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Comment by bin0 | Hacker News Reader

> internet availability

Remind me again, which nation has produced companies with a realistic chance of delivering satellite internet to every one?

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There are plenty of countries that have cheaper and better internet right now.

Most of them are much smaller, meaning there is significantly less distance to cover. Of course you can get fiber to the home every where when you have a small nation. Let's look at larger nations:

Canada has worse broadband but better mobile [0][1]. I'd attribute this to population density: most of their population is fairly close to our border because the rest is a frozen wasteland.

Russia has worse speeds by far, and the certain things simply are not accessible due to being blocked.

No, we're not South Korea, but S. Korea is small with most people living in a very concentrated area. Again, no other nation has companies with excellent chances of setting up satellite network infrastructure, which is a good solution for a nation as big and spread-out as America.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinmurnane/2016/09/15/compari...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...

I live in LA which as far as I can tell is pretty densely populated. I have one provider to choose from (Spectrum) at $70 for 100mbps. That's it. Why is there no competition in this area?

The feds make ISPs spend money on rural areas which aren't really profitable; that's likely a part of it. But there's no competition because there are a limited number of lines available; they can't tear up the street for every one that wants to.

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