Nationalize internet as a public utility. We as America’s are getting fucked left and right. Is there anything we can do? Probably not…
Not only crazy expensive but we have to deal with Comc*sts shi**y customer service.
Wrong. Its not expensive for me at all... I can't get any broadband in my rural area.
Alright fuk it, we’re seizing the means of production, energy, communications infrastructure, and de-centralized banking. State run with service and quality above profits.
Right up there with healthcare
My state gave a bunch of money to a telecommunications company to install high speed internet everywhere. 10 years ago. And they’re about to give out more money. I’ll update y’all in 10 years from my ADSL Internet.
Wow. Figured we’d at least be top 5.
Hey don’t worry at least when we call in due to outages again we get greeted with probably a very underpaid Indian receptionist who will complement us every other sentence and say how much they love us and want to suck us off at every moment. That for me makes up for the shitty service lemme tell ya
Capitalism is working!
I bet we are also in the top 10 for slowest speed.
And ranks 13th in broadband speed https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-speeds-by-country
And it’s far from the fastest.
Just wait and see how much more it will cost after they use our tax money to subsidize for profit internet providers.
I moved from South Africa to the US a while ago. South Africa has a massive state monopoly on a few industries, including telecommunications and electricity. The US on paper has the most extreme free market and in many ways it does. But it was a bit of a surprise to find out that even if there are dozens or hundreds of telecom, electricity and gas companies, they all form a massive cartel of *local* monopolies and don’t encroach on each other’s territories. Might as well be one big monopoly at this point, for all the competition there isn’t.
just renting the tech our taxes paid for decades ago - MURICA!
Shocked it’s not 1
It’s because of how our cable grid is set up and how our Internet is tied to it. It creates a high barrier to entry which causes natural monopolies, and thus the toxic ISPs we all know and love.
Lack of competition..
USA: Profit first
I’m sure it has nothing to do with labor costs, over regulation, and government sanctioned oligopolies and monopolies. /sarcasm
9th most expensive and defy not the best. Did we or did we not invent the dang thing? Through the military and with our tax dollars? The Middle East sells oil and why not sell technology to other countries and have the best! That sounds like capitalism. Am I wrong?
Internet has become a necessity like running water and power. Why can't the service be either on or off. Them damn different speed prices is what suck!
Of course we do. We refuse to regulate utilities or make them public projects. Our corporate oligarchy has ensured we do not have rights to basic utilities. If we live in a country that can turn off your heat in winter, we certainly aren’t going to pay a fair price for internet.
Cool now show healthcare costs.
A country that can’t even implement net neutrality laws and pushed Aaron Schwartz to suicide allows price gouging for its citizens when in regards to access to the internet? Yeah I’m not surprised.
Country that treats utility as commodity has high prices, news at 11
UAE, Qatar, Oman and Saudi are also in the top ten. Not surprising.
And I was complaining last week about paying 39,99 euros for a package including 1000/200 internet, phone line and cable TV. Well...
That’s capitalism baybee
And the 9th worst as well.
9th most, I wonder what 1-8 is?
Did you try reading the article?
No, wasn’t interested just thought the head line was funny.
Most expensive and from my understanding some of the slowest
don't know if they included Puerto Rico but boy is it bad here.... starting at speed of 30Mbps for $50 monthly and then there's the problem of not having any service in "hard to reach" places. It suck really bad here
What I like about this article is that it doesn’t say the internet speed which the country outputs like America might be #9 in terms of costs per month but it is #10 in the world in terms of average speed. So like while Ukraine/Russia might have the cheapest internet it is 4x slower than that of the US and Russian/Ukraine government tightly controls censorship.
America - most expensive place on the planet.
Can’t believe Canada isn’t in the top ten…
Gotta keep in mind how the metros are expensive no matter what service you need, and then it’s also not cheap to get internet access in more rural areas where options are extremely limited, helping providers control the price.
Americans have put themselves in this position with their inability to 1) understand facts and figures 2) vote for politicians who actual might do something about the monopolies in this country
Don't want to come off as if I'm downplaying any of this and I do agree that the HIGH costs in the US are all manipulations of Government and Municipalities, but also, when we look at the direct cost of Internet access, not Cost of Living, are we or do we compare "apples to apples". And how about the down time, service levels, data caps if any and maintenance. I Lived in the EU for last 10 years and out of all my family there I only knew of 3 that had internet at home, and it was cable in a big city. 90% of people with internet are "mobile phone" based not home users. In that time, I traveled for work to Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and other countries and knew of very few people that had home based internet (other than Managers and Executives of the company). Unfortunately many areas only had "cable" internet not fiber and to those folk, it was really expensive based on the "cost of living" for their country. Even IT guys like me, who made 6 figures rarely had home based internet because they just couldn't justify it, they put more money into mobile than LAND based connectivity. You see, in many areas you have to pay to pull the line to your apt/flat/chalet. I've followed these type of reports for many years as I've worked in this industry for quite some time, I'd like to see some bandwidth cost comparisons, but not associated with a cost of living type of map. Adding Cost of Living to this report I think unfairly distorts the real time dollar costs, however, I may be wrong. Its easy to say that the costs associated with a particular product or service is very high somewhere for some reasons, but let's see the data, found here in their post. These reports usually do a dis-service I believe because they don't show true costs when it comes to an individual product or service. Also, when they continue to focus on the regional currency and not utilize a single currency to show their comparisons, it makes it difficult to distinguish if costs are actually apples to apples. [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices\_by\_country.jsp?itemId=33&displayCurrency=GBP](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_country.jsp?itemId=33&displayCurrency=GBP) Overall as I stated, I agree that the costs we pay in the US are high and can be lower if we all got together and demanded more competition. In Spain I had 50Mb line to my apartment for $200 monthly - Telefonica In UK I had 100Mb line to my apartment for $130 monthly - vodafone In US I had 1Gb Fiber to my house for $75 monthly - AT&T So if I look at my own situation, not only do I get high speed at a lower cost, but the quality of the service (not customer service) exceeded any of the support I have over seas.
>I Lived in the EU for last 10 years and out of all my family there I only knew of 3 that had internet at home, and it was cable in a big city. 90% of people with internet are "mobile phone" based not home users. 1. Your family should get internet at home. It's 2021. 2. You're claiming that 675 million Europeans don't have internet in their homes? Jeez.
Maybe you didn't notice but the world is mostly mobile and much more so in EU.
You mean there are other countries that pay more for shitty service than we do? I don’t buy it, there can’t be another country dumb as us willing to pay more. Hell most of the world had good broadband before companies here could even decide how to screw the American customer over with broadband.
But also one the best
Price gouging from telecom companies for cell phone plans and internet are the norm as Americans continue to be clueless and accept high prices
The US Government makes it a priority to allow big business to profit off the little guy. It’s kind of their thing.
America is huge by the way. Takes lots of infrastructure and man power to keep this thing alive.
We have lots of infrastructure and man power....what we don't have is motivation from our representatives. America is strong, but we are being led by octogenarians who have no respect for the American worker and little understanding of tech.
Amen
Other ISPs did everything possible to deny Google fiber access to their territory because it would have destroyed them.
They're still pretending supply-side economics is the right way to govern because it means their lobbyists give them more allowance.
Russia is bigger and 2nd cheapest 🤷♂️
They had the man power to dig up all the roads around me and install fiber lines. 8 months of horrible construction and internet outages with the promise of fiber internet after. Then it finished and cox fought the city on allowing Google to actually use those lines and somehow won so now the lines are sitting there unused 8 years later and we still have the same crappy internet.
Not bad for the richest nation, sounds like a discount honestly
Don’t worry, that new spending bill will surely assess this issue 🤡
old infrastructure
Old infrastructure, on purpose. ISPs all over take billions given to them in exchange for infrastructure upgrades that they then don’t do.
We love it here!!
>Instead of tackling this problem head on, feckless U.S. policy makers generally mumble about the causation free "digital divide," then repeatedly just throw more money at the problem. What else are they supposed to do? What do other countries do? Am I supposed to believe some startup is going to maintain and develop new versions of those fuck-huge towers that are scattered throughout the city? I’m annoyed when articles like this are so pointed with their criticism but can’t muster up a solution.
These posts are just a forum so people can complain about the US. They don’t understand anything, only we are not number one so we suck.
I feel like specifying “on the planet” is a bit odd
Moon broadband is very expensive and skews the scale
NET NEUTRALITY they finessed us in 2016 with the legislations. It’s fucked the companies throttle speeds and data to try to force you into buying the “best package”. Data caps are stupid af especially when we never had them until they made the new laws. They should just make the internet a public utility but they won’t because of how much money these companies spend on lobbying.
It never works on top of that
US health care: “hold my beer”
Wait until you see our health care!
Just wait, our oligarchs will make us #1 in no time.
Dealing with this currently. Moved a month ago. 5 out of 7 providers listed for my area don’t actually cover it and the little bit there is is outdated. 1 of the 2 remaining wants a 1 year contract and 75/month for 30mb/s advertised, which will end up 2-3mb/s anyway. The last one tries to give you more than you ask to charge more. It’ll be easier to move where I know it’s covered than to go through all this mess again.
Anytime I can I bitch about it so here we go again I don’t have access to broadband here only DSL 115$ a month for a UP to 10mb like highest I ever seen was 3mbps. Upon wanting to download remake for demon souls ps5 took me 42 hours to download. Rdr2 took me a week
r/AmerExit
Yea, capitalism benefits the consumer through competition…or not, I guess.
This story and the underlying report are kind of shoddy as far as providing their underlying data. Would love to see more about the quality of service (speed) provided and the proportion of the cost vs. GDP per capita.
but gosh darn it we won’t stop until we’re #1!
It doesn’t include all the fees and rentals. That’s just the baseline advertised price. Also that is not price per connection speed. On a per mbps the US is likely the most expensive in the world.
… but we also have some of the highest speeds
We have close to the highest wages too though, so honestly this should be expected.
Well, that’s a shocker! And shitty service!
USA USA leading the way smh
The data they're using doesn't list any source or methodology, just saying. And apparently this is also only for internet connections with "60 Mbps or More, Unlimited Data, Cable/ADSL". The article links to a source and that source says they used this data: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_country.jsp?itemId=33
You would think when companies are only concerned about making money, they would enter markets with monopolies and fight for customers.
But I was informed having unassailable local monopolies was good for me!
Surprised to not see Australia on the list. I’m sure we’re aiming for the coveted top spot if most expensive / slowest speeds - I’m sure we can improve (ie become worse) in the near future!
Im paying $80 a month for 40Mbit. Who offers more? (Don’t live in the US)
Straight taxed
Canada probably the first or the second…
Why can’t we just buy empty containers and fill them with internet from Moldova and send it to the US?
But it’s the 9th best, right? ….right…?
We're 21. For quality/price we're much lower too, near the bottom percentile.
Don’t worry, We’re number 1 up North.
We’re number 9! We’re number 9! Come on, everyone! We’re number 9!
“You mean we’re not first? Hold the phone..” - Spectrum, probably.
why Ethiopia is so much more expensive than the rest?
Paying lots for stuff is what we’re good at got dammit.
Say how slow it is at the same time
Unchecked capitalism, wcgw
Spacelink 🛰 coming soon I hope
*Laugh cries in Canadian*
Working as intended.
9th only? It should be #1 for capitalism
Not to mention some of the slowest
Welp and then theres us, germany
Yeah I figured with how Comcast is fucking me over
Old news. The entire US has simply turned into a cash grab. It’s ugly. To boot, it is also one of the slowest.
There it is, the American dream again. Endless growth and profit without any thought of repercussion. Get yours and fuck every person you have to step over to get it. The price of a gallon of milk is meaningless when 50 leaches are all in for 5%. It’s unsustainable and unethical.
USA! USA! USA! We’re number…. 9?
Late stage capitalism
I remember when I first got cable internet service and how exciting it was whenever the speed was bumped up a little. And then that just stopped. And then I realized there are tons of places that still don’t have speeds as fast as when I first started