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Comment by h_tbob | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if that's because the USA is that stupid, or if it's just not as population dense as other countries with faster speeds? According to this statistic, it's not very dense, meaning it's super expensive to build broadband. Because it's pretty much a question of physical area covered, not number of people serviced. This stat says the USA is on the lower end of density

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?locations=U...

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> This stat says the USA is on the lower end of density

Yes, but America's population isn't evenly distributed across the entire dry surface area. The population is clustered tightly in cities like it is in many other countries, it's just that the cities are further apart from each other. [1]

The better metric, IMO, is the percentage of people who live in urban vs rural areas. [2] The US is 85.8% urban, which is right in line with other developed countries. Spain is 81.5%. France is 88%.

With this in mind, the expensive part would be the trunk line but America has that. [3] It's missing the last mile, especially in urban areas.

[edit] For the record I don't think it's stupidity, I think deregulation, a lack of competition and a laissez-faire policy attitude allowed a few large players to chronically under-invest in infrastructure. And of course the perennial regulatory capture, with some 16 states literally banning municipal ISPs or making it difficult to set up. Good, cheap fiber to the home is available in Chattanooga, for example, thanks to a city-run utility. They sell city-wide 25Gbit FTTH (!!). [4] That model is illegal in states like Missouri, which itself ranks 43rd in broadband coverage.

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/geo/popul...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/urban-vs-rural-majority

[3] https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/09/15/166239/first-det...

[4] https://epb.com

but connectivity is also not a problem in the denser areas. I live in a medium sized city in the midwest, I have access to 3 Wired Broadband Providers, including 1 Fiber, with a 2nd fiber provider rolling out in the area and could be accessible to me in the next 18-24 mos...

hell even my former home, in a town of 1500 people, I had access to 1 wired Broadband, and 1 Fixed Wireless, and I just learned that a fiber provider has plans to complete wire most of the rural areas of the county by 2025...

Deregulation is not the problem, government corruption is.

> For the record I don't think it's stupidity, I think deregulation

Corrupt legislation is 100% the problem. You have it completely and hopelessly backwards

https://baltimorebrew.com/2016/10/18/city-set-to-approve-10-...

Yes. It is a strangely regulated deregulation/privatization through corrupt legislation. Seems we all agree here and your comment is needlessly insulting.

It's hard to compare housing styles and density when you only have a binary choice of "urban" and "rural". One form of "urban" areas could have extremely different costs per customer to service than the other. Think dense condos and townhouses versus every house with 1-3 people on nearly acre lots. Both are often considered "urban".

US “urban” areas are much less dense than many other countries. Imagine servicing a building with 100 apartments vs 100 detached homes spread out over a square mile.

Agree. True "urban" starts at roughly 5000/sq.m density.

Many countries have had the trunk lines installed for over two decades now. During the dotcom bubble massive fiber trunks were installed in railway and highway rights-of-way - just in time for wavelength-division multiplexing to become economically viable and make most of them redundant.

New Zealand is way lower than the US on that measure - almost half the density - yet around 87% of households here have access to FTTP with speeds of up to 800Mbps/500Mbps (you can get a slower plan for lower cost, but the lines all support at least that). Around 40% have actually connected, mostly because people don't have a reason to change from VDSL2.

That metric isn't the right one to look at.

Exactly. Look at population density inside those cities. You'll find the US is living in what they call cities, but that they are all far from one another compared to the rest of the world.

Across the whole US, sure. But what's the density of the top 50 cities in the US and what is their internet like?

It isn't that dense, but also, the utilities are monopolies that just print cash for shareholders because they don't have to invest.

AT&Ts stock price is at a near thirty year low, their dividends are lower than ever and they have a massive amount of debt.

> I wonder if that's because the USA is that stupid

The USA is a continent made up of 50 countries [states]. Think European Union. Most people don't grasp or understand the sheer size.

So.. the USA failed 50 times instead of 1? Not sure how that's supposed to be an excuse for anything.

The bureaucracy of state governments is almost unfathomable unless you've experienced it first hand. Start with a meeting to discuss a meeting about another meeting... When you get to that last meeting, a supposed "working session", there's 20 people there supervising and note taking, and the one actual person who seemingly does anything has called out for the day.

Canada is bigger than the USA, and is a distinct part of the same continent.

Merely being big isn't a good argument.

Canada is also not great at providing high speed Internet outside of the more populated regions.

Most of the test results I've seen, mobile and landline, place it above the USA.

You'd have to give a careful and precise definition of what your care about in order to get a more nuanced answer, which is kind of the same point I was driving at by saying "being big isn't a good argument".

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