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Comment by nsbk | Hacker News Reader

Spain is at 96.79% (June 2025), up from 94.79% a year before. See [0]

I think France and Spain are the best of the big European countries regarding coverage, but also adoption: If we look at the adoption ranking globally, Spain sits fourth at 90%, behind the UAE, China and South Korea and ahead of France at 83.6%.

Very few European countries convert coverage into subscriptions that efficiently, and I think it's driven by competition. You can get 500Mb symmetric connection for as little 10 euro [1], 20 for 2Gbps. DIGI has just gone crazy and in their own network they are offering symmetric 10Gbps for 25. Most people I know have 1Gbps because when is that not enough?

[0]: https://digital.gob.es/en/telecomunicaciones-infraestructura...

[1]: https://www.digimobil.es/fibra-optica/

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In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered. That doesn't mean automatically that one gets fiber. First at all, if someone doesn't need to download heavy stuff and has a good coverage a 5G SIM with unlimited data (something you can get for 10/15 euros a month) is cheaper than a fiber connection (that starts from 25 euros).

Second a lot of people has still FTTC even if it has FTTH, mostly because FTTC offers a speed that is enough for most people (100Mbit/s) and upgrading may have costs (the installation of the fiber is at the expense of the ISP, but if you need to make modifications, such as put a pipe from your house to the street in which they will put the fiber, it's at your expense). In some cases even if fiber is present it's difficult/not possible to get it into your house (for example you live in a condo and the other tenants doesn't want to spend money to make the modifications that are needed to pass the wires).

In any case they have started to switch off copper (since it costs money to maintain an infrastructure that has decades), so either way customers will be forced to move to fiber or 5G network in the upcoming years. In any case a fault on a copper line is likely not to be repaired...

> a 5G SIM with unlimited data (something you can get for 10/15 euros a month) is cheaper than a fiber connection (that starts from 25 euros).

These sorts of prices are unheard of in the US, so incredibly low.

Something has gone deeply wrong with US telecommunications.

State sanctioned and encouraged anti trust behavior will do that

You can use any one of many MVNOs to get unlimited data for around that price, say less adjusted for household income, in the USA.

A favorite of mine is https://www.usmobile.com/ which is $25/mo list price (and less if you pay for the year, or if they're having a sale) which will give you Unlimited Data and 1GB a month of global roaming data

If you pay $45 you can get unlimited data from Mint for $15/mo: https://www.mintmobile.com/plans/

It's not unheard of!

It's actually the high speed internet at home that is less competitive - the prices in Europe are unheard of.

Only some places. Netherlands is €45-60 for 1 gbps (we don't make 4x-6x the money Spaniards do), unless you live in an area that actually sees multi-line competition.

We do have an interesting sidegrade: 5G Klik & Klaar from Odido (formerly T-Mobile / Deutsche Telekom) for €26. If you point it the right way out your window, you can get 700-1000 mbps down and 150 (capped) mbps up. Ping is around 35ms. Horrid modem firmware though, you get ping spikes up to 400-850ms (!!) under load due to bufferbloat, but you can of course solve that with your own router and SQM :+)

Is this line of site to a very high mast? Enabled because the Netherlands is so flat?

I do use US Mobile, and I recently switched to it because T-mobile made it so difficult to pay a bill, it was nearly impossible to get them to accept money.

And a ~decade ago in SF I did have Sonic 1Gbps symmetric fiber for something like $40 or $50/month, but that too is twice the cost of Italy.

In the U.S. I perceive MVNOs to be a scam. Like Tracfone was OK in 2011 but somewhere afterwards it became normal to go around rural upstate NY and no service and go around NYC and no service and go to LA and no service.

This year I got a real phone with a real plan and I have coverage in many places now me I can finally see why people get excited about apps.

That's kind of a broad brush, Google Fi is great, especially the fact that they work mostly seamlessly for the same price in like every country, and they're an MVNO.

It proves that you can’t trust the claim that “it is the same network”, I mean it is the same network but you may find yourself riding the back of the bus and there is no independent way to check what service you are actually getting.

Well I never expected it to be treated exactly the same as their first party customers, did you? Especially if I’m paying a much lower rate. Just have to evaluate the actual results, and hop if you’re unhappy. I’ve been extremely happy with mine, so I’ve stuck with it. It’s a bad choice if you’re out and about a lot, since it’s not cheap when you go unlimited data, but working from home on WiFi, the metered option, I end up paying like $30-$40/mo, and there’s no need to go get a new sim when I travel. For a different lifestyle shape, I’d be shopping for one that fit that better.

I have both T-Mobile via a family plan and US Mobile (AT&T MVNO) via a yearly plan.

US Mobile serves as my data eSIM, where it gives me unlimited hotspot 20GB of roaming/month. Previously I bought eSIMs when traveling since T-Mobile is only 5GB/mo hotspot/roaming and earlier at 256 Kbps.

T-Mobile is better for calls and international texts, due to it being unlimited. I also prefer keeping a non-MVNO as my call/text number so I can go to a T-Mobile store and activate a spare phone if I lose mine (which I never did), or my phone fails. With US Mobile, I'm not sure how I'd recover a lost phone.

Since the Pixel 10 Pro lacks a SIM card slot, this is important. But hey, I used my Pixel 3 on Sprint with eSIM; I went T-Mobile 3 months before they merged.

US Mobile has done well with me, although anything not-T-Mobile is really slow nowadays.

Can't speak for Italy, but there have been some consequences in many EU jurisdictions. The EU has been pushing HARD for competition, etc, but it has left many European telecoms in debt-heavy financial situations that has caused issues around future investment and in some countries the (mobile) coverage is good on paper, but the networks are themselves actually terrible (looking at you Germany).

But yeah, it's otherwise a problem with competition enforcement.

At the same time a software developer earns 40-50k, perhaps a little higher in Milan or Rome.

Gone? It started rotten with Bell and hasn't gotten much better.

> These sorts of prices are unheard of in the US, so incredibly low.

The EU also has incredibly low salaries.

The main issue with copper comes from the active infrastructure rather than the physical lines.

I work at an ISP that gets DSLAM equipment from Huawei, we run one of the few G.fast VDSL deployments in the world using this particular hardware. Huawei has stopped manufacturing this product line (the Swiss market is a rounding error ;), which will force us to fully migrate some neighborhoods, only for backup inventory.

Germany being 15 years late, I assume you can still buy similar hardware from AVM though.

> In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered

> UK is at 85% FTTH [on a sibling comment]

Meanwhile I have 1 Gb/s FTTH in an Italian village of less than 100 souls, while I couldn’t reach 300 Mbit/s on copper in London zone 4.

I have been surprised at how well they have improved the situation in Italy, and in dismay at how terrible it is in UK.

The UK is absolutely terrible. I've noticed this quite a bit in my travels there.

Average speeds are higher in the UK than Italy.

My brother in the UK has 1Gb/s fibre in a village of less than 100.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...

Well I guess I must have been unlucky in 13 years in 5 flats around London with an average broadband speed of ~150 Mb/s

No, you're totally right. I'm currently in Zone 4, maximum _theoretical_ speed is 67 Mbps.

Clearly, yes. Unless you're claiming your personal experience invalidates a long running, well regarded statistical analysis.

It’s not uncommon for cities to be worse than rural areas now. In Ireland, nearly all rural premises have 10gbit-capable fibre available (will be literally all by early next year) but parts of central Dublin are stuck with VDSL. Retrofitting in cities can be quite slow and expensive.

> In Italy we are at 78% of addresses covered

Complete bullshit.

BUL maybe is close to that percentage

P1G is nowhere near and is never going to reach full coverage in 2030.

I am in Italy right now, in fact, spent a lot of time here. I can safely say, the 5G sim coverage is extremely spotty, and when you can get internet from a physical line, it's generally pretty poor speeds. I am pretty sure a lot of that 78% includes 1 bar of LTE coverage, so it's "technically" true.

Because deploying fiber is so hard in NYC, I use Calyx Institute (https://calyxinstitute.org/membership) on a MikroTik Chateau 5G R16. Calyx uses T-Mobile towers. I use the internet via L2TP to a VPS to give me a static IPv4 and IPv6 /56 block. This is only for upload speeds. I get 45-80 Mbps uploads.

I used Spectrum for four months but because of my L2TP setup, DOCSIS ACK suppression doesn't work; it's TCP inside L2TP UDP and then ACKs are then sent over the wire. This meant sluggish internet under load. Spectrum did install a high-split amp but it's still not turned on afaict.

Row townhouses in Brooklyn and Queens have Fios, but not in Manhattan. I wish I could just do a NYT ad but that'd force me to liquidate a decent chunk of my E*Trade and J.P. Morgan accounts.

I am right now visiting Belgium and I saw multiple towns, including historic neighborhoods with Proximus fiber splitters: Brussels, Antwerpe, Ghent and Bruges. The fiber and Telenet Coax is so well organized when compared to NYC's coax mess. However, where Fios is available, Verizon does an okay job with organizing fiber.

Verizon said killing line sharing would bring more fiber. Yet Proximus built fiber in historic cities more than Verizon did. I don't believe Orange France legally has to share fiber, but in return Orange can't block Free/SFR with payola deals.

Several of the issues you point have been solved in France via regulations (on the ISP and on the tenants of condos). It tools several years, even decades, but we ended up with fiber regulations that are good (could have been better and faster).

I spent time in the interior of Portugal that had fibre internet, it was very impressive and incredibly helpful to the village. Better payment services and banking for example.

UK is at 85% FTTH or 91% gigabit (including DOCSIS): https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/. Given VM are a fair way through their XGS-PON upgrade it'll probably be 90%+ FTTH imminently.

Damn, we pay $110 for 5Gbps in Seattle only because the 2Gbps would be $100.

Cellular plans are also a lot cheaper in Europe :(

I pay £6 per month for a sim only contract, which gives me 4GB of data. In the USA I feel like I was paying closer to $40-50 for a google fi sim? Which admittedly did have better roaming. Now I just get an e-sim for travel and it works out to be £3ish per day

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