One word: government.

>> ^blankfist:

One word: government.


HAHA! Non-statist idiots!

That's it! I'm moving to Amsterdam!

>> ^blankfist:

One word: government.

By that do you mean a lot of government regulations working well to benefit the people instead of letting big businesses Cleavland-steamer every one of us into financial ruin???


If so, I agree. Government.

*promote

Self promoting this video back to the front page; last published Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 11:34am PDT - promote requested by original submitter blankfist.

paying $60 per month for 768 kilobits here in the USA.

>> ^marinara:

paying $60 per month for 768 kilobits here in the USA.

Outch!

For 30€ you get 100mbit internet and telephone flatrate here in Germany, time to move

Here in Aus we have cans and pieces of string, powered by diesel. This whole internet thing is just a fad.

>> ^LarsaruS:

>> ^blankfist:
One word: government.

HAHA! Non-statist idiots!


This seems to be more a case of statist non-idiots, not non-statist idiots.

*politics

Adding video to channels (Politics) - requested by NetRunner.

>> ^kymbos:

Here in Aus we have cans and pieces of string, powered by diesel. This whole internet thing is just a fad.


Diesel works ok, but I prefer to run my internet box on koala juice, it's more organic.

Easy: their broads are allowed to go topless.

Yeah, we need regulation to create more competition in this area.

On the other hand, those 2 rural Dutch guys are selfish and crazy to think city-dwellers should subsidize rural people's extra living expenses.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I already posted this to BF's Facebook - but this is where the action is - my selected comments:

There's no chance for competition when the massive telecom corporations own all the pipes into the home and sue to prevent any further competition. (See most muni-broadband projects) http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/the-price-of-muni-broadband-eternal-war-with-time-warner-cable.ars

Read the above article and tell me again how if only the free market was left unfettered we'd have competition in broadband. What a load of bull. The major controlling corporations have no interest in competition.

How is it government's fault? The big telcos gobbled up the little Baby Bells with no regulation from the FTC, hogging all the infrastructure and lobbying / suing any organization that challenged their primacy. How do you blame the government for this?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

^Unless you are blaming the government for not preventing the merging and acquisition of the smaller telcos to make giants. You're not saying that I think Blankfist.

>> ^JiggaJonson:

>> ^blankfist:
One word: government.

By that do you mean a lot of government regulations working well to benefit the people instead of letting big businesses Cleavland-steamer every one of us into financial ruin???
If so, I agree. Government.


It's true. The Government opened up the market, which is why we now enjoy fast and cheap broadband (I pay $20/month for 50mbit plus phone).

>> ^campionidelmondo:

>> ^JiggaJonson:
>> ^blankfist:
One word: government.

By that do you mean a lot of government regulations working well to benefit the people instead of letting big businesses Cleavland-steamer every one of us into financial ruin???
If so, I agree. Government.

It's true. The Government opened up the market, which is why we now enjoy fast and cheap broadband (I pay $20/month for 50mbit plus phone).


Well you get better than me. UK's garbage for broadband and is known in europe for being that way. Popular broadband company BeThere (subsidiary of o2 i believe) offers £17.99 (that's about 30(+2?) dollars?) for maximum 24 Mbit, and what you actually get depends entirely on your local exchange, they guarantee absolutely nothing. They say up to, and they mean up to. I know people who pay for "up to" 8 Mbit and get around 2.

Oh, and it's not unlimited. Most "unlimited" broadband in the UK has fair usage policies and the majority of those boil down to a hard download cap.

The worst ones? They offer things like £7 per month but a download limit of 5 gigs per month, with 5 gig topups being another 7 quid. Rediculous things like that. People who don't read up and shop around really do get the utter shaft, and even those who DO read up and shop around don't get good deals. Most of them are even owned by the same damned company too.

They're notoriously bad at administration. When my previous provider got taken over by another company, that company "renewed" my broadband contract for 12 months for DOUBLE the price i was preiously paying. They didn't tell me about the new contract though, so when i cancelled it suddenly they charged my bank for £300 contract termination fee. I didn't have £300 so the bank issued a £20 charge. Then i made another payment (thinking i still had that extra £20) and got charged £20 AGAIN and now i started getting charged for being in arrears too.

I phoned them and it took me a few days to even get rid of the 12 month contract i'd been volunteered into, getting them to pay all the charges (and phone call charges) took a good few weeks work but i was absolutely incandescent with rage.

Er, rant over! In other words, it's not all sunshine and smiles over here, broadband in the UK stinks.

The actual problem is the ability and willingness of the telecoms to sue to keep competition away. Owning all the pipes, while it may be perceived as a monopoly and obstruction to competition, does not satisfactorily explain the problem. I say this because in Germany all of the the pipes are owned by Deutsche Telecom, but it is government regulations that allow for competition. As a result, internet is cheaper and faster as pointed out by TheGenk. Go ahead, own the pipes, but allow for fair use of them and lease them to anyone willing to pay, and the problem will not be so acute.


>> ^dag:

I already posted this to BF's Facebook - but this is where the action is - my selected comments:
There's no chance for competition when the massive telecom corporations own all the pipes into the home and sue to prevent any further competition. (See most muni-broadband projects) http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2010/11/the-price-of-muni-broadband-eternal-war-with-time-warner-cable.ars
Read the above article and tell me again how if only the free market was left unfettered we'd have competition in broadband. What a load of bull. The major controlling corporations have no interest in competition.
How is it government's fault? The big telcos gobbled up the little Baby Bells with no regulation from the FTC, hogging all the infrastructure and lobbying / suing any organization that challenged their primacy. How do you blame the government for this?


>> ^TheGenk:

>> ^marinara:
paying $60 per month for 768 kilobits here in the USA.

Outch!
For 30€ you get 100mbit internet and telephone flatrate here in Germany, time to move

>> ^aaronfr:

The actual problem is the ability and willingness of the telecoms to sue to keep competition away. Owning all the pipes, while it may be perceived as a monopoly and obstruction to competition, does not satisfactorily explain the problem. I say this because in Germany all of the the pipes are owned by Deutsche Telecom, but it is government regulations that allow for competition. As a result, internet is cheaper and faster as pointed out by TheGenk. Go ahead, own the pipes, but allow for fair use of them and lease them to anyone willing to pay, and the problem will not be so acute.

This is true and at the beginning Deutsche Telekom faught against the usage of their pipes with various methods, but got slapped into submission by court rulings and the government.

>> ^dag:

I already posted this to BF's Facebook


We're not facebook friends.

Here in Los Angeles I'm currently paying ~$60 for 6mbps theoretical, less than 2mbps for all practical uses.

So yeah, UK still has us beat no matter how you slice it.

And dag, we're blaming the government for failing to regulate properly to prevent monopoly/duopoly. The same thing is happening with cell-phone service, where AT&T and Verizon are steadily gobbling up the other services, and eventually flat-rate usage-capped cell service will be near $100 per month. Well, that's my prediction anyway.

Sweden - 180sek ($29) 100mbps / 100mbps - aw yeah.
And yeah had same problem when I lived in UK - got "up to 8mb actually got 4mbit - I thought they had made a point of stopping companies using the "up to" marketing bollocks and now you have to deliver 80% of the speed / service you contract to the customer with...

$130/mo for 5 megabits and 40 GB cap

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

$50 a month for unlimited ADSL2+. I can't remember how fast it is - fast enough that you don't think about it.

My phone+internet package is $90/month, with 16Mbit speed (although I rarely get better than 12) and unlimited traffic.

Time Warner Cable in NC.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Not true. BF is my FB BFF. >> ^blankfist:

>> ^dag:
I already posted this to BF's Facebook

We're not facebook friends.

It shouldn't be discounted that the USA has a lot of land and its population is very spread out. Europe's population density (other than scandinavia) is much more closed in. You don't have the problem of having to justify wiring costs through vast tracts of unoccupied areas.

http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/popden.html

That being said, the USA has a fairly massive government, it's just that, unlike other countries, it hasn't much incentive to spend wisely because it's the reserve currency of the world with no metal backing. We can print and run deficits fighting useless wars and subsidizing useless industries for as long as the world allows us.

Amsterdam:
Ubiquitous broadband.
Public nudity.
Legalized Pot and Hash.

BOW DOWN!

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^LarsaruS:
>> ^blankfist:
One word: government.

HAHA! Non-statist idiots!

This seems to be more a case of statist non-idiots, not non-statist idiots.
politics


Think they meant non(statist-idiots)

It is funny that when Conservatives favor "deregulation" it is all about making their corporate masters more profitable. But when consumers ask for "deregulation" that will give them better service at cheaper prices, the Conservatives say "We cant do that!"

Tags for this video have been changed from 'broadband, internet, speed, isp, engadget' to 'broadband, internet, speed, isp, engadget, competition, antitrust, FTC fail' - edited by rasch187

We need some regulation, we're just doing it all wrong in the US. The story of talktalk starts with the government forcing BT to open up their last-mile copper to other providers. This allowed more competition to spring up which led to a healthier, arguably freer, market than the one which was less regulated.

More competition is always ideal for consumers.

In the US all of our regulations are in place to protect monopolies/oligopolies and stifle competition, and we wonder why we suck at damn near everything.

>> ^marinara:

paying $60 per month for 768 kilobits here in the USA.


Well I have 100/100 Mbit fiber for about 38 dollars a month. Unlimited of course... I could download 20 TB a month and they wouldn't and couldn't touch my connection. Go Sweden. This is broadband as it is meant to be.

In socialist denmark, I enjoy shite internet and hi-hi prices.

I was paying 35e a month for 25Mb broadband in Dublin. Apparently you can now get up 100Mb for 65e.

We're a few years behind the times in Ireland as a whole because our major telecom company was bought up by venture capitalists shortly after being floated on the stock market by the government (for the sake of competition).

I think no matter how good my broadband its always not quite good enough. ONE DROPPED PACKET OUT OF 10,000.

Really I don't care much about bandwidth, its latency and the quality and reliability of the connection I am after. I would be happy on like, 1mb if its got good routing, pings well to the rest of europe and doesn't drop packets or fluctuate wildly. Videogames don't really require that much bandwidth

I'm on BE Broadband atm, and honestly I'm super impressed with the quality considering its built on aging telecom infrastructure. Very affordable too. When I was living in student digs I forked out for fibre optic cable because the alternatives were awful and while the bandwidth was great it was extremely unreliable. Headaches of new tech or just a bad business...

damn socialists have more freedom of choice than US

*dead

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