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Comment by ssl232 | Hacker News Reader

I know this has come up before, but since the gulf in cost is so stark I thought I'd mention it again. In the UK I just signed up to a £20/month VDSL2 broadband service (approx 65 Mbps, FTTC, unmetered), rolling monthly contract, and £65 up front. The contract guarantees at least around 50 Mbps or they automatically pay compensation. $100/month seems pretty crazy to me. I know the lack of competition and widespread collusion is bad in the US amongst cable companies, but you saying people typically pay 5x more for what seems like similar service to what I'm getting is really eye-opening. Apart from Virgin Media most companies share the OpenReach network that's sort of publicly funded (ish). Yet, the UK isn't exactly known for investing well in public services so I'm still surprised at the gulf in cost.

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The person you're responding to isn't talking about internet service, they're talking about premium sports video packages like NFL Sunday Ticket.

> I know this has come up before, but since the gulf in cost is so stark I thought I'd mention it again.

I think you might be remembering conversations about mobile service or something. I live in the US and my gigabit fiber (to my house) is fifty bucks a month. The US is a big place.

Internet sucks in London, UK, yet to get 6.5mb/s or so called ‘Fibre’ internet. It’s 2022 and you can’t get a 200-500mbit plan in Zone 1 of London without going for a business fibre plan and pay a lots of money for digging if you don’t live in some apartment building. Even g.network and Hyperoptic have been digging around my house but my Mews house won’t get connected even while everyone in the Mews indicated interest

In the UK I just signed up to a £20/month VDSL2 broadband service

Good for you. But I wrote about cable television service, not about internet service. Two different things.

We're talking about cable TV content. Satellite (DirecTV) costs about the same. But, yes, now that I only have Internet from my cable provider, I also pay about $100/month for that.

Looking at the exchange rate, I’m paying ~£65/month for 1Gbps unlimited fiber in Canada, which is not exactly known for its cheap internet.

£20 a month for only 65Mbps seems not great to be honest.

Is £500/y really worth a difference you'll rarely notice? Streaming needs 20Mbps max, so it's only large downloads like games which will take an hour or two.

The savings pay for a high end phone every year, or a complete desktop upgrade every other year.

I do a heck of a lot more with my internet connection than just streaming – there was a night-and-day improvement when stepping up from my previous 150 Mbps coax connection. It’s not just “large game downloads”, but moving many gigs of data to remote servers daily as part of my job while both my wife and I are in video calls, while also etc etc. Fast symmetrical fiber is a godsend.

But whether or not these speeds would be meaningfully useful to you personally, the real observation here is just that GP is paying ~4.7x as much on a Megabit per second per month basis – your 20Mbps “I just stream” connection should cost hardly anything, a bad deal however you slice it.

(As an aside: yearly phone replacement?? I buy hardware to last on a much longer timeframe, so it more than balances out)

edit: back of the envelope network stat math – the 7.5TB I moved last month (up+down) would have completely saturated a 20Mbps connection for more than the month (34 consecutive days), assuming it was symmetrical (which a connection like that probably isn’t).

Most of that £20 goes to cover the telephone line rental, it's not directly comparable to prices for fiber.

The details of why the bad deal is bad are good color, but don’t really change that it’s not a great deal.

> would have completely saturated a 20Mbps connection

The GP was talking about a 50Mbps connection.

Also, I pay the same for a 150Mbps symmetric FTTP (well its fibre to the building and copper Ethernet to the demarc in my flat), with the option to upgrade to 1Gbps symmetric for £43pm. I dont use my home as a backup or major content creation store so for me its not worth the extra.

Either way, it sounds like Canada doesn’t suffer from the same problems as the USA as far as broadband goes.

Yes, when you have a 15x faster Internet connection, it feels like all your Internet-interfacing software has been upgraded. Lots of small interactions go from having delays built in to feeling snappy, if not effectively instant. Small downloads become nothing, medium become small…it’s nice if you do much with computers or phones.

I'm paying £43/month for 1Gbps symmetrical with Hyperoptic. My current bottleneck is the otherwise very capable Turris Omnia that I use as a router.

There’s a lot of variation in the US. I’m in a 600k city and an area with some kind of COVID program that pays my $20.00 bill. I’m not paying anything for a very reliable 35 mbps.

US is a big place. I'm paying $75 for unlimited 1G fiber where I live, and it is not a cheap place in general. I have family living in cheaper places paying <$30 for 50-100Mbps cable broadband. I have other family in the suburbs paying like $300 for decent internet and cable TV, getting ripped off, but essentially not caring because they don't want to deal with changing anything.

The problem in the US is that there is now a $30 federal subsidy for internet. This is ostensibly to support low income people but the effect is that it sets a minimum price anchor. Very few ISPs offer a cheap, low bitrate plan despite few people really needing to have multi-100Mbit service.

Similar speeds, about £24/mo for the FTTC, with bundled phone (pay as you go) and one static IP. SIM only Mobile phone with same provider with unlimited calls and 7GB data for just under £10/mo.

London it’s about £60/mo for 1000/50Mbps DOCSIS from Virgin Media but I think the smaller FTTH companies that require an enabled property are cheaper.

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