Comment by pavelevst
4 days ago
In Russia we get 500-1000mbps (for real) for about 5-10$ monthly, every home has few ISP options with free installation
4 days ago
In Russia we get 500-1000mbps (for real) for about 5-10$ monthly, every home has few ISP options with free installation
Labor costs are lower. The US has the highest cost of labor in the world for many jobs that would be relatively inexpensive elsewhere.
Russia probably has state owned poles.
In most US places, utility companies own the poles and it’s ridiculously expensive to lease space. Urban areas with competitive ISPs usually have government owned poles or leases for streetlight arbs that allow them to string fiber.
That's a weird analysis of US policy. Very few places in the US have privately owned poles. What most places have is private poles on public right of way. It's a worst of both worlds scenario. Where somehow public infrastructure is used to exclusively further private interests.
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Average salary nowadays is 800-1000$/mnt (after 30-40% taxes), I would expect internet price in US to be proportional to their labor costs
Yes the average salary of an internet installation technician is about $25 an hour or about a 1000 a week before taxes. Although, the people doing regular installs and the people who are in charge of planning and building out networks are different and often the latter are paid far more.
Why is labour so expensive in the US? Is it because of healthcare costs being passed to employers?
Fun fact, the US has always had some of the highest wages in the world- even dating back to colonial times before 1776. Adam Smith did a detailed accounting of them, going occupation-by-occupation and noting that American colonist wages were higher than on the British mainland. (I'm excited because I literally just read this last night. I would link if I could to the specific pages in my book).
I believe the standard explanation is that most of the colonists were British (already a high-wage country at the time), and you really had to pay skilled labor to get them to leave & settle on a new continent. Plus labor mobility between the proto-state governments of the time (Virginia, Massachusetts, etc.)
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Mostly because most people have lots of options for employment and they typically don’t take the low options. In a place with nationalised healthcare you would still be paying for it through taxes paid by the labourer but I guess the system would be a bit more progressive than in the US so lower-skill labour would demand a smaller premium for healthcare. Though I think there’s probably more than just labour costs in the US. Eg maybe it is expensive to get the right permits to install fibre optic cables.
My home in Las Vegas is 2000Mbps down and 100Mbps up, and it's $200/month. $50/month of that is an add-on for "unlimited" usage, but Cox still writes me letters and threatens to cancel my service if I upload more than 2-3TB in a calendar month, despite having paid well over $3000 in "unlimited" add-on upcharges.
Internet pricing is a scam in the USA.
I assume you are on DOCSIS coax internet? The problem is upstream on DOCSIS is (very) constrained and if you hammer it causes huge problems for everyone on the segment (TCP ACKs start getting lost/slow, everyones ping rises massively and huge packetloss starts occurring).
Obviously no excuse to claim it is unlimited, but if the major US cable companies speeded up moving to true FTTH it would really save them a lot of trouble in the long run.
There’s no need for them to move to FTTH; 99.9% of homes don’t need more than 10-20Mbps upstream.
I was on 1000/40 for most of my history with them ($100+$50) now I have 2000/100 ($150+$50). I would be fine with 40Mbps upstream unlimited; the issue is not the throttling but the threats resulting from bait-and-switch.
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I’m in Vegas. It’s the first time I’ve actually had meaningful ISP competition and incredibly I can get fiber for 50 a month without caps. (Using quantum)
Russian public infrastructure is vastly different compared to the US though. It's probably much easier to run Internet to 10 apartment homes housing 1000 people than to 300 single family houses with the same amount of people.
I was living in Indonesia, where most of people lives in individual houses, internet installation is free or ~20$, but monthly is 20-50$ for fiber 100mbps. In house areas they have noodles of cables on the poles but it works
Assuming $ still denotes US currency, that looks fairly expensive relative the average salary.
I remember paying about 10$ for a proper gigabit in Russia. Probably a perk of living right next to an exchange point.
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I'm guessing in cities.
Yes small city in central (European) part. Mobile unlimited 4g is about 8$ but some operators has FUP 200gb monthly, with 4g modem connected to the router and special antenna in the roof will work well outside cities. About remote areas I don’t know
That's what happens when you invade a country to steal resources and equipment.
In Russia you get pseudo-internet without Youtube, Instagram, X, Discord, The Internet Archive, many news sites.
Abit inconsistent you’ll need to use VPN. (Don’t we have to use it in liberal countries too if open torrents) It’s just some resources are blocked, it isn’t as bad as in China or Iran. Previously internet was same cheap but not so restricted
How many ISP options do you have at your location?
Typically the US only has one. Two if you are exceedingly lucky.
I believe that in Russia you wrestle bears and that the only liquid anyone drinks is vodka, but this I simply cannot believe :)