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Comment by kayoone | Hacker News Reader

whats the typical internet speed in the US ? In europe i got 120Mbits (only 5 up though) which only comes to its limits when i use A LOT of bandwidth intensive stuff at the same time. So while Google Fiber is nice, would that really be the deal maker for entrepreneurs ? The fact that its free rent would appeal to me much more than the internet connection though :)

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I'd say typical is something around 20Mbps down, 3Mbps up, but if you look it up you'll find an average quite a bit lower than that because a lot of the US (by land area) can't even get broadband.

To give an example of what the increased land area leads to: I get 1Mbit/s down and 0.5Mbit/s up for the same price that my uncle in the city gets 40Mbit/s down and 8Mbit/s up.

The reason is that I live in a rural area about 20-30 miles from major cities. If you go another 10 miles your only option is satellite or dial-up (if you have phone lines to your house).

Most DSL in the US is /dramatically/ worse than advertised. Mine advertising 20Mbps down; I'm lucky to get 3. From what I've seen? this is pretty typical. I live in Santa Clara and have an office in Sunnyvale; DSL experience at both is similar, so it's not exactly out in the sticks. In fact, there is city-owned dark fiber running past my condo. (It's business-oriented, not consumer-oriented, so it would cost me some tens of thousands of dollars to setup, and significant monthlies, but it's there.)

I'm considering switching to cable, but we will see.

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