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European ISPs Exaggerate Performance; US ISPs Slower But More Honest (itworld.com)
itwbennett writes: New studies of broadband Internet access across Europe and the U.S. published by the European Commission have found that European broadband Internet access providers advertised download speeds of 47.9 Mbps, but only delivered 38.19 Mbps, while U.S. providers delivered more or less what they advertised. But if you want fast fixed-line Internet access, you're still better off in Europe than in the U.S. Average DSL, fiber, and cable Internet speeds in Europe were all ahead of U.S. average speeds, and at lower prices.
This. I have 160 kbps DSL in Seattle that is advertised as up to 12 Mbps. It sucks paying over $70/month for something not much faster than ISDN.
The U.S. has tariffed rates.
If they don't meet specs on their connection compared to what they contracted the connection at, then they will be crucified.
This is why, when I lived in an apartment 10 feet too far away from the LATE, the wouldn't give me DSL, and would only offer ADSL. This was in Silicon Valley, where presumably, we'd have good Internet connectivity. They simply weren't willing to risk the legal ramifications, should the sell it to me, and it be 1% too slow, and me taking them to court over it, and them losing their regulatory approval everywhere because of it.
It looks like Europe is either under-regulated, or under-litigious, compared to the U.S..
The slow U.S. rollout of higher speeds has more to do with 20 year amortization on equipment, which is standard practice in the telecom industry, and the fact that you only have to be better than the competition to lock up all the consumers in a given market, and there is little competition.
That, and the U.S. is *big* and sparsely populated for the most part, and Europeans have absolutely no clue at the distances involved, which is why they totally fail on the "public transportation in the U.S." and "Internet access in the U.S." and "Taxi service in the U.S." arguments (you can get a Lyft in Alta, UT -- population 389 -- but if you expect a taxi, don't hold your breath, or expect to pay for it to come out from Salt Lake).
I have lived in the US and in Sweden both in fairly newly built areas. I have also worked in various places related to IT and from experience the internet here in Sweden is much more reliable and faster than that of the US (Comcast). In the US I don't remember ever getting the speed I paid for and it was not unusual for the internet to be terribly slow at times or be completely down. Here in Sweden I currently pay for 100/100 internet and regularly get 95/95 or so which could be because of my own router/wireless etc. On good days it goes over 100/100 which is surprising :D recently I saw one area of Sweden where you could go from 100/10 speeds to 1000/1000 for an extra $20 which is super cheap.
I can only speak from the view of my small european country. The ISPs got a lot of bad press from their "up to" claims. I don't know if there's actually laws against that sort of advertising now but their sales pitch here in DK has changes, at least with my ISP and they have stopped advertising "up to", I think they only will guarantee 20/5.
I got a chance to test it just last week were I was about to upgrade my line. Now they only sell what they know I can get. last year(before I cleaned up my installation and removed a lot of wireing), they would only sell me a 40/10, but connects at 45/12.
So I called them to change the plan and they tested my line and saw that they now could run 50/10 on it and when I asked into it(that I got 45/12 when instead of 40/10) he said that most likely I would get 55/12, but they clearly would not promise it and I had to drag that answer out of him, and they didn't sell me a 60/10. I later tried their online form for changing my line and it seemed to do a new connection test and even though the order page had selections up to 100/20, I could only select 50/10 in the order form.
But apparently this is not how all ISPs across the EU operate yet. :)
Really it should be population density vs number of internet connections, not available land. As well you would want it broken down by city density as well to get a more granular metric. Europe doesn't have the complete sprawl of a city like Dallas. Since a much greater majority of Sweden's population is concentrated in a small space than in the US, the swedes get better internet access.
A part of Sweden called Norrland is about the same size as Kansas and has half the amount of people living there, and I still have 1 Gbps in my summer cabin there. But avarage population density has little to do with it, I think Svalbard would win that category though.. :-)
Backbone investment to remote places has just been very high priority in Sweden.