[milankragujevic]

I'd also like to mention something that was tried in Serbia (but ultimately failed, though in a good way):

Our national telecom operator, Telekom Srbija, had a monopoly on internet access in most areas due to the fact they own all the phone lines. In cooperation with Huawei and the Chinese and Serbian governments, they made a plan to kill POTS service per line and use ALL of the bandwidth for VDSL, as well as building DSLAMs on street level, to provide very high speeds (100/10 Mbps was the max they achieved before stopping) with short copper lengths. Phones would work over VoIP, so all new modems were VDSL compliant with IAD (integrated access device) "certification" (a SIP client and 2 POTS ports).

In the end the Chinese lost interest and it was all forgotten and covered with ash. The new idea, which is why I say it failed in a good way, is to skip the street DSLAM buildout and just do FTTH. And they did, though not with symmetric gigabit speeds, because reasons (bla bla customer demand, costs, etc..) The highest speed is 1000/400 Mbps for $120/mo. (which is super expensive compared to what was promised by the Chinese and also compared to general purchasing power in the country).

[wu_187]

ive got 1000/1000 unmetered in the US for ~$110/month

[milankragujevic]

Well.... yes, you do, and some people in the US have 4/0.5 Mbps for the same price. It really depends.

For example, in Niš, which is the most developed city when considering internet infrastructure and the number of ISPs, you could have 600/400 Mbps for $10/mo with ~300 TV channels on unlimited* TVs. You'd even get a [VoIP] landline.

* all the TVs in your home, basically up to 5 for 99% of users

Then Telekom Srbija got the Chinese money and bought 10 largest ISPs other than them and SBB (the other side of the duopoly), and now there's 200/20 Mbps on FTTH for $30/mo on up to 3 TVs with 260 channels and a landline that has call routing problems. Users which sign new contracts are downgraded and pay more, those that don't sign new contracts suffer with TV and Internet dying, and are told to "sign or sue us".

Ironically, I chose the second option, and won (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21733553) but the thing I "won" is free contract termination and being repaid fees that were charged but are not mentioned or required under the TOS and Contract at the date of signing (given I have not signed anything else giving permission or agreeing to anything new, and they didn't officially force new contracts on people so that people can't cancel to run away)...