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Capitalism: On why US Internet sucks, badly
  • In fact, their capital expenditure is down from years in the past. They’ve spent their money. They’re just going to sort of soak their network and try to increase the number of premium services that they’re charging for. They have no incentive to expand their lines. And they have no incentive to do this upgrade to fiber. What’s happening is that they are able to pick off very rich areas and cities and then leave behind poor people in those cities and completely leave behind rural areas. So we’re suffering in this country from a number of intense digital divides.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/31/18203591/internet-connectivity-susan-crawford-harvard-law-america-infrastructure-broadband-huawei-vergecast

    If you do not know, US has one of the worst internet in large cities also compared to any major country.
    Normally it is real hard to find real working 100Mbit speed, speed will be random fluctuating around 10-15Mbit.
    And real 1Gbit, did not see still even one real case. It certainly exist somewhere in US just need to find where.

  • 6 Replies sorted by
  • It really is sad how many places are left "in the dark" without internet service. Yeah, its a massive, mostly rural, country with small towns spread very far apart, but you'd think by now they would at least have seven some basic service spread to all locations.

  • What are you defining as "real 1 Gbit?" US Internet in Minneapolis offers gigabit speed and colleagues who have it have said they can get that (or reasonably close to it) from a number of speed tests, etc. Sadly, they are not in my neighborhood.

  • @eatstoomuchjam

    I told that in some places it exist even in US. :-)

    But pair of optics cables must go to each and every house and apartment long time ago.
    With standard equipment with QSFP+ ports that you could buy and upgrade, including optical switch in every house and affordable optical patch cord in each shop.

  • may not be gigabit speed but general internet access...

    LinkSure is building a satellite network to provide global internet access for free

    https://newatlas.com/linksure-satellite-free-internet-network/57466/

    The “LinkSure Swarm Constellation System,” developed independently by LinkSure Network aims to solve internet access in areas not covered by terrestrial networks through satellite communication services and solutions. The ultimate goal is to provide free satellite network around the globe by 2026. The system is the world's leading hybrid orbit constellation system, consisting of 272 satellites and data processing application centers distributed in low orbit of different heights with two layers of satellites—72 core satellites 1000 km above the ground and 200 node satellites that are 600 km away from the ground.

    https://www.wifi.com/article.html?articleId=44

    Many global tech companies, including Google, SpaceX, OneWeb and Telesat, have already launched plans to use satellites to provide free internet access
  • @jleo

    This is old story, such projects started in late 90s even and none of them ever became reality or even showed any economical calculations on how it'll work.

  • Plus Satellite-based internet suffers from very high latencies and is often subject to interference (weather, solar flares, etc).

    If you have no internet access at all, it is an improvement. If not, it's not that interesting. As much as people don't like wires these days, they work pretty well for a lot of things.