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Comment by geodel | Hacker News Reader

Important point. I was talking to my brother in India. Last month internet service was down in their building for 4 days. Unlike folks who go apoplectic over this, he understands that 3rd world prices do not come with first world service quality in practice.

Most people do not have an option to move across continents just because somethings are cheaper there. And internet service is one small part of overall things one has do deal with in their daily lives.

Another way to cheaper price is that most jobs done in first world is to be outsourced to much cheaper places, which is happening. Or push lot of middle class jobs to subsistence level jobs, which is also happening.

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Although, the benefit of having cheap mobile internet / Fiber broadband plans is - you can have multiple redundant backup services!

I spend a few months a year in Mumbai, India.

I have a truly unlimited 300Mbps fiber connection as the primary source ($25/Mo), a second 100 Mbps connection from a different company as backup ($10/Mo) and my mobile LTE as the third backup ($10/Mo). AND my international roaming US Google Fi network as the 4th backup for $10/GB :)

This setup does work pretty well for me.The backups have come in handy at times.

you can have multiple redundant backup services!

My mom had slow DSL for years 6Mbps/1Mbps through the local phone company. They had stopped offering DSL to new customers for years.

I had to stay with her one summer while we were literally between places to stay. Our lease was up and our house was being built.

She got cable internet so I could work. She now has Had both DSL and cable for four years just so she will have backup internet and if she cancels the DSL she won’t be able to get it back.

>Important point. I was talking to my brother in India. Last month internet service was down in their building for 4 days. Unlike folks who go apoplectic over this, he understands that 3rd world prices do not come with first world service quality in practice.

4 days is pretty good turn around time for most US cities that aren't NY or SF.

It was just his building or may be apartment complex. I imagine city wide outages are more severe and likely due to some event like storm etc.

At least in India, the situation is far better now in terms of reliability. My internet goes down maybe once in 5-6 months, and when it does, it's back within 24 hours. Mobile internet is cheap and fast enough (I pay around $7 for 84 GB) that I can use it as backup.

My work is entirely online. I haven't worried about not having internet for a while.

> Last month internet service was down in their building for 4 days

I don't live in India, but if it happened in an individual building that sounds like perhaps this was due to management of that building and was just an isolated incident.

For buildings and apartment complexes, they usually have a dedicated switch/line (I don't know the technical term).

So, it's most likely that the cable got damaged due to bad weather (rainy season, laying out cable open to the sky), or the closest switch suffered a damage due to electricity fluctuations. These are the 2 main reasons for internet going down for that long. With me, it usually happens during a power cut. While I have UPS power backup and my router keeps running, it seems the local (geographical) area hub doesn't and internet goes down for 5 minutes.

fwiw many of my coworkers in the Northeast US suffered multiday internet and power outages due to the storm that forced them to either take days off or travel >30m to find places with internet.

This sounds like an uncommon occurrence sure to an act of nature unlike what op was suggesting

miles? minutes? metres? My high school maths teacher would like a word

Metres, obviously. Miles and minutes have different acronyms.

> "due to the storm that forced them to either take days off or travel >30m [metres] to find places with internet."

Is it "travel" if you walk 30 metres? :)

I was wondering that too, but it says metres, and I'm not one to claim that another is lying. :)

Haha, completely fair. Though outside of cities, 30 miles == 30 minutes.

I meant minutes.

Oh, I though 30 miles outside of cities meant 15-18 minutes.

Driving 100 to 120 miles per hour?

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