If You Lived In Riga, You Wouldn't Bother To Cut the Cord

lpress writes "If you lived in Riga, Latvia, you would not have to 'cut the cord' to see video entertainment at a reasonable cost. You would simply get a triple play subscription with 20 Mbps up and 5 Mbps down from service provider Balti-Com for $25.43 USD. Balti-Com had the lowest triple pay price in a New America Foundation report, The Cost of Connectivity, which compares prices charged by 885 ISPs in 22 cities worldwide. The report found that five of the cheapest 15 triple-play offerings were in Paris — the fruit of competition between ISPs. With the Telecommunication Act of 1966, the U.S. Congress hoped to foster similar competition, but failed. As study co-author Benjamin Lennett says, U.S. telephone and cable companies have arranged a 'negotiated truce' in which cable incumbents enjoy a de facto monopoly on high-speed broadband service, while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms."

Comments

Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course I assume they have weighted the prices wrt average income.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

If you mean, the prices have been adjusted to purchasing power parity, then no.

It's actually ~25USD or ~12LVL/mo in local currency.
http://www.balticom.lv/lv/home/dom_komplekt?districtId=50

imho, the reasons are: fierce competition&little to no collusion, little regulation and little legacy technology.

Re:Weigh with average income

[PineGreen]

No, you don't weight with average income. Do you weight sony television and apple laptop prices with average income? (they also pay on-the-ground workers like sellers in shops and truck drivers, which are more expensive in more developed world)

Re:Weigh with average income

[reverseengineer]

The prices are weighted by the World Bank's Purchasing Power Parity metrics "which adjust for differences in costs of living, price levels, and other factors that affect a consumer’s purchasing power."

Re:Weigh with average income

[Red Storm]

And to bring the comparison full circle, the Big Mac Index from January 2012 showed Latvia to be -30% parity. Meaning if you were to adjust the price to US Dollars it would cost an equivalent of about US$15-16 in the US.

The index can be found here:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/01/daily-chart-3

Re:Weigh with average income

[noh8rz6]

latvia: gdp per capita = 11k. US: 50k. nuff said. wolfram alpha is awesome.

Re:Weigh with average income

[noh8rz6]

In soviet latvia, television watches you! (no joke, true story).

Re:Weigh with average income

[cpu6502]

You don't but you should. TVs cost like 20 dollars in India and China, because that's all the people can afford. Meanwhile in the EU or US they cost around $200, because we're "rich" in the worldwide income scale so the corporations charge us more.

BTW we do have cheaper options in the States:
- ignore the government-granted monopoly that is Comcast and get Dish: $15 or $25/month for their lowest CATV packages. Or antenna which is freeview.
- or add Hulu. $7/month for unlimited viewing.
- Wired phone service can be had as cheap as $4 a month (and then pay 10 cents per call).
- Another form of entertainment are books or magazines or radioshows, which are often published online for free. When nothing's on the boobtube, I read or listen instead.

- get DSL for internet. $15 a month for slow service or $30 for faster service.
- VirginMobile. $5 a month for cellphone service, or ~$20 a month for unlimited. $35 for unlimited data.

The problem I have observed with most Americans is that they don't know HOW to save money. They complain-and-moan about high prices, but then don't bother to shop around. They buy overpriced goods, lock themselves into 2-yr-contracts that are lousy deals, waste money eating-out everyday when it's cheaper to bring your own lunch, buy $1 snacks in the machine when the same thing at the store costs half as much, and so on.

Basically they are their own worst enemies. We work hard to earn money..... we should also work hard to save it rather than waste it.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

The network equipments, material cost and energy cost do not fall magically either.

Re:Weigh with average income

[ACS Solver]

I come from Latvia, lived in Riga until recently. It's true that it is one of the poorest countries in the EU, and income levels are low by the standards of more developed Western countries, but telecom is cheap there. 100 megabit connections are very common and I had one. About 40USD together with TV and a landline, and that's not the cheapest that was available, it's a particular service provider I like. The prices are consistently affordable even by local standards.

Availability and price of high-speed broadband in Riga is excellent, and Latvia is near the top of country rankings by Internet speed. This is not surprising for those who remember the situation in Riga just over a decade ago. Very limited availability of DSL/ISDN lines that give reasonable speeds, mostly 56k dialup instead, which was very expensive from the ISP bill plus the phone company charges. Real broadband came to the area later, but then it was good.

As a side-note, I have only on very, very rare occasions seen people with Macs in Latvia. Until iPods/iPhones I could go for months without seeing an Apple product, and that certainly has to do with pricing. The price difference between Macbooks and other laptops looks absolutely ridiculous in Latvia.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Chibi Merrow]

- get DSL for internet. $15 a month for slow service or $30 for faster service.

Not available at my address. Yes, I'm serious. I don't even live in the boonies. I live in a rather densely populated suburb of Philadelphia. There is no high speed provider here other than Comcast. Another ten miles further from Philly and they have FIOS and DSL.
Besides that, DSL (where it's actually available) is a good bit slower than my Comcast service. So you're essentially saying "Do with (significantly) less, and it'll cost you less!"

- VirginMobile. $5 a month for cellphone service, or ~$20 a month for unlimited. $35 for unlimited data.

Except you can only use the phones they offer, instead of the phone you want. And it's on Sprint's network, which is lousy.

If you're willing to put up with Sprint's network, you should use Ting anyway.

So again, "Do with (significantly) less, and it'll cost you less!"

The problem I have observed with most Americans is that they don't know HOW to save money.

They definitely know how to save money the way you're suggesting: "Do without". Many, in fact, do. For instance, since I ceased living with my parents way back in college, I've never paid a cent for any sort of television subscription. Some people just can't live without TV, however. I've also never had a land-line phone, since I've always had a cell. Always interesting dealing with people who demand your home phone number...

But the point is, people shouldn't have to do without to save money. These services are dirt-cheap to provide, get cheaper every year, and the prices where there is actual COMPETITION reflect that.

  They complain-and-moan about high prices, but then don't bother to shop around. They buy overpriced goods, lock themselves into 2-yr-contracts that are lousy deals, waste money eating-out everyday when it's cheaper to bring your own lunch, buy $1 snacks in the machine when the same thing at the store costs half as much, and so on.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you going on about?

I can't use DSL as I frequently work from home, remoting to my various office desktops. I also use Netflix to watch moviesI don't torrent anything, as Netflix is good enough for us for now. (Don't have TV, don't want Cable TV). So, no, I can't fucking go for DSL.

Even without any such restrictions, it's STUPID of you to suggest to use DSL. I want high speed internet like rest of the developed world, and there is nothing absurd in expecting such - we are not living in 1990 anymore for fuck sake.

Here, in NYC, the area I am in, I have only ONE choice - the dreaded TWC. Verizon FIOS - No. Comcast - No. Cablevision - No. Basically, no competition.

Free market my fucking brown ass.

Re:Weigh with average income

[cpu6502]

My DSL goes 6 Mbit/s and I think that's plenty fast. I can download movies or shows faster than I can watch them, so basically the speed is higher than I need.

TING would actually cost me more. Instead of the 5 dollars I currently pay through Virgin, I would pay $9. And the text/data plans are about the same price.

But the data cost on Ting? Outrageous! 3GB plus calls/texts == $80. Virgin charges just $35 and has no data limit.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Darkness404]

So in other words this boils down to, by getting less I can save more?

I can save money by getting rid of a car and buying a bike, I can save money by getting rid of the bike and walking. But the quality decreases a lot as well. A BMW and an old beat up Ford Pinto will both get you from point A to point B but in general it will be a lot more enjoyable driving the BMW than the Pinto.

The problem I have observed with most Americans is that they don't know HOW to save money.

That is because, quite simply, it makes no economic sense to save cash. Even using the hilariously manipulated official statistic of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, the US dollar has an inflation rate of 1.66%. Using the CPI as it was originally designed without the manipulation gives you a real inflation rate of ~5%. Now, a savings account will pay you, what? .35% interest if you're lucky? A 1 year CD rate will pay you about 1% or so. A 1 year treasury bond will pay about .2%. This means to an American if they keep cash or any other traditionally "safe" investments of cash they are taking a guaranteed loss. Which means that their only other options are to invest it in stocks, foreign bonds, real estate, or commodities such as gold or silver in order to even keep the same purchasing power they have today.

We work hard to earn money..... we should also work hard to save it rather than waste it.

Ok, so where do you put cash that will at least keep up with inflation without scaring the masses off?

The fact is, most Americans don't save because there is no financial incentive to save. Cash is a "hot potato" that needs to be spent and invested in -something- or else you take a guaranteed loss.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Chibi Merrow]

My DSL goes 6 Mbit/s and I think that's plenty fast. I can download movies or shows faster than I can watch them, so basically the speed is higher than I need.

Well, 6MBit/s would not be enough for our household, with three heavy internet users. It's not uncommon to have two simultaneous NetFlix streams, a large download going, and still have two of us playing online games.

TING would actually cost me more. Instead of the 5 dollars I currently pay through Virgin, I would pay $9. And the text/data plans are about the same price.

But the data cost on Ting? Outrageous! 3GB plus calls/texts == $80. Virgin charges just $35 and has no data limit.

Ting would be cheaper in my situation, with 5 phones, instead of paying $35/ea. Also, the big difference is if you use less than what you signed up for in a month, Ting refunds the difference. And that $35 "unlimited" Virgin Mobile plan is throttled after 2.5GB.

Re:Weigh with average income

[theshowmecanuck]

The explanation for this is of course, not as nice as the article makes out:

As study co-author Benjamin Lennett says, U.S. telephone and cable companies have arranged a 'negotiated truce'...

This in fact called a Cartel.

And in fact it is a private/public Cartel. Private because we really know it's there for price fixing and splitting up the market which is, ostensibly illegal. But we know they do it right in front of the legislators' noses, who don't do anything about it. In my opinion because that would threaten cushy 6 figure swan jobs offered by the culprits when their terms end, as well as free education at top schools for their kids/grandkids via "scholarships" and whatever other shell games are devised, etc. etc. etc. A true cooperation of "public" and private concerns.

Re:Weigh with average income

[lurker1997]

The fact is, most Americans don't save because there is no financial incentive to save. Cash is a "hot potato" that needs to be spent and invested in -something- or else you take a guaranteed loss.

I have heard this a lot, but thinking about it now, I think low interest has little bearing on the average person's saving / spending habits. For people who are already saving, it probably changes the instruments they use to preserve their wealth, but I don't think the average person/family is living paycheck to paycheck because they are worried that the purchasing power of their money will not endure if they hang on to it. People get themselves into a position where they end up giving most of their pay to service debt, and I think this is very rarely if ever done because they are being smart and not holding onto the "hot potato" that is cash.

If your argument was correct, I think you would see fewer companies sitting on piles of cash. I also believe Japan has/had one of the worlds highest saving rates while interest rates there have been zero for decades.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Darkness404]

Of course a lot of it has to do with culture and people's individual habits, but the people who try to start saving undoubtedly don't keep it up because yields are so very low.

The fact that companies are sitting on piles of cash doesn't contradict my argument but rather confirms it. Currently there is really nothing for anyone to buy with cash that has any future yields so they just have cash in case a major opportunity comes by (buying a competitor or promising start-up). If CDs and bonds had positive yields, you'd see companies flocking to buy them, but since they don't, its easier to keep the cash in fully liquid form and hope for an opportunity than it is for them to make a guaranteed loss by saving it.

Myself I don't even know what to put my extra cash into other than silver and gold which are unlikely to really make me money but should keep their value better than cash, bonds or CDs. I don't even see IRAs as good investments anymore considering European governments have already started to seize their citizen's retirement accounts and I really don't see tax rates dropping in the future. It doesn't make much sense to not pay a low tax now and pay a high tax in the future.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically what we've established here is that your data requirements depend largely on how many people will be sharing the bandwidth. I live in a 1-room apartment by myself so 10 mbit is plenty for me, but if I had 3 or 4 roommates or a torrent server then I'd definitely want to bump it up to 40 or 50.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

RCN serves New York, no?

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

I save quite a bit of cash, you have to if you want to buy a house.
I do lose something doing this, but far better than being a debt slave for a car or other major purchase.

Re:Weigh with average income

[StonyUK]

That is because, quite simply, it makes no economic sense to save cash. Even using the hilariously manipulated official statistic of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, the US dollar has an inflation rate of 1.66%. Using the CPI as it was originally designed without the manipulation gives you a real inflation rate of ~5%. Now, a savings account will pay you, what? .35% interest if you're lucky? A 1 year CD rate will pay you about 1% or so. A 1 year treasury bond will pay about .2%. This means to an American if they keep cash or any other traditionally "safe" investments of cash they are taking a guaranteed loss. Which means that their only other options are to invest it in stocks, foreign bonds, real estate, or commodities such as gold or silver in order to even keep the same purchasing power they have today.

You don't have save or invest - why not pay off your mortgage or car loan early instead?

Re:Weigh with average income

[Teun]

I feel for you regarding the shitty service you get.
But you are wrong thinking DSL can't support the services you need.
Like I have a 'Light' (V)DSL contract offering 30/3 speed, I live 850 m. (1/2 mi.) from the exchange and the line would support 42/4.
As with all things DSL it depends on how far from the exchange you are and living even closer you can get a 50/5 contract.
Presently there is discussion to bundle lines, most if not all houses here have two phone lines coming in and that way you can double the speed!

It seems the country you live in does make a difference...

Re:Weigh with average income

[Darkness404]

But is a house really that great of an investment? Or will real estate prices continue to fall?

Even before that, lets say you've decided that buying a house is a good use of your money and in order to buy it you need X amount of cash which will take you 2-3 years to accumulate. So for those 2-3 years while you are accumulating it, it would make sense to put it in some safe investment that will meet or beat inflation so when you buy your house you only need X+Y amount of cash, not X+Y+Z (Y being the increase in the house price since when you made your goal 2-3 years ago and Z being the amount of money needed to add to X to keep up with inflation).

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have that backwards. It would be the equivalent of $35.60

Re:Weigh with average income

[doshell]

Your analysis only makes sense if you assume you will always have steady income and that it will always be enough to satisfy your needs. What if you become unemployed or unable to work? I would argue that's the first and foremost reason to save money; whether you keep it under the mattress, stashed in a bank account, or invest it in stocks is an entirely separate matter. Naturally, some choices may be better than others, depending on what you believe the future will be.

Re:Weigh with average income

[raju1kabir]

get DSL for internet. $15 a month for slow service or $30 for faster service.

Faster?

I've been shopping for broadband for an office in Washington DC and the "fastest" Verizon offers is 7mbps down, 768kbps up for $90/month.

Granted, I don't live in the USA, but it has been many years since I've seen anything that slow. I get better speeds than that on my phone. How can that possibly be the top offering via a wire? At home I am paying half that much for a connection almost 10 times as fast, and I live in a country where broadband is considered expensive compared to the neighbors.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

The best DSL speed on the offer was 3/0.5 (I think). It's just so sad.

Re:Weigh with average income

[TubeSteak]

I also believe Japan has/had one of the worlds highest saving rates while interest rates there have been zero for decades.

After the tsunami, there were endless stories of people finding massive wads of cash and turning it in to the police.
Where'd the wads of cash come from? Japanese homes.

The Japanese people have the highest savings rate, but they save it in cash.
The zero interest rate and a nationwide distrust of banks means these people store their life savings at home.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Swave An deBwoner]

Apparently a "computer programmer" in Riga earns on average around $790 per month:

http://www.worldsalaries.org/latvia.shtml

Re:Weigh with average income

[O('_')O_Bush]

A valid assumption given the audience. We will be extinct from zombies before technology related jobs become insecure.

Besides that, consumerism drives the economy. A lot of the stagnating economy problems that Japan has are due to a very conservative population that believes in saving all their money and not spending on the types of consumer goods that many other countries consume.

Re:Weigh with average income

[zippthorne]

And it's on Sprint's network, which is lousy

People keep saying this, and their posted coverage map is pretty sparse, so it must be true, but where? I've had sprint/virgin up and down the east coast of the US since 1998, and I'm not even sure I can remember the last time I didn't have service (or had to switch to roaming when I bothered to get dual- and tri- band phone models), including the overpass in the radio dead-zone near my parents' place that all the other carriers seem to ignore (but proudly highlight on their coverage maps....)

The virgin phone selection is limited, but at least you don't get the privilege of continuing to pay for the phone after you've finished paying off the phone. Also, the iPhone 4S is one of the limited selection phones you can get....

Re:Weigh with average income

[zippthorne]

The house isn't, but the land might be. Real estate prices will *not* drop to zero, and as we make more people, demand for land can only go up - more people chasing the same amount of land as ever.

Now, it's certainly possible that we're still in a bubble and that real estate prices have further to go before correcting to the "real" price, but it's not very likely that the "real" price won't eventually surpass the current prices considering the trends in population growth and currency devaluation.

Note that real estate prices in a particular area may be affected by more than just the general market. For instance, that nice residential-only suburb 25 miles from the city? Those prices could go either way depending on transportation availability and fuel costs. They still won't go to zero, though.

Re:Weigh with average income

[nbsr]

Consumption drives economy. Savings or (in unsustainable manner) loans drive consumption. It is really as simple as that.

Japanese do spend a lot of money, which is a *problem* because they are not getting anything near to what they have paid. They reached the stage where keeping cash is a natural defense from what government policies gave them (risky or unavailable savings/loans and inflated prices).

Re:Weigh with average income

[mdielmann]

Perhaps, just perhaps, when other people say 'saving money', they mean not spending everything they own, without going into specific details of what they do with what they haven't spent. While the points you raise are important, you're missing the key one that people in North America are typically spending as much as or more than they earn over a given period. This leaves nothing to invest, put into a savings account (which, frankly, is only good to offset unplanned short-term expenses), hide in a sock in your drawers, or anything else that would make it available for you to spend sometime in the future.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, true 100 Mbps Ethernet links are quite common here. But this is local connectivity inside Latvia (think DC++). International links are not so brilliant.

Re:Weigh with average income

[ACS Solver]

No, that sounds like a horribly outdated figure. 790$ (assuming before taxes) is below the average salary nationwide, the figure being now around 865$ before taxes. Programmers, consistently with the rest of the world, get good pay by local standards, a decent one should certainly have no less than 1300$ before taxes.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

It helps to call up your cable company and talk to their retention/loyalty department. Someone might as well save as much as possible on the package they want.

Antenna TV? Yeah right. When things went digital over the air, I think they pretty much ruined the ability to pick up a clear channel.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. International links are quite excellent. Across Europe (especially north) speeds are terrific.

Re:Weigh with average income

[gl4ss]

..since when do tv's cost 20 bucks in china? used tv's can be had for 20 bucks in euro too, but not brand new.

americans are getting ripped off on their net connections, that is hardly news. OTOH jeans and tv's are cheaper than in euro.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem we some of the cheaper options, is that they are unreliable.

A family member dish. He saves a lot compared to my cable service. He can also use it when he travels. it's a great service for him. He, however, loses reception (from severe corruption to just plain out) many times per year due to storms. No antenna has ever helped fix this. My cable service does not have this problem. The extra cost is worth it to me (Mind you, with my bundle, the cable comes out to around $40/month).

I have another family member who switched form Virgin to a more expensive cell provider recently, mostly because the coverage was horrible for him, even around a city.

If the cheap option works for you, that's great. But there are often reasons they are cheap. Choosing the alternative doesn't mean you don't know how to save, it can also mean that you have to sacrifice something unacceptable, to save.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

And spending it on a too expensive car that depreciates in value is preferable ?
When people talk about saving they dont always meen saving acct. They mean saving as in not spending, not consuming. IE, keeping it liquid, whether it be in saving, checking, or stock account.

Re:Weigh with average income

[doshell]

A valid assumption given the audience. We will be extinct from zombies before technology related jobs become insecure.

I'm not American, so I can't really assess how much that is true. But what about the "becoming unable to work" scenario? (As in, becoming incapacitated by an accident or disease?) Are most Americans with technology-related jobs insured against that scenario? What about the years after they retire? A retirement plan is a form of saving money, after all.

Re:Weigh with average income

[pnutjam]

I bet he pointed his own dish, if he had someone good position it and cleared the necessary sight-line, most of his problems would go away.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Anonymous Coward]

But is a house really that great of an investment? Or will real estate prices continue to fall?

It is if you're renting. Rent has increased by 10-20% in the last couple of years in my area. If you can qualify, it's cheaper to own a house.

Re:Weigh with average income

[T Murphy]

If Americans were concerned about watching interest rates the first thing they'd all do is pay off all debt as fast as possible. Considering that most households have debt (mortgage, car, credit cards), and yet they are still spending more than they need to, I'm pretty sure that the economics of how to best save money doesn't enter the equation.

Re:Weigh with average income

[O('_')O_Bush]

"Are most Americans with technology-related jobs insured against that scenario?"

Between worker's comp, life/ltd insurance, and SS, mostly..

The parent was exaggerating a bit when he said "The fact is, most Americans don't save because there is no financial incentive to save", and I'm not disagreeing with you that there are good reasons to save money. And most American's do save for retirement, either through a 401k, personal savings, or indirectly through Social Security.

However, beyond a rainy day fund (low 10s of k), there are fewer incentives to not have a large expendable income when real inflation is high. That is partly why so many people put their money into their houses before the 2008 collapse, and why gold experience the recent bubble. Material assets scale with inflation better than pure cash does, as long as the goods preserve their value (houses, collectibles, items with intrinsic values) and the economy stays strong. Alternately, spending it on luxury items now provides a better return than spending it later.

Inflation in the U.S. has been staved off by Chinese consumer good production increases, but as their economy evolves and slows, they will stop being the hedge driving our inflation rates down.

Those reasons are why I am saving to put my money into land (low priced, low development areas, of course). As an investment, it is less risky than stocks, and more valuable than securities. If shit hits the fan, I'll end up being a real winner.

Re:Weigh with average income

[lsatenstein]

My son, formerly of Florida, lived in Riga for 3 years in 2004. He downloaded a DVD equivalent in 3-4 minutes. Watched movies from the web, and had about 10x the speed of what cable provided, for about $15/mo US$

Riga Latvia has mostly fibre connectivity to apartment blocks, as they could not afford to lay copper (which would later be stolen).

Imagine if thieves started stealing copper wiring in your area? Would they replace it with fibre?

Re:Weigh with average income

[nobodie]

I have to agree.... with both of you!
Yes Americans gladly take their cash to pay for useless services that they don't need because an advertisement has told them they should. Marketing is a powerful tool that drivesa these purchases. Many, many people have expensive , say $50 a month data and phone and text plans for their phones and barely use10% of it. Others Pay for the cheapest plan and then screw the pooch by going over and paying extra expensive charges for just a few minutes or Megs.

On the other side, there are thoughtful and careful people who hold tight to their cash and don't overbuy, who are careful about what they choose and what they can afford. They live thoughtfully and carefully and try to maximise the value of their income.

That is the reality of people, some are silly fools, some are thoughtful and careful fools. Since we all agree to live in the world we should expect these differences and they don't really need to be remarked upon.

Typo folks

[webjedi]

That's the Telecom Law of 1996, not 1966

Re:Typo folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, do they have the up and down speeds backwards?

Re:Typo folks

[Z00L00K]

I agree - getting the up and down backwards doesn't really add to the credibility of the article.

Re:Typo folks

[turkeyfeathers]

Another fine example of Timothy's "editing".

Re:Typo folks

[lpress]

That's the Telecom Law of 1996, not 1966

Sorry about that! Of course, it is 1996 -- just a typo.

Re:Typo folks

[Shatrat]

There's also a pretty complete misunderstanding of that act and telecom in general. There is tons of competition out there now if you want a T1, DS3, OCn, carrier Ethernet. That doesn't change the fact that DSL still can't compete with Cable in the last mile. That's why Verizon has started building out fiber to the home in the first place. There are also plenty of local telephone companies with no wireless component that still can't compete head to head with cable on bandwidth terms.

Triple Play?

[Anonymous Coward]

Definition, pls.

Also, 20Mbit up and 5Mbit down? Is that backwards?

Re:Triple Play?

[Anonymous Coward]

Phone, Internet, TV

Re:Triple Play?

[Anonymous Coward]

Triple Play == Putting all your eggs in one basket

Re:Triple Play?

[Anonymous Coward]

Triple play is a all-in-one package with DSL, TV over DSL and VOIP.

In France we also have quadruple play : Triple play + cell phone for 1 h/60 SMS for 1 € more without contract.

As you can call all cells for free from your landline (and even abroad), it is really cheap (eg 37 €/month).

And for 16 €/month I get unlimided voice and SMS plus 3 Go of data.

Hurra for communist France, and thanks to Free (www.free.fr) for breaking the cartel of french telecoms.

Re:Triple Play?

[davester666]

Triple play: phone, cable tv, internet access

And no, that's not backwards. Everyone in France is very creative and runs their own web server, streaming content they've made. This is only possible because of the laws protecting their creative industries.

Re:Triple Play?

[reverseengineer]

Yes, those speeds are backwards. The chart in the article gives 20 down and 5 up. The rankings also set up an interesting debate about value and what customers consider an acceptable data rate. Is 20/5 at $25.47 (cost of living adjusted USD) a better deal than 50/50 at 32.74 or 100/50 at 34.47? And how do the television offerings really compare? There are quality of service factors beyond having the most channels

Re:Triple Play?

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet, phone and TV
Yes, that's backwards and it's an upper limit. It varies by distance to the dslam

Re:Triple Play?

[Blaskowicz]

well it's a small rip off, I pay 36 € per month (38€, minus 2€ for disabling TV, plus 0€ for the one hour cell phone)

I should have taken the ISP (Alice) that does 20€ per month for triple play, then with 2€ per month for the cell phone with the first ISP we're speaking of, that would amount to 22€ not 36, which I quite feel on my minimum income. sadly, Alice didn't have the commercial offer up on its site at the time. this was back when Free, which actually owns Alice, was launching its new offer and box. After that the Alice deal appeared again! so it's not that bad but I've been ripped off 14€ per month for 1.5 year

Re:Triple Play?

[Blaskowicz]

sorry. communist France?, are you on crack? you won't feel the same when you realise our brand new president, elected on a slogan of "Change!", just handed over the destiny of our country to Angela Merkel. We won't feel the consequences immediately but eventually, our fiscal and economic policy will be run by foreign, powerful and faceless interests (i.e. Goldman Sachs and friends, weapon industry, oil&gas etc.). We'll become a dictatorship, just like the US is.

Re:Triple Play?

[Anonymous Coward]

France annexed Latvia? After dealing all those years with the Soviets I think the Latvians can handle cheese eating surrender monkeys without breaking a sweat.

Re:Triple Play?

[dunkelfalke]

Calm down, dude, there is nothing to fear. Merkel doesn't do anything at all, she just sits there and talks sometimes. She isn't called "a talking pantsuit" for nothing.

Re:Triple Play?

[Gobelet]

You might want to add for the US readership that those 60 minutes you have on your mobile plan are outgoing; incoming calls and texts are free. I just subcscribed to Bouygues' "Bbox Sensation Fibre": 37.90 EUR/month for a FTTLA bundle with TV, unlimited international & mobile phone, 30 (effective in my case) Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. I have catch-up TV, a media center with USB and SD inputs, DVR, modem, Wi-Fi router and video games all in one box. It's not the cheapest but I didn't have a landline (and no will to get one), and cable works beautifully where I live.

Re:Triple Play?

[wierd_w]

No silly, they are doing everything they can to PROMOTE filesharing! With the asymmetry reversed like that, one seeder can service 3 leechers at 100% saturation! Imagine the swarm size attainable!

verizon

[Espectr0]

while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms.

So they don't know who sells FiOS?

Re:verizon

[3count]

I was about to post the same thing. Here in the Maryland, Comcast and Verizon are battling it out for Internet, Voice, and TV service. Comcast service (delivered and customer service) have improved many times over sine FiOS showed up. But Verizon has been offering fantastic rates guaranteed for 2 years with no contract so I finally switched in January. A little competition is a wonderful thing.

Re:verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

except for the fact that FIOS is only available in very select areas. I have been waiting for them to roll fiber in my neighborhood since they started advertising it.

Re:verizon

[DigitalSorceress]

Yeah, but how long before they get to where they start doing what they do in the mobile market: start trying to lock you in to long-term contracts in order to stop you from switching.

I'm sure that's coming

Re:verizon

[geoskd]

while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms.

So they don't know who sells FiOS?

Apparently nobody sells FIOS. They allegedly cover the area where I live, but the price they quoted me is double what the Cable carrier charges, the bandwidth is less, and they want $750 to hook me up because I would have to pay for the stretch from my house to the nearest drop. On top of all that, they don't offer FIOS TV here which is thanks to that very same telecom act of 1996... Congress hasn't been able to do anything right since the 50's and 60's, and Verizon doesn't appear very capable either.

-=Geoskd

Re:verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon stopped expanding their FiOS network more than 2 years ago. It reaches only 12 million households (less than 10%). Verizon also just recently announced it will stop selling standalone DSL packages and will raise the price of FiOS. That's hardly competition.

Re:verizon

[phantomfive]

My understanding is this 'truce' is not because companies like each other, they would all stab each other in the back if they could. It happened because in many municipalities, one cable operator came in, and negotiated with the local government to get an exclusive deal.

So even though congress allowed competition, in many places the cities have disallowed it.

My question is, why do we have such lousy internet in the Silicon Valley region? I thought all my internet problems would be over when I moved here.

Re:verizon

[bastion_xx]

FiOS (Verizon) or uVerse (AT&T) are wireline products. If you look at wireline growth in the 2-4% year over year versus wireless in 20%+ range, there isn't a big incentive for the telco's to invest in wireline upgrades. Look at FiOS - there are no new markets or expansions that Verizon wishes to do. Why? Because the capital invested in a wireline plant doesn't have nearly the same return on capital invested that upgrading a market to LTE does.

Granted wireless is saturated on the voice call component, but data is still a growing market. Ever wonder why the new share plans give you unlimited minutes and SMS? That's a gimmie compared to the hope you'll consume data (and pay for it).

The new cabal is the broadband providers such as Comcast/Charter/Cox looking to enhance and augment the Ethernet data markets while the telcos focus on wireless. Hence the recent purchase by Verizon for frequencies while promoting the cable consortium. I still think you'll see any carrier with wireless sell off their wireline business as focus on "mobility".

Re:verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

But you can now get family sharing plans via 4G... 10x faster that 3G! :)

Broadband is a low margin offering now (at competitive pricing). Outside of region, VZ has partnered with the Cogent's of the world to provide DSL local loop back to a UUNET hub.

The competition should be provided by another broadband carrier (e.g., cable). What I'd love to see is the mandate to open access to the plant and provide common wholesale pricing to all wishing to drop in CPE at a DSLAM type location. Or the same pricing for all to access the copper/fiber plant.

Re:verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'd have thought there's some incentive for Wireless carriers to spread into the wired so they can offer, through their pico or femto cells service to locations they may not have properly covered and extend from there.

I'd think their future is to extend to many houses and use houses to further provide service, so they get you to pay for housing and providing their service, which I think is part of the goal of both ATT and Verizon to extend in such way.

The problem comes with free phone services such as Google voice, that may take a bite from some phone providers. I'd have hoped Comcast provided telephony services for free over their network, and that would have taken care of both Verizon and ATT, but since they get greedy, and want money for that service (even though people is already paying for their broadband), then I'll guess they'll see Verizon and ATT moving faster into their arena. (also, Comcast clearly has no wireless infrastructure, not sure if they are counting on something there).

Re:verizon

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms.

So they don't know who sells FiOS?

Verizon has not done any substantial FIOS build outs since 2009. Since then, they've colluded with comcast. Comcast gets a promise from verizon not to build any more fios plants and verizon gets some wireless frequencies that comcast has been sitting on for like a decade. Hell, verizon is now bundling comcast catv service with their dsl packages.

Re:verizon

[arth1]

except for the fact that FIOS is only available in very select areas. I have been waiting for them to roll fiber in my neighborhood since they started advertising it.

And even then, it's mostly not fiber-to-the-home, but using MDSL over the phone line for the last step. They started offering service where I live, but I turned it down when they (a) demanded that I severed my existing DSL service with someone else, and (b) would not provide a true internet node, just NATed service without an ability to run servers of choice on your endpoint.

It was also seriously overpriced, at around twice the price of a 100 Mbps line elsewhere in the world.

The free market is an illusion. If you give the market free reins, it will always produce monopolies, because nothing is preventing the big players from eating the small ones. Monopolies and oligopolies is why US Americans pay through their teeth. Why they think they have the best service in the world at a fair price, I have no idea. Perhaps they really are as stupid as the stereotypes about them.

Re:verizon

[lymang]

Verizon stopped expanding their FiOS network more than 2 years ago. It reaches only 12 million households (less than 10%). Verizon also just recently announced it will stop selling standalone DSL packages and will raise the price of FiOS. That's hardly competition.

Yeah. This kills me. I'm less than 10 miles away as the crow flies from Verizon FIOS (Millbury, MA has it) but they stopped, and didn't come any further and I can only hope someday for something better.

Re:verizon

[Rhys]

AT&T was, in theory, building uverse out in my community (midwestern university town, >100k pop). That was two years ago. Not a peep since then. Supposedly a couple places have it, but I can't get it where I am. I'm stuck with comcast and their terrible network maintenance. They have a leak (classic sense: water infiltration) somewhere. Good soaking rain means 25%+ packet loss, multi-second ping times for a few days.

Of course by the time I'm through their "service" org far enough the central line techs would come out and look at it, things have dried up and they see no problem, so close the ticket and fix nothing.

Luckily we have a university/city sponsored FTTP service in the works -- probably WHY AT&T quit their uverse build out -- but at least I'll be able to get service that isn't comcast before I die/move out.

Re:verizon

[bolthole]

Bizzare.. I guess only in california is verizon expanding fios. I keep getting FiOS spam in my (US mail)box every month, seems like. And this is when I'm aready a customer :-} I signed up within the last 12 months. Free installation, and around $75 a month for internet and landline phone.

Re:verizon

[Lando]

Well, Infinity has made it to my neighborhood, but I wouldn't call it a good thing. First, AT&T no longer sells DSL lines in the area, claiming they are all used. Second, minimum price for Infinity is well over 100/month since Comcast is around the same, it basically means that and internet connection is more expensive than they used to be.

Maybe the extra speed would be nice, but at a cost of doubling my costs, it's out of my price range.

in germany we have a different triple play

[acidfast7]

that includes mobile phone service (since 20 channels of TV are public anyway) where we get some good deals.

For 24.99€/mo with no contract (can cancel immediately), we get 16/1 service (including a WLAN router), standard telephone (anywhere in Germany free to a land line) and the O2 mobile phones for free (we choose to pay an extra 5€/mo for 500 minutes to the EU/US long-distance because I call the US quite often), and 4 SIM cards with numbers and .15€/min and .15€/SMS.

If you agree to a 24-month contract the price is only 14.99€/mo

:D

Bulgaria

[Anonymous Coward]

We can go lower.

vivacom 4PLAY - $23,625

http://www.vivacom.bg/bg/residential/prices_and_services/paketni_uslugi/vivacom_4_play
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=bg&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vivacom.bg%2Fbg%2Fresidential%2Fprices_and_services%2Fpaketni_uslugi%2Fvivacom_4_play

Edit the Editor

[Anonymous Coward]

Think you mean:

20 down / 5 up
Triple play (not triple pay)
and Telecommunications Act of 1996 (not 1966)

Ma Bell breakup did not go far enough.

[mrsam]

I always said that the original break-up of the legacy Ma Bell did not go far enough. It was broken up into local and long distance entities, with local telcos providing local telephone service, and AT&T long distance providing long distance service.

The problem is that the ILECs ended up owning both the physical plant, and the voice/data service. The breakup should've had its bar pushed even farther down the line. Specifically down to the last mile, and not an inch above that. The local telephone companies should've left with owning nothing but the last mile, and all they would do is charge tariffed rates for maintaining the physical plant. They should not have allowed to provide voice or data services as well. The ILECs should own only the physical plant, and any company should be allowed to install their equipment in the CO, and provide voice or data service to any wired customer, charging whatever the competition will bear, with ILECs getting paid a tariffed rate (the higher the capacity of the last mile, the more they could charge) for maintaining the physical plant, and nothing more.

Re:Ma Bell breakup did not go far enough.

[meerling]

It was broken up from one large monopoly, to a bunch of local monopolies. Even your cable company has a local monopoly. Go check it out. As long as they can keep the local government renewing their local monopoly, they don't really compete, they just pretend to, and not very well at that.

Re:Ma Bell breakup did not go far enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully not where I live. The locally owned electric company put its own fiber in. Comcast and AT&T tried to sue them to stop it, but failed.

Now we can get Gigabit fiber service if we want. Comcast is now forced to try to compete. So far they've failed.

40 dollars for 20 mbps in Hyderabad

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in hyderabad, I have an optic fiber drop to my house with 20 mbps speed for Rs.2000, that is, less than 40 dollars a month.

LITERALLY DEFACTO!

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't a de facto monopoly that US telecommunications enjoy. For many particular services it is more accurate to simply call it monopoly. Specifically, they have state franchise utility monopolies. This means that others with similar services may also operate, but each is protected from competition within certain geographical borders(chosen usually at the municipal political level). Other businesses are violently restricted from offering similar services(usually by way of giving the physical infrastructure exclusively or preferentially to the monopolist). So while one area of a city is given to comcast, another to qwest and so on, none of them have to compete with an unhampered market where the rest of society can replace them by investors seeing an opportunity to invest and entrepreneurs seeing an opportunity to fill a void for consumers and consumers trading with more productive providers. Those actions from the rest of society are violently opposed by the state. Thus they don't have a de facto monopoly at all. They can restrict output and raise prices without fear of replacement. Society is not allowed to compete with them. They have a monopoly.

source(which goes into detail about several aspects of telecommunications monopoly): http://mises.org/daily/5266/

It's just too expensive in the west.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Sofia we don't cut the cord either. 50Mbit down for 30 USD with television.

in italy

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some triple-play but i don't know the costs. It would be interesting to integrate the data.

One difficulty we have in italy is that almost all utility lines (telco, power, water and gas) are under the roads or sidewalks. So to connect houses you have to asks for permissions, close roads, dig, put the cables and cover everything then re-do the road pavement...

There are some areas of Roma, milan turin that are covered by fiber but work stopped years ago....

Re:in italy

[Teun]

All of Europe has it's utilities underground, when there is a problem making a new hook up it's because your local authority is bureaucratic (and history has shown you can't leave it to the market to properly fill in the holes after the dig).
So like here in The Netherlands a licensed company can dig up most streets without much more than a simple notification.

Besides, most houses are hooked up when build, even when you don't take the service the line is already there, like some 30 years ago our town got cable, it's in my house even though I never took a subscription.

Translation please

[Anonymous Coward]

What does "cut the cord" mean? I don't live in Riga so I need to figure out whether or not I should bother to do it.

Re:Translation please

[Raenex]

What does "cut the cord" mean?

In this case, it's unclear without careful reading and used poorly. Dictionary reference for normal usage:

1. "cut the (umbilical) cord to stop needing someone else to look after you and start acting independently"

2. "to end support of someone or something, esp. financial support"

So what "cord" is the author referring to? Based on the article, it seems to be his subscription to television services:

"I cut the cord to save money. I live in Los Angeles and pay Time Warner $84.94 (plus $6.56 tax and fees) for telephone service and Internet connectivity at "up to" 20 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload speed. Adding digital TV to round out the triple play would cost me an additional $58.99 per month -- just about what I paid for my Roku box."

Simple logic

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, the major corporations want you to pay more, so you pay more. In other countries, the government rules over all of the people (including the corporations). In the US, corporations rule over the government, and that trickles down to the people (its not trickle down economics, its trickle down policy). The corporation tells the government what it wants. I'm always quite disgusted when republican politicians coddle law breaking corporations and their agents exactly like a subordinate would treat a boss. On the other hand, since the corporations are paying their election expenses, they *are* the boss.

Triple play is awesome!

[cockroach2]

Because, you know, all your eggs, one basket, single point of failure etc.

I for one would love to lose my phone, cell and TV connection too whenever my ISP has one of their "little technical difficulties".

"Negotiated Truce"???

[Jane Q. Public]

There's another name for that: market rigging. And it's illegal.

Re:"Negotiated Truce"???

[Greyfox]

It's only illegal if you get caught!

Doing illegal things as a corporation works kind of like raising in poker. In poker, if you raise you have two ways to win. You could have the strongest hand, of course. That one's pretty easy. But you could have a weaker hand than your opponent and he might still fold because he's not confident he can beat you.

It's a little different as a corporation, but if you do something illegal you could just get away with it and make a ton of money. Or you could get caught and fined. From what I've seen, the fines are always less (sometimes FAR less) than the illegal profit you made. Something to keep in mind when, as a CEO, you're faced with a choice between contaminating an entire town with asbestos and making ONE BILLION DOLLARS...

Re:"Negotiated Truce"???

[Jane Q. Public]

"It's a little different as a corporation, but if you do something illegal you could just get away with it and make a ton of money. Or you could get caught and fined. "

And that's the problem with our laws today: the entire current "punitive damages" arrangement.

The first problem is, when corporations are fined by government or regulatory agencies, the money doesn't go to the people who were actually defrauded. When a corporation is caught doing something like that, they should be forced to make every effort to discover who was actually damaged, and recompense them, BEFORE any "fines" are even considered.

Then, and only then, should punitive damages be levied. And they should be large enough that the corporation LOSES money when it is all done. Anything else isn't really "punitive" at all.

Re:"Negotiated Truce"???

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't usually work out this way now. After your fines you get hit with obscene amounts in civil suits. The bad news pummels your stock price, with a follow-on market beating when you settle or lose your suit. Meanwhile, Congress calls you in for a grilling, because it looks good for them to do so. Business partners withdraw contracts to distance themselves, and in some cases, you see more regulatory oversight. When that happens, you contribute to the costs to run the organization that costs you money. The list goes on.

Much time in business school (at least in the last ten years) is now spent going into extreme detail on your obligations to all STAKEholders. That includes everyone that you might cheat, hurt, aggravate, etc. Because it's usually in your interest to play nice with the world around you.

Re:"Negotiated Truce"???

[shentino]

I think that the problem is actually the other way.

Corporations get fined first and THEN sued by their victims.

And since government fines have higher priority than restitutions, there's little incentive to report a company if the feds will get their pound of flesh before you get compensated.

Re:"Negotiated Truce"???

[Jane Q. Public]

"Corporations get fined first and THEN sued by their victims."

Uh... that's pretty much what I wrote.

Re:"Negotiated Truce"???

[Lando]

(ALWAYS FAR less) than the illegal profit you made

FTFY

Someone from Latvia here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Average salary in Latvia is about ~620 $ per month (~7440 $ per year). If you're an entrepreneur - someone working for you with salary 620 $ per month costs you about 1050 $ per month (all taxes that you have to pay for the employee included) (12600 $ per year).

One of the largest and most expensive local telcos offers 100 Mbit / sec FTTH + TV solution for 40$ per month. Or 50$ per month for 200 Mbit/sec goodness + HD channels for your TiVo-style-over-the-internet-TV that comes with this package.

On a spammy and off-topic sidenote - best of the breed software engineers would cost you no more than 5000 $ per month (or 60 000 $ per year; all possible taxes included). Something you'd pay 200 000 $ for in US I suppose.. So if you want to get in touch with local freelancers (I'm a software engineer myself), drop me a line at spiritus [dot] emortus [at] gmail.com.

Re:Someone from Latvia here.

[buglista]

I can't speak for Latvia, but guys I have worked with in Tallinn, Estonia were good. I apologise for the drunken English tourists on stag weekends :)

Re:Someone from Latvia here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha.. Thanks! It's really strange to see regularly in local news that some British tourists relieved themselves (or even took a dump) at/on our Freedom Monument (and got detained by police, of course)t. I guess the problem is that its backside looks like "some random, ordinary container of sculptures without any special meaning". Oh well.. I just hope that their overall experience in Latvia is good and they enjoy their stay. :)

Hurrah! Race to the bottom!

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we really be celebrating cost-cutting rather than lauding the quality of services?

What happens when one of Balti-Com's customers suffers a prolonged period of ADSL degredation? That's when you really discover what you're paying for. I doubt that their tech support is sufficiently funded to investigate, say, interference on the line from Christmas lights.

The LIBOR bank lending rate has been mocked recently but it does have a sensible approach to removing outliers that can be applied to ISPs: chop-off the upper and lower cost quartiles and take the median of the remainder. Then you should be able to find a reasonable balance.

Negotiated truce

[nine-times]

I wouldn't claim to know, since I have no inside knowledge, but I had assumed there was some kind of behind-the-scenes agreement among ISPs. Verizon has seemed to give up on rolling out FIOS. There's essentially no competition in NYC right now between ISPs. Once you know what your needs are, there is usually only one vendor who can provide that level of service.

Since they're monopolies, these companies should be regulated at least as strictly as the companies providing electricity. In my opinion, they should be regulated even more strictly.

Oops...

[Chibi Merrow]

Meant to hit preview, not submit... Ignore that last bit of accidentally unquoted text...

Smaller networks = lower price

[Osgeld]

news at 11

Re:Smaller networks = lower price

[acidfast7]

I'm sorry, I didn't realize Paris was small, my mistake.

Re:Smaller networks = lower price

[Anonymous Coward]

Paris (the actual city district of Paris, 75) *IS* small. It's not even completely FTTH'd, after all these billions wasted in commercials telling how great the ISP are and how fun it's going to be when eventually they bother to light up all these fancy great horizontal fibers they've laid.

What this report misses entirely is that 95% of the whole country can have the same DSL offers for the same price (modulo issues with distance from the DSLAM, which can be a problem just anywhere: my in-laws live in a village east of Coulommiers (77) (yes, small town), and being 300m away from the DSLAM, enjoy 24/1 DSL for the price I (a mere 8 minutes ride away from St-Lazare, one of Paris' biggest railway stations) pay for half the speed.

http://francois04.free.fr/ for instance, has unofficial but usually quite accurate stats about one of the ISPs. The first chart after the link is nationwide. 60M people, perhaps half households (how many DSL lines per household do you need ?).

Re:Smaller networks = lower price

[acidfast7]

i would consider Paris 75/92/93/94 at a minimum (and a fair chunk of 91/95/78), but you're point is still valid (even in that context).

Bucharest

[war4peace]

In Bucharest, I already have 100mbps Internet (optic fiber) and 70 TV channels for less than 20 bucks. I could get phone as well for 5 dollars more but I am not interested. Bonus: free 3G USB dongle with unlimited data transfer.
Beat this, Riga!

Re:Bucharest

[acidfast7]

but to be fair, you should compare the average salary of Frankfurt to that of Bucharest :P

Re:Bucharest

[Erpo]

Thank you both for sharing. As someone who pays $150/month in the US for no-frills TV, telephone and 10/1 Internet with a 50GB/month transfer cap, it's eye-opening to read about conditions in other parts of the world. Also, I'm sorry about how the United States has been behaving towards other countries for the past decade or so.

Re:Bucharest

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Helsinki, and I pay 8.90 euros per month for 100/10M Internet connection (and it really works at those speeds). It's not very special deal, and I could cancel it at any moment. If I cared, I could get more bearable speeds at quite affordable prices, but I've found 0.2% of my salary a reasonably level to pay for this kind of a connection.

US pricing of both wired and wireless broadband is a prime example of what happens when competition does *not* work. Sure, there are beneficiaries, but consumers are not those.

Re:Bucharest

[Anonymous Coward]

There is something truly wrong with the US networking. I believe it's caused by unregulated oligopoly and monopoly on the cables/bandwidth/frequencies. In Europe owner of these very limited resources have to share them at government mandated price, which is nearly at cost. Therefore markets work better and competition drives down the prices.

My costs in Finland are 19 euros for 100/10, IPTV, WLAN router, Internet based "TiVo". Mobile costs about 35 euros per month for 4 sim cards, 14mbit unlimited data on them and 1 euro max per day for domestic calls. I don't think we have triple play plans, I don't know anyone with a land line. My parents are retired and they have mobile phones. I have never had a land line in my life...

Re:Bucharest

[Erpo]

I'm curious: what do you mean by "1 euro max per day for domestic calls"? Do you pay by the minute for domestic calls? Also, what do you mean by "14mbit unlimited data"? In the US, carriers often claim to offer unlimited data but are usually lying. Either they start throttling speeds after a certain amount of data transfer, or they stop all data access claiming that the subscriber is abusing the network by transferring too much data.

Re:Bucharest

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the original poster but:

Normally you pay by the minute for domestic calls in finland (0.069€ in my case), but many operators have deals that you can never go over 1€/day.

As for data: normally unthrottled and unlimited but there are offers that you only get limited amount of unthrottled data and after that the speed is limited to some predetermined value. Usually the cheapest connections are like that unless you already get the slowest possible connection like I do (2.90€/month, 512kbit)

Re:Bucharest

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally you pay by the minute for domestic calls in finland (0.069€ in my case), but many operators have deals that you can never go over 1€/day.

Just to clarify: of course you can keep making calls after you reach that 1€. It will be free.

Re:Bucharest

[arth1]

Normally you pay by the minute for domestic calls in finland (0.069â in my case), but many operators have deals that you can never go over 1â/day.

US system:
POTS: Local calls are generally "free".
Mobile: You pay for both outgoing and incoming. Provider-to-same-provider calls are often "free".

European system:
POTS: You get charged a low rate for local calls.
Mobile: Incoming calls are free. Provider-to-provider calls are much like local calls for POTS.

Not to mention SMS pricing or data plans...

What matters the most is the total bill, which is much higher here in the US. My land phone bill effectively doubled and the mobile bill effectively quadrupled when moving to the US and getting the least expensive plans for my usage. (And mobile coverage went way down to a fraction of what I had in a less densely populated country.)

The reason is, of course, the lack of regulation to ensure that consumers don't get stiffed. When celebrating "freedom", remember that this includes the freedom of big money to put a big shaft up your arse.

Re:Bucharest

[war4peace]

I agree, you also shouldn't expect the same prices in Bucharest and Frankfurt for laptops, MP3 players, TV sets... oh wait...

Re:Bucharest

[Anonymous Coward]

In Bucharest, I already have 100mbps Internet (optic fiber) and 70 TV channels for less than 20 bucks. I could get phone as well for 5 dollars more but I am not interested. Bonus: free 3G USB dongle with unlimited data transfer.
Beat this, Riga!

Riga: $26/month for 100 Mbps FTTH from Lattelecom (largest ISP).
Actual speed for me is around 90 Mbps up, 50 Mbps down.
As extra: free WIFI (some 2000 hotspots).

$17/month for 100 Mbps FTTH from an unknown smaller ISP.
In some places, works better than Lattelecom.

Re:Bucharest

[war4peace]

Still doesn't beat the offer I use, if you look at the free 3G option. The 3G dongle works in all major cities.

Re:Bucharest

[Anonymous Coward]

But do you pay part of the connection price in the maintenance charge? My 10/10M connection in Espoo costs 9 EUR (the normal list price without various deals and offerings, like half of the price off and free modem), plus the charge of 4 EUR per apartment with single two year contract period bundled with cable tv contract.

It's obviously collusion

[WOOFYGOOFY]

It's so obviously collusion. In my neck of the woods, no two cable companies compete. You can get one if you live HERE and the other if you live THERE. This is not capitalism and they should be forced through legislation to compete.

It's called "regulation" .. aka law and order for corporations. Sure, criminals don't like law and order.. so what's new in that? They'd much rather be left alone to play freely in a green field of their id's desires.

From financial deregulation, deregulation in other industries and a general lack of oversight and enforcement we have gotten the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl , the S&L melt down, the Long Term Capital Management melt down, the 2008 crash and global warming. The cumulative bill to the rest of us so some tiny minority can profit obscenely runs into the trillions, a bill the rest of us have to pay.. This is also known as a Grover Norquist Tax, the tax the rest of us pay for deregulatory policies and the destruction they cause. .

Well, I've been taxed enough. I'm sick of paying the bill for dereguation and I WANT MY MONEY BACK from the small set of libertarian and conservative personalities and lawmakers that took it away and gave it to the coke snorting class.

Re:It's obviously collusion

[Solandri]

It's so obviously collusion. In my neck of the woods, no two cable companies compete. You can get one if you live HERE and the other if you live THERE. This is not capitalism and they should be forced through legislation to compete.

It was legislation, not collusion, which gave you just once choice in cable companies (unless you're talking about collusion between the government and the cable company). To lay down cables in the U.S. normally requires crossing private property. To avoid having to get permission from every homeowner along the path of a line, the government allows laying down cables in/along streets and easements (small portions of private property which the government has obtained cable-laying rights to via eminent domain). In other words, if you want to run a business which involves laying down cables, you need the government's permission to do it.

Unfortunately, they didn't let any cable company to lay down cable and allow the market to do its job. The municipal governments made demands such as x% coverage of a city, or payments to the city to help offset the cost of maintaining roads. The phone/cable companies only agreed on the condition that they get a monopoly. And so for the vast majority of the country, we only have a single choice of cable company and local phone company (though VoIP is making the latter less of an issue). There is no second cable company or second phone company because your local government made it illegal for there to be a second one.

In the suburb of Boston I used to live in, the city tore up its agreement with the cable company and allowed a second cable company to offer service. The first cable company immediately lowered my monthly bill $10 (to match the second company's price) without me even having to do anything. If you're going to give a company a monopoly on some sort of wired service, it should be under the eye of the public utilities commission, and should only be for the cables - i.e. providing the physical pipes. They should be prohibited from selling content which travels through those pipes. Their job should be maintain the pipe and sell access to it to cable/phone/internet providers. Those providers would then provide the content, and should then be free to offer you whatever you like at whatever prices they want to set.

Re:It's obviously collusion

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Thanks for the info. +1 informative. It's not the government's fault the cable companies wanted to be monopolies and extorted that as the price of doing business. .. it's what all companies want . Too bad they felt like they had to give it to them. Cities give Walmart, the biggest company in the world. financial concessions all the time. You have to look at the details to know why corporations are able to extort munis in this way.

In a perfectly free market we'd have what we have when the oil and gas companies obtain natural resource rights from individual land owners. They end up owning everything and shut out everyone else for all time, and anyone who does not sell at the going rate gets boxed in by those who do. If you saw the only mildly fictional There Will Be Blood, you know what the oil barons did to people who wouldn't 'sell- they ran a pipeline laterally underground into their land and sucked out the oil anyways.

If you've seen Gasland you know what they do to people who DO sell. It's not pretty.

Look, humans have an practically unlimited capacity to think up schemes and present them in ways so as to lure relatively naive people into deals that ultimately harm them, harm the environment and everyone who depends on it and are bad for a competitive market. Highly trained analysts possess asymmetrical knowledge of a huge number of variables present in any deal. To understand whether you should take the deal in a completely unregulated market where sellers are not constrained by any laws whatsoever, would effectively become a question it would take years of schooling to really analyze and something Joe Homeowner just doesn't have the capacity, resources or time to do.

The whole libertarian argument is aimed at preventing the government from accumulating and using knowledge about the world, to benefit taxpayers in the form of laws which limit the badness any determined aggregation of exploitative and well funded people can do to innocents.

It's so obviously a wet dream for sociopaths it's hard to see why people don't simply reject it out of hand the way I did as soon as I understood what it was they were saying. In fact, it's so hard to understand why libertarianism isn't laughed out of existence that the best reason I can think of is what I said- it's the political wing of people with sociopathic personality disorder.

They find it, understand in their bones what it's really all about and and immediately become determined enthusiasts, being careful to frame their argments in terms of "freedom" and "freedom from government" as though our government wasn't a thing for by and of the people, which it is.

It's just a fact about the relative complexity of the world, the relative capacity and resources of Joe Regular Citizen and the resources and capacity of what amounts to well funded nation-states , which is what corporations are now, that there's no contest between these two entities and corporations don't even need to use so called "force" to fuck everyone over.

Look at the personalities involved with libertarianism and it's near cousin objectivism. Ayn Rand was a virtual walking checklist of sociopathic . psychopathic personality disorder, as is her "philosophy".

In our own time , consider the person of Rand Paul. When faced with having to obtain continued certification for his eye doctor practice, he balked and instead invented his own ""certification" and then bestowed his that invented , fake certification on himself.

This is just the actions of a dirtbag scammer, the kind of person who shows up at your house and takes money to "fix your roof" then is never seen again. It's exactly the same level of anti-social behaviour towards the rest of society.

Presumably Dr Paul's patients think he's certified and that certification means something other than Dr Paul thinks he's above society's rules.

Re:It's obviously collusion

[WOOFYGOOFY]

I cant speak to what happened in your suburb of Boston but your post inspired me to look a little deeper into the issue and this paper kept my interest -

http://yalelawandpolicy.org/29/the-looming-cable-monopoly

Once the cable digital migration is accomplished, the cable companiesâ(TM) big pipes will be filled with virtual, highly-compressed digital âoechannels.â Three of those, or so, may be devoted to Internet access.

The real growth area for cable is âoebroadband,â but very little of âoebroadbandâ will be recognizable as Internet access.

The rest of the transmissions filling the pipe will use the Internet Protocol but will be thoroughly managed, monetized, prioritized, filtered, packaged, and non-executableâ"much like traditional cable television today.

When a monopoly cable provider can allocate just two or three of its hundreds of virtual âoechannelsâ to Internet connectivity, and when only that provider can sell you video-strength speeds, net neutrality becomes a subsidiary issueâ"a tiny white bird landing on the back of an enormous hippo. Net neutrality matters, but it is a sideshow. As one content executive told me, âoeComcast owns the Internet.â

II. What Happens Next

We are about to confront a well-coordinated cabal of local monopoly cable providers. When it comes to affordability, ubiquity, and nondiscrimination, we could decide to take a lesson from a host of other developed nationsâ"particularly Australia.

As a report from the Berkman Center made clear earlier this year, policies requiring line-sharing at regulated rates have played a central role in the spread of low-priced, nondiscriminatory, very-high-speed access in many other nations.[20]

Australia has recently cleared an important final hurdle towards rolling out a publicly-funded fiber network that will be open to all ISPs: By having its Senate pass a bill that will decommission old copper-wire (and hybrid coaxial fiber) infrastructure and separate its monopoly provider into wholesale and retail operations, Australia has ensured the construction of a new National Broadband Network that will connect 93% of Australian homes and business at speeds of 100 megabits per second.[21]

Another lesson: Leadership played a central role in this major Australian initiative. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has been leading the reform effort since 2005, and said recently that ââ[n]o other sector has been held hostage by a market structure that has been such an impediment to genuine competition and innovation

Re:It's obviously collusion

[subreality]

It's called "regulation" .. aka law and order for corporations.

I prefer a non-regulatory way to solve the problem: Municipal fiber. Have your city drag fiber from a central data center to everyone's homes. They rent you a pair for $10/month or so. At the data center you get cross-connected to any of a dozen providers who will sell you TV, IP, and telephone service in any combination you desire.

There's no need to regulate once you take away the natural monopoly held by the telcos/cablecos. Once you have a bunch of companies competing to have the other end of your fiber you win.

Re:It's obviously collusion

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Yeah well if we could do that then we'd have single payer health care too like other civilized societies.

What I am saying is to conservatives what yo're describing is Socialism which is like Communism (in their minds) except it's still alive.

Conservatives have a shit fit if you try to have muni broadband , because that's government... Big government.

Re:It's obviously collusion

[subreality]

I know it's still a hard sell, but I think conservatives will find it much more palatable to have a "city-run utility providing access to a free market" than "more regulation".

Re:It's obviously collusion

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Well why just wonder what they'd say when you can ask them directly? Just ask a conservatard if they like the idea of a local government supplying their population with municipal WIFI or broadband and see what reaction you get. Or just ask Mr Google what the conservatards thought of your little socialist plot.

typo

[Anonymous Coward]

20 Mbps *down* and 5 *up*

A "negotiated truce"... Sounds like politician

[Rooked_One]

speak for a monopoly.

competition was the key

[karuna]

Latvia is a poor EU country but that's not the main reason why broadband prices are relatively low. It is all because of competition. Latvia had poor phone infrastructure and after the Soviet era the government decided to give a monopoly to Lattelecom and as a result the prices for local call were unreasonably high. Internet, however, remained unregulated. The opportunity was immediately seized by small entrepreneurs who bought one high speed link from the Telecom and connected local apartments in the complex with local ethernet cables. The service was shitty and the speed varied but the required investment was minimal, just a bunch of routers, some cables and connections with housing owners to receive permission to pull cables to apartments. The specifics of Riga was that there are very little of suburban housing and most people live in apartment complexes.

The low cost of entrance created quite a competition and kept prices low. Gradually many such micro-ISPs were merged or bought by bigger companies and quality gradually improved. The possibility of competition never disappeared and eventually it forced all major ISPs lower prices.

Re:competition was the key

[Anonymous Coward]

> connected local apartments in the complex with local ethernet cables
Now it is continuing with optical fiber.

Numbers for cable in Berlin are wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Their numbers fail to include the basic fee to have a functioning cable tv outlet in your appartment (~$20/month).
With that outlet you can watch about 30 analog channels and the digital channels of ARD and ZDF.
Only homeowners notice that fee because it is usually a non-optional part of your rent whereas the fees for telephone, internet and encrypted digital channels are paid directly to the cable company.

Hey Google

[symbolset]

Hurry up with that gigabit fiber, please.

'negotiated truce'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I come from, that's called price fixing.

socialist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

You will be a dictatorship, a socialist one. Of course, like all socialist dictatorships, it will still be called a democracy. Hollande got elected on a populist platform of "making worker layoffs so expensive that it's not worth it" for companies to fire workers, and increasing taxes on the rich.

He is making good on that now by attempting to prevent soon-to-be-bankrupt Peugeot car company from closing a plant and firing 6500 workers before the announced law takes effect later this year. This, in a climate where car sales in Europe are down significantly with no visible path to recovery. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fef127fa-ce90-11e1-bc0c-00144feabdc0.html

He has also proposed a confiscatory 75% tax rate on all earnings over 1 mil euros, which has resulted in many of these people selling off their assets and leaving France for Switzerland or UK before the law is passed. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9404209/Frances-proposed-tax-hikes-spark-exodus-of-wealthy.html

Re:socialist dictatorship

[Teun]

Don't worry about the 75% tax for the rich, that's only marginally above the ~72% tax a regular Dane pays and they have one of the strongest economies and highest living standards in Europe.

Yes there is life after tax.

Re:socialist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Additionally, most of the income for the rich often comes in the form of equity for which there is no progression. That is the real reason some members of a board in some companies take the $1 salary.

which has resulted in many of these people selling off their assets and leaving France for Switzerland or UK before the law is passed

I really thought those people have already migrated from the Germany, France and Nordics to Switzerland. The tax evasion cases in Germany and some not very publicized and purposefully forgotten embezzlement whispers suggest so.

Collusion doesn't work

[Darkness404]

What you don't seem to understand is exactly -how- these companies got big in the first place. It wasn't the free market, it was through governments giving companies money to "modernize" the US.

Because established companies got a head start (because they had the equipment to run an ISP and the money to bribe Congress) it made the barrier for breaking into the ISP market quite high because wiring is expensive and your competition already has it thanks to the government.

Because of a lack of competition, the already large companies got larger both through legitimate means (providing a good service) and illegitimate means (by taking government money). This increased the barrier to breaking into the market even more.

It was through regulation that this happened. In a fully free market these things don't happen. All the things you've mentioned that "deregulation" caused, didn't happen because of deregulation! All that happened was the regulations were changed. The financial sector was never "deregulated", some of the regulations were simply changed and changed poorly.

True deregulation would have meant no government involvement, which isn't what happened.

Re:Collusion doesn't work

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Due true deregulation means monopolies and unlimited dumping of toxic shit into our environment. The reason the dust bowl happened was because farmers "maximized their profit" in the easiest way they could. Then it all blew up. Ditto the Great Depression . If your history isn't that sharp, then let me point you to the event around 2008 where banks fond a way to provide insurance, called "credit default swaps", but avoided the regulation that went along with selling insurance. Then when the deregulated housing market - a system that lenders hand out liar loans and NINJA like candy because no one was watching what THEY did, blew up, all those insurance contracts bills came due , and the banks couldn't ' pay them and couldn't on them.

I can sense when I'm talking to a libertarian , which is the political arm of the sociopathic personality type. Really, I'm not that interested in your "proofs" that everything is because of government interference. It's just in your genes to think the way you think, to exploit other people are greedily as you can, to hate any kind of communitarian impulse and to elevate your personal selfish greed into a an uber First Principle. It's how you were born, and the reasons and narratives you give are just your brian seeking out, repeating and generating just so sotries about how things could be if onoly you had no rules upon you. Libertarians attempt to associate their genetically mediated greed with everything from The Constitution (Taxes are theft!!!) to Jesus Christ (The prosperity gospel - Jesus wants you to be rich!!! ). They're materially and as a matter of course indifferent to the plight of other people around them excepting of course the vacuous and self serving rationalizations, usually presented as hypothetical scenarios about how government causes all bad things, which always end in how we'd all be better off if government just withdrew from our lives.

They think about everything in mercantile terms and do not care on whit about other people or the larger society they're a part of .

I understand. It's what your brain is screaming at you 24 / 7. I empathize, I really do. One day soon we'll have a cure for libertarianism, we'll fidn the gene that makes the part of your brain that's concerned with people other than yourself and your personal wants so dysfucntional and we'll make it work properly so you feel empathy and compassion and a sense of responsibility to others. One day soon, we''ll make sure no one is born with this defect. Until then, I fell sorry for ya buddy, I really do. Perhaps this would be a good time to go read The Fountainhead again.

Re:Collusion doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe instead of pathologically attacking your opponent's psychology you could try arguing against him next time. Maybe you think you sound cool but to everyone reasonable *you* sound like a psychopath.

Why aren't the Latvian companies attempting to move into the US if they are able to provide Latvians at a cheaper price than US Americans? They should be able to come in at a cheaper price and make a boatload. It's not that easy, and one of the big factors (maybe not the only one) is government regulations.

Re:Collusion doesn't work

[WOOFYGOOFY]

and one of the big factors (maybe not the only one) is government regulations.

Yeah you said that because you've studied the financing behind Latvian broadband and know all about the effect of government regulation on broadband in this nation and have published a comparative study on the two which link you just forgot to publish

Oh wait, you just ejaculated the "government's the problem" meme all over slashdot readers because that's what you reflexively do in every situation and besides, it's always true, so no facts are needed before you assert it as true?

Oh. I see.

Re:Collusion doesn't work

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Yeah actually, all those libertarian's actions I cited pretty well speak form themselves and the reasons and motivations behind their criminal / amoral actions is actually a worthwhile thing to reflect on since it has animated just those actions and continues to animate the movement.

"The perfect liberty they seek is the liberty of making slaves of other people." -- Abraham Lincoln

Re:Collusion doesn't work

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Yeah too bad I wasn't "pathologically attacking my opponent's psychology", as anyone who read my post is fully aware . Actually, I presented quite a few detailed cogent arguments why the basis of libertarianism is fundamentally flawed and anti-social. Funny that you just *missed* all that huge part of the post. Oh that's right, you didn't miss it, you just lied about what I had written because you have to say SOMETHING and lying is what libertarians do as normally as they breathe. Oh well, I suppose to you it seems like I must something "unfair" about my post attack since any attack that is effective must be, by your feelings about it, unfair, and anyone who criticizes libertarians effectively must, of course be a psychopath , unless, of course, you look up the definition of psychopath in which case you'll discover that in fact, the meaning of the word has nothing to do with protecting innocent people from say, the ravages of libertarian/ conservative induced global warming but rather is more or less describing what crawls out of the said same people's mouths on a daily basis and is enshrined in their "philosophical" writings ("The Virtue Of Selfishness" ..."Collectivism Taxes and Redistributionism is Bad" "Trickle down economics" etc etc etc) as fundamental principles.

See, protecting and fighting against the real, immediate and devastating impact a sociopath's actions have on innocent people is not a form of being a sociopath. The American government sending people to fight in the Civil War was not an act of "Northern Aggression" as libertarian / state's rights assholes framed it back then . People advocating for killing Hitler's were not plotting a murder. This is all called "moral calculus" and it is, in fact just exactly what libertarians are least capable of by their very nature.

The reason people despise libertarians so much is just because the "policies " they agitate for, if you can call the advancement of lawlessness a "policy", are completely despicable and in the case of global warming lead directly to the genocide against the world's poorest peoples who are least able to protect themselves. , a kind of econo-cide. As Ayn Rand would tell you, a trifling thing like the mass murder of "lesser men" is sure to just piss off the non-John-Galt cretins off every time and they'll start in with their collectivism and their laws to get ya, or as Ayn Rand said in We The Living

What are your masses...but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?

Indeed.

Re:Collusion doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

mod up parent.

If you're gonna regulate, you have to do it right and it requires constant monitoring. everything is still regulated, jsut in a way that benefits the big companies.

unfortunately, now that the BIG GUYS are out that, you cant just create a free market (true free market, many actors, etc) by dumping all the regulations in the trash and waiting for the lil guys to pop up. Some will but nearly all will get crushed.

no, the only way to fix it and foster a free market now is to regulate teh BIG SOMBITCHES, smack em on the nose, and regulate to foster small business growth. then over time you can withdraw regulations, but keep essential ones (cause if you withdraw em all, the big will once again just get bigger and crush all who are smaller and once again kill the free market)

Re:Collusion doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Flame bait, troll, and moron. Another internet psuedo intellectual bully.

You are equating libertarian with ultra right wing / big business. The two are no where near the same, and most libertarians are very moderate, very centrist.

They simply want to live and let live, to be left alone as private citizens, by both government and corporations and anyone else that would seek to control them.
They support laws that promote that goal and dislike laws that don't.

Such beliefs were what led people to found this nation in the first place, so take all the vitriol exuding from every pore of your being, and shove it where the sun don't shine and go learn something about being a decent human being. You also might try not sounding like a 10 year old.

Re:Collusion doesn't work

[AnonyMouseCowWard]

Actually, no, the financial sector _was_ deregulated, and deregulation does cause monopolies.

You got the first part right. In some sectors, there is a very high cost to entry, for example telecom and utilities (in economics, a natural monopoly), due mainly to the initial outlay. The first movers get a big advantage, because once their network is setup, they can drive new entrants out by taking a loss on the service they provide until they get all of the market, and then jack up prices. New entrants can't match artificial low prices because they need to recoup the initial investment, and thus are pushed out in the absence of regulations.

Of course you can argue the first entrant was able to get into the market easily because of regulations, but deregulation won't help solve that problem. You'll _need_ regulations to break monopolies once they're in place, regardless of who you want to blame. There is just a right amount of regulations that's required for capitalism to work well, and it won't lead to socialism (not that there's anything wrong with socialism, but I think you'd beg to differ).

Re:Collusion doesn't work

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Yeah that's right, when someone points out what libertarianism is, has been and what it actually advocates with the rhetoric of the "limited government, maximum liberty" pulled out of airy fairy land where they like to keep it, you act as though someone has aggrieved you in some particularly outrageous way. On top of everything else, you're a thin-skinned bunch with an exaggerated sense of entitlement to nearly everything on the earth, including respect for your planet-destroying deregulatory policies.

In fact, what libertarians are is pathological liars. You just told me and everyone else that libertarians are "centrist" and "moderate". What exactly are they centrist about? Because last I knew centrist was sort of a mid-point between extremes. In fact your party is defined as nothing BUT extremes in personal ( I can choose not not serve *niggers* if I damn well please ! You should be able to sell yourself into indentured servitude if that's what you decide to do! ) and corporate "liberty" , which is another name for environment destroying de-regulatory policies and social Darwinism.

. Somehow you think that advocating extremes in both corporate lawlessness and personal predatory, anti-social behaviour necessarily constitutes some form of "centrist" position irrespective of real world consequences.

Tell us again how libertarians are against Big Business when your party ran billionaire and budding mass-murderer David fucking Koch as it's vice-presidential candidate in 1980, from which position he advocated for all the "centrist moderate" positions we all can feel good about, you know, things like the abolition of the FBI, the abolition of the CIA , the abolition of public schools , the abolition of social security etc etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koch_family

Oh and all of your "think tanks" - the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Fraser Institute , the Heritage Foundation are ALL funded by Exxon Mobil and right wing ideologues with the last name of .. whoa, what's this? "Koch" who also happens to be , whoa what's this?? Reason' Foundation's trustee while the rest of its officers, guys like Mike Flynn, are in a revolving door relationship with "centrist" organizations like ALEC who ran the "centrist" "global warming Ted Kaszinsky / Charles Manson" billboard .

http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

and the rest is chock to the gills with former Big Tobacco / cancer science deniers .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Institute

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heartland_Institute

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reason_Foundation

Yeah , libertarians are "centrist moderates" all right. Well, either that or they're Machiavellian psychopaths who see their holy ends as justifying any means whatsoever, especially the means of systematically and knowingly lying about who they are and what they represent.

Hey! How do you know when a libertarian is lying? His lips are moving.

Comparing like with like

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see a study that compares the *actual* speed customers of these ISPs get, not their claimed maximums. A 100 Mbps local connection isn't much use if the upstream bandwidth from your apartment building or neighborhood is crap. Also, what about download caps?

Also, how many TV channels are in these triple play bundles? I'm paying Comcast $130 / month for 22 Mbps Internet, phone and cable TV service that includes 700+ channels. And the phone service provides unlimited calls at no extra cost to the entire US - do Latvians get to call anyone in Europe for no extra charge?

I recently visited relatives in Malaysia, where there are a number of 4G providers (P1, Yes, umobile, etc) offering what seems like great prices by US standards. However, their real-world speeds are poor, coverage is spotty, monthly download quotas are 10% of what Comcast offers, and connection dropouts are common. I'm sure that on paper getting a 20 Mbps 4G connection for US$30 / month looks like a great deal, but in reality there is no comparison to US ISPs.

Re:Comparing like with like

[ThatsMyNick]

I'd like to see a study that compares the *actual* speed customers of these ISPs get, not their claimed maximums. A 100 Mbps local connection isn't much use if the upstream bandwidth from your apartment building or neighborhood is crap.

True

Also, what about download caps?

You dont have download caps in most of Europe

Also, how many TV channels are in these triple play bundles? I'm paying Comcast $130 / month for 22 Mbps Internet, phone and cable TV service that includes 700+ channels.

How many do you actually watch and want to be included in the plan?

And the phone service provides unlimited calls at no extra cost to the entire US - do Latvians get to call anyone in Europe for no extra charge?

Nope, but Euro is a recent development, so it will take sometime before people freely migrate to anywhere in the Euro, with no restrictions (which is when these calls become useful). Currently no one would find it useful. When it becomes useful, I am pretty sure the market would accommodate it

I recently visited relatives in Malaysia, where there are a number of 4G providers (P1, Yes, umobile, etc) offering what seems like great prices by US standards. However, their real-world speeds are poor, coverage is spotty, monthly download quotas are 10% of what Comcast offers, and connection dropouts are common. I'm sure that on paper getting a 20 Mbps 4G connection for US$30 / month looks like a great deal, but in reality there is no comparison to US ISPs.

Wait till you check out AT&T's 4G service, dropouts, and that their quota is 1% of comcast.

Re:Comparing like with like

[raju1kabir]

Also, how many TV channels are in these triple play bundles? I'm paying Comcast $130 / month for 22 Mbps Internet, phone and cable TV service that includes 700+ channels.

What does 700 channels mean? Last time I was in the USA and flipped through the Comcast lineup, there were a whole lot of "channels" that were the same programming as another channel but one hour later, or a blank screen while shitty old music played, and so on. Maybe 100 actual channels that I'd say deserved the word. And that's about what I have in Europe on my triple-play package which is around $60/month for 50mbps internet.

And the phone service provides unlimited calls at no extra cost to the entire US - do Latvians get to call anyone in Europe for no extra charge?

I'd assume they do. Throwing in calls to Europe, USA, developed parts of Asia, etc., for free is pretty common these days. It doesn't cost them anything more to send a call to Australia than to the house next door, so why not?

I recently visited relatives in Malaysia, where there are a number of 4G providers (P1, Yes, umobile, etc) offering what seems like great prices by US standards. However, their real-world speeds are poor, coverage is spotty, monthly download quotas are 10% of what Comcast offers, and connection dropouts are common.

With the newer fiber providers in Malaysia, like Unifi and Time, you really do pretty much get the advertised speed (20mbps or whatever).

Malaysian wireless internet is a mess, true, but wireless internet is pretty much always a mess unless it's so expensive that almost nobody uses it.

Re:Comparing like with like

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see a study that compares the *actual* speed customers of these ISPs get, not their claimed maximums. A 100 Mbps local connection isn't much use if the upstream bandwidth from your apartment building or neighborhood is crap.

True

They even admit that the 20 Mbps speed is only valid within Latvia - see http://www.balticom.lv/lv/internet_dom/home/tarifi_dom?districtId=50 . For accessing sites in the rest of the world, top speed is 5 Mbps.

Also, what about download caps?

You dont have download caps in most of Europe

If ISPs throttle traffic leaving the county to 5 Mbps, it hardly matters.

Also, how many TV channels are in these triple play bundles? I'm paying Comcast $130 / month for 22 Mbps Internet, phone and cable TV service that includes 700+ channels.

How many do you actually watch and want to be included in the plan?

It varies - point is, you can hardly compare Bati-com's 59 channel lineup (see http://www.balticom.lv/lv/televizija/home/zona_pokritia_tv ) with the hundreds you get from US cable providers.

And the phone service provides unlimited calls at no extra cost to the entire US - do Latvians get to call anyone in Europe for no extra charge?

Nope, but Euro is a recent development, so it will take sometime before people freely migrate to anywhere in the Euro, with no restrictions (which is when these calls become useful). Currently no one would find it useful. When it becomes useful, I am pretty sure the market would accommodate it

If and when they do, I'm sure the cost will be significantly higher.

Re:Comparing like with like

[nanoflower]

Looks like they get 107 channels for about 12 euros/month according to this one cable company: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=lv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.baltcom.lv%2Flv%2Fbaltcom%2Ftelevizija%2Fprogrammu-pakas-un-cenas%2F

and something similar from Izzi https://tv.izzi.lv/

Both seem to have a decent selection of channels so it's hard to fault them on the selection. Yes, they don't have quite as many channels as you might get with Comcast or TW, but lets face it a lot of those channels are very niche and were forced on the cable/satellite providers in order to get the channels they really wanted. (As with all of the extra VH1/MTV channels that very few people ever watch.)

Re:Comparing like with like

[ThatsMyNick]

I'd like to see a study that compares the *actual* speed customers of these ISPs get, not their claimed maximums. A 100 Mbps local connection isn't much use if the upstream bandwidth from your apartment building or neighborhood is crap.

True

They even admit that the 20 Mbps speed is only valid within Latvia - see http://www.balticom.lv/lv/internet_dom/home/tarifi_dom?districtId=50 . For accessing sites in the rest of the world, top speed is 5 Mbps.

Also, what about download caps?

You dont have download caps in most of Europe

If ISPs throttle traffic leaving the county to 5 Mbps, it hardly matters.

This is not Australia. No European country does that.

Also, how many TV channels are in these triple play bundles? I'm paying Comcast $130 / month for 22 Mbps Internet, phone and cable TV service that includes 700+ channels.

How many do you actually watch and want to be included in the plan?

It varies - point is, you can hardly compare Bati-com's 59 channel lineup (see http://www.balticom.lv/lv/televizija/home/zona_pokritia_tv ) with the hundreds you get from US cable providers.

My point is most of the channels part of US cable providers is literally spam (teleshopping etc). And then there are channels no body ever watches. So how many channels do you watch is a very relevant question.

And the phone service provides unlimited calls at no extra cost to the entire US - do Latvians get to call anyone in Europe for no extra charge?

Nope, but Euro is a recent development, so it will take sometime before people freely migrate to anywhere in the Euro, with no restrictions (which is when these calls become useful). Currently no one would find it useful. When it becomes useful, I am pretty sure the market would accommodate it

If and when they do, I'm sure the cost will be significantly higher.

Ok, now I had to ask. Except companies, and service providers, who do you call out of state? In Europe these companies are always in the country, one would never have to call another country.

Re:Hey...

[theshowmecanuck]

You joke, but the way some of these fucked up parents act with their kids, doing everything for them, never letting them learn how to do things on their own, it just about amounts to having them walk around with the placenta still attached... on both ends. And I'll admit, even considering the number of truly gross and disgusting jokes that I know, this is as disgusting an analogy as I can possibly think of.

In ex-Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

ISPs and Cable providers serve YOU!

Pfft. That's too much!

[degradas]

I live in Vilnius, Lithuania (neighboring Latvia, for those who can't be bothered to look at the map) and pay 22 USD/month for 100 Mbps FTTH, no download caps. For additional 15 USD or so I can get cable TV with HD channels from the same provider.

But who the hell needs cable when torrents download at 70 Mbps or so? :)

Re:Pfft. That's too much!

[Anonymous Coward]

Same in Estonia. I have 100/20 FTTH, no caps connection. It is in theory triple whatever, but I've never connected a phone to it and I've unsubscribed from all the tv channels. 20€ (~24$) per month. Torrents come at max speed the 100Mbit link from the switch can handle.

I could also choose a 50/10 or even slower connection or enable various tv channels including hd ones using the remote of the set top box.

This is provided by the largest ISP here, owned by TeliaSonera.

Verizon and Comcast Cozy ...

[__aajwxe560]

U.S. telephone and cable companies have arranged a 'negotiated truce' in which cable incumbents enjoy a de facto monopoly on high-speed broadband service, while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms.

Mainstream media is starting to pick up on this same very notion, with Verizon's latest quarterly report covered by the Boston Globe here which basically highlights the fact that Comcast and Verizon are getting cozy rather than competing. "Verizon Wireless struck a deal to market cable broadband from Comcast and Time Warner Cable in its stores, a move consumer advocates see as a capitulation by Verizon that will leave many areas with just one viable choice for home broadband: cable."

We as taxpaying Americans supporting these monopolies lose out on both fronts while this trend continues ....

Truly Ironic

[some old guy]

Where I live, the same company (Shentel) monopolizes cable and phone service. Can I get cable internet? No, I'm stuck their crappy ADSL service because they refuse to offer broadband cable to DSL-capable customers at any price. I'd happily pay for improved service, but no dice. Stupid.

Re:Truly Ironic

[FormOfActionBanana]

I agree as a capitalist consumer you should have a choice. But why do you think cable is better than ADSL?

Re:A "negotiated truce"... Sounds like politician

[Anonymous Coward]

It's either a group of pseudo-natural monopolies or a national cartel, but not a monopoly per se.

Verizon and Comcast in the same room...

[Anonymous Coward]

By the very nature of their respective technologies, are they really competing? That's like saying that because I can go into a shop and buy either satellite or cable broadband that they're somehow colluding.

Bush and Powel's Kid stopped the 96 telco act

[witherstaff]

I owned a regional ISP for a decade. The '96 telco act was great. It forced the legislated monopolies to interconnect with new local exchanges. Suddenly an ISP could easily do business with a non monopoly telco and gain access to all exchanges in an area code (or a state/region) at one set of equipment instead of paying high foreign exchange rates or having various rack space spread around the countryside. Then.. Bush got elected, Powel's Kid was put in charge of the FCC, and the FCC became very big business oriented. They rolled back the telco act - the baby bells did pay huge fines for not following the act by being competitive but the FCC got more and more lenient. After a few years under Powel the FCC said the free market would handle such things and the act went away..

You saw the near instant collapse of the small ISP and regional CLECs. The thousands of companies that got people online either folded or sold as there was no way to stay competitive against the monopolies. For example wholesale costs for bare DSL lines were often higher than the companies were selling retail. Etc. Of course this wasn't just the FCC. My local fed house rep was sitting chair of the telecommunications subcommitee and he was all for big monopolies. (Interesting correlation with his voting record and his donations record too). His pat response was the big monopolies were holding back from infrastructure improvements because why build out when they may just lose money? Of course once they got their monopoly back it never happened...

With 300 billion documented of broken promises and failed tax breaks given to the telcos it would seem like someone would look into it. But we still haven't seen a single person charged with a crime by outright lying on wallstreet and causing economic damages so what's some broken telco promises?

Re:Bush and Powel's Kid stopped the 96 telco act

[phantomfive]

That's depressing. Almost makes you want to be a libertarian.....if the government doesn't have any money, it can't give it to special interests.

Re:Bush and Powel's Kid stopped the 96 telco act

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you sure got the wrong lesson out of that story.

Nobodys giving money to anyone here. What happened is that regulation was reduced - we used to have regulation on telcos that were essentially natural monopolies due to the nature of things like right of way. That regulation was scaled back - leaving the circumstances that caused the natural monopolies but no longer restricting what they could do with the resulting monopoly power.

Re:Bush and Powel's Kid stopped the 96 telco act

[Anonymous Coward]

They did get tax perks and didn't pay about 300 billion that would have been collected otherwise. So yeah it was government giving money to a special interest. A special interest with very strong lobbying.

Re:Bush and Powel's Kid stopped the 96 telco act

[Sir_Eptishous]

Right, I remember those days fondly. I had several friends and co-workers who started up their own ISP's, sometimes with just some networking gear and a few servers in a room in their basement. It was great because they were all under-bidding each other. Prices kept going down. Then as you say, That Cunt Powell and his corporate overlords undid the "Free Market" they love to tout as a reason for undoing the real competition.

It is really is amazing how out of control the American political system has become and how out in the open it is regarding who owns and controls what. There really is no such thing as choice or customer service regarding broadband. You get two choices and they both suck.

Come on Free Market Dick Breathers, where's your market?!?! I thought De-regulating this industry was going to bring all the promises that never showed up.

Must be different in your state

[drainbramage]

In the few U.S. States I've been to the local government approves every single cable and telco fee independent of those the feds haven already tacked on. It is the local governments that force these monopolies all over the US.
But don't let that stop you from blaming companies for your politicians evil deeds.

Re:Must be different in your state

[theshowmecanuck]

Your argument is specious at best.

Re:Must be different in your state

[shentino]

The monopolies force the local governments to capitulate.

They will sue the city and they will bribe the state legislature to make municipal competition illegal.

Citations: Google it, but i fyou're lazy it's TDS and time warner.

The study focuses on a small number of areas

[nomaddamon]

It doesn't include Stockholm (Sweden) for example, thanks to public infrastructure basic TV+phone+100/100 subscription costs 14$

I live in Tallinn (Estonia) and i get cable (~100 channels) + phone (unlimited) + 250/50 net for ~35$

How outdated?

[Anonymous Coward]

As you seem to be familiar with the subject... can you tell how outdated are we talking about? Ten years? More? Less? I'm a Finnish software engineer so I'm quite interested in the speed with which wages are catching up to ours in our southern neighbors.

Re:How outdated?

[ACS Solver]

Sounds to me like a figure from shortly after Latvia joined the EU. 2004-2005 maybe.

I just looked up the official figures - salary statistics can be filtered by occupation type. So salaries, after tax, for those whose employment officially falls under "computer programming, consulting and related work" are 700$ in 2005 and 1166$ last year, with a peak in 2009 at 1228$ (converted using the current exchange rate for USD). Which is actually good growth for the 2005-2009 period, of course before the huge crisis hit the country. Skilled developers that I know are making no less than some 1400$, which counts as a very comfortable salary there.

20 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up

[deltaromeo]

Not the other way around as stated in the summary.

Than god the US is 15 years behind the times

[gelfling]

And fading fast. With any luck AT&T and Verizon will be the only wireless companies in the US soon and prices will skyrocket as service sinks to war torn African nation quality. In the meantime cable providers like Time Warner are debating how to offer slower service at higher prices and with even worse uptime stats.

Latvia is the best country in the world!

[nycguy]

A million reasons why: http://miljons.com/en

22 cities?

[j2.718ff]

"compares prices charged by 885 ISPs in 22 cities worldwide"

Are you telling me they compared a total of 22 cities? That's a ridiculously small sample size!

What about the last mile

[jader3rd]

How do these cities solved the "last mile" problem? Do the telecom's own the cord going into the house? Does the residence own the cord? Does the city own the cord and the telecom's rent the cords from the city?

Re:What about the last mile

[Anonymous Coward]

Latvian here, from what I can tell, my local ISP is leasing bandwith from the largest business grade internet provider in country that I believe has their country-wide network backone running through the town. As for the network within town, it's probably owned by the ISP, i only own the gigE cable within my property, and, yes, it's 100M FFTH with sepparate hard-allocated bandwith (unlike a certain large telo in Latvia) for HDTV all for some 30 EUR.

Not a failure, that's the desired outcome!

[Cid Highwind]

The U.S. Congress considered several bills to foster similar competition, but decided they like the large campaign donations incumbent ISPs can afford because their near-monopoly positions allow them to impose huge economic rents.

T, FTFUSA

Ah, yes, the "deregulation" act

[whitroth]

First, slashdot, that's 1996, not 1966.

Second, it was rammed through by the telecoms, who wanted out from under the controls that the 1984 breakup of Mother Bell kept them under. Yes, I know what I'm talking about: 1995-1997, I worked for Ameritech, one of the Baby Bells now swallowed by SWBell (which then swallowed AT&T, and tail wagged dog). That was explicitly one branch of the business plan - I was in a "startup" division that would be their entry in the long-distance sweepstakes. I, personally, along with every other employee in "management", and probably union members, too, got a personal email demanding that I write my Congresscritter and Senators to ask them to pass it... AND the president of our division wanted copies of those letters, and managers leaned on those of us who balked. So, yes, "rammed through" is the correct phrase.
And it's got us *so* much more... right. Just remember, I know as an insider that they do have large, well-staffed divisions of bright people who spend 40, 50, 60, and sometimes 70 hour weeks doing nothing but coming up with plans that sound good to you, but will actually cost you more.

              mark