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How Far Will You Go For Highest Speed Internet?

Zecheus (1072058) writes "This community is extraordinarily rural. It is considered among the northernmost in the world. In the summer, temperature rises as high as 40F. There are more polar bears than humans. Even the usual ubiquitous and generous Norwegian health care is out of reach: inhabitants leave for the south to give birth or to die. On the other hand, it enjoys the highest quality Internet experience in the world due to recently installed fiber. Care to give it a try? By the way, the area has a turnover rate of over 25% every year."

7 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. So how fast is it...? by QRDeNameland · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How do you write an article about the "highest speed internet" in the world without a single quantification of how fast it actually is?

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    Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
    1. Re:So how fast is it...? by Kjella · · Score: 4, Informative

      Digging a little they're talking about a 50/50Mbit connection (Norwegian), so the article is wildly exaggerated... triple the mean connection yes, not 10-20 times.

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      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  2. Back in my day by alta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I remember how happy I was the first time I had cable internet. I was beta testing for comcast. Free for the first 6 months. So exciting. Now, I'm old (37) and bandwidth doesn't excite me the way it used to. I'm paying for 10MB I get 12MB... I could get up to 100, but why bother. I come home, sit on my couch and have a beer. The kids can and I can play all the minecraft we want on that 12MB connection.

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    Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
    1. Re:Back in my day by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

      The cynic in me would say, all customers of Comcast are beta testing for them...

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  3. Re:I'd Walk A Mile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I would walk five hundred miles and I would walk five hundred more, just to be the man who streams Netflix and torrents even that much more...

  4. One part conveniently left out by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One part conveniently left out is the military's part in this, they want fiber optics for a bunch of NATO surveillance activities, polar satellites and so on. It's pretty obvious why if you look at a map. Supplying the about 2600 permanent inhabitants with really fast broadband (100% fiber optics now) is just a side effect. True, this cabin area about 3 miles from the main settlement wasn't originally included in the plans, but when the inhabitants dig the ditch and all the fiber company has to do is roll out the cable drum it's a pretty good deal for them too. There are several rural areas - though not quite that remote - here in Norway which has done the digging as a community effort to make the cost bearable for the fiber company. Just last quarter the median broadband in Norway passed 10 Mbit/s, the mean is 18.4 Mbit/s and improving at a nice pace.

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    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  5. Also how is the backhaul? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I mean sure, they have fast FTTH. Fair enough, but that doesn't do you much good if the backhaul to the rest of the Internet isn't sufficient to support the speeds.

    This is something that always gets left out of the "OMG t3h fast internetz!!!" articles on Slashdot. A lot of the "really fast" Internet in the world is basically a big WAN where you have a fast line, and thus fast speeds to your neighbors and ISP, but then lack the backhaul to get those kind of speeds to the wider Internet, since that's the really expensive part.

    Not saying that's the case here or not, but it is the kind of info that needs to be included to be useful. Along with, of course, the actual speed.