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0 pointschimeracoder11y ago0 comments

> The US is not going to match the #1 and #2 on your list, Hong Kong and Singapore, ever, because it is trivial to wire up a single dense city with weak democratic red tape.

But even the most densely populated areas in the US have terrible Internet access. A small portion of New York City has FiOS, but the vast majority has Comcast or Time Warner, and those are about$60 for 20Mbps advertised[0].

I'm willing to give Singapore the fact that it's a smaller government[1], but the bottleneck in providing better Internet access in NYC is not the NYC government.

[0] I am in midtown Manhattan, probably the most densely populated area in the country, and I am getting 700 KB/s as I type this, so I'm not even getting anything close to what's advertised.

[1] And the population is about 2/3 the size of NYC

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danielweber11y ago

I didn't mean to imply that Singapore had a smaller government. But Singapore and Hong Kong definitely have governments where, once the leaders decide to do something, it happens. If it's what you wanted to happen, great. If it inconveniences you, too bad.

How could any putative problems in broadband deployment not be because of some difference in governance? I don't mean this as a "government sucks" rant (although that could definitely be the problem, as 'rayiner mentions FiOS being used as a social justice issue, of all things). But there are lots of rich people in dense areas who would be willing to pay money for the service. NYC's government must be doing something wrong (whether it's over-regulation or under-regulation or mis-regulation).

rayiner11y ago

At the state level, on Ookla's data, New York performs pretty comparably to France and Belgium. It may be that there are cities in France and Belgium that have faster internet service. But they have better subways, etc, too. Most Americans cities are terribly managed. While Verizon is trying to deploy FIOS in New York, De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government!

chimeracoderOP11y ago

> At the state level, on Ookla's data, New York performs pretty comparably to France and Belgium.

Because they're including Weill Cornell Medical College and Digital Ocean in the data (those are the top ISPs in NYC, on their map).

It's not very meaningful unless we (A) can separate out consumer ISPs from business ISPs[0], (B) Know what speeds everyone is paying for and has available (currently this is all lumped together), and (C) knows how much everyone is paying for that service.

> While Verizon is trying to deploy FIOS in New York, De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government!

As someone who actually lives in NYC and has tried to get FiOS installed in multiple buildings, there are two problems. One is that buildings have exclusive agreements to provide television service through either Time Warner or Comcast (usually because the superintendant and/or owner gets free cable as a result of this agreement), and that Verizon refuses to provide FiOS Internet unless they can also provide television service.

Verizon is fully aware of this problem, and they've framed it in a way that allows them conveniently to point the finger at another entity.

Verizon is "trying" to deploy FiOS in New York, but they're not really interested in expanding their coverage.

> De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government

This would only be relevant if the NYC government were the ones actively blocking people who can afford to pay for FiOS from having it installed, but as explained above, that's not the case.

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