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Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

Sadly, I'm not convinced that strategy has any long term effect.

I'm still bitter about how bad & expensive Internet access is in the Silicon Valley

I think that says more about Silicon Valley municipal priorities than anything else.

Besides, when it comes to infrastructure and consumer habits, influencing any change for the better is still better than none at all.

SF is actually getting really fast internet now. All the new developments we looked at had gigabit internet at ~$80/month with multiple competing providers. It's getting to older apartments now as well.

At these speeds, the WiFi adapters are more of a bottleneck than the ISP. I can only get close to full speed on ethernet.

Just in SF, though, right? Immediately south in Daly City the options were either paying through the nose for Comcast's mediocre cable or being stuck with DSL, and that was in 2019.

Not even in most parts of sf, those are still the options everyone I know living in the city has.

> … "either paying through the nose for Comcast's mediocre cable or being stuck with DSL, and that was in 2019."

Still a problem in many places in the USA in 2021.

New apartment buildings aren’t much of a litmus test. Those are the easiest for providers to get fiber to.

This is a result of the low density of SV. In my Oakland apartment I have 1Gbs symmetric internet. In fact we have the choice of 3 ISPs offering gigabit internet (only one of them is symmetrical though).

I would've thought somewhere like Silicon Valley would be dirt cheap... considering for $100 I get ~950 up/down in Gary, Indiana!

I get 1 Gbps / 300 Mbps fiber for about $20 (80 PLN) in village next to a big city in Poland.

I heard that the 3 best speeds are in Romania, they bad 500 Mbps dirty cheap about 7 years ago.

Afintiy: From $29.99/month for for 10 mbps. AT&T: From $40.00/mo for 45 mbps

What are you paying?

Isn't Fiber more than 20x that speed for less than 2x the price in Austin, TX?

Honest question (I may have misunderstood): Do you mean to imply that those are good prices? For reference, I'm paying about $40 for 1000 mbps (I'm not in the US). Can go to 10gbps for about double that price (IIRC), but I think the bottleneck becomes server bandwidth so it wouldn't speed me up for most services.

I pay $50 for symmetric gigabit in Redmond, WA. Not everywhere in US has crappy internet but the most populous places are entrenched.

I pay $59/month for 1 gbps through Sonic in Oakland (SF Bay Area).

I do as well in SF. And it’s 1gbps SYMMETRIC.

USD35 for 1gbit symmetric fiber here! Non US.

I pay $60 for gigabit in Denver -- but my ISP is owned by Big G.

$80 USD for 1000mbps in Tennessee, USA. Unfortunately I have the best internet of all my friend groups and will be moving across town to a newer home soon where the best I can get is 50mbps for $50 USD.

It is completely random what internet speeds you can get. The only constant is the monopoly of Comcast & AT&T.

If you list two things, it’s not a monopoly.

A duopoly can be a distinction without a difference if there's territory-dividing collusion, or even just game-theoretically "optimal" moves by the players towards a sub-optimal state for the customers.

Yep and here is a useful calculation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman_I....

They have different words, use them.

Two can be as lonely as one, but it’s still two.

Those speeds are a joke. I’d be mad to have less than 100, and currently have 1gbps

37€ for 1000/300 in Spain, one VoIP phone number included.

In Spain also, DIGI: https://www.digimobil.es/fibre-mobile

1Gb fiber symmetrical - 30 €

Really curious about DIGI. fed up with Orange and I want to try DIGI, 1gbs down + 2 unlimited data mobile lines for <50 EUR is really good value IMHO. Is it stable? How fast was the install¿? I've had everything from 48hs with ONO to 2 weeks delay with Orange

Their connection is good. They lease the last mile to Telefónica (Neba). They exchange traffic in Espanix. Fun thing is sometimes Google says you're in Romania :-D

Those are terrible prices.

Absolutely in most countries you get either a much faster connection for the same price, or a connection of the same speed for less than that. And in this comparison I'm including a few developing countries where I've been recently (SE Asia).

It's okay, money are dirt cheap in USA.

FWIW - About 80cad for gigabit in Toronto Canada.

40us for 45mbps feels old. Any money for 10mbps feels antiquated in an urban area of a developed country :(

Is it for real?

I live in a rural city of France and I pay €24 a month for 400Mbps (upload: 200Mbps).

Yes it's real! In rural cities in the USA many people only have 1-2mbps speeds still!

My family in rural areas are waiting and hoping for 5G internet to save them, but I live in a rather hilly region and many are worried their homes won't get good 5G service!

I think this is why starlink will sell well.

Rural users are sick of slow speeds, and in low density areas there should be enough bandwidth for starlink to work well.

Dont know how starlink would handle a city-full of users; Think that is something we are looking forward to finding out.

Same here, small town in France, I get 5 Gbps downstream and 700 Mbps upstream for less than 30 euros (35 USD).

So what use is that 5gbps? Do you run multiple machines? Do you use 10gb NICs? Or is this just simply what your ISP offers? I’m curious what people beyond 1gbps are using their extra speed for.

I'd personally use it for remote backups. I guess this is with Free (illiad). They also offer 10G-EPON (8Gbps) with their "Freebox Delta" router with at least one SFP+ port.

I pay $49.99/month for gigabit in Colorado.

RCN: $44/m 1gbps/50mbps down/up

Comcast: $70/m 1gbps/30mbps down/up

Chicago

Both are copper. RCN is slowly rolling out fiber but I think it’ll still be asymmetric.

Is that in a metropolitan area? Wow that's worse than what we have Australia, and internationally we are the laughing stock of internet connections! Here, you can get double than 10MB/s even in some remote areas now.

Poland here, about 20 Euro for 1Gbps asymmetric (100mbps upload), multiple competing providers.

$165 US / mo for “960mbps” down and ~30mbps up. I put the 96mbps in quotes cause it’s wonderful cable that i only actually get around 200mbps from

20€/month for 150Mbps download, 10Mbps upload in France.

Of course, for that price I have to regularly deal with the shitty service of Numericable (payment service down, money extorsion for which I have to send snail mail to recover... and I still haven't).

I've got sonic gigabit here in SF. It's amazing.

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