[hartez]

Can't watch the video right now, but the summary at the bottom mentions France and Bulgaria - does it bother to mention the geographic differences between the US and those countries? I feel like a broken record every time this discussion comes up, but no comparison is complete without addressing the differences in geographic distance and population density that US providers are dealing with.

[dalke]

Every analysis I've seen does compare geographical differences, and finds that that's not a major factor. If that was a big factor then you would expect that either 1) the US northeast is a hotspot of cheap high-speed internet, or 2) there are no regional providers and the national providers are required to have the same coverage for all their customers. This is not the case.

Why doesn't NYC have 100 MBit to the home, when Singapore (population 5 million) does, and can get it for US$50/month?

Looking now, Cablevision serves the New York tri-state area. Their fastest rate is $45/month for "50 Mbps for downloads and up to 8 Mbps for uploads." Comcast has a much larger range. They offer 50 Mbit for $115/month and 100 MBit for $200/month.

Telia is a Swedish ISP. They offer 100Mbit for $50/month and 100/100 for $60. That's for the cities. So we see that a Swedish ISP can provide higher bandwidth, for cheaper, than two of the ISPs in the biggest metro area in the US.

I then pulled up Telia's numbers for the town of Skurup, population 10,000 in the Swedish countryside. They are limited to 30Mbit, also for about $50/month.

The south of Sweden is densely packed, for Sweden, with 290 people/sq mi in the county. The country is 54/sq. mil. That's about the same density as Pennsylvania. Is it possible to get 100 megabit to your home in Pittsburgh? For under $100/month? Likely not. Why not, when it is possible in mid-sized Swedish cities?

[argv_empty]

That would explain why rural areas are expensive, but that excuse doesn't really carry over to urban areas in the US (where it is also expensive).