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Comment by andruby | Hacker News Reader

For once, I am glad to be living in a densely populated European country. We can easily switch ISP's if one decides to pull these kinds of dirty tricks.

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Well, except that the local telco (e.g. BT in the UK) almost certainly has monopoly over the last mile of your connection, regardless of who your ISP is (they rent the last mile from e.g. BT Openreach or maybe TalkTalk) and it's not uncommon for them to refuse to fix congestions at their exchanges (or even admit their presence) for extended periods. So, you know, it's not like it's all utopistic here or something.

The worst bit is that OpenReach are publishing data where they will wire the cabinets, but are hiding information when the cabinets will be wired to your house.

They are actually going to court for this false advertising.

Don't Virgin use their own last mile for fibre?

If by their own you mean one of numerous other cable companies that they purchased then yes. There used to be a plethora of small cable companies in the UK. Now there is only Virgin.

The widespread availability of high quality ADSL does seem to do a good job of keeping them honest though. I've been a pretty satisfied customer of them for many years now.

Virgin offer a "cable" service which is available where they have cable television (not a wide distribution area), and that this is what they refer to as their fibre service.

Virgin also resell the same ADSL that everyone else does (complete with BT line rental).

While it's true that the average population density of the US is low compared to much of the rest of the world, that is due to including the US's vast empty spaces, mainly in the West. The vast majority of US citizens live in densely populated areas - just like the rest of the First World, only with crappier internet.

The population density is still radically different even when you cut the vast empty spaces between cities in the west.

I live in a midwestern suburb. In the land area that my house uses, you'd have 10-20 families in Madrid. Our idea of dense shopping is a two story mall, not stores under every residential area. And don't get me started with mandated parking spots in strip malls that aren't ever half full.

So unless you live in Manhattan or downtown Chicago, you don't see the same levels of population density.

Single fami

Population density is still a red-herring in this discussion though. Internet connections in Manhattan are worse than those in small cities in Romania, yet Manhattan is 3-12 times more dense than Timișoara and Bucharest.

We have choices in most large markets in the US but the one common factor is horrible customer service. You're likely to pay a lot for high performance.

yeah, I too thought the EU was the land of (regulation) milk and honey yet in Germany you have Deutsche Telekom and those that resell Deutsche Telekom with non-performance related value adds.

funny how the blau.de "3.5G" connection is wildly faster and less latent than the cable modem connection. actually it's kinda sad: 5GB for €10/month?

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