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Why Is Connectivity So Cheap In Stockholm?
lpress writes "Symmetric, 100 Mbps service in Stockholm, costs $11/month. Conditions in every city are different, but part of the explanation for the low cost is that the city owns a municipal fiber network reaching every block. They lease network access to anyone who would like to offer service. The ISPs, including incumbent telephone and cable companies, compete on an equal footing."
Socialism?
Why Is Connectivity So Cheap In Stockholm?
Because their taxes are so high, it had better be cheap!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'm not a big fan of a huge federal government, but at the local level, cities and towns should have been building out the last mile of service instead of granting local monopolies. If building that infrastructure IS so expensive that no business would do it without the monopoly status, then it probably is something best left to local governments to fund/build and then lease out to whomever wants to offer services to the residents.
My Dad has this problem. He has the choice between the sucky local phone monopoly for DSL or the sucky local cable monopoly for cable.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Lafayette, LA, Cox Cable $140 5 50
Capitalism working for the consumer as usual.
How much of the operating expense is subsidized by revenue not generated through subscriber fees?
Any cost element that's not accounted for in the price calculation that subscribers pay directly makes the apparent benefit of such an arrangement apparent only... not real.
I read a study on plasitic recycling that did something similar; they wanted to show how much more economically sound it was to recycle, so they compared costs (including some estimated) of the recycling processes (transport, processing, etc.) with just plain dumping. And part of their rationale was that dumping fees were really high. But they didn't account for artifical elements in the fees (government environmental impact taxes and fees, etc. designed to make dumping more expensive) and the fact that significant portions of those fees went to subsidize recycling activities (a double whammy in terms of the study dollar per dollar there). This made to whole thing silly, but it looked good if you didn't ask the questions.
This low pricing sounds like it could be suffering from the same sorts of distortions.
My first thought was that because the city owns the entire network, much of the reason for the low cost is self-explanatory. But then I imagined if a similar arrangement were formed in the US, I would be extremely surprised if the same prices were attained. Local governments would likely see this as a source of income and either charge a similar rate to competitors, or possibly undercut their neighbors by a narrow margin in order to appear generous and possibly gain a few extra votes for the incumbents. Does anybody know more particulars of this arrangement and local laws in the area? Is the portion of the Stockholm government that runs this program have any sort of "no-profit" legislation?
Dragging the fiber can't be that expensive. I mean, compared to water or sewer pipes (which they can even be bunded with).
What's wrong here in the US is a strong public distrust of having the government do anything, because the government may screw you over. So instead people prefer to give important tasks to businesses, who will screw you over.
I'm on the Stockholm network mentioned in the summary, and it's more like 80Mbps downlink and 20Mbps uplink in actual usable bandwidth. But I can live with it.
It's the lack of profiteering that keeps the price down.
If you see communications as a service to be provided to your community; rather than something to be exploited for profit then the dynamics change drastically.
The Pirate Bay, of course!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
It doesn't necessarily require a lot of subsidies. A large proportion of the fees paid for American internet access go to profits of the oligopolies who provide it; if it were provided on an at-cost basis, it would be considerably cheaper.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This is a prime example of the mistake people of any nation state thinking that any company, particularly one that's granted a local monopoly will in any way, shape or form act in the consumer's best interest.
I don't think we'll see this in US. I work for a network equipment provider and we do xDSL and FTTH. Even when our customers deploy fiber technology, they still limit the pipe. With video becoming more prominent, they'll have to increase the bandwidth. However, the only advancement we'll see is if there were more players as opposed to only one or two choices.
Here in Australia the government owns just about all the last-mile copper, and the only difference is the sucky local phone monopoly is nation-wide, and there is no sucky local cable monopoly.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
It really comes down to the fact that last mile connectivity is pretty much a natural monopoly(not quite as severe as roads; but pretty much on par with water and power).
For reasons that, I assume, have to do with a mixture of lobbying by incumbents and a strong distrust of "socialism" we've mostly been denying this fact for years.
It is a simple matter of empirical fact that free markets work pretty well. However, when you are dealing with natural monopolies, free markets aren't really an option, so that is irrelevant. The choice is pretty much between (ill) regulated monopoly and municipal ownership. Frankly, municipal ownership is likely the better choice. I know that I have way, way less trouble with my water service than with my phone service or ISP.
The Evils of Socialism!!!
p.s. their income taxes are lower than ours in most cases.
We're being told it costs like $4k-8k per household to wire fiber. Don't ask me where all the money is going.
Where do I turn to get this cheap connection?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Do I speak for more than myself when I say, *That's all that we really ask.*? We should apply this to every major industry, and probably more than a few "minor" ones.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
The question is whether it's more dishonest than corporations bribing their ways to monopolies, lying to the legislature, and cheating the consumers.
I can't think of a single example where infrastructure didn't become more expensive through privatization. Thus I don't mind subsidising a little, because even if I lose that money, I will still end up paying far less than when the vultures run the show.
Internet access is slowly becoming another "must have" commodity. And as with water, electricity, telephones (the landline type), mail, public transport, etc. They are simply best left to the government to finance. Or subside.
If running water, electricity, or mail would be left only for big corporations to run, citizens of smaller (sub 10,000 people) cities would barely have running water.
Consider mail. Do you really think the post office wants to deliver mail to everyone? If the recipient lives in an urban area and the postman gets an average of at least 5 letters per mile, then it isn't bad. But when someone lives in the middle of nowhere and the postman needs to travel five miles per letter, then it simply isn't profitable. Yet people would rebel if suddenly half of the country wouldn't be able to receive mail or have electricity.
The U.S. should use an infrastructure already in place. Pipe fiber through residential gas lines. It's only light traveling across the line so it shouldn't ignite the fuel.
And they got something for it in return, fuck Rand-bots and that bathtub drowning retard (what's his face again?)
One thing the feds have no monopoly on is corruption. Think "monorail".
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
I think the US is completely backwards the way we do things as far as telecomm. However, I think it's going to eventually be a moot point as wireless technologies get better and better. I can get slow broadband right now through several different wireless carriers. Once this technology improves and is ubiquitous, the debate will be largely over. I can't wait!
Yes, the fear of government and of Government regulation can be quite misplaced.
It is well known that in some markets regulation is the only thing that keeps the market even remotely resembling a free market, rather than an oligarchy.
Now regulation can have its issues too. N o doubt that some government regulation is actively harmful. Some of it is well intention regulation that goes sour, which is pretty common considering that macro-scale economics is not a science by any means. Other harmful regulation is that which is supported by the major players in the regulated industry. In general that indicates that the regulation dictates what they would be doing anyway, yet makes it more difficult for competitors to enter the market, or compete with the big players.
In a similar way, having the government perform some function may be very helpful, or may be quite harmful.
Look at the United States Postal Service. People complain about them, but they function pretty well all things considered. The pricing on first class mail is definitely very competitive despite the complete lack of competitors. If the market were opened do you really think UPS, FedEx, or DHL could offer first class mail services at a significantly lower price? Probably not. Perhaps a few cents lower, but not much. The USPS does tend to be slightly more expensive than the alternatives when shipping packages, but that does not really matter, because they have competition there.
Overall the USPS works well. Why does it work well? Perhaps the most important thing to notice is that it is well insulated from the elected politicians. They can't continually mess with it, making changes all the time. It is not profit driven. The apparent goal is to net exactly zero profit, with income covering all the expenses, and employee salaries, upkeep etc, thus requiring no treasury funding. It does reasonably well at that, although they almost never actually reach that goal.
That goes to show that a government institution can work effectively. One that owns last mile infrastructure could also work well, if set up well, such that the politicians have little influence over it, it is set up such that it must price fairly (be this some sort of per endpoint, or bandwidth based pricing scheme, the important thing is that Ma Bell gets no better deal than Joe's DSL Shack), and be set up so that the net profit is zero (the all income covers infrastructure, maintenance, and upgrades).
But alas, the average American is to scared of the government to allow such a thing, and don't see the absurd television, phone, and internet pricing as a real issue.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
What is the upstream like? Something that seems popular in various contries is selling more or less a WAN type connection. What I mean is you sell a very fast conneciton to the person's home, however there isn't the kind of bandwidth to back that up at higher levels.
Net effect is it ends up working kind of like a campus WAN. If you are on campus, you'll have probably 100mbit, maybe even gigabit to your desktop. You of course get those speeds to others in your building. However the building itself then has only a 100mbit or maybe gigabit uplink. The whole campus then has perhaps a few hundred megabits. So the net effect is that while your connection is quick, provided others aren't being greedy, it isn't nearly as quick as the end rate might suggest. You don't get gigabit Internet speeds.
I encountered this some years ago with a service somewhere in Europe that had the initials BBB (I don't know what it stood for). The BBB users claimed to have 10mbit VDSL lines. This was back when such a thing was rare. However, I never got more than something in the 200-400kbps rate to them. I was on a high bandwidth connection, and actually worked for network operations so I could check and make sure the problem wasn't on my end. A bit of research revealed that they had 10mbit links, but not so much upstream. So to other BBB members it was generally pretty fast. To the rest of the net, not so much.
So, things like that could potentially be part of the reason the price is so low. When you provide a big WAN, more or less, that is much cheaper than trying to provide that kind of bandwidth through and through. It is oversubscription to a much larger degree than you see on most US ISPs.
If that's the case, then it isn't so impressive to me. I pay a lot for a 10mbit line, but the upside of it is that there is low oversubscription so I basically get that bandwidth all the time to anywhere. It isn't fast just to people that live in my city, or my area, it is fast to any site on the net that also has good bandwidth.
I'm not saying this is necessarily the reason, or that it is the only reason, but it could be part of it.
Ok, this is not quit so. Fiber connections are not so widespread as people imagine, and in fact most of the people I know use ADSL 24/1. At my place it costs me around 700Kr (~U$87) for 100/100 with Telia. Some people can get it for around 300Kr, but it depends very much where you live.
Let's stop this nonsense, please.
Nonsense? Most people in the US would have to pay ~$100 for 24/1 ADSL (if it's even available which is EXTREMELY unlikely).
Most people pay ~$45 for 8/1 cable. To get 100/100 we're talking thousands of dollars in 99.999% of american cities.
Companies are building up without the monopoly benefit. Here where I live, Comcast cable is a fiber backbone with coax last mile system, and Verizon fiber to the premises (fiber backbone and last mile, coax and twisted pairs inside the house) is promised to be on the way in less than four years, although it's expected in two.
Verizon's fiber is fast, but as half the customers get off of Comcast, that's more capacity for those who stay. Duopoly here we come.
Nuff Said.
The company is owned by the city of Stockholm and is not a private business. Stokab was founded in 1994 and is owned by the company group Stockholms Stadshus AB, which is in turn owned by the City of Stockholm.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
like the "idealogical barrier" that prevents the Postal Service from doing an efficient job at anything.
When I was a child, my father often spoke proudly about the U.S. Postal Service, bragging about how a first-class letter could get to just about anywhere in the United States in just 2 days, for the cost of a 7 cent stamp.
Today, it costs 6 times as much, and as often as not takes 6 times as long. What is wrong with this picture?
There is a world of difference between Sweden and Cuba. Cuba is a totalitarian regime with communist economy. Sweden is free market economy and democratic society. The so-called "socialist economy" has never been precisely defined, but *please* don't get confuse what's called "socialist economy" in some western countries with those countries which call themselves "socialist" and whose economy is completely centralized and controlled by the state.
Free market evangelists know what they are talking about. You don't.
Telstra is one of those wonderful privatized monopolies. It's the worst of both worlds.
Name something governments do well, aside perhaps from national defense.
National Defense.
Police.
Fire Supression.
National Resource management. (National Parks).
Airspace management.
Worker/Business relations. (When was the last time you heard of employees rioting and fighting in the streets. Used to be common before the government stepped in.)
Airwaves regulation and leasing.
Autmobile safety regulation. (Airbags, Seat belts, Padded stearing columns etc..)
National Highway system.
Airports.
Bank Deposit Insurance. (FDIC).
Public Libraries.
Driving Regulations. (Standardized safe driving practices and enforcement).
Street Parking Management. (Much cheaper than a parking lot most of the time and super easy).
Science Grant Writing.
Medical Grant Writing.
Drug Testing and Approval.
Food Safety Oversight. (The last few years was a great example of what happens when they lose funding.)
City planning. (Go to Bankok and try getting anywhere. This one is huge.)
Public Transportation.
Baseline Medical Insurance for impoverished children.
A social safety net so that to some degree the poorest in our population can feel free to change jobs and not let the economy completely devolve into a slave/endentured servitude in practice.
Unemployment insurance.
Tobacco taxation. (Reduces smoking use while not banning cigarettes.)
The FBI. If your child is kidnapped or a bank robbed you want these people on your side.
The National Weather Service.
Air Traffic Controllers.
The Public School system. It takes in EVERYBODY unlike a private school. Unlike my school (Private school) they don't expell students who fail a class or get caught with a beer. (shock and amaze, when you expell all the kids who fail classes your overall test scores go up!). They also accept vegetables and make their best effort to get them to an employable state at Burger King or stocking shelves. This saves the government a lot of money from having dependent adults who can't contribute to society.
The US Coast Guard. (If your boat flips you want these people to be well funded.)
I apologize for the other million other government employees who also do a great job every day. I only have so much time to stand up for them.
You are a councilman.
In a city where 45% of your population are on Food Stamps.
You can vote to raise sales and property taxes across the board to lay and maintain municipal fiber or you can let Comcast finance the project and collect a franchise fee.
Provide last-mile networking infrastructure in Stockholm?
what about all that tax money of yours that went to the telcos, long before Verizon came along, to lay fiber to your house? Where is the fiber? Where is the money?
In some places in the USA, it's even more expensive. In rural parts of Kentucky (where I used to live), the local cable company charged $37.95 for 3/1. Imagine my surprise when I moved to a larger city and have Insight cable 20/1.5 for $45.
he said things the government does well!
Out of your list, I would keep maybe Food Safety, Air Traffic Control and the National Weather Service (NOAA).
It might be argued that our government does well at national defense, but if you are talking about a per-dollar value, then most of this list is absolutely pathetic.
Some companies are born with a bailout, some companies have a bailout given to them and some companies create their own bailout.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
It really comes down to the fact that last mile connectivity is pretty much a natural monopoly(not quite as severe as roads; but pretty much on par with water and power). For reasons that, I assume, have to do with a mixture of lobbying by incumbents and a strong distrust of "socialism" we've mostly been denying this fact for years.
I also think it's because "broadband" is quite more ambigious than water and power, they're much more binary like served/not served. If I move across the country to a completely different utility company, water and power is pretty much identical. It's very easy to agree on whether I got power or not. Broadband on the other hand is a bunch of competing services with different speeds, prices and other qualities. Where there is competition it makes sense that cable and telco and fiber and power companies compete over delivering the same service. I'm very happy with my commercial service here, knowing that there's 3-4 companies that really would like to serve this apartment block. From the US I hear the problem is they give one company a monopoly in an area, and yet give them free reign to exploit everyone in it. That's neither competition or regulated monopoly, that's just being asked to bend over and lube up.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Exactly. This service doesn't really cost $10 per month. To figure out the real cost of the network, you'd have to add together all the expenses the city incurred creating/maintaining the service, and divide that by the number of people using the service. At $10 per month, I doubt the service will ever be profitable (maintenance will be expensive!), but the city's goal isn't to make a profit anyway.
The thing is, the reason people using the service are paying $10 per month is because the rest of the money is coming from taxes/deficit spending. Hell, some people who aren't even using the service might be paying more than that for the people who are making use of it.
The better situation is one where people pay for what they make use of. I'd rather not pay for other people's luxuries and I wouldn't want others paying for me.
It just goes to show the importance of moderation in all things. Moderation in regulation. Moderation in privatization.
How DARE you imply that the Invisible Market Fairy is anything other than the perfect solution?!?!?!
I DEMAND that you retract your statement. This is America, where anything less than 100% unfettered unregulation is pure unadulterated evil!
Your phone service is not a (federally) regulated monopoly, and hasn't been for decades. In fact, landline telephone service (the service, not the telephones) probably operated best when it was. It was not the service that got Ma Bell broken up; rather, that was a hardware (telephone handset) monopoly issue.
When telephone infrastructure was first being established, the United States went with a regulated monopoly, while a number of European countries, for example, allowed competition in their markets. They typically ended up with a plethora of separate private networks, none of which interoperated with the others. If you were on one network, you could not call someone on another. In the long run, most of these networks had to be completely rebuilt later.
In the meantime, the U.S. built a single, solid, nationwide network that was completely compatible from coast to coast... no mean feat. It was the envy of the world.
Do not denigrate regulated "natural" monopolies. They work. And they can work very well.
GREED... Telcos and ISP's will charge what ever the market will tolerate, period! Don't expect to see anything like this in the US, politicians are bought and sold to the highest bidder. The RIAA, Telcos and ISP's will conjure up the "rampant piracy" boogie man in order to charge all sorts of fictitious fees and sur charges to line their pockets... Oops, I mean combat piracy as a ruse to gouge the shit out of you for your Internet access. Anyone else remember when the Telco's petitioned congress to charge you extra fees to have 45Mb synchronous fiber to your home by 2006 way back in 1995?
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
This is exactly what I've been saying - to anyone that would listen, including the California Public Utilities Commission - should have happened in the United States. What sets the described situation completely apart from anything here is that the "people" collectively own the telecom infrastructure: the companies that built it were paid ad CONTRACTORS and not allowed to retain ownership of that common infrastructure.
The sad thing is that there are other examples of that here in the U.S., like out public highway system; we paid the construction companies (through taxes) to build the roads, but the ownership remains in public hands.
That is what SHOULD have happened with our entire telecom infrastructure, but we screwed up way back in the Eighteen Hundreds; we allowed American Telephone & Telegraph - remember them? - to build telegraph and telephone systems but keep ownership of it. That misperception is perhaps solely responsible for getting us in the mess we're in now here in the U.S. We actually had a chance to rectify this during the anti-trust proceedings against AT&T in the 1970s: we could have reclaimed the wires or forced the monopoly to become "nonprofit" similar to the USPS. What we did instead was to slice and dice the beast but let all the parts keep control of the wires in their new little fiefdoms.
Forget all the breathless FUD about "socialism": common shared infrastructure SHOULD be publicly owned. The fact that Sweden is a nation with a marginally socialist economy is quite possibly irrelevent; what is relevant is that Sweden observed and learned a bit from our mistake.
Yes, the fear of government and of Government regulation can be quite misplaced.
It is well known that in some markets regulation is the only thing that keeps the market even remotely resembling a free market, rather than an oligarchy.
Well said. One of the core contradictions in many defenses of the supposedly magical free market is that all property rights exist in a socially meaningful way (as opposed to a philosophical ideal) only because the state defines and protects them. People who claim to want government out of their lives are still quick to call the police or to sue if they feel as though their property is threatened or their contracts aren't being enforced.
.sig withheld by request
It really comes down to the fact that last mile connectivity is pretty much a natural monopoly
Only for physical hardwired cables and fiber. But not for the airwaves. Almost anyone can setup a transceiver, ham radio or shortwave operators may even design and build their own.
For reasons that, I assume, have to do with a mixture of lobbying by incumbents and a strong distrust of "socialism" we've mostly been denying this fact for years.
It's precisely because big businesses wanted to restrict competition that the airwaves were licensed, in the beginning they weren't.
It is a simple matter of empirical fact that free markets work pretty well.
As much as I wish it weren't true, there is no free market. Some markets are freer than other but there is no free market, ie one without regulations or other government interference.
Fslcon
Should there be a Law?
You can vote to raise sales and property taxes across the board to lay and maintain municipal fiber or you can let Comcast finance the project and collect a franchise fee.
And after 10 or 20 years require them to open up access. By then the cable should be paid for.
Fslcon
Should there be a Law?
I live in Illinois, arguably one of the most corrupt states in the country. (Governor Rod is just the tip of an iceberg, folks.)
This is a state where elected officials use public funds to put their names on signs attached to public works projects, taking credit for those projects. And it is accepted as normal.
That said, broadband access cries for governmental intervention. There was the rural electrification act of 1936, and subsidy for telephone service later. These technologies were the broadband of their day, in a sense, and the country made sure they were available to everyone.
Today, even in a major metropolitan area (I live in a Chicago suburb) it can be hit or miss whether you can get residential broadband at a decent speed.
I work for a major international retailer, in the US division. Broadband isn't mission critical into our locations, so we're not willing to invest in very expensive options. It's OK to just have a residential service SLA.
There is a shockingly high percentage of our locations where wired broadband just isn't available at all, and we have to fall back to either dial-up modems or satellite.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Uh, $87 for 100/100 is still extremely cheap compared to US prices. And you can't even get 24/1 ADSL in the US...
But that's nonsense, because if the pricing weren't affordable relative to value customers would 'leave it' and the monopoly would shrink in size. If the prices were high relative to the costs, competitors would start to enter the market and investment would be there for the easy money.
The first part, shrinking of market, is true but the second part does not have to be true. In the case of a natural monopoly it definitely is not true. How how many people have a choice as to whom they get landline cable or phone service from?
Fslcon
Should there be a Law?
Stokab that runs the dark fiber network in Stockholm is a regular company owned by the City of Stockholm. http://www.stokab.se/templates/StandardPage.aspx?id=306/
The money the city put up to finance the fiber is an investment, not a subsidy, so Stokab earns a profit for the city when it leases the dark fiber. According to their 2007 yearly report, Stokab had a rentability of 9.6% of the total investment. So the taxpayers of Stockholm doesn't subsidy the network as such; they did put up the money, but they earn interest on them. Besides that, cheap and fast fiber internet has created a lot of jobs for the city over the years (=more money).
Notice that Stokab isn't a ISP; they only lease dark fiber (point-to-point, ring or start topologies) to companies or ISP's who supply their own equipment to light up the fiber.
--
Regards
That doesn't mean it's not intellectually dishonest to only count the price the end-user pays if a larger fraction is paid out of their taxes.
You mean like the billions the US payed to telcos to make and improve the networks?
Ikea, Volvo, Ericcson, H&M,etc,etc
Because they compare themselves to the reactionary superstitions-based society we have here in the US?
Even when excluding the inventions that occurred before the US existed, like the wheel, steel, and printing press, this is still patently (no pun intended) false:
As for people moving to the US, that has nothing to do with this country's greatness, but the amount of money this country is willing to pay smart people precisely because they are such a scarce resource here. While Wehrner Von Braun, Tim Berners-Lee and Linus Torvalds all moved here, that doesn't mean that the US can claim credit for their inventions.
... the country which every free market holistic economist zealot fails to mention while condemning socialism, because it breaks their entire house of cards. almost socialist swedes enjoy 100 mbit for $11, whereas in the pinnacle of 'free' market capitalism, america, americans pay hoards of cash and still not get anywhere near the service they promised.
enjoy it while you are there, if you are there.
Read radical news here
Stockab has fibers connected to municipal housing. That's about 20% of all fiber, and they cost more as both ISP and stockab get paid. The reason why it's so cheap is because of fierce competition between the different broadband providers. There was zero regulation and great tax benefits during the IT-boom era which led to a large number of broadband providers. That made a huge difference.
I pay (in Stockholm) about $7/month for a 100 Mbit connection and that's through privately owned fiber, not the municipal one. It also varies from city to city. In the case of Västerås (another Swedish city) they did actually build a full municipal fiber network and through laws and regulations made it a monopoly (the fibers, not the service). Prices there are about $30-40/month for a 20 Mbit connection.
Why is connectivity so expensive in the USA ? - keywords: Time Warner, Artificial scarcity.
that guy spurt a lot of bullshit without knowing what he is talking about, yet, you people modded that comment to +5 ? how did you conclude he was talking the truth without knowing how ISPs in sweden work, yourself ?
Read radical news here
"Moderation in regulation. Moderation in privatization."
pretty good punchline you got there. i wont forget that one.
Read radical news here
I don't know what your definition of "most" is, but I can say it isn't the majority. Here in the far west Chicago suburbs (30+ miles out), we pay $63 (before package deals, discounts, promos, etc) for 22/5Mbps cable from comcast. We can also get DSL from AT&T for $65/mo for 18Mbps down.
The connectivity in Stockholm is "cheap", because the taxpayers are subsidizing it. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. There is a cost to the network infrastructure and its continued maintenance, and that cost is being paid. It just doesn't show up in the end user's bill.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It is well known that in some markets regulation is the only thing that keeps the market even remotely resembling a free market, rather than an oligarchy.
This is not in some markets. This is absolutely true in every market. A "Free Market" can't possibly ever exist in reality. Approaching that theoretical ideal is the best we will ever be able to do in that arena. A completely unregulated market will always be far away from a free market.
This is easy to prove absolutely.
Want to win in a market without being the best? Murder your competition. What's that, you'll go to prison? Wow, market regulation, It's everywhere and it is an essential requirement of a functioning market.
Over regulation is also bad, but the most commonly deluded types are the ones who not only believe that free markets are real, but they think unregulated markets and free markets are the same thing.
So how will the proposed fiber network(100mbit) in Australia compare in terms of service and price? I've been told prices of up to AU$100(US$70) may be expected for this service in oz. Would it be possible for competition to push down prices anywhere near the stockolm levels on such a large piece of infrastructure? would some ghanges in our legislation be required to permit such a commercial environment?
*claps enthusiastically* /thread
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I live in Stockholm, please tell me where I can sign up for a 100Mb/s connection for $11/month. The blog post is pure nonsense. The uplink speed is not really that interesting. Sure you can get a connection with that kind of uplink but how does that differ from a 1Gb/s service? Hell I can sell you a 10Gb/s service for 12$/month. It won't connect anywhere but it will give you a really cool uplink and you will a nice 10Gb/s to all my other customers in your appartment.
The Public School system. It takes in EVERYBODY unlike a private school. Unlike my school (Private school) they don't expell students who fail a class or get caught with a beer. (shock and amaze, when you expell all the kids who fail classes your overall test scores go up!). They also accept vegetables and make their best effort to get them to an employable state at Burger King or stocking shelves. This saves the government a lot of money from having dependent adults who can't contribute to society.
DAMN STRAIGHT. We cant go scarring people by allowing failure to actually have CONSEQUENCES, can we? By removing all consequences for mistakes and misbehavior, we'll have a well educated and responsible country in NO time!
/sarcasm
Im pretty certain you could attribute at least a fair portion of the blame for the current economic situation on people not understanding what consequences are.
Maybe it's because, by itself, government ownership of anything is obviously no guarantee of good service and reasonable pricing. Chances of that are higher (compared to a private monopoly), but it still takes an effort to achieve this (including for citizens to prod their government into doing so).
So tell me this then: What major technological inventions happened in the US during the last 59 years?
I've found that suburbs tend to get highspeed pipes faster than cities. And cities tend to get pipes faster than rural areas.
FIOS is less than 12 miles from my house. They predict it might reach my neighborhood sometime in the next 5 years. At work less than 4 miles away Comcast is offering 40mbps for $110. Less than 300 yards away I could get 20/5 for $60. But everything in my neighborhood, west and south for 4 miles is limited to 6/1 for $50 or 4/1 for $60.
That's why I say "most". There are always nice pockets of highspeed coverage. Comcast being the best and most consistent I've found. But most people only have a crappy cable company which they can buy from especially if you factor in the rural population (which is almost most by themselves).
Tax payers subsidize roadways, for cars that polute the air (harmful, in short-term) & emit CO2 (harmful, in log-term).
Internet lets people learn, etc. at home, which reduces the amount of both air pollution & CO2 emitted.
I'd prefer to subsidize the Internet, wouldn't you?
Al Gore invented the Internet!
Consider yourself spoken to.
Dragging the fiber can't be that expensive
Yes, it can be that expensive. This is why we need a strong WISP (wireless ISP) industry to fight back against the Qwests, Comcasts, Verizons, and AT&Ts of this country - to use a medium that is mile for mile cheaper and overall speedy enough for 97% or more of Internet users to start shaking the boat, to start getting the monopolies in the ivory oligopolis to take notice and to stop fucking us over every step of the way.
What's wrong here in the US is a strong public distrust of having the government do anything, because the government may screw you over. So instead people prefer to give important tasks to businesses, who will screw you over.
There's a distinction. The FEDERAL government in the US can be depended on to do the absolute WORST thing possible. Local governments (cities and counties) can be generally depended upon to do things that are sane. STATE governments are like the Feds - they just think "oh I'm just one level below the feds, I can fuck up all I want too!"
Just think - on the whole, who are YOU more happy with? Your City, State, or your Country?
Consider yourself spoken to.
I think the real question is: "Why is connectivity so expensive elsewhere?" Maintaining a network connection like providers do costs them hardly anything compared to what you have to pay. Stockholm providers aren't doing anything special to reduce costs, they just don't overcharge you.
Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers
The word socialism is completely taboo in Sweden as much as it is in the US.
I'm not Swedish, I'm Danish... But I can ensure that in both Denmark, Sweden and many other European countries socialism is not a bad word...
Note: Our liberal parties are more socialistic that Obama.
Prodding the government is a much less effective motivator for change than when someone is threatened with going out of business
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
so it was a country free from socialist bullshit which achieved the first spaceflight?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
ADSL 1.5 Mbps (down) / 256 Kbps (up) unlimited downloads (I guess that's the norm outside of Australia, but it's the exception here)
It's only available from a few daring Australian ISPs; we pay Au$ 99 / month (there's NO setup fee, with a 24 month contract), but it's S-L-O-W...
Help! I wanna move BACK to Stockholm... NOW!!!
I lived in SE for 5 "winters" --(my little joke)
and once tested the "Say, can I use your public [computer] terminal, please?" (I asked in English)
I was immediately taken behind the counter, a "read-only, restricted access" card was swiped in & I was given access to one of the Tax Office's computer terminals to use without (stated) restriction of any kind.
Although I was able to look-up inviduals' details, including income (as seen for local & state taxation purposes, resp.), the names of any children born out-of-wedlock were NOT available.
Try this next time you're passing throught SE.
PS: Alternatively, ask - in any Public Library - to see the (local) "Taxeringskalendar" It looks like a phone book, but - instead of tel.no's - you get two incomes (again: local & state taxations' view of income for the named individual).
Enjoy!
Fire Suppression — done at the state level, and largely ineffectual because the goal is impossible. National Parks — several are slated for closing, and the majority of land "managed" by the federal government is "BLM" (Bureau of Land Management) property, which they will at will grant leases on for clear-cutting and strip-mining. Oh, don't forget oil-drilling. Airspace management mdash; massive fail. The FAA is mostly a pork producer, for example they have held back safety in small aircraft by placing absurdly high limitations on what you're allowed to sell, which reduces the instrumentation most small-craft pilots have access to. Worker/Business relations — It's harder and harder to support a family by working, and more and more people are taking second jobs for the purpose. Airwaves regulation and leasing has been utterly proven to be a complete boondoggle. In particular only corporate interests are represented, which is why the frequencies are auctioned off instead of decided in the public interest; the airwaves are supposed to be managed on that basis, not on the basis of maximum profit. Autmobile safety regulation is a sad joke, since the government has continually allowed larger and larger vehicles to be produced, which makes the road unsafe for small and efficient vehicles. The National Highway system is not only in a continual state of disrepair, but the nation would have been better-served by improving the nationwide rail system which was already extant and operating at the time when the automobile companies were permitted to buy up rail, bus, and trolley lines (gaining a transportation monopoly) and shut them down. Street Parking Management is performed by county governments, not even state, and certainly not federal. Science grants are used to kill research not desired by the current administration through lack of funding. Medical Grant Writing/Drug Testing and Approval is a horrible boondoggle and misprescription of prescription medication is the #1 killer in America. In order to get a new drug approved it is not necessary to prove that it is more effective, or even do a test on it to prove that it is reasonably safe if it is substantially similar to a drug already on the market. City planning is done by states and counties.
I could go on, but the fact is that every single one of your examples is shit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is already been done in a few cities, without any risks at all; read more here.
If Fiber optics would ignite the gas, any beam of light would be dangerous and we'd not be using gas at all...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
The transistor was invented in the US, though that falls slightly outside the 59-year window, but the integrated circuit would count. The LCD display was invented in US in the 1960's. Lots of modern military technology was developed in the US thanks to our enormous defense budget, including things like the GPS system. The internet was also initially a military project. Unix was created in the US. There are lots of things invented in the US the past 6 decades if you open your eyes and look around.
Right, but once the gov't starts screwing you over, it cannot be stopped. Don't want a corporation to screw you over? Stop giving them money. The feds send people to your house with guns when you stop giving them money.
BTW, what makes you think everyone has public water?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Yet people would rebel if suddenly half of the country wouldn't be able to receive mail or have electricity.
It's not that they wouldn't be able to receive it. It would simply be more expensive to them, because they have chosen to live in a place that is harder to supply with such services.
So my question for you is: If someone chooses to live in an area where it is easy and cheap to deliver mail, why should they also pay part of the bill to deliver mail out to my remote residence? My decision to live inefficiently is easier when I don't have to pay all the costs. Is that really something you want to encourage?
"I also think it's because "broadband" is quite more ambigious than water and power, they're much more binary like served/not served."
You think this because water and power are so well stablished and serviced you already forgot about how lame they can be.
Your home is two flatted? Sorry but forget about taking a shower on the high floor; not enough water pressure. Of course, in august watter supply will be offered just four hours a day.
What do you mean, 15KW for your home? We'll offer you just 6KW, so it will your wash machine or your air conditioner, but won't be able to use both of them at the same time. Oh, and every day from 23:00 to 8:00 you will see how your lamps bright much less; and you will have cuts at least monthly, and spikes will be usual (hey, but that boosts market; you'll have to renew your VCR yearly).
Telecoms (specially Internet) at home are still maturing. The problem is economics have changed you much that it is still to be seen if they will be able to be as stable and respectable as water/electricity in the future.
I'll bite on this one:
Integrated circuits - how many new designs have come out from Intel, IBM, AMD, etc.
The major software industries - Like it or not, Microsoft is important to how our world operates. Not to forget products released by IBM, Sun, Oracle, Adobe, and countless other productivity software like spreadsheets
Modern Pharmaceuticals - This is a HUGE industry in the US. I won't even try to list what drugs were developed in the US in the past 50 years, but needless to say it was a lot
GPS
Credit Cards
video tapes
weather satellites
kevlar
cordless telephones (also many of the ideas behind the cell phone systems were developed at bell labs)
Compact Discs
laser printer
wireless lans
smoke detectors
C/Unix
digital cameras
ethernet
the internet
many crypto-graphical problems
google (the countless innovations they've made)
I'm sure I could go on, but these are some of the major advancements made in the US. Not to mention countless discoveries invented elsewhere, but first made commercial by US companies etc (of course a lot of US inventions were first made commercial by foreign companies as well, although many of those were Japanese companies).
Phil
But a beer costs six Euros, so it evens out
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g189852-i233-k635713-Beer_Price_in_Stockholm-Stockholm.html
Serious point - you can cherry pick individual items that are more expensive or cheaper over different countries, but just comparing one item means you are totally out of context. Then you throw in fluctuating exchange rates as well, and the comparison isn't worth that much.
I think you vastly overestimate how many people live in "rural" areas. The top 30 (of 363) metropolitan areas alone make up for the majority of the US population.
But I will concede that there are many pockets in the US that are stuck with just a single cable company, and the best they can get is 6Mbps download, although, dish services are available ANYWHERE in the US that have 6Mbps service, so no less than that. If you think there is somewhere that is stuck with 4Mbps as the fastest they can get, they haven't looked very hard, or they require something other than just a fast download speed (like extremely low ping times for ultra competitive fps shooters, etc).
It's hard to threaten a private monopoly with going out of business. Free unregulated market does not always mean competition. In fact, if left on its own for long enough, it's virtually guaranteed that competition will be suppressed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor
The first patent for the field-effect transistor principle was filed in Canada by Austrian-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld on October 22, 1925, but Lilienfeld published no research articles about his devices, and they were ignored by industry. In 1934 German physicist Dr. Oskar Heil patented another field-effect transistor. There is no direct evidence that these devices were built, but later work in the 1990s show that one of Lilienfeld's designs worked as described and gave substantial gain. Legal papers from the Bell Labs patent show that William Shockley and a co-worker at Bell Labs, Gerald Pearson, had built operational versions from Lilienfeld's patents, yet they never referenced this work in any of their later research papers or historical articles.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
That's true. The freedom to fuck other people over, though.
Anyway, this whole debate is as childish as "my dad's bigger than your dad" arguments in the playground. I've lived in Europe and the US and although I actually prefer where I am (England), I totally appreciate it's a matter of taste. If you don't like where you are, then move.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
I'd prefer if the government stuck to its legitimate functions and stopped playing the subsidy shell game.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
While the final compact disc standard is not american, the underlying principles are. I got my information from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_inventions . It looks like the underlying principles are were developed by an american in the 1960s, and he later sold the rights to many of his patents to Philips and Sony to use in the compact disc.
Of course, as with most all sufficiently complex technology, no single person, company, or country is responsible for everything that goes into it. Too much work is built off the work of others, but there are generally key portions of a technology that can be related back. As it stands, this is mostly a pissing contest, but it exists for a reason, in outlining the effect of economic policies on innovation.
Phil
Yes, but apart from that, what did the Romans ever do for us? Nothing!
The LCD was developed in the USA, but the TFT was developed in the UK, by an employee of DERA (the British equivalent of DARPA, since split into two parts, with the larger part being privatised). He decided to publish the invention before it could be patented, which is one of the reasons why it quickly replaced competing technologies for colour laptop screens - anyone could implement it without paying any royalties.
UNIX was invented in the USA, but I wouldn't be particularly proud of it. There were a great many more interesting systems developed at the same time (many in the USA) which, although they have not survived as products, have been enormously influential.
Oh, and the most successful CPU architecture at the moment? ARM, developed by a British company. In a lot of systems, it runs Symbian, the rebranded version of EPOC, developed by another British company. Unfortunately, the government initiatives that created environment for companies like these were killed off in the early '90s.
The USA has been the home to a lot of innovation in the last century or so, but if you put it in per-capita terms you will find it is a lot less than you might expect.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Integrated circuits - how many new designs have come out from Intel, IBM, AMD, etc.
And how many of those were from the USA? The latest designs from Intel are from Israel.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I see a lot of "if"s about corporations, but the government already does that stuff NOW.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Furthermore, it was invented and well-described by various Europeans well before WWII. The first patent for a working device was in 1970, by Hoffman La-Roche in Switzerland. A few months later, the exact same design was "invented" in the US, and patented there by Westinghouse. See here for more details.
For a while, in the 70's, the result was that companies that wanted to use LCD displays had to license it from different companies depending on where they manufactured the products. This helped establish cheap Japanese watches, calculators and industrial counters on the market.
There's no dearth of inventions being done outside the US, and where the US contribution basically amounts to being first to copy the design from the foreign inventors and patent it in the US.
There are even European lawyers specializing in how to avoid someone else (read: in the US) from patenting YOUR invention. That's the sad truth.
These days, quite a lot of the "inventions" done in the US are in reality done in sweatshops in Taiwan and other low-cost high-tech areas, and the one who pays the piper also gets the patent.
By "see here" I meant http://www.lcd-experts.net/, and even embedded a link. Which the new /. interface promptly removed.
The Automobile? While there are dozens of possible "inventors", none of them were in or moved to the US. The father of the "modern" automobile was Karl Benz, not Henry Ford.
Not according to a recent speech of Barack Obama before the congress, the quasi state of the union
"And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
Pharmaceuticals? Switzerland has been the main driving force there.
Video Tapes? Brought to the masses in the 50's by by Sonitape (later "Sony")?
Weather Satellites? When did Sir Arthur C. Clarke become American?
Compact Discs? A joint venture between Sony (Japan) and Phillips (Netherlands).
Cryptography? Like IDEA (another Swiss patent)?
Digital Camera? Like the 1988 Fuji DS-1P, or should we only count the 1991 Kodak?
Cuba has a functional health care system with higher average lifespans and lower infant mortality rates. Wouldn't it be better for them to mention North Korea instead of Cuba?
First of all, I've never had a letter take two weeks to deliver. Anyway, how exactly do you figure that the for-profit letter carriers are "more efficient" if they charge orders of magnitude more money for their service? You're using a definition of "efficient" that I am not familiar with.
A "Free Market" can't possibly ever exist in reality. Approaching that theoretical ideal is the best we will ever be able to do in that arena. A completely unregulated market will always be far away from a free market.
Agreed, but not for the reason you think. Regulation is needed. But government regulation is not necessarily needed.
Want to win in a market without being the best? Murder your competition. What's that, you'll go to prison? Wow, market regulation, It's everywhere and it is an essential requirement of a functioning market.
I'm not a real fan of viewing the basic criminal laws as government regulation of markets, but I will admit that it does function to help regulate some markets. However, the government regulation here is not essential. The key is that there must be something to prevent you from murdering your competition. There can be alternatives to the law there. Consider organized crime. The criminal law is largely irrelevant in the avoiding of murder there. What prevents it is generally the protection of the crime lords from each other, such that they really couldn't murder each other.
In general the black markets are is interesting in general, since they often approximate a free market fairly well, tending to rely on internal regulation where regulation is needed. (Of course the black markets can vary in levels of openness. Those dominated by crime lords are often closed markets, but that still compete fairly well, while others are more or less a free-for-all).
Over regulation is also bad, but the most commonly deluded types are the ones who not only believe that free markets are real, but they think unregulated markets and free markets are the same thing.
True. A market without government regulation can most certainly fail to be even remotely free, while markets with significant government regulations can approximate a free market really well in some cases. Generally I find that over-regulation in the sense of too many regulations is not the problem. The problem is generally specific regulations that have major harmful effects. In rare cases we get many regulations with small harmful effects that just add up to become significant, but generally it seems to be a small number of regulations bought and payed for by the big players in the market that are the problem.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524