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Comment by rhino369 | Hacker News Reader

I'd imagine a good part of the price difference is that good and services are generally cheaper in Romania. Wages in Romania are 20% of those in the USA (not 20% less, 20%).

The fact I pay 75 dollars for the same service doesn't sound so absurd after accounting for that.

And like consumer electronics, which easily flow across borders, which is why an Xbox costs the same in the USA and Romania, ISP is a local service that relies on local labor costs.

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Not entirely accurate. It's cheaper to buy some things in the US than it is to buy in Romania, electronics for example. And if cost of employees were the only factor then you wouldn't see such wide differences in prices in the US depending upon whether or not there is competition. Or cities would cost less since there are more people to subsidize the costs, which we typically see the opposite of right up until competition comes in. Plainly, while location and cost of works plays some part in the cost structure, the vast majority of pricing for Comcast and other telcos is what the market will bear in a monopolistic environment. Were it simply the costs of doing business profit margins wouldn't be as drastic as they are.

Despite the source the following breaks down the profit margins based on the telco's own information that they provide.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/time-warner-ca...

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