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Comment by andrewtj | Hacker News Reader

The users by nationality statistics are interesting. Australia has a population of about 21 million whilst the Netherlands has about 17 million, and yet the former doesn't rate a mention whilst the later does — why? My theory - bandwidth:

http://xs4all.nl - € 29,95 per month for 4M Internet.

http://internode.on.net - $49.95 per month for 1.5M Internet; 50 gigabyte cap - downloads and uploads are counted.

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Xs4all is actually the most expensive consumer ISP in the Netherlands. The cheapest ISPs offer 20 Mb DSL for 20 euros per month. DSL is slowly becoming legacy technology due to high speed fiber and cable connections.

Oh, I thought it was middle of the range like Internode. The equivalent of Xs4all in Australia would be Telstra who's ADSL services start at 1.5M with 2gb (upload/download) for $39.95; additional usage charged at 15¢/MB and capped at an excess of $300.

That's pretty bad. Bandwidth caps and charges create a different mindset that hurts many providers like Dropbox. If i transfer a large file i only think about how long it will take, not how much it would cost. Unfortunately bandwidth caps are often due to a lack of competition between ISPs.

Which is exactly how it is in many parts of Canada. I can choose between cable and DSL, and both have bandwidth caps. While mine is a fairly generous 100 GB/month (good enough for me), I still keep a watch over my current totals, so I stay a little bit paranoid.

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