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Comment by anonoholic | Hacker News Reader

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> it's astounding to me that affordable broadband access is still an issue even in the United States

Not sure how to respond to this, other than to point out that by most metrics, the US is largely a 3rd world country:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-a-third-world...

https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/study-by-...

https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/poverty-in...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/six-ways...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-develop...

etc., etc.

Except when it comes to broadband! The US is top 10 for average connection speeds in both Akamai’s and Ookla’s global surveys. This is the mind boggling thing to me. By objective metrics, our infrastructure is shit compared to other first world countries, except when it comes to broadband. Roads, schools, transit, etc. Broadband is like the single infrastructure thing we do better than say Germany. But for some reason broadband is the thing folks on HN complain about.

The US as a whole might have statistically great broadband, but that's cold comfort to folks paying $200/month for 10 megabits. Roads are better in some counties than others, but generally not two orders of magnitude worse on the other side of town.

Every hotel or airbnb I've been to in Europe has had pure shit internet. 1 Gigabit to every hovel or cabin in Europe seems to be a meme, not reality.

Yes, every (almost) hotel I've been to in Europe has had questionable internet. Homes are a completely different thing. Hotels provide enough capacity to be able to charge you for access, homes get enough to do the things they want to do.

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