[kyralis]

The article does not include the word "density" at all. Switzerland has 2.5x the population density that the US does.

I absolutely believe that US regulation choices encourage telecom monopolies and suppresses service in the US, but it's impossible to make a credible argument for that without acknowledging the density challenges that the majority of the US (geographically) faces.

[cogman10]

Density doesn't really make the sort of difference you might think.

Every home in america has electricity and plumbing even though those utilities have the same density problem. Up until the rise of cell phones, every home had a telephone line as well.

In many ways, the lack of density actually makes it easier for you to install new lines. It's a lot easier and faster to plow through a long strip of grass next to a highway than it is to deal with a built up ubran location (I've actually done this work).

US regulations actually give telecoms a leg up in a lot of ways to expand services. These private companies have utility access to power polls and easement access to common lines. About the only regulation that can get in the way is some cities and states have minimum service requirements before you can start burying in a new territory. That is a give away to the ISPs to tamp down competition.

The reason internet is so crap is because utility lines are all private. For example, in the UK BT owns all the lines and British law allows for line rental from 3rd party ISPs. That's what allows you to get a wide variety of ISPs without having to plow in a brand new line to your location. That shared infrastructure monopolized by a central government authority is exactly what the US would need to have fast internet everywhere. Without that, ISPs have no incentive to increase speeds as new competition is very hard to create or come by.

[ethersteeds]

I agree with you about the effects of regulation and privatization. The installation challenges of dense urban environments are no joke either. But:

> Every home in america has electricity and plumbing even though those utilities have the same density problem.

Plumbing yes, but it might not leave the property. About 25% of US homes have septic systems, and some states are as high as 50%. For water, 15% of homes use private wells, which goes to 72% for rural households.

It's not everything, but density absolutely matters for rural households. The US is vast and contains many areas where you are your water and sewer company because there's no municipal option.

That said, your electricity example shows the way. That got to every home through massive public infrastructure projects. And internet could too, far easier than water or sewer.

[steve1977]

> In many ways, the lack of density actually makes it easier for you to install new lines. It's a lot easier and faster to plow through a long strip of grass next to a highway than it is to deal with a built up ubran location (I've actually done this work).

If endpoints are spread too far out, it's not hard technically to connect them, but it might be very expensive and not feasible economically.

If density is too high on the other hand (say NYC), it's becoming hard to technically connect, because, as you mentioned, there's already a lot of "stuff" there that you have to be careful about. But it might be much more interesting economically.

I think Switzerland just hits a sweet spot between these two. It's dense enough to be profitable but sparse enough to make construction still feasible. So essentially, we're just lucky.

[bigstrat2003]

> Every home in america has electricity and plumbing even though those utilities have the same density problem. Up until the rise of cell phones, every home had a telephone line as well.

Those utilities are also far older than the Internet, so they should be expected to have more penetration. Also, the fair comparison here wouldn't be "how many American homes have a super fast Internet connection", but rather "how many American homes have the Internet at all".

[ivell]

> That shared infrastructure monopolized by a central government authority is exactly what the US would need to have fast internet everywhere.

In case of India, the government lines had higher costs and lower service standards than the private Jio. So it is not always the case that government infrastructure is better. However, there are regulations that require rural infrastructure development which ensures coverage on low profitability regions.

[wisty]

As an Australian it's hilarious to hear that. We have less than 10% the density of the USA. And yeah, we blame everything on density too, even though 90% of the country is a desert with noone in it (so no need to lay cable or build roads there), and we are one of the most urbanised countries in the word (IIRC most of the population lives in 3 cities).

[moi2388]

Whenever I hear the density problem for internet cables, I think about all the cables in the ocean and how few people actually live on the bottom of it.

[danpalmer]

It's fair to critique this article not covering this, but I also think this is largely a red herring. The vast majority of the issue in the US is suburban, where density isn't really a problem. The US has a lot of rural areas, but they represent a tiny fraction of the population.

As a comparison, Australia has roughly the same land-mass as the contiguous states, but with less than a tenth of the population. It has its fair share of ISP and telecoms issues, but not as the US for the most part. Most people live in cities with good internet infra, most of the rest live in towns with at least some choice. Not perfect, a long way to go, but better than the collection of monopolies the US has.

[cogman10]

Rural and suburban line burial isn't a hard problem to solve. It's easier to put in lines in rural and suburban locations than it is to put lines in urban areas.

You don't have to, for example, shut down a road when putting in rural lines.

It's a mistake to think that population density has anything to do with the difficulty of getting high speed internet. It's nearly completely unrelated.

[rootusrootus]

> It's easier to put in lines in rural and suburban locations than it is to put lines in urban areas

This is backwards in my experience, but I probably have a different definition of urban from you. In my area, the suburban area has mostly underground lines that pre-date fiber, and getting fiber is probably not ever happening. Comcast is all we got. But if I drive 15 minutes into the city, there are fiber lines on every pole, and I could choose from a couple different providers.

[cogman10]

It'll depend on the area. From what I've seen, it appears that a lot of cities are eliminating utility poles and are burying all their lines (except for high voltage power).

An urban buried line will be harder than a suburban or rural buried line. Pole access is easier in both situations.

Utilities like buried lines because people will cut and strip overhead lines looking for copper.

[rootusrootus]

Yeah that sounds like just a regional definition of what constitutes urban :). My city is old only by western US standards, approaching 200 years old, and nobody seems to have any intention of burying the existing wired utilities. Probably not enough tax funding or voter enthusiasm to pull it off is my guess. The one upside is that poles are cheap to put new infrastructure on. But it would be so much prettier without all the wires criss-crossing everywhere. I hope someday we do it.

[Xirdus]

There are cities in the US that have 2.5x the population density that Zurich does. Rural Texas might have this excuse, but New York City absolutely does not.

[rurban]

The higher the density, the more problematic to dig up the streets to bury the fibre lines. And US streets are much wider to dig the lines.

I've seen city-level street works in the US and they are incredibly slow compared to national highway work, or street work in Europe. Like 10x slower. And getting the permissions? Impossible

[quickthrowman]

You don’t need to dig up streets to install fiber underground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_boring

[jltsiren]

You often do, if the street has been there for a while. The exact location of underground infrastructure was rarely documented in the past. While the city should have a general idea of what lies under the street, you usually have to dig the street up to determine where you can install new infrastructure safely.

[quickthrowman]

OK, you are clearly not a construction professional but you are confidently wrong so you must be a programmer.

Yes, telecom companies will lay new backbone fiber during a total road reconstruction because someone else is ripping up the pavement. Gas companies do the same thing along with water utilities. Streets where I live are completely redone every 60 years, it’s mill and overlay between those total reconstructions which does not allow access to the subsurface.

When this is not happening and fiber installs need to happen, they dig two pits and directional bore.

I see fiber companies directional boring everywhere on the suburbs to build out their network without ripping up entire roads.

> exact location of underground infrastructure was rarely documented in the past. While the city should have a general idea of what lies under the street, you usually have to dig the street up to determine where you can install new infrastructure safely.

Fiber does not run under the street in most residential areas, it’s laid in the utility ROW near the edge of the road/sidewalk so a handhole can be installed on the customer’s property to run a service drop to their demarc. I’ve seen fiber laid for residential networks in multiple jurisdictions in my area and that’s how it’s done.

[rurban]

Well, that's "small" digging, but you still need maps and permissions.

[xbmcuser]

Why are you using all of US then compare the internet of most US cities and to most cities in Europe and Asia. US has a problem of false advertisement it is portrayed as the free market but reality it is filled with monopolies/duopolies/captured markets in most industries and americans are propagandized to believe stupidly that it is a good thing.

[rmunn]

It appears the author lives in Germany. In my experience, Europeans who haven't visited the US (I don't know if he has or not) often have a hard time grasping just how HUGE the country is. It literally spans an entire continent east to west. In Europe, you can usually drive to another country's border, or the coast, within 4-6 hours (sometimes more depending on where you are). In parts of America, you can drive for 24 hours in the same direction without even crossing into a different state. I heard about one German auto engineer who was visiting Los Angeles. He looked at a map and thought it would be a fun drive to go to Portland and back on a Saturday. He was shocked when his American colleagues told him to look at the map's scale more closely, and that it would be more than 24 hours of driving just to get there and come back.

So yes. Regulations certainly play a part, but so does geography.

[lefra]

European here. Maybe I'm not typical, but I know that the contiguous US is about as large as the EU (around 4000 km from one side to the other). And if you need 24h to get to the other side if a state, you're either on dirt tracks in Alaska, or got stuck somewhere in the worst traffic jam ever. Texas is about 1000km wide, just like the larger european countries, that's a 10 to 12 hour drive.

[rmunn]

You're right, I was misremembering "it takes all day to drive across Texas from east to west" (or west to east) as 24 hours, when in fact it's about 12 hours: on Interstate 10 (going from the southeastern corner of Texas to the westernmost point) it takes about 12.5 hours according to Google Maps, and on Interstate 20 (which enters Texas in the northeast and heads to the westernmost point, joining up with I-10 along the way) it takes about 11.5 hours. So it's "all day" in the sense of taking from sunrise to sundown (more or less), rather than 24 hours.

(And if you drive across Texas's "panhandle", the squarish part in the north, from east to west, then it's only 2.5 hours. But most people are referring to the longest possible drive, not the shortest possible drive, when they say "it takes X hours to drive across (place).")

Anyway, thanks for the correction. I'll try to remember next time that it's "from sunrise to sunset" rather than 24 hours. As the (rather silly) poem goes,

"The sun has riz, the sun has set. And we still is, in Texas yet."

[GolfPopper]

The immense geography doesn't matter as much as you might think, because very few people one lives there. The Mountain West and Great Plains are largely empty and most of the people who do live in them live in a small number of urban and suburban areas. I think geography is an overused excuse for America's poor delivery of residential internet.

[hibikir]

It's a geographical difference, but it has little to do with the deserts, and more to do with the actual density of where people live, where the US is also among the least dense in the world. Those suburbs with 0.3-0.5 acre lots, roads that need to be everywhere and quite wide, extending every distance, just aren't standard worldwide, and increase bespoke infrastructure costs. In a denser place you need more capacity in the fiber bundle, or larger pipes on a sewer, but that's a much smaller problem than the miles of infra. Go look at a density map by the square km, and compare any American metro to, say, a Spanish metro. You find denser square miles in Spanish towns under 500k than you would in Kansas City, Phoenix, Houston... and that lowers all kinds of infra costs. It's not really the miles of desert, farmland or anything like that.

[Hikikomori]

Yeah that sounds impossible. How are these places able to get power, sewage or water? Do they all just have solar panels in their huge backyard or something? Did they just get the Internet with starlink?

[danaris]

...For rural places in America, at least, they don't get sewer or water lines run to them. They have a septic tank and a well.

Power lines are significantly easier to run than water/sewer.

[Hikikomori]

The guy I responded to didn't describe something rural though.

Heard about every excuse possible in this thread. Cities are too dense, can't put fiber in the ground. Suburb yards are too big so not enough density. Rural have too much distance.

As if these things doesn't exist in Europe at all. In reality they do, we don't have fiber everywhere but we for certain have a lot more of it in areas that matches all excuses given.

Guess what makes it real easy to build out fiber? Whenever you're already digging for power, water, sewage, roadwork, whatever, you put some fiber down. But "efficient" capitalism doesn't work like that I guess.

[esseph]

Now thing about all the single houses on multiple sq mile plots and the fact that a $40-$100 subscription is never going to pay back the millions it took to get to each of those homes. There are tons of those. I've lived in several states like that.

[rmunn]

That's the most important thing, really. The geography — that America extends the width of a continent — is secondary. BUT the geography is, in part, what allows all those single houses on large plots of land. Because American suburbs can sprawl out without meaningfully cutting into the amount of available farmland in the country, which isn't the case in most smaller countries (where suburban sprawl, at least to the same proportional extent that it happens in the US, would have a meaningful impact on available farmland). Hence why America's average population density, total population divided by total country area, is so much lower than other countries. We have megacities where the population is highly concentrated — New York City's population density is over 11,000 people per square kilometer, comparable to Geneva's 12,000 people/km². But America's overall population density is one of the lowest in the world. (Not the lowest: both Canada's and Australia's are lower, for example, in both cases due to having so much land that nearly nobody lives on, either tundra or desert).

But those suburbs that sprawl all over the place? That's a WHOLE lot of capital investment, far more than other countries (on average) to hook each home up because you have to lay down so much more fiber. Hence why fiber rollout has been relatively slow: I remember in 2006 reading about fiber going in in certain cities, and looking up whether it was available in the suburb where I live, and the computer lookup system giving a very polite "LOL, no, not for years" (not that they said "not for years" but I could read between the lines). But now it's available. Not anywhere close to 25 Gbps, though.

[Nursie]

> In parts of America, you can drive for 24 hours in the same direction without even crossing into a different state

Which US states can you do this in? You can drive across Texas from El Paso to Port Arthur in 12 AFAICT. Alaska maybe?

Now Western Australia where I live ... 36 hours from Cape Leeuwin to Kununurra, and we only have 10% the population of Texas.

[carlosjobim]

> In parts of America, you can drive for 24 hours in the same direction without even crossing into a different state.

I used to have a car like that also.

[initramfs]

A slow one? Me too.

[yxhuvud]

If you can manage to have plumbing and electricity, you can manage to have proper broadband.

[kamranjon]

It takes longer to drive the length of Sweden than it does the length of California.

[SXX]

There are big countries with a good internet. Russia was one before it started turning back into totalitarian shithole.

[usrnm]

To be fair the situation with the Internet in deep rural Russia was never great. Not everyone lives in a city.

[Root_Denied]

Is that 2.5x number the average of the whole of the US compared to Switzerland? Because NYC probably has higher density than Switzerland, but Oklahoma probably has much lower than even that 2.5x number, and it doesn't make sense to put them under the same umbrella.

[nixon_why69]

The vast, vast majority of Americans live in more dense areas.

A naive average national density obscures more than it reveals.

[procaryote]

Every story about how the US has awful internet has a comment like this. I suspect that the refusal to believe the US is worse at anything is part of the reason it never catches up in those areas.

[diffeomorphism]

The US has it much easier not harder.

The average population density is pretty irrelevant here. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_population_map.pn...

Lots of high density cluster and much easier geography (Switzerland famously has lots of mountains in the way).

So the question is "Why do US metropolitan areas not have 25gbit fiber for about $60/month?".

[earth-tattoo]

How do you explain the top comment at this time (about Spectrum in NYC)? It can't get denser than NYC. So I guess it's not the density that's the problem.

[ascorbic]

This article isn't about coverage, it's about what goes in the duct if there is a connection. If Comcast can run a cable to your house, then they can put four strands and allow other ISPs access to them.

That said, how many of these homes have mains electricity? Landline phone service? If they can do that, then they can do fiber. Sure your cabin in Montana might not have it (though the equivalent in Sweden probably would), but the small town probably does.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Switzerland is half as dense as New Jersey.

It's around the same density as Delaware and Maryland. And it's full of giant mountains, which neither Delaware nor Maryland have.

[Waterluvian]

Actually curious what you can get in NYC.

I’m getting 5/5gbps for $100 CAD in what qualifies as “rural Canada” for tax reasons. But in Toronto there was 10/10gbps for $30.

[Scoundreller]

> But in Toronto there was 10/10gbps for $30

Who? What? Where? When?

[Waterluvian]

Beanfield if you call and ask. It was years ago so they probably changed it a little for new customers.

[lmz]

Surely there are cities with the same density in the USA?

[panick21_]

People only using aggregate density calculation is so overly simplistic. Inside of each country there are patterns.

Imagine a country with two huge cities and a very long empty desert in the middle. Density can be low but its still easy to connect.

I not totally skeptical that some places are harder to connect then others but given we live in the modern world with algorithms and satellites we should be able to do a better job than top level density.

And I'm not saying this to convince you that Switzerland is easier. Frankly I do think it easier. But because I am actually interested if anybody knows if such work and estimations exist.

Like lets assume all fiber, cable and old phone connections are gone. How hard much would it cost to get every person to some very high speed.

[thewanderer1983]

Yes the complete lack of geography in the article should of raised red flags for people.

[AngryData]

Except in my very rural and very poor part of the US we got a fiber co-op that formed a few years ago that provides 1 gig direct to home without a problem.