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Comment by shadeslayer_ | Hacker News Reader

As someone from India, it is unbelievable that someone from California - an affluent state in a first-world country - has to actually pay for a 3.5Mbps connection in 2021. For context, I was paying around $11/mo for a 40Mbps connection in 2016.

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We've had gigabit internet in most metro areas of New Zealand for many years now (I pay $110 NZD = ~$80 USD a month to have no data cap either). In mid-March 2019 the infrastructure provider (Chorus) began testing 10Gbps connections with small businesses.

I moved to Seattle in 2016 and found there was only 1 provider who could do 1Gpbs, and even then only to some select locations in the city. Somehow moving into the Amazon/Microsoft center of the tech universe was like going back in time.

Now if we could just resolve the speed of light issue between the bottom of the south pacific and US-EAST1.

4 gbit connections are now available in most metro areas :)

I'm all for progress but... Why?

What possible use could an end user have for a 4gbit connect? The router alone is going to set you back a few hundred bucks.

> What possible use could an end user have for a 4gbit connect?

Who knows. I was excited to do icecc over a gigabit WAN on those "cloud" servers.

4k, 8k and future proofing? How many 4K 5.1 high quality streams can 1g handle?

Roughly 9~ concurrent streams (if we're talking uncompressed blurays) assuming the network infrastructure is dedicated. OTOH If talking Netflix 4k, the number of streams capable here is just about infinite :)

> How many 4K 5.1 high quality streams can 1g handle?

1 Gbps can handle about 8¹ to 40² 4K streams.

¹ 2160p60 on Blu-Ray goes up to 100 Mbps

² Typical 4K Netflix streams are in the 15-20 Mbps region, with a recommended Internet bandwidth of 25 Mbps.

If someone hacks into your computer, they want to exfiltrate the data fast, right?

640K ought to be enough for anybody.

Future proofing and it gives people the possibility to think big. If most of the country is stuck at 20 Mb, then most people will think in and build 20Mb applications.

Who knows what people will cook up if they are unbridled. Of course limiting users also breeds innovation to overcome the limitations (youtube-dl is a good example), but artificially creating limitations for the sake of money, isn't a good argument IMO.

If you want applications for the future, don't limit it.

You mean well, but to be entirely honest, I'm happy if the 20Mb sentiment persists. Because no matter what you do, there will always be some people who cannot get gigabit (physical limitations, work abroad, etc.), but nobody cares about them.

Plenty of things come to mind that can involve a lot of data

- Docker and other VM images - Backups - 4K video editing synced to shared NASes when working from home - Build and content syncing for gamedev when working from home

4gbit/s is still slow enough for me to spend minutes syncing a mere 100GB, even if I can exclusively saturate that link and not share it with a roommate. That's smaller than some blueray disks and many steam games in their compressed/compiled/processed states for a single platform - no debug symbols, no built object caches, no source assets. It's not uncommon for me to resync a significant portion of that due to mass rebuilds, poorly handled content refactoring, or just switching projects when my local disks (mechanical, SSD, and otherwise) are all full.

I'm living in France in a medium-sized city, and I pay 20€/month ($25) for 1GBps internet (that's actually a 1 year discount, it's gonna be 30€/month).

Also my 4G mobile plan is 60Gb/month for 10€.

Broadband and fibers are about 35€ a month in France with the two providers. They do a single package with phone, internet and TV over internet.

It's misleading to call it 20€/month because of one-off discounts.

I guess it's a FTTLA 1GBps internet.

It's FFTH

I'm living in france too, I pay 40€/mo (~$48) for ~8Gbps fiber.

You seriously get 8 Gbps on anything else than torrents? I get 400 Mbps in Canada and there so many time where I download and I hardly get more than 100 Mbps... Steam and torrents are pretty much the only times I get my full 400 Mbps.

That would mean the servers don't give you more than 100, but your provider does honestly provide you a 400 Mbps channel.

I max out at around 1 Gbps on steam, although I think I might be bottlenecked by my cpu for decompression. Servers that allows clients to pull 8Gbps are very rare.

Torrenting linux iso is indeed very fast :)

GBps != Gbps

Bytes != bits

Yeah sorry, I meant Gbps

I live in central London, about 5 minutes away from Google HQ. Here on I can only get 10Mbps ADSL2+ connections. I ended using a mobile broadband modem for the whole house, at least it gets me up to 20Mbps.

Now, before living here, I was living in Rio de Janeiro state in Brazil. I had 300Mbps fiber connection cheaper than the price I'm paying for shit connection in London.

You haven't got FTC then ?

Worth checking Virgin if you haven't already or yeah going for 5g (3 and some others offer this in parts of London).

I had thought most of London had access to really good options here but obviously I was wrong!

I fell into that trap once - rented in a listed building with ADSL that will never be upgraded.

Now Hyperoptic (a Gigabit provider) is my second question for any letting agent or landlord, without it head straight for the door.

Hyperoptic is lightyears ahead of anyone else, because they offer 1 Gbps synchronous broadband. Synchronous is the key here, because absolute majority of other providers usually only offer upload speed that is 10-20% of download speed.

I have AT&T 1Gbps fiber both up and down on my street here in the US. I agree it is blazing fast.

I live in one of the most backward state tier-3 city in India and I have 200mbps unlimited for USD 18$/month

It will happen after India gets its own Telco Monopolies. Just give it another year or two.

Unlikely, jio has been operating for more then a couple of years and there’s no sign of this happening. In fact, it’s had the opposite effect of catapulting the digital ecosystem to another level.

Leave broadband, the mobile data rates and caps are exorbitant in US-CA. Back in 2016 I was paying $5.5 for 10GB 4G data in Delhi, and in US its like $10 per GB.

4G service in USA is about $4/GB now.

Well India is at 9 cents/GB now.

How much are technicians are paid in India compared to the US? This should be factored in.

Certainly less, but not by a factor of 40...

The median telecom technician in India[1] make $3,406 USD a year, while a US[2] one makes $55,878 USD a year.

It's certainly not a factor of 40, but at 16x it's still quite significant. I'm pretty sure the population density which is 10x higher can factor for the 2.5x remaining.

[1] https://www.payscale.com/research/IN/Job=Telecommunications_... [2] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/telecommuni...

Interesting. My latest info was an income difference that is far smaller (around factor 2 to 4 in tech jobs). Thanks for the update.

Canada ranked 208 of 228 countries surveyed in 2020 at an average price of $12.55 (US) / GB.

I'm in rural utah and pay $60 for 1GB. I live in no-mans land and we have decent coverage most states don't though, betting the new administration pushes for more widespread coverage. Plus, Starlink might be a game changer for that as well.

I have a condo in a building with gigabit fiber access but they won’t provide to my unit for no reason (it’s a 4 unit brownstone), so pay $65/m for 10 Mbps. Oh, and when I saturate the uplink (~800kbps) they cut off the entire conn for ~30 seconds.

My parents were paying $200 for 8mbps in 1998.

Where was that?

Russia, and in one of the least developed part Vladivostok, Far East.

Good internet, is not about how rich the country is, but how the regulatory system is set up.

Intelligence collection / surveillance net tax?

It's worse in Canada than it is in large parts of the US. Typical deregulation/capitalism will save us B.S.

It's not deregulation it's regulatory capture. The regulations are put in place to keep new entrants out. Just look how fiercely even small rural ISPs are attacking Starlink. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/isps-step-up-fig...

A bit of apples to mangos comparison. California is a big state. There is gig internet available depends where you live. India the internet speed would vary based where you live. Also US internet in general will be more reliable, won't go out when it rains hard.

With all that said yeah US is behind for wide spread fast internet.

Yes, and north Hollywood isn’t exactly a rural backwater

absolutely, its shameful.

you're right -- but it's not a good way to compare an entire country.

example : I live in a rural backwater part of the United States and I have access to gigabit+ ISPs.

"Also US internet in general will be more reliable, won't go out when it rains hard."

Why do you believe that US internet is any more reliable than any other, especially since many countries have fiber to home?

This was a specific reference to the comment above about the cost in India. Yes in general would say more reliable than India.

Off the top of my head, my connection has only had ~8 hours of downtime over the last six months. That is around 99% uptime.

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