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Comment by vladslav | Hacker News Reader

My friends in third-world countries get faster and less expensive service than me in Silicon Valley. On top of that, there is no fiber connection in my neighborhood, and they've been on fiber for over 5 years. And there is a data cap also. It's just crazy and sad.

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I live in Perú, and I have 400Mbps internet FTTH with no data cap, and the price is 37 USD [1], the competition of the internet providers is incredibly good for the consumers.

The lowest plan that mi ISP offers is 100Mbps and is at 21 USD.

[1] https://www.movistar.com.pe/hogar/internet/solo-internet (Link in Spanish)

According to wikipedia the average monthly salary in Peru is $502 US. $37 per month doesn't seem that cheap to me.

As another point of comparison, a new ISP in my area of London is offering symmetric gigabit fiber for £25/month or around $30/month (USD).

Your country requires ISPs to share and rent lines. That does a great deal for competition and lowering prices

$30/month USD compared to the average salary in London is pretty good. We unfortunately don't have much competition among ISP's here in the US.

If you develop later you can leapfrog countries that ground through all the necessary phases for the development to happen for everyone globally. But that doesn't mean you can keep pace. Hopefully your area gets an upgrade, or a Starlink, soon.

Palo Alto just unveiled another fiber to the home plan to be ready by Jan 2025 in one select neighborhood (that I live just outside of, dammit).

This plan will definitely come to fruition just like all the other ones since the 90s

It boggles my mind that Google Fiber has been available in Austin, TX for 10 years but is still not available in the communities next door to Google HQ.

Probably due to the extreme level of veto-ism in the Bay Area. Everyone wants internet, but if 5 people complaining about yards or roads being dug up can get work to stop indefinitely, costs are going through the roof. There's far more uncertainty in that political environment than anywhere else.

For reference, I live in a small town of ~6,000 people, and we're getting fiber laid. For the longest time we only had 25mbps, and then a new provider came in with coaxial and offered 200mbps (with a data cap), and now a third is laying fiber.

Our average income is $34k/year, so it's not because we have more money than the opulent Bay Area.

It could simply be that poor people don't complain about infrastructure projects like rich people too. Or they don't have the tools/connections to effectively stop it.

I imagine if you are renting a property, you are less likely to complain about things going on around the property because it's not your property to "defend." If you own (and especially if you are part of an HOA) you might be more likely to complain if there is construction going on for 3+ months in your neighborhood.

So it probably does fall into rich vs poor in the same way that renters may be less likely to be rich.

Google announced they would bring service to San Jose, along with about 20? other locations, and then later in the week, AT&T announced they would bring fiber to the listed communities in their ILEC territory and a couple more for good measure. And then a few months later, AT&T started rolling it out. Google hadn't figured out how to access poles or where they wanted equipment by the time AT&T was offering service, so they gave up. They did get some new service areas through aquisition, but I don't think they've announced any new construction service areas in a very long time now.

Check this out:

> Broadband penetration as of June 2017: 23.5 broadband connections for every 100 people. > Distribution of broadband connections by type, as reported by Ancom, is as follows 94% FTTx (FTTH/FTTB/FTTC/FTTN) internet access connections, 4.8% Coaxial cable, 0.2% other.

Now guess the country. Answer in ROT13 at [1]. Hint: it ain't a first world country. Another hint: Latine loquitur. Oh and it ain't a recent development either. They've been at it like forever.

[1] uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Vagrearg_va_Ebznavn

Are they in geographic region that is more densely populated? Or an area that was built out more recently? In my last house (also in SV) the choices were between Comcast and AT&T copper. The latter went up to 6/1, so was effectively useless. I'm sure it was laid down decades ago.

Yes. Providers in India offer far more speed at far cheaper prices than US. The key to this is competition. There are many providers available in each major city which helps consumer. It's sad that in many US' major cities there is usually one or two providers only for a building or neighborhood. My building in SF only has comcast, so they have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want.

You can find fiber connection in some remote vilage in slovakia.

Consolidation is the cause - US had 2-se as many listed companies 30 yeats ago.

Now US capital is buying up independant businesses across easterm Europe and developing countries, killing competition and the local economy.

They are in a densely populated area. The city had issues with internet service for quite a while. The government started to invest heavily in fiber tech around the 2010s, and fast forward to now, almost everyone in the city can get a fiber connection to their home or apartment building. The cost is around ~28$ for 300Mbs and $80 for 1Gbs.

Much of residential silicon valley was built very quickly in the 50s

"faster" here is relative. unless you live in eastern USA or western Europe, you'd be lucky to see half the quoted "speed", since that is where the majority of the internet resides

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