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Comment by teach | Hacker News Reader

So Poland has two things going for it:

(1) Poland is a LOT smaller than the United States. It's not much bigger than the state of Wyoming, yet it has more than 60x the population. That makes building infrastructure a lot cheaper and more profitable.

(2) The US had the Internet FIRST. That's not an advantage when it comes to infrastructure. For example, England had roads hundreds of years before the US did, so roads in the United States are quite a bit better. Rome had running water (of a sort) a long time before most anywhere else but I'll bet its water situation today is quite a bit worse on average than most of the United States.

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1. I am tired of hearing this rehashed over and over again. Yes, overall density in US is lower than most countries in Europe, but even high density places like New Jersey still have plenty of spots with only one, overpriced, shitty provider. For example, I am paying $98/mo for 400/40mbps cable, and that's my only wired option. My dad's country side house at the foothills of the Romanian Carpathian mountains gets 900/450mbps FTTH service for $10/mo. 2. Back in the late 90s, both Romania and my NJ neighborhood were at the same point, twisted copper phone lines and cable TV service over coax cable. Yet 20+ years later, the differences are stark. Don't get me started on cell phone service :)

That explanation is even more strange if you figure out nothing of the infrastructure from 20 years ago still exists that could explain the difference. Every single active or passive network element must have been changed when technology evolved, likely multiple times.

I have a better explanation, and it is just greedy companies that invest absolute minimum into infrastructure, oversubscribe their internet access and pioneered worst possible customer service just because the customers have no other option.

I think you point 2 is much better than point 1.

There are parts of the US that have similar or higher population density to poland or other european countries. There are no reason they cant get as good internet. Not all ISP's have to cover the entire country.

Tangential, but I remember a tour guide at the Colosseum saying they could flood the floor of the arena for “naval” shows in less time than it would take you to flush the toilet twice in many apartments in the city today. Unsure how accurate that was, but impressive description.

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