[Just1689]

I live in South Africa. Myself and all my friends are sitting on around 100 Mbps up/down uncapped unshaped, no fair use policy each at around $100 USD monthly. A few of my friends are on Gigabit down, 200 up.

How is America behind on this? Everything is hosted there and cached there. Is it big business lobbying politicians to prevent them from having to compete? In South Africa we have dozens on ISPs and as an economy we're probably not far off from one US state. The competition has been great for consumers.

[justapassenger]

USA built out its internet infrastructure earlier than most of the developing nations, who now, almost universally, have better connectivity.

That caused two things:

1. Coming later to the game, you don’t need to deal with legacy infra, that’s there, costed huge amount of money, and replacing it will cost even more (like cable connections to the houses)

2. USA has a general approach of building out infra in sprints, and then neglecting it until next sprint. Few examples - credit cards and their security, roads, space program, internet infra. And while it’s more complicated, politics are large reason for it. It’s much less catchy to say “I’ll spend $500B to maintain X”, then “I’ll spend $1000B to build Y”.

[908B64B197]

I wonder if there is maybe less red tape in SA to roll out fiber?

Or a desire of the country to strengthen it's tech sector.

[ip26]

USA built out its internet infrastructure earlier...

It's a story that repeats itself. See the Type A electrical outlet, imperial measurement, measuring cups, etc

[rayiner]

> How is America behind on this?

There is no single situation in "America" with respect to broadband. We're a federation of 50 different states that's almost the size of the entire EU. Broadband is mainly a state level issue and it varies by state. Here in Maryland, over 60% of people have access to fiber. I have two different fiber providers to my house, more than an hour outside a major city. Symmetrical gigabit here is under $80.

[formercoder]

Yep, big city here, 1G/1G fiber to my apartment for $80. It’s supply and demand.

[bearjaws]

Living in a downtown area is pretty much guaranteed 1gbps fiber, outside of that is almost certainly garbage (cable/dsl/satellite) unless your neighborhood was built recently.

[BitwiseFool]

My congressional district has a Comcast call center located in it. So my representative bends over backwards to support Comcast because they 'provide so many jobs' in the area. It's pitiful.

[soulofmischief]

"They provide jobs" is often a euphemism for "they give me money".

[suchire]

Geographic monopolies. Most households have only one broadband provider they can choose, with satellite or DSL as the only other fallback

[pirate787]

They are political monopolies, not geographic. Congress created a telephony and cable video regulatory regime based on monopolies to subsidize the buildout of those technologies. Congress has only halfheartedly moved away from this system because cable and telecom are the largest political donor groups. Some states have made progress moving to more competitive models but for the most part the system is a rats nest of federal, state, and local regulations designed to block competition.

[topspin]

> Is it big business lobbying politicians to prevent them from having to compete?

Correct. The politicians that US citizens habitually elect are in the pocket of telecom companies. These politicians have not elevated Internet service in the US to the level of, for example, telephone service which, as a result of government policy established by now long dead politicians, is available almost anywhere someone would care to live in the US. This allows telecom companies to cherry pick lucrative areas for Internet service and ignore everything else. The result is that both rural and poor urban areas have poor or no Internet service while suburbs and dense metropolitan areas have high performance network services.

One might assume that US citizens are fabulously stupid for continuing to elect such politicians. That's the easy answer, frequently offered, and like most easy answers it misses a great deal. There are political undercurrents in the US that create the alignments of power that explain our outcomes. Unfortunately it isn't possible to candidly discuss these currents in forums such as this without igniting flame wars, so I'll end here.

[theandrewbailey]

> How is America behind on this? Everything is hosted there and cached there.

The ISPs and networks that serve datacenters do not serve apartments and houses.

[hanniabu]

> How is America behind on this?

We don't invest in the future, only immediate profits. Look at any other infrastructure....subways, roads, water, electrical, government systems, education, recycling, etc. They're all crumbling.

[missedthecue]

Subways, roads, water, electrical, government systems, education, and recycling are generally government run. "Immediate profits" isn't the excuse, because that isn't part of the equation. It's the fundamental inefficiency of government.

If your description was accurate, Ford would still be trying to sell their Model T rather than continuously investing in the future at a cost of today's profit. Obviously, this hasn't happened.

[betterunix2]

I am an American with symmetric gigabit service (actually ~900mbps down, ~880 mbps up) with no caps and I pay less than $100/month. Of course, that is because I live in a huge urban area where ISPs actually compete with each other and do not have any local monopolies on service. The problem in America is that there are vast geographic areas where millions of people have no real choice in broadband service, and ISPs let their networks languish in those areas.

[guenthert]

Funny that the rich only ever have rich friends. Who can really afford $1200/a for ..., well, what exactly? One can make the case today, that access to the Internet is essential (although I'm not quite convinced that this needs to be from home. An account at school or a public library would suffice methinks), but broadband? with bitrates even exceeding those needed for high definition video streams? C'mon.

[kube-system]

I am also in the US and my connection is 10x faster than yours and 30% cheaper.

Half of the senators listed in this article represent states with population densities lower than any South African province other than Northern Cape. Colorado's density is 19.9/km2. Maine is 16.9/km2

Many of the servers which you connect to in the US are in the Northeast megalopolis, which is an area with a density of 359.6/km2

[mlcruz]

Here in Brazil i pay something around 30usd(170 BRL) for 200/200 + cellphone with no caps.

Local ISPs are great for competition.