Slashdot Mirror
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.
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).
For some reason a small cadre of Americans believe that they're different and special.
Let's ignore the sparsely populated areas for the time being.
Many of the big cities are as dense as European ones so there's just no excuse for stuff sucking in the cities. But it does.
Now let's get on to the sparsely populated areas. The USA has a higher population density than Sweden, and Sweden's internet is excellent, so it can't just be a population thing.
So what about land area? The USA is undoubtedly larger. In fact, the USA is about 20x the area of Sweden. But wait, the USA has 50 states! Looking that up... If Sweden was a US state, then it would be the third largest behind Alaska and Texas. So why do the remaining 48 suck? They are mostly smaller!
But what about the population density of the states?
Well if Sweden was a state, it would be the third largest and the joint 16th most sparsely populated.
So let's take Sweden as the example. It's on average larger and has a lower population density than most of the US states. So based on those, why aren't most US states individually better than Sweden?
And if you're arguing that it's harder in aggregate then you're literally arguing that economies of scale don't work.
The US is not particularly exceptional compared to Europe for the majority of it's population. There are some large, exceptional areas like Alaska, but they hardly count to wards the average stats because the number of people there is quite small.
And if you go state-by-state then it's really not all that different at all, because here are European countries that are harder to wire up than the majority of states yet have better internet access than the majority.
You have a severe case of Stockholm syndrome with your ISPs. They're crap, and it's their fault.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Not really ironic.
In the US. We have the last mile problem. Compared to Europe the US is very sparsely populated, leading to a good portion of the population far away from infrastructure, and it takes a lot of money to get such infrastructure to a person. because you can use a 10 kilometer of cable just to reach one household. So we don't always get the fastest network connection.
However this slower average speed, makes it promising for media delivers. It is more or less at the same speed it takes to watch as it does to download. So we are not incentivized to download and store movies in bulk. but to watch them as streams.
If we can download a bunch of movies then there will be so many we do not watch, and they are spending money for content not used. As well they may not know which shows are popular or not. But having it at the speed where you can stream it, but not just download a library means you can consider it like a normal broadcast show.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
In a sense these speed tests do not really measure the important factors. I don't have a direct comparison, but I'm convinced that the network access is generally way faster for Americans than for most Europeans, even when we (=the Europeans) have nominally faster download speed. The reason is simply that most interesting servers are located in the US.
As an example, I have a 100 Mbps download / 10 Mbps upload fiber link for 40 Euro/mo., but in reality my download speeds tend to max out at 8-45 Mbps. In speed tests to nearby servers I do get near 100 Mbps, but I rarely need anything local anyway. (We also got an option of 200 Mbps in our country and I wonder what one would need this speed for, especially if the upload speed is not as high as well so it can't be used for bidirectional links.)
> even when we (=the Europeans) have nominally faster download speed.
Been there, done that. It's the students wandering from nation to nation, providing cheap laber but also buying Terabyte USB drives and saturating them with Bittorrent. I spent a few years working in the EU recently, and in *every flatshare* or B&B or cheap hotel I stayed at, there was always at least *one* idiot sucking all the available bandwidth with Bittorrent.
I do not believe the internet is as fast in those sparsely populated areas.
As someone who has lived in Norway, Sweden and Finland and been hiking in the Northern, really, really sparsely populated areas I can assure you that you couldn't be more wrong. The reason why is the way ISPs are regulated: If you wish to provide internet access in the lucrative high density areas, you must provide the same quality of service in the unprofitable areas.