
Why American Phone, Cable and Internet Bills are so High - bretpiatt
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/why-phone-cable-internet-bills-cost-much-130914030.html
======
DanielBMarkham
This is one of the things I like ranting about, so I'll try not to do that.

I also live in an area that will _never_ see high-speed internet. We were sold
out by both the feds and our state legislators. You can argue that perhaps
these government officials were misled or uniformed, but I remain dubious.

We were able to construct an interstate highway system. We were able to wire
this country with electricity. We were able to wire it for telephones. The
only reason we can't wire it with fiber is because of poor government
management of eminent domain. We should kick most of those responsible out of
office. To see a bunch of yahoos on TV telling me we need the road paved when
most of their constituents don't have enough bandwidth to get high-quality
instruction over the web? Or to work over the web? It's the Information Age,
bozos. Something is wrong somewhere.

The worst part? I do not expect this to get fixed any time in the next couple
of decades. Not only is it broken and hurting, but there's no political
incentive to fix it. In fact the incentives run the other way.

~~~
batgaijin
See, I want to agree with you, but I'm not sure.

I think that the future really is in wireles communications. What's the point
of laying down fiber if in 10 years we can get wireless at the same speed?

Of course I'm assming that telco will actually compete in tthat domain... but
considering how easy it is to switch serfices, I think it can only get more
disruptive.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Wireless is a shared medium. There is a limit to how much you can push through
the air.

Laying fiber once is long enough to last at least 100 years (based on what we
know now). Should we not lay fiber just because wireless may eventually be as
fast?

A good decision now is better than the best decision later.

------
seiji
Report from the field: On Friday I walked into a cell phone shop and told them
I wanted a SIM mainly for data. They suggested a prepaid "all you can eat
data" SIM good for one month (realistically it alerts at 15 GB usage). €20
($26 USD). The €20 goes towards pay-per-minute and pay-per-text usage, but who
calls or uses non-iMessage these days?

Back home, my Verizon bill will be $120 every month with one iPhone 5 and one
LTE iPad sharing the same data plan (breakdown: $40 for iPhone 5, $10 for
iPad, $70 for unlimited talk/text + 4GB shared data (or, replace $70 with $100
for 10 shared GB data for a grand customer abuse total of $150 every month)).
You can't seem to even get non-unlimited voice/text anymore. Let's not bring
up the $35 fee per device they charge to "activate" it either -- I don't want
to headasplode in this room (it has white walls).

Data only, please. For under $3/GB, please. RFN, please, not in another 10
years.

~~~
fireflash38
> who calls or uses non-iMessage these days

Quite a few people actually. The former is rarer, but there is an increasingly
large portion of the populace that doesn't use iMessage (considering it's
proprietary to Apple). Sure, you can work around using Google Voice to
SMS/Call over data, but that isn't for everyone.

~~~
w1ntermute
Or use Google Talk, for fuck's sake. The protocol is open, and the service is
very reliable. I got all my friends running iOS to get Vtok, and now they can
chat with me too. And you don't have to be on a Mac to use it from a computer
- just log into Gmail or use any Jabber/XMPP client you want. I haven't used
any other messaging service in over 5 years.

The only thing I use Google Voice for is the one or two friends still using
dumbphones.

~~~
jrajav
Google Talk is also the protocol for chatting on Google+ (That is, it's the
same chat as on Gmail). I've used it for a while to talk with friends around
the globe; it's a great place to centralize quick chats/messages and video
hangouts. I get Google Talk messages on my phone, and I can leave messages for
them to see next time they log on to Google+ or Gmail. It's pretty sweet.

~~~
shmerl
Even better - it's a federated XMPP server, allowing you to communicate with
users of other federated XMPP services like jabber.org.

------
zwieback
I've read this same article for the past 10 years now and every time I ask the
question: what about fees and taxes Europeans pay apart from their bill? The
US system is horrible but I think for a complete picture it would be good to
know exactly what taxes and fees pay for the infrastructure in other
countries.

As a kid in Germany every household with a radio or TV had to pay a fee to
operate those devices and there was a constant barrage of ads reminding new
households to register and pay up. I'm assuming there are also other taxes
that flow into building communications networks in Europe.

~~~
haugstrup
You're comparing apples and oranges. The TV licenses are funding for the
public broadcasters to provide programming. They do not go towards laying
cables into people's home for cable tv reception and do not fund cell phone
towers. It is quite irrelevant to bring into this issue.

In American terms: The TV license pays for PBS programming, it's not a subsidy
for Comcast to lay cables.

~~~
malsme
Not quite right. For the UK, £300 million of the licence fee budget (over the
next couple of years) will pay for the roll out of high speed internet to
rural communities. I doubt the BBC wanted to do it, but it looks like they'll
be subsidising ISPs.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/ariel/19181454>

------
btilly
Don't autoplay the frigging video! (Maybe some editor can modify the title to
warn us?)

I hate sites that start playing video without my asking. Doubly so ones with
loud noise. I have sound on my computer for things that really need to get my
attention. Not because some site wants to interrupt me and everyone around me.

I wish there was a way to vote this link down so that other people who will be
similarly jarred wouldn't have to experience it.

~~~
dfxm12
_I have sound on my computer for things that really need to get my attention.
Not because some site wants to interrupt me and everyone around me._

Why do you expect websites to conform to your expectations? There is nothing
inherent about the web that suggests it would. You'll save yourself a lot of
trouble by being proactive rather than waiting for the world to catch up to
your standards.

~~~
manys
The social contract holds that you don't start yelling at people just because
they walk up to you. It's user-hostile web design.

------
CWuestefeld
While I don't like paying a lot, and I wish my Internet service were faster, I
think the article was sensationalist to the extreme, and remarkably light on
facts.

The author hasn't provided any reason for us to believe that prices or
services _should_ be comparable between countries. First and foremost, prices
are dictated by the value that people attach to a product. If Americans value,
say, TV more, than economics would predict that Americans would therefore
_pay_ more for it.

And I think that the examples of telephone prices are cherry-picked based on
structural differences, or just plain wrong. Communications rates have
plummeted since then. I remember back in '84 people would say, "you've got a
long-distance call from Xyz". Today, nobody cares if it's long distance.

In the late '80s, when my wife immigrated from China, she could only afford to
talk to her parents every month or so, because the international phone rates
cost several dollars per minute. Today she talks to her dad -- with video! --
on a whim, because it's _free_. And the price of telephone-quality audio is
negligible (~$0.02/minute).

~~~
Retric
Free Markets don't work like that. If you charge 100$ for a bottle of water
and most people charge 2$ than you end up selling far fewer bottles of water.
Only the fact that we don't have a free market for high speed internet has
kept prices so high and service so low.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
A "free market" concept in it's pure-bred form does not and cannot exist. You
either have some form of government control, or you get a
monopoly/duopoly/plutocracy situation that skews things around. This is
exactly what's happening now with telcos in the US.

Time to crack the whip and restore sanity in these markets. The telcos have
become a law unto themselves.

~~~
zanny
If you get monopolies, they are considered bad only when they become an
obstruction to improvement and inventiveness, because if the prices ever rose
enough to justify competition again someone could enter the market, assuming
it was a market like on-line retail where you can't crowd out competitors from
store shelves.

Internet is a _terrible_ commodity, because so much of the cost of
connectivity is wrapped up in laying lines and buying server farms than
actually maintaining the infrastructure. And that is really what it is - there
is a reason roads aren't private, and why no other animal ever evolved wheels.
Some things are best done collectively, and I usually lean libertarian but
infrastructure is something you can't effectively leave open to free markets
or give to private monopolies, because they are so easy to take through
monopolistic practices.

------
mech4bg
As others have said, this article was remarkably sensationalist and cherry
picked many of their facts.

However there is a grain of truth in here - while Europe had MUCH higher
internet / phone / cable costs 10 years ago, from what I've learned from my
friends over there the price has dropped dramatically. While 'regular' plans
are comparable to US plans, the budget operators are incredibly cheap.

It's been a similar situation in Australia. We had incredibly high costs, and
for many years the value of our internet went BACKWARDS - as the price went
up, our data was also heavily restricted. However that trend finally reversed
and it's much better value now. When I left Australia I had a 200gb 100mbit
internet plan with a home line for $78 a month (and that included a cable
modem).

I have to say I was pretty shocked at how poor the choice and value is in the
US after moving here, particularly in Silicon Valley. Fast internet (> 30mbit)
is incredibly unaffordable, and there is huge pressure to have to bundle with
cable TV (which I don't want or need).

And what's up with the phone plans here?! The only reason I'm not absolutely
screaming about it is I'm on a shared plan with my wife - if I were trying to
get a phone just for myself the costs would be insane.

The biggest kicker is trying to find a good prepaid with data SIM - in
Australia you can walk into any 7-11 and buy a SIM card for $2 and then get on
a $2/day unlimited phone/data prepaid plan (i.e. you just charge up and then
every day you use it another $2 is taken off your tab). There is NOTHING like
that here.

I'm not sure if it's because of a lack of competition or what - in Australia
all networks are now (roughly) compatible with each other, so if you buy a
phone on one network it'll work on another. Then you have many many resellers
who buy the network access wholesale from the big providers and then resell
it. Same for the internet market. That's the only thing I can think of - the
US needs to get this happening ASAP.

~~~
Jacqued
One thing that is not mentioned is that in some European countries (like in
France where I live), there is no limit to the amount of data transfer you can
use in a month -- that is, on the home optic fiber lines, not on the mobile
ones.

I have a $30 100Mbps plan, and if I want to download 10 TB in a month, there
is no additional charge for that. Mobile plans cost around $20-25 and are
tipically capped at 3GB per month.

But don't worry, we're still complaining very much, that the lines are too
slow and expensive.

~~~
jeltz
Unlimited plans for Internet over wire is the norm in most European countries.
The only exception I know of is the UK. And at least in Sweden it has been
like this since broadband was introduced.

~~~
bearmf
It is also the norm in US.

~~~
jeltz
Ok, could be confusing you with Canada then. There I know for sure most
connections have a monthly bandwidth limit.

------
brg1007
As Bulgaria came into discussion, let me give you a short glimpse at what the
biggest cable company in Romania (4th rank in Akamai average peak connection
speed 2012) has to offer. For about 25 USD you will get: - 100Mbps Internet
access fiber optic, - +100 TV channels including HBO, HBOGo, - one 3G data SIM
with 3GB/month, - access to various WIFI hotspots around the country, - 1
phone landline with various free minutes.

All this infrastructure for this network was build in the past 15 years and it
is national. Romania is as big as Oregon State.

In my opinion the prices in US for triple-play are as the article states very
very high.

~~~
bmunro
It makes sense to compare US prices with western/northern Europe, as they are
similarly rich/developed.

But to compare prices in the USA with those in eastern Europe doesn't seem
right. In nominal terms, the GDP per capita of the USA is 6 times that of
Romania, and 4 times by purchasing power parity.

------
krenoten
I've been horrified by my experience after moving to NYC. I have been unable
to find any providers that offer upstream of > 5 Mbps, and my current
provider, time warner, supplies a locked down cable modem that doesn't allow
me to port forward anything. Apparently I can trick it into giving me access
to a control panel by resetting it with the cable unplugged, but I've been
unable to access the internet after trying to put the damned thing into bridge
mode.

I would pay double or triple what I used to pay verizon for 25/25 symmetrical
service before moving to NYC. Does anyone know of a provider that can offer
something like this for less than $150/mo in NYC??? I'm considering getting a
VPS just to tunnel to so I can access my home services at a steady domain...

~~~
drbawb
A possibly cheaper option would be to get an unlocked cable modem that is
compatible with their service.

In my area anyways, I can go to my TWC "PayXPress" portal (e.g: your online
billing control panel) and on their support page they list links for
compatible hardware.

Another suggestion: instead of bridge mode, look for an option called "RG
Passthrough" or "Gateway Passthrough" or even just "RG enable"... then get
your own router and wire the router's WAN port to the 1st ethernet port on
your cable modem.

My motorola surfboard SBG-6850 has this option; and it works while bridge mode
fails. I only use it because they want $5/mo to enable wireless on my cable
modem. That's right, they want $5/mo to enable some hardware I already have.

~~~
montecarl
I remember a time when MODEMs were just that and nothing else. I would be
miserable if my ISP forced a router and wireless access point on me. Cheap
routers that have to be reset once a week shouldn't be forced on anyone.

My $50 Linksys WRT54GL goes years between resets and then it is only because I
am moving.

------
nckbz
The saddest part about this, for us in Canada, is that when we see any
American advertised cell phone or internet deals our natural response is
"Damn, those Americans got it good over there." I pay around 90 a month for
200 minutes and 4gb of data with unlimited texting under Rogers. Canadian
plans are a joke. Seeing this article with a $38.00 plan for phone, internet,
and TV is just completely unfathomable for me. :P

~~~
bryanlarsen
Mobilicity and/or Wind Mobile not available in your city? $45 a month for
"unlimited" data, NA voice and global text.

Of course in a few years the big three will purchase them ala Fido and PCS and
it will back to the status quo, but in the meantime I am enjoying sane cell
phone rates.

~~~
dholowiski
I haven't checked mobilcity, but Wind Mobile is only available in a few cities
(and not very far outside of the cities) over here in western canada.

~~~
jarek
Mobilicity's network is even smaller geographically, but both are excellent
options for those covered.

~~~
dholowiski
I think this actually has something to do with why we pay so much for this
kind of service in Canada. Our population is so thinly spread (other than a
few major cities, who do have these cheap alternatives) that I bet if they
even tried to cover second tier cities, they'd lose money. European countries
have the advantage of being really small.

~~~
jarek
There's plenty of small remote towns in Sweden

~~~
dholowiski
According to Wikipedia,Sweden has 20.6 people per square kilometer,compared to
3.4 in Canada. Also,Canada is slightly larger. Much easier to cover all (or
most) of Sweden than Canada

~~~
jarek
Here's another stat to look at. Southern Ontario, roughly up to Algonquin
Park, has around 12 million people on about 140,000 km^2. Sweden has around
9.5 million people on about 450,000 km^2. Going purely by area or density
criteria, southern Ontario should have telecom service miles ahead of Sweden,
even in towns that are tiny and remote by southern Ontario standards.

------
d--b
I am very astonished by the comments I read here. That internet is way cheaper
and faster in Europe and Japan than it is in the US is a fact, period. And it
is not because the governments pay for it. It is because the market
competition works there, not here! America is not always where capitalism is
best implemented! Antitrusts law should step in and these companies must
compete!

------
aleyan
The article doesn't really answer why the services cost so much. The higher
fees aren't going to the margins of the telecoms. Verizon has a revenues of
$39.14 per share and earnings of $2.31 per share for the past year.

~~~
bretpiatt
I show $2.89 in earnings for CY2011 and $2.00 in dividends paid for a total of
$4.89 on $38.57 in revenue per share, dividends + earnings = 12.6% revenue.
That is very high for a mature company in a competitive market. I'll use
WalMart as an example -- $132.91 revenue per share, $1.53 in dividends, and
$4.74 in EPS for 4.7% of revenue.

~~~
wtvanhest
Dividends are paid out of earnings so adding dividends to earnings is not an
accurate way to understand a company's finances.

Revenues last year were $110,875.

Earnings (profit after expenses including depreciation): $2,404

Profit margin was 2.16% for 2011.

Walmart did about 3.5% for 2011.

Aleyan has a very valid question which is much more interesting than the
original story. I would love to hear some people's opinions on why it is so
expensive to provide highspeed internet.

------
RandallBrown
The infrastructure in those other countries is considerably less expensive to
set up. The US is HUGE. For a company to have nationwide coverage they need to
invest a TON in infrastructure. It's not surprising to me that our services
are so much more expensive than the rest of the world.

I didn't realize the difference was as big as it was though. It's surprising
because even though internet/tv is sort of expensive here, it isn't at all
cost prohibitive for the majority of Americans.

~~~
klausjensen
The US is huge, but there are also a lot of people in the US.

Population density (population/km2)

<pre> USA 34 Sweden 23 Norway 16 Germany 229 France 114 </pre>

Source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density#cite_ref-1)

So many countries that are far LESS densely populated than the US - and MORE
densely populated - have much cheaper Internet. It does not seem to be the
deciding factor.

~~~
huxley
That's a problem if you're living in Wyoming but for the majority of the US
population, low population density is not a factor. There are vast mostly
empty areas in the US, but people congregate in highly dense cities and
suburbs.

Take California, it's 93.3 /km^2, New York State is 159.2 /km^2, New Jersey is
459 /km^2, and DC is 3,886 /km^2.

------
rjsamson
What I was hoping to see in this article but didn't (and maybe some HN folks
have good ideas on this) is _how_ do we fix it?

~~~
bduerst
Government owned infrastructure.

The most expensive part is the "last mile" or hooking individual buildings up
to the grid. What I propose is that the Federal government build fiber to each
and every public school and university.

From there, leave it up to the individual state, county, and city governments
to see if they want to front the real cost, which is the last mile.

You could even make it like _the New Deal_ and only hire chronic unemployed
workers (unemployed >6 months) and train them to lay the fiber. These newly
trained workers can then be hired by the local governments who choose to
complete the last mile from the national backbone.

It would at least give the unemployed work, the schools access to information,
and let the rest of us to decide whether or not to pay the real cost.

~~~
randomdata
Nearly 100 years ago the citizens of my rural locality built a co-operative
telephone company. The organization still remains owned by the customers and,
as such, have to act to the interests of those customers.

The result is that the entire service area – which consists of mostly farms,
and some small town areas – have had DSL connections for more than a decade
and they have been working to roll out fibre to those locations for the past
few years.

If the citizens are going to pool their money to build infrastructure anyway,
what advantage does the government model bring over the co-operative model?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
In a rural area with a strong sense of community, a non-governmental
cooperative can work pretty easily. In an area with more fighting and less
community, you need government power of eminent domain to acquire the rights
to intrude on people's land for infrastructural purposes.

~~~
randomdata
Given the battles that are heating up over wind turbines, I'm not sure rural
areas have any more sense of community than anywhere else. Though perhaps
things were different a century ago.

------
codgercoder
simplest answer: the 1996 Telecom Deregulation Act. Sold as a way to bring
real competition after the breakup of ATT, what it did instead was: 1) coax
Baby Boomer money into the stock market, causing the Telecom boom, with all
the mis-investing that a boom entails, 2) build a lot of infrastructure with
the new money, that the incumbent companies didn't have the stomach for, 3)
free up the baby Bells from much regulation, but not enforce the "play fair"
rules to allow upstarts to use the extant infrastructure, and 4) crash the
boom, allowing the incumbents to pick up intrastructure for cents on the
dollar. Instead of a rebirth following the crash, as is usual, in which the
newcomers get to pick through the remains of the last boom, the remants mostly
got gobbled up by the incumbents (even ATT, absorbed by SBC). So the landscape
looks much like it did originally, except now the old incumbents control the
Internet, instead of just the phone system. Innovation is largely coming on
top of the Internet, instead of in providing it.

------
Karunamon
Hosting on this continent is pretty much a ripoff as well.. one can reasonably
assume something is terribly wrong if pricing is broken up to that level.

Anecdote alert: I recently moved from a stateside provider to one in Germany.
A dedicated server, quad core, 8 gigs, 1TB transfer out was running me around
$120 a month from my usual provider.

The German host has me set up on the same CPU, but with 32 gigs and 10TB
transfer out for less than $80.

400% more memory and 1000% more bandwidth for a $40/mo reduction in cost. The
pricing on stateside dedicated servers wasn't out of the ordinary either. If
anything, I've seen virtual servers be on the same level, with dedicated
servers even more absurd.

------
njharman
Because we as a nation are willfully delusional as to how corrupt our
government and corporations are. How much buying regulation and legislation is
standard part of business.

------
gregsq
It is expensive in the US compared to the other two countries I get sims for,
the UK and Australia.

In the UK I can get a sim and monthly plan for my iPhone for around £6, which
gives me what I need. In Australia it's about $30 for a month. In the US it
was either H2O at $50 a month or StraightTalk from Walmart for $45. I recently
moved my girlfriends grandfathered AT&T iPhone plan on to StraightTalk for a
saving of about $50 pm. A 2 gig limit on data compared to her grandfathered
unlimited, but thats OK.

The US is expensive. No doubt about it.

------
kevinSuttle
It all comes down to greed and gouging. Period. There's too much money being
made to stop it now. I'm all for capitalism and making money by working hard,
but this is the opposite of that. Inferior product, astronomical rates. These
are industries strangleheld by a few gigantic companies, and that, my friends,
is bad for everyone.

------
hpguy
I came from a developing country and among the things I miss about it is low
cost phone, cable and internet. Basically $25/month vs $150 I'm paying now for
pretty similar quality of service. That has puzzled me a great deal, shouldn't
tech cost be much higher in a developing country than in the #1 technology
country in the world.

------
GlennS
The USA is very sparsely populated compared to South Korea, Japan, or most of
Europe. The Ukraine (mentioned in the video), is a really big chunk of land
with a smaller population than the UK, but still appears to have more than
twice the population density of the USA (eyeballing wikipedia numbers). This
is obviously a big deal for any infrastructure project.

I'm not saying this is the whole (or even the main part) of the explanation,
but it needs to be taken into account at least. In my opinion it certainly
wouldn't excuse poor service in towns with 100k+ people.

When it comes down to it, internet access is crucial now, and it does enable
other parts of the economy to flourish. If the government needs to step in to
give it a push, it seems worth it in this case? After all, what is a
government for if not planning for the long-term when individuals and
corporations can't?

------
codegeek
I lived in Hong Kong for about 18 months temporarily as an expat from the US.
I was astonished that for about 300 HKD (< 40 USD), I could get unlimited data
and a new iphone with contract. The only catch: contracts are usually 18
months or longer. But even then, it is dirt cheap compared to US.

Same with cable.

~~~
mratzloff
In my experience US contracts are often 24 months.

------
hansy
OK so assuming Americans do end up paying way more for less in the phone,
cable, and internet departments, what's the solution?

I can't recall one month when my parents, both highly educated and cautious,
aren't griping about some "strange" or "unknown" charge creeping up into their
phone bill. They've even tried different plans on different networks over the
years to find the most economical package for the family. When I ask them
which network they like the best, they always reply with, "it's not about
which network is the best, but about which one sucks the least."

And internet? I'm tired of hearing how overseas ISPs are just better (speed to
cost ratio) than the ones here. I guess I'm just crossing my fingers waiting
to see what happens with Google Fiber, but I seriously hate putting all my
eggs in one basket.

------
Timmy_C
In Seattle we have a startup called Spectrum Networks which offers 100mbps
fiber and microwave internet to a small set of condos and apartments. Last I
checked, it was a 9 person operation. I don't see why more startups like this
haven't cropped up in other towns.

~~~
andr3w321
I live here in Seattle and would love an alternative to comcast, however, I
don't think this is it. I googled them, looked at their website and see
nothing about pricing, how to sign up and their links under "Services" on
their homepage don't even work.

~~~
seiji
Well, they have to light up your entire building first. It's no something you
can initiate as a single person. You have to get your apartment/condo/mdu
management to send them some flirty emails.

------
bickfordb
I have considered this a lot and the problem appears to be mostly a policy
problem boiling down to the two following issues:

* Right of way laws in localities make it difficult to deploy cabling of any sort. Starting a network operator is incredibly difficult legally even if you have the capital. Also, counties often grant monopolies to particular cable companies and do not allow other operators to enter the market.

* It's a popular economic thought (and apparently one the FCC subscribes to) that CLEC/wholesale style systems do not incentivize network infrastructure maintainers to keep pace with technological advancements. As a result the FCC has granted control to vertically integrated operators like ATT/Verizon/Comcast.

------
ck2
There is only one cable and one phone company in my city.

Our prices are terrible and guaranteed to go up each year.

But with cellphone companies, there are usually three or four of them and
prices are still bad. So I am not sure why the market doesn't "correct
itself".

~~~
mikeryan
Most of the "low cost" cell carriers in the US actually lease bandwidth from
the larger carriers or are subsidiary of the larger carrier, for example Boost
and Virgin Mobile are wholly owned subsidiaries of Sprint.

Point being there's not as many carriers as you think their are.

------
dawernik
The problem with a lot of the comments here is that the participants use
logic, while typical Americans do not. The main point is really about lack of
transparency by providers and complacency by consumers... Compounded by an
industry that has gotten into bed with government.

The market will eventually correct as phone, cable, and internet services
continue to be individually picked off by best of breed pure plays that create
simple service with transparent business models. May take a while, but it will
happen.

------
tsotha
Not a very good article. He's thrown together a bunch of unrelated statistics
and left out some pretty important information, like the total cost in the
landline example. I remember paying $1/minute to call someone 50 miles away
before ATT was broken up.

The question I have is whether or not wireless carriers pay for spectrum in
other countries. Verizon paid over $17B for spectrum, and that money is going
to have to come from somewhere.

------
Aloha
One thing that this article missed out on:

Prior to 1984 Business telephone users cross subsidized Residential users,
both thru higher local access rates, and higher LD rates.

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tomrod
When I bought my first landline in the mid-2000s the cost was $40 a month for
local service. 75% of that charge was local and state fees.

My first phone call was an automated telemarketer. 98% of my calls after that
were also telemarketers of one form or anther. Ads started stressing me out,
and I ceased being so nice to cold callers.

The landline lasted maybe two months before I figured a cell would be cheaper
and less annoying.

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aidenn0
And how much per minute was long-distance in 1984? In the early 80s almost all
the profit from telephone service was in the long-distance service. For
example, 1980: in today's dollars, it was over $1 PER MINUTE to call New York
from Los Angeles.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Fun story. The university I went to used to buy long-distance minutes in bulk
at 12 cents, sell them at 25 cents, and made a million bucks a year off of
students calling home. Now they buy them at 3, sell them at 5, and everyone
uses cell phones so there aren't any landlines in the dorms so emergency and
"too much ice, class cancelled" notifications and the campus phone directory
are a disaster... also, the IT department is out a million bucks a year.

But they're working on it, they say.

------
blasteye
Ummm, Google Fiber had to pay over 10k per customer. This article sites around
3k per customer in gross.

So they expect the ISPs to just eat up a 7k difference which will take over
1-2 decades to recoup?

------
kin
We're super behind. I can't wait until Google expands their Fiber to more
cities so they can get fiber in every household.

------
devGabriel
You guys think that is expensive? You don't know Brazil...

------
thebigkick
Did the interviewer say "information super highway"?

------
mtgx
I pay $20 for triple pay, with 100 Mbps Internet.

~~~
grumps
Yea, I'd like to know where you live. I'm paying 75 for 50 Mbps and basic
cable

~~~
drbawb
Not 50Mbps/50Mbps I take it. What's you're upload speed and ISP?

I have TWC in the midwestern US; $65 (up from $50 after the introductory offer
lapsed) for 35Mbps/5Mbps.

I don't even want faster speeds than that; I just want something resembling
symmetrical. I'd be perfectly happy with 15Mbps/15Mbps.

I'm waiting for an ISP to offer "x Mbps" and an unlocked modem that lets you
divvy up your bandwidth however you want.

Hell. I'm waiting for an ISP to offer an unlocked modem.

------
emehrkay
> Bandwidth is the new Black Gold

------
Ntrails
"America has gone from #1 in Internet speed (when we invented it) to 29th in
the world and falling."

I beg your pardon?

~~~
dlan1000
Which part exactly are you contesting?

~~~
Ntrails
America inventing the internet?

------
pkandathil
Couple of reasons why it's more expensive here: 1) Area and population
density: Countries like Japan have a small area with a very high population
density. This drives, infrastructure costs down and the return on it high
because you have a lot of users.

2) Minimum wage in the US: The cost of labor in the US is quite high hence it
costs more to build out infrastructure than it does in other countries.

~~~
gergles
People continually try to use density as some sort of an excuse for the
ludicrously under-spec broadband deployments in the US.

Why do NYC, SF, Boston, Chicago, and LA all still have the same shitty service
as the rest of the country? SF is far _more_ dense than the totality of any
European country and only has the same monopolistic, overpriced,
underperforming, punitively-capped service as the rest of the US (except for
the lucky people who live in the 20 webpass buildings.)

