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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."
That's the Telecom Law of 1996, not 1966
while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms.
So they don't know who sells FiOS?
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
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)
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
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."
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
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.
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.
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
---- Fight to protect your right to keep and arm bears! ummmm... ya I think that's right....
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".
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.
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.
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!"
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!"
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.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
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...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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!
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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.
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.
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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? :)
The explanation for this is of course, not as nice as the article makes out:
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.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
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
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.
"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.
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?
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.
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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?