Two-thirds of Americans surf the Web at less than 10Mbps

[crankypenguin]

We basically have 1.5 companies here is Aus. Telstra and Optus. Optus's share is so small it doesn't really count. With almost no competition Telstra gives customers the worst service they can. If they complain, they just keep charging them fees as punishment for reporting problems.

There is no legislation protecting customers, the mediating body (The Telecommunications Ombudsman), is gutless and controlled by the ISPs. There is nowhere for us to go...

</ENDRANT>

Wow, I would be up at night climbing the cable poles outside my house *doing things* lol to get better speed.

Climbing cable poles wouldn't do you any good where I live, there are no cable poles. There's a difference between having faster service available but not using it and having no better choice.

My guess is that you live in a city, which is why you have so many choices. Some of us live in rural areas. Where I live there is no DSL, no cable, no FIOS available because the companies don't want to spend the money to bring those services here since there aren't enough customers to subscribe for them to get a return on their investment. My connection is wireless (essentiallly long-range wifi), I have an antenna on the roof of my house that points to an antenna on a mountain on the other side of the valley from me.

The US government wants everyone to have broadband available to them and provides money to ISPs to expand their service. My ISP has told me that they are in the process of trying to receive funding to be able to bring a much faster connection to my house. However, whenever I ask for a time frame as to when I will see that happen, they tell me 18-24 months (they've been telling me this for at least 18 months now) so I'm not counting on it anytime soon.

City or not, it is the law in this country to have a minimum download rate of 20mbs, people who live out in the boonies have 20mb fiber here. Last few years, perhaps even a decade, the government here invested a large sum of money into upgrading the entire countries internet infrastructure. This country is not large...we only have maybe 35~ million citizens and most people who use cable have anywhere from 20-150mb fiber (unlimited of course) and LTE is used on all cellular phones so you can get a good 50mbs download speed on your smartphone / ipad / nexus / whateverpad with most phone companies. Even though Poland is mostly a country with farming, we have a few major cities where you can get GB internet, like our capitol *Warsaw* and a few others, like where I live. I haven't upgraded to the GB, because truly I can d/l really fast. And well, it would cost a little more, but still a reasonable rate, there are laws against overcharging too, so companies can only charge up to a certain amount per speed, not amount. Not showing off, but if I wanted, I could probably fill up a 3tb HDD in 48 hours. I forgot to mention the best part, the standard modem we get here is a Cisco DPQ3925 although they started switching to 2.4/5ghz wifi modems in my area. I got one and get great wifi coverage with it, only sucky part is that you can't bridge it. But I really have no need to.

 

[jadinolf]

I'm just a little faster than dial up.

Wanna live in the sticks? Pay the price.

 

[carwiz]

It's a little easier for countries that are smaller than most of the US states. Look at the northern European countries. They top the list for speed and coverage but they only need to cover a few hundred square miles. We have ranches down here in south Texas bigger than that. I'm 3.5 miles from the closest 2-light town and 25 miles from the "big city". I wouldn't trade a T1 line for what I have.

 

[Computer0304]

Same for korea.