[seattle_spring]

The GP is comparing the US to the rest of the world, and they're correct: the US (including yours) lags behind other modern countries. Singapore, for reference, offers 500/500 symmetric connections for approximately the same price as you're paying. 2gbps symmetric is less than $200/mo.

You're saying your Internet is fast enough for you, and that's fine and probably correct, but you're still getting slower speeds for higher prices than you should. You're also likely better situated than much of the rest of the country.

[umanwizard]

If by "the rest of the world" you mean a cherry-picked selection of the most advanced countries, then yes, the US is behind on internet access (and everything else).

It never makes sense to me when people say how the US ranks last among developed countries on a bunch of metrics. Of course, that just means the US is indeed... less developed than those countries. If it's not fair to compare the US to Somalia, it's not fair to compare it to Sweden either. It just is what it is, somewhere between the two development extremes.

[mynameisvlad]

How, exactly, are you supposed to compare if not to other countries? There’s no bar for “this is what a developed country’s internet should look like” so the only way to compare is to do it against other countries roughly in the same range as the US.

It’s also entirely factual to say that in comparison to other developed countries, the US lags in internet.

[umanwizard]

If the US is significantly behind developed countries in practically every category, why do you consider it a developed country? What does “developed” mean?

> other countries roughly in the same range as the US.

The same range of what variable? How do you measure/define this?

[mynameisvlad]

There are several definitions for what makes a country “developed” and the US is solidly in all of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country

I’m not sure how you can possibly argue that the US is not “developed”.

> The same range of what variable? How do you measure/define this?

Feel free to take any of those lists and compare the US to countries around them in those lists. The countries might differ slightly, but the notion of what is a “developed” country has been firmly established for a long time now.

[umanwizard]

> I’m not sure how you can possibly argue that the US is not “developed”.

The U.S. is considered developed only because it’s extremely rich. However, the general state of its infrastructure, education, governance, media, etc. is more typical of a developing country in many ways.

That’s my point: all these lists of things the U.S. is worse at than every developed country are collectively what it means to be developed, more so in my mind than just being rich.

[trimethylpurine]

only because it’s extremely rich

Wtf!? Yes!

Now I'm curious what you thought developed means.

[trimethylpurine]

You compare cities, since you need to include average income.

[trimethylpurine]

My prices are much lower in the states than in my place in Italy right now. Service sucks here too.

Anyway you're ignoring income. Seattle is around triple the median of France for example. You need to compare cities of similar size and income.

[throwaway35777]

> but you're still getting slower speeds for higher prices than you should

And what is your solution to that?

[int_19h]

Aggressive regulation of large businesses, and local government-run non-profit ISPs to provide a sensible baseline that can be relied upon without being at the whims of private companies.

[seattle_spring]

Not vote for politicians that are ardently anti-consumer and anti-infrastructure? We’re talking about what exists, not who you can call to upgrade your internet :/