Why American Internet SUCKS
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- Опубликовано: 3 окт 2023
- If you are a person existing in this society and on RUclips then you know that the Internet is basically a necessity for our modern world to function. We’ve built an entire civilization on the Internet, and yet somehow Americans are still dealing with overpriced, cruddy service - if they even have Internet at all. How did we get here?
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For further reading, check out the sources for this video here:
docs.google.com/document/d/e/...
Script: Holly Maley
Editor: Reid Valaitis
Lead Editor: Kirsten Stanley
Project Manager: Lurana McClure Rodríguez
Host: Levi Hildebrand
Want to work with Future Proof? Suggestions? Hate mail? Get in touch with the project manager, Lu: contact@befutureproof.ca
still blows my mind i have unlimited data from my phone here in Latvia for 15 bucks a month. it even works in the forest. Cycling in Texas I would get 3g or just no service in parts of the state
Yeah. Latvians are kind a blessed with their internet. At least one thing is right with that place.
Yes it is kinda ridiculous I live in the USA. With Cox communications. We pay 160 a month because we have to pay them for our speeds and then unlimited data. Phone plans are not much better it is 45 per person for slow speeds that are kinda disgustingly slow and less reliable than my Internet provider
you're comparing city and rural
the fact that Texas is 10 times larger than Latvia makes a big difference
Did you have a US SIM though? I went to Australia and only had 4G but I'm not sure if that was just my international plan.
Hey, a Future Proof topic I am actually qualified to chime in on. I'm a network engineer in the States and have my masters degree in IT and my thesis was on public broadband in the US!
Long story short - its complicated. A big part of the problem like you stated was incumbent providers (cable TV) had a significant advantage when it came to deploying network infrastructure this allowed them to leverage said infrastructure and squash any upcoming competition. Another part was lack of regulator involvement when it came to subsidizing network infrastructure projects. Providers took LOADS of money from governments/grants etc and didn't follow-up on any of the promised infrastructure. Also the continued allowance of what I would consider monopolies for cable and ISPs to merge also is insanely anti-consumer. A lot of that comes from the super cool thing called "regulatory capture". Also a lot of it stems from policymakers not having a comprehensive understanding of computers and networks.
Don't even get me started of FCC reporting, it is LAUGHABLE at how bad it is. To be honest, we really truly do not understand the full scope of "broadband" access in the US. The standard definition for broadband in the US is significantly dated and does not reflect realistic or useful speeds for modern day use. It gets better, if one home or building within a census block (yes census block for population counting) has access to what the FCC considers "broadband speeds" then ISPs count/report all of the homes/population within that block as having that speed. Even if its only that singular home with access. Its absurd.
The Chattanooga example is always touted as the gold standard but that's hard to replicate. Most of the backbone infrastructure was built out to support connectivity to powerplants within the region and the city leveraged that for their build out. Its obviously more complicated than that and this is a condensed RUclips comment but I have found other "models" to be more effective than Chattanooga's approach.
I am not sure if nationalizations is the correct answer. I also do not think waiting on "big tech" companies to come and save us is the answer either.
I think continued investment in locally owned and operated community or municipal run ISPs would be a much better solution that allows for more local flexibility and ownership. There have been fantastic examples of local communities rising to meet the challenge and having better performance and lower costs when compared to commercial offerings.
All in all, super nice video. Well done!
You can read more about it all here!
www.ifc.org/content/dam/ifc/doc/mgrt/em-compass-note-107-municipal-broadband-networks-for-web.pdf
www.bbcmag.com/pub/doc/BBC_May16_SevenModels.pdf
ilsr.org/cooperative-fiber-brings-high-speed-internet-access-to-rural-ohio/
www.fairlawngig.net/
For the super bold -
startyourownisp.com/
I learned more from this comment than I’ve learned in whole RUclips videos from other channels. Thank you for taking the time to succinctly sum up the crux of the issue.
@@megan2349 glad you enjoyed it!
A massive part is also the government has effectively banned competition. You couldn't just start an isp even if you had the money and wanted to.
really good comment, thanks for the insight.
Municipal Fiber has been slowly gaining ground here in Oregon.
Sandy, Sherwood, and Ashland has had it for almost a decade and now Hillsboro is building it out too!
I think American internet would be a whole WHOLE lot better if it was operated as a utility like electricity, and if there was simply more providers. The fact that Spectrum, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast practically hold monopolies in their respective operating regions means they get to suck up money for doing the absolute barest minimum. Give people options and suddenly you have to start making your service actually worth it!
I agree with your sentiment, but I doubt that would make things much better. In Virginia, our primary electric utility pretty much gets anything that it wants in the state legislature. They lobby it hard for a bill several years ago that would supposedly save all of its customers money by freezing rates for several years. "Why would they need the state to pass a law preventing them from raising rates?" You might ask. Because buried in the bill was also language that enabled them to keep any extra profits over the statutory limit, if their costs went down during that period. And of course they did massively. So a bill that was theoretically about saving customers money was really a bill about allowing them to keep excess profits.
The people of flint michigan agree with you
In my county there’s literally 1 electricity provider. Only because it’s a subsidiary of an even bigger utility company, they lobby to let them have pretty much total control. While internet, we have much more providers. The utility company has been continuously raising their prices, I pay nearly 175usd per month for electricity and gas, while internet I pay 25 because there’s spectrum, cox, Comcast, Verizon etc, all competing
We have a cooperative where I live where were the customers own the phone company. We have fiber to our house in a rural area. The company has their own fiber between Alaska and the lower 48. Our electric company is also a cooperative. We have great wireless with AT&T.
I worked on fiber, digital microwave and satellite communications delivering bandwidth for many customers among other things. I retired from “T”.
More probiders doesn't help in the long run. These need to be public infrastructure with no focus on profits. Just a focus on providing the best infrastructure it can. Wether it is nationalization or local co-ope is irrelevant to me, simply that it is not a private entity. Private ownership is incompatible with necessities.
I work for a small ISP based in Canada. It is quite amazing our company managed to survive attempts to get squashed out by the other big ones. They really REALLY tried.
A fellow small ISP employee! The big guys can never crush us if we band together;
I'm surprised you didn't mention the biggest problem with creating a new competitor which is network exit points. There are very few places where you can actually connect your network you just built to the rest of the internet without having to pay your competition.
I still remember when I came to Canada in 2016, I could choose a phone plan from no data, 256mb, 512mb, or 1GB. It blew my mind that I could get unlimited internet for $20 in Taiwan at the same time but only got a no data plan in Canada. Another unbelievable thing is that there was no signal nor wifi on the Toronto subways 😅 you were basically disappeared from the network when taking the subway
Different realms different rules
Salary in Taiwan is not equal as the salary in the states.
Yes you should pay 1000 times more because your salary is a 1000 times higher. Quit bitchin'!
Yeah i know, bitches will be bitchin' 🤷🏼♂️ no matter what
we've had unlimited data etc. for more than 10 years already, surprising that Canada was so behind on that
In Czechia all the phone providers teamed up to cover the subway in antennas, but the cost of data plans is unbelievable compared to other EU countries
You're underground. What do you expect??
I think the only part or aspect of the topic that wasn't covered and would've liked to be was expanding on how chummy the IPs and governments are. Specifically with reporting your activities online and storing your data.
yeah that's a really good point!
Seriously. The amount of bad info the IPs are reporting to the FCC is such a huge problem. So many decisions and funding are made off that data it's actively harming people.
It's a fair point, but I generally assume the government spies on all of our internet activity regardless.
You know how the mob handles a rat - don't you?
@@deltasyn7434 that's kind of the point
When you finally got to the Chattanooga portion I was able to breathe again. I worked at a large tech company during the Internet expansion in they late '90s and early 2000's, our biggest problem was intransigent telecom companies that locked states to prevent high speed bandwidth adoption through ridiculous laws. A few states avoided making dumb laws, but those states were-and still are!-hampered by the laws developed by telecom lobbyists. Everybody loves a free market except for business people.
Even business people love the free market when it is not in their industry.
I feel so validated with this video. I get roasted so hard by my extended family due to my internet and they never believe it is as cruddy as I describe. Now I can send them this video as an explanation.
hahaha "see! it's not my fault!!!"
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”2
I was a contractor for an ISP that served rural communities in the states and it was a mixed bag. Half of the people (retirees) were absolutely over the moon to have internet that’s functional. The other half of the people (“power users” as they called them) said that the internet dropped out on them during video calls and jeopardized the success of their businesses (for example, losing connection during a sales call and not getting back up for hours if not days). My concern is that the rural US is getting ‘good enough’ internet but not good internet. This puts a massive block on these communities while ISPs get to say they’re getting the job done. Yes starlink is a massive competitor for them and yes they aren’t doing what they need to do to actually compete with starlink.
They’re probably gonna regret that in the next 10 years or so 😅 the more Starlink satellites Musk puts up, the more wide-reaching and (most critically) reliable Starlink’s connection will be, and thus their prices will be able to drop as they reach a wider and more stable customer base. Amazon getting involved will affect that process too. Once the high speeds and improving reliability makes up for the inevitably-higher ping of Starlink, there’s gonna be a decent flood of customers leaving the rural ISPs.
@@thecrazycapmaster 100%
@@thecrazycapmasterThis rural ISPs are the best promoters of Starlink, and Elon Musk is getting that promotion without paying a dime 😅
starlink is a scam, like all musk projects
I don't even get good internet. I live in a rural area.
During covid, the government shutdown everything. Lots of people lost jobs as they weren't deemed "essential" workers (at least I didn't lose my job since I'm a nurse).
But some people were able to continue to work as their jobs went to remote work... however if they happened to live in a rural area (where previously perhaps they were driving to the city for work prior to covid), they weren't able to work because of bad internet (or the lack thereof) and lost their jobs. This also affects students in school.
We are very lucky here in India where we have really affordable data and also wired broadband in all major towns and cities. The service has also improved vastly over a couple of years.
there’s not gonna be a town or city without internet or data in the usa, but rural areas where literally nowhere lives is where you’ll have issues with internet
Being from Chattanooga, I can tell you that the reason Chattanooga was able to do this was that much of the fiber optic backbone was already there. The EPB (electric power board) was wiring fiber to smart meters they were installing to better monitor usage and deal with outages in a much quicker manor. So, it wasn't a big stretch to just light that up for TV and Internet. Once it was settled in court and got built out...and (and its a big one) was wildly popular, The state really couldn't put the genie back in the bottle. What they did do, however, was pass a law to make sure no one else did it (written by AT&T and Comcast), and people like Rep Marsha Blackburn before she was in the senate, pushed to make sure that Chattanooga's fiber internet was not allowed to expand past the EPB footprint. So, even though the dark fiber exists, people in Bradley Co. just outside the footprint can get little better than dial up, and the incumbents have no incentive now to make it any better for them.
Our capitalist overlords are relentless in there pursuit to crush any spark of freedom, it’s time we start doing the crushing around here
All my friends in Korea and China love to make fun of how crappy and slow the Internet in the USA is.
DAMN those countries have stronger density but still
Here in Utah, we have UTOPIA, a municipally-owned fiber network that is open to any ISP (even Comcast could be a provider...but they never would be). It's pretty cheap. I can get 10 gigabit symmetrical if I wanted to...but I don't because that would be ridiculously overkill for my needs. Snazzy Labs has a good explained video about it.
We have something similar in Oklahoma City, the main parts of the city (like Downtown) doesn't have it because of a contract I think, but a bunch of the rural and suburban areas around it now have co-op fiber. When I moved it was one of my prerequisites, and it felt great to tell the local cable company I'd no longer need their crappy asymmetrical service. I now have unlimited gigabit for half the price and couldn't be happier.
Can you do one on cell phone providers?
let's see how this one does first 👀 but it's definitely an interesting one!
I think cellphone providers mirror what was discussed in this video. They kinda all are bad.
@@FutureProofTV me on my way to watch and like this video on 5,000,000 alt accounts so this video does well:
yea, was thinking the same, unfortunately@@NotSazuki
@@FutureProofTV dig into the hidden cost of text messaging that we grew up with, that's even more fun.
Hint, the character limit was originally due to piggybacking off "free space" on the signal that kept your phone synced to towers. And the cost per text message trend of the 90s and 00s was just ridiculously free profits from the major telecoms; data plans are what killed cost per text message... funny how we aren't asked to pay for them anymore, huh?
Phone data is the dumbest, most expensive data we consume due to natural monopolies thanks to the limitations of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Would make for a great video!
It's so fun to listen to this from a North American perspective. I live in Norway, and up until recently I didn't even know there was such a thing as capping data on cable internet. I have fiber internet in my house for $5 a month, and my unlimited (speed and amount wise) 5G mobile subscription costs me like $20 a month. There's also 4G/5G coverage pretty much everywhere you go, and 3G is being removed right now as it is obsolete.
I thought $35 a month for internet and phone was good here in the US...
Though it's with Xfinity so that is $20 a month in physical and mental pain
what an idea. you can actually afford to live over there! everything about american society sucks us dry
The thing I never understand is how anyone can stay in business while offering service that cheap. I have done some planning to start my own isp and just 1gb of backend bandwisth would be around $1k a month. The cable also needs to be put in the ground.
@@deepspacecow2644 The main tele provider over here called Telenor is partially state owned. Infrastructure to the rural (and pretty mountainous) parts of Norway is often subsidised over the state budget to ensure that the entire population has access to high speed internet regardless of where they live.
We have a mixed-market capitalist economic system here, with more governmental intervenience than in the US. It has its upsides and downsides, but free healthcare for all and examples such as telecom infrastructure outweighs the disadvantages in my opinion at least.
My fibre network in the U.K is £40 a month!
Hi Future Proof! I live in Northen Colorado and actually had the pleasure of voting for municipal fiber optic internet several years ago--and it passed! Not only does my city, Fort Collins, offer this service, but so do several nearby cities (such as Loveland, Estes Park, and Longmont), and it is expanding. What is better is that the cities are working together through intergovernmental agreements. Our NoCo municipal fiber departments are collaborating! And its amazing. We have some of the fastest internet services in the country, at very affordable prices (basically $70 for symmetrical 1gig), and very accessible customer and tech support. I am a little biased because I actually work for one of those municipal fiber departments, but I am also an extremely satisfied customer.
Chattanooga's story is great; Northern Colorado's is wonderful.
In Canada, we have mostly 2 internet options in many communities. Luckily, where I live, we have SaskTel, a Crown corporation. (Provincial government owned) And their rates are reasonable. Except our government in SK is trying to sabotage SaskTel by increasing contracted workers, company debt and rates, slowly privatizing some aspects of the company, with the eventual goal of selling (privatization) to the Big Three. 😢
Having worked in the management of fiber optic installation, I am well acquainted with the costs and challenges associated with it. However, in reality, despite Italy (where I live) lagging behind in many aspects, it has structured the deployment of fiber optics not only to private companies but also to individual municipalities. This was made possible with assistance from European and state funds, enabling the construction of an infrastructure that is then leased to various companies responsible for its operation and maintenance.
That being said, not all rural areas are covered, and Starlink is a viable alternative. Another advantage we have is the widespread availability of 4G and 5G networks, even in more remote areas. This availability largely depends on the service provider, but there are also economically accessible flat-rate solutions where there are no data usage limits at a fairly reasonable price.
Of course, Italy is a small country compared to the United States, but some of these options could also be considered!
My weekly dose of reality
what we all need 😅
Reality is kinda terrible… I like the show, I just wish it was like what the differences between two great options because there are no bad options instead
I was planning to travel to Canada and was shocked how pricy are Mobile internet plans there. I couldn't believe when I saw that some plans offered only 3G.
If you can pry your face away from your phone, a $30/mo unlimited talk and text + 1GB is a good thing!
@@dakrawnik4208if you can pry your head outta your ass you’d know that’s a scam lmao
@@dakrawnik4208One gig is piddling for a month.
If you’re watching this in the United States, I can sum up the video for you in two words that 100% of us Americans will understand spectrum, Xfinity!
🤦♂🤦♂
I did a research project in college on the effects of launching satellites into space both internet and military and the effects of it. (I’m an astrophysics major) and all my professors say they hate how not having any regulation in this effects any form or ground based research
*affects
@@Blox117 damn 💀💀 no way I missed that.
Ukraine actually has been using starlink during the war. It has helped them immensely especially after their internet access was corrupted by Russians. This is a double edge sword, though, because Starlink stopped offering internet to Ukraine during an important counter attack of theirs. It’s important to note that these corporations have the ultimate say in who gets what, when.
Starlinks are helpful not only in the places where otherwise there would be no connection but helped a lot during blackouts as they were connected to generators and provided internet when the telecom grid and local internet providers didn’t have any power.
The only place Starlink is blocked is in Crimea as it is considered (temporarily, I hope) Russian territory. As such the US and international sanctions in effect there and Starlink is included in the sanctions.
@@fredsasse9973 This is partially true. The whole story is that Ukrainian Armed Forces were doing an attack on Crimea with naval drones and those naval drones had Starlink onboard to control them and right at the moment of the attack Musk turned the Starlinks off and Ukrainian soldiers lost control of drones and the attack was unsuccessful. As later discovered and confirmed by Musk he did this for personal reasons and now actually the Pentagon controls the work of Starlinks in Ukraine to prevent such situations in the future. You might ask why Musk gave up the control of Starlinks in Ukraine and the explanation is that he has too much subsidies and contracts from the US government including those for the military and he didn’t want to lose all of that.
@@fredsasse9973ah, no, sorry. Starlink is not available in China. Teslas are though. In fact, they make them here. I wonder if there's a connection? (No pun intended!)
@@benduncan4027slight correction to that, he never ordered it turned off, it was already off, but he did refuse to turn it on over Crimea, supposedly due to the sanctions. Spacex was donating Starlinks humanitarian aid, but when Ukraine wanted to put them on weapons, that’s when it was decided it should be done through the DOD and not SpaceX directly.
This is why cables/infrastucture like these, should just be public. Just like most roads. Obviously you should privately run cable to some new development, but I think government should be one to offer the framework. And I specified all of it because otherwise private business would just take all the profitable bits, while government would have to fork out obscene amount of money for more rural communities. Competition is only good for products where it makes sense.
In much of Asia and Europe, the Internet infrastructure were built up by government owned telco monopolies like British Telecom in the UK, Deutsche Telekom in then-West Germany, Korea Telecom in South Korea and Nippon Telephone & Telegraph (NTT) in Japan. Here in the USA, most of the infrastructure was built up by private companies such as the "Baby Bells" in the 1980's and cable companies about the same time. As such, the American view of the Internet is different than much of the world.
I was surprised you didn’t mention the “5G” options that cellular companies offer as someone who experienced being an actual “cord cutter” for a year. I’m a “true” cord cutter as I only use my hotspot on my phone as my internet connection. I typically use Wi-Fi at work and/or friends when I don’t stream. But streaming from an iPhone onto an external monitor/screen has its own issues. Video idea: why are so many streaming apps blocking a (often paid) user from being able to cast onto a larger screen?! Amazon, HBO, RUclips at times, Paramount+, Peacock, Showtime, Cinemax, CW, Fox, ABC all prevent showing the video via the HDMI adapter from the iPhone, which would allow data speeds & amount based on phone usage rather than the much more limited hotspot data.
I think you know the answer to your own question my friend 😅
that would be a consumer-friendly option, and there is no fucking way in hell that they’re willing to do that 😂
actually, here’s my prediction: in 3 years time Netflix will sell subscription additions & for an extra $9 a month it’ll work 😂
@@pasta-and-heroin no journalist has taken up the request so I’m looking at other avenues to understand the movement, not just to accept being as DONE TO. And of course I know capitalism’s forces!
DMCA is arguably the only reason. A good number of the shows or movies you would want to watch get caught by standards in your HDMI protocols or devices.
Being a cord cutter by removing physical internet connectivity and relying on wireless is pointless in the US. It’s a shared medium with far less reliability that is missing a huge number of important features and generally costs far more.
Cord cutting is primarily done to free yourself from oppressive and limited offerings, and you’re actively pursuing that either it’s nonsensical.
@@ttopero you must be a grandma playing solitaire if you think a phone is acceptable internet service
In the US we could use a Right to Information amendment. Something that makes internet a utility, and prevents government and corporate abuse of people's information, and the prevention of aggressive restrictions. Do I think I'll see something like this in my lifetime? No, but it's nice thought lol.
You completely forgot about fixed wireless internet service providers. As the owner of a small internet service provider I find the largest problem being the customer's lack of willing to look and educate themselves about all ISPs.
I cannot tell you how many times where I had good coverage to deliver fantastic internet service to a customer and they kept coming back with cable or telephone solutions and could not understand fixed wireless broadband.
I won't stand for this misinformation!
Mexico City not only has a bundle of phone lines on every pole, but it is phones, power, cable AND internet! 😂😂😂
Also us single kids don't get our parents things but even sometimes other family members things!
Expected more from the FP Team! 😂😂😂
Love the video as always guys, hopefully we can transition in many parts of the world to reliable wireless service without having more space trash and human trash with companies like starlink 😅
You forgot about the tennis shoes, a lot of those.
Corporate greed and political corruption. Those 2 are reasons for just about any American shortcoming.
Also, read "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu. This monopoly process has moved through newspapers, telegraph, telephone, cable and now internet. History repeats itself at every technological shift.
I live in a rural Missouri town and until a few months ago I was stuck with 10 Mbps DSL and one bar of cell service on a good day. My job requires home internet access and call availability so it was a major issue. Thankfully a rural fiber internet provider came into town and it's been a game changer.
Thanks for this video! I literally was having internet issues and boom! Your video came up! Naturally I liked and subscribed.
whenever there is something that becomes a natural monopoly, a rational society would always either have it outright nationalized or at least make it a public utility
Dunno, my country has like 3 national providers and we have pretty good internet while having GDP per capita like 15 times smaller than the US. I think it isn't just the fact that it's a private venture that's the problem in the US.
Right, we once did this with previously private electricity companies which have the same physical reach constraints.
At the very least, a rational society would do something about companies committing fraud left and right (Comcast).
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 Which country it is ?
I mean, the average person would probably want that, but unfortunately, things are run by the corrupt people being paid by the monopolies, and the average person doesn't have enough time in their day to worry about ousting those individuals when they're having issues paying for their rent or groceries.
I live in Australia and it's almost comforting to see that it's not only us that have truly awful internet. I feel like Australia may still have worse internet overall, but I wish governments could just get their act together and fix it.
Welcome to Russia,
if you live in a small town,
you have one monopoly to choose from, (and horrible mobile internet with speeds of 25mbit at best)... who will deny you a connection for 15 years...
and keep anyone else out of the market,
I was first in line for a dsl connection.
then I was in line for Fiber,
I ended up with a new provider in my town....
I can't even imagine what could be worse than constant 3g/4g interruptions and ping jumps from 100 to 1000-5000ms every 5 minutes with packet loss of 5-10%,
all this was about 10 years ago, my nervous system has not recovered since then and is unlikely to do so.
ps at the moment it is still impossible to use mobile internet for realtime activity, constantly losing packets and jumps ping, the promise to put a few more towers 10 years ago is still not fulfilled!
I hate that I have to do promotions to keep my internet service cheap. The cheap options for me is still about $80+ month. I've had to do contracts to keep my bill under $50 and even when it ends I have to jump on another deal just to keep it cheap.
I love this topic. It feels different in its approach and like how it wasn't just one brand but a topic.
The difference to europe is staggering. I know that the Netherlands is a much more densely populated country but it still has some pretty rural parts. But Dutch government said that everyone should has access to 1gigabit internet by 2030 and if market doesn't do it, they will pay for it. Can't even compare it to just *not* having internet in this day and age
Europe here 10bucks for 1Gb/s fiber and excellent 4G/5G cellular network for like 8bucks
Dayum.
I think my family pays like 40 usd for trash net.
In Australia we complain about broadband speeds, but we have a Government business (NBN) that maintains and slowly, continually, upgrades broadband to all residential and business locations. And they also maintain satellite internet to remote areas (of which there is a lot in Australia). One of the major reasons is that our fixed line telephony was never privately owned, (the now privatised national telecommunications agency, Telstra, actually owns the lines and rents out access to isps) and we did not have ‘cable’ until decades after USA, and by that time, most new homes had cable connections as part of their fixed line telephone connection (which is a required utility in new build town residential areas), so having a non competitive system from the start might mean slower access for some, but it does mean adequate access for all…
I'm from Russia. Not from a big city, which is important. And I have an unlimited internet with max speed 8 mbites/sec... For 1000₽\10$ a month. I've never really thought about how much should the connection cost, but after hearing about USA prices it seems unbeliveably cheap. Or, rather, in USA it's unbeliveably expensive.
Very much agree that internet access is a human right. Coming from a country where 7 out of 10 times, the Internet is completely shit and even when its working its super slow, yeah....
So you are owed the labor of another? Interesting.
@@BrianOblivionB for something I consider a human right? Yes. We all are. Why are you acting like it would be unpaid labor.
@@cosmiccentaur I don't recall saying that it would be unpaid. That being said, you are not owed the labor of others. Positive freedoms are a lie, and that is what this is.
The US government has already forwarded a lot of money toward getting better internet speeds for the whole country. There are many new telecoms opening throughout the nation because of this. There's a draftsmen shortage, and a shortage of a lot of fiber optic supplies because of all the money being poured into upgrading the US internet. In my neighborhood alone, we went from 5mbps download top speed a few years back to a new telecom company showing up and offering 1gbps download. As long as funding continues, this is going to continue until it's nationwide.
The problem is these monopoly/oligopoly Internet Service Providers, typically in many states there 2, maybe 3 ISPs at best for a given metropolitan area and they charge exorbitant monthly rates for mediocre internet access🤨
That's changing quickly.@@willia3r
@@willia3r Well, they are getting paid to run new cable. Its free customers for them, our crappy DSL provider literally cut the DSL lines in town and ran fiber. Only in town though, farther out there is only DSL
The fact that the only question seems to be "how much money will it make?" is the most savage indictment of our moment in history. In my opinion. Allegedly.
We moved to a little town outside of Nashville, far enough out to be considered rural. The county has municipal internet and it has been the best internet we have ever had. We have gigabit, and customer service because we are dealing with people who live here has been incredible.
If internet service providing was made by workers for workers without the profit motive everyone would get better internet. But hey that's socialism and socialism = bad, because reasons.
The necessity to profit ruins everything for everyone but those at the very top getting insanely rich from those profits.
Actually the 2 MB upload speed is 2 mega bits, or about 0.5 MB upload speed
it should be roughly about 1/8th the original stated speed, because a byte is 8 bits. gigabit is roughly 125 MB/s
The POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) companies have been payed BILLIONS of tax dollars over the decades to upgrade their telecommunication networks, but haven't. They could have already supplied fiber to the neighborhood, if not fiber to the home for the majority of Americans as a replacement of the 100+ year old copper infrastructure. This would have preempted the cable company stranglehold.
Here in my state, in Brazil, the The state government created a neutral optical fiber so that any provider can use it and provide internet in every part of every city.The result is surprising, we are the state with the highest speed in Brazil.Prices are low and everyone has the possibility of connecting to high-speed internet. Unfortunately, other parts are related to people's finances. But it is already possible to see people leaving big cities to settle in small towns that have these great internet speeds with the advent of home office.
Living in rural New Brunswick, Canada, we had terrible internet and had to go with Starlink.
Even Starlink is ridiculously better in Europe and even some countries in Africa than it is in the us and Canada
I agree that the Internet is a Human Right.
basically impossible to get ahead in the current world we live in without it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yea, just try applying to jobs without it now. You used to be able to walk into any place and just apply, but no one wants to do that anymore. That and, if you do manage to secure one, everything like schedules or communication is also done online.
Living in the UK I pay £20 a month for unlimited data/calls/messages and £20 a month for unlimited home internet at 300Mb up/300Mb down. Meanwhile, the USA is money/me-me-me, with providers acting like AOL of old.
I live in a rural parish of Louisiana and the parish spent millions getting fiber cables added to the electrical poles nearly 3 years ago. But even with miles of fiber laying around no one is able to get fiber internet since the fiber has never been hooked up to any backhaul. Im just lucky that I was able to get Tmobile home internet before it ran out of spots. Now im paying 55 a month for 250 mbps down and 15 up instead of 130 for 5 down and 2 up. Theres also a small local company that started offering wireless internet and everyones been switching to that so I got their lowest plan for 60 a month for the lower ping for playing games and I keep Tmobile for downloads and movies.
I love this channel, imma definitely get the patreon.
Thanks for the support here!
You also have to take into account how large the US is. It’s much easier to supply a country with internet when it’s the size of a state. But with that said, the US does have monopoly issues everywhere. And that’s what causes most of our consumer issues
I hate when people say this because its sort of true, but also not fully true. Because if the issue is literally just the scale, you could just approach it from a state level and that solves literally every problem here. Thats why state exist after all.
It's also worth considering the US is the most prominent figure in the world economy at the moment, it's hard to say that we're strapped for cash. It also doesn't excuse anything, it literally just explains the main complaint of the ISPs for the last thirty years, and does nothing to justify its existence.
Yet somehow, whether its public transport, internet access, utilities, whatever, the number one most common response is "it's too big, it wont work"
@@killingtimeitselfyou're right that we can scale up but the density is the bigger problem. There's so many empty places where it would be such a big cost for some few people. Wiring up Florida is way different than wyoming
@@Distress. yeah you can say that, but then again we also managed to electrify, and to this day maintain the grid around the entirety of rural america.
With a little bit of planning, and running some code in order to optimize wiring layouts, you could pretty easily run and install a new backhaul, and almost certainly make money back on it long term with how easy it is to do.
Fiber isn't expensive nor complicated, unless someonw digs up an existing cable and damages it somehow its basically impossible for it to fail.
Not all rural customers want or need gigabit, making it even cheaper, It's absolutely doable we just pretend that it isn't because its more convenient short term.
@@killingtimeitself true I think we can and should do it, just a little more complex than in europe. Canada and Australia are ein the same boat.
@@Distress. the main problem with australia is that the entire current government is corrupt, and corpos definitely aren't worried about scamming customers.
I live in Hungary and my ISP basically upgraded my apartment to fiber optic for FREE. They even offered Gigabit internet plus 30 GB of mobile data for $20. Shit's great.
One thing I wanted to say that I feel like the cellular companies like Verizon T-Mobile are starting to pull into the home Internet market and shake things up as well.
I'm surprised you never mentioned 5G Home internet. It practically solves the "it's too expensive to give internet to the rural population" problem. 1 tower can provide a gig+ connection to a huge radius of land
No, it doesn't. 5G extended range stops several miles before where I live, while 4G coverage is quite good on Tmo and VZW, and tolerable on AT&T (reliable, but low bars, and thus poor standby battery life on a phone). Meanwhile, I can get 2Gbps symmetrical fiber. The 500-700MHz 4G bands are far better at getting out into thesticks, and from time sticks back to the towers, than 5G on those bands, and it's not economically feasible to add the needed 5G towers, to fix that (5G was not designed to supplant 4G, as 4G was for 3G).
Our Verizon tower is oversaturated and I get less than 1Mbps download on a normal day in the evening. The city will not allow more towers to be built. I'm looking at switching our service to ATT. I did a speedtest on my moms phone when she was over once and her speed was fine.
Each time that I watch a new video of Future Proof I realize how lucky we are in Europe
My family's home in rural Mississippi didn't have access to anything besides extremely crappy satellite internet (very slow, 30-50GB/mo cap, drops with a hint of cloud cover) until 2019. Near the end of 2019, AT&T finished building a cell tower about 3 miles away, which allowed us to get 4G and eventually 5G LTE. It was life changing for the community.
I'm so happy and grateful for the new service; we've been able to get AT&T wireless internet that is so much faster than satellite, costs about half of what we were paying, and is capped at 150GB (with reasonable options to add on more data if needed.) It's not as fast or reliable as wired internet, but a huge upgrade from satellite.
There are still many other places in the US that still don't have access.
It's incredible they here in Chile I get 1Gbps symmetrical fiber for ~US$30 in a town of 30.000 people
About the same in rural Thai villages. around 1000 baht / month (US$27) for 1Gb/1Gb or 700 baht (US$19) for 1Gb/500Mbps. In many cases there will be several fiber ISPs to chose from.
Place for a future joke
I am writing this comment solely to use the undersea cables.
Me too
My country faced the same issue, the internet infrastructure sucks so much many electricity companies starts to provide internet, and basically, if there's electricity they can just provide internet using their existing infrastructure
My internet barely functions on a good day, so it sucks when all my homework is completely online.
I like how you have Cox and Comcast separated on that brief monopoly map when they're the same company
Stuck with lousy Comcast here in Mass (oh, the wind's blowing.Gotta restart the router). Back in NY I briefly BRIEFLY had Fios which was good but then I moved and discovered that Fios only served the other side of the street. Seriously. It needs to be a utility.
Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, EPB is no joke. In 7 years, it has only gone down 3 times. First was an expected outage with upgrades being performed on the system. Second was a piece of equipment at EPB failed and was replaced quickly. The third time it went out, I went up two floors in my condo building to check on the EPB internet there and it was working, so I knew it was just my place. So, I went back downstairs to go to my condo to call EPB. As I approached my door, a guy from EPB was coming down the hall and asked me if my internet was down. I said yes and he fixed it. I asked him how he knew I had an issue and he said it registered there at EPB that I had an issue and he was already in the area. Now that is service!
this was very informative good job
Rural PA mountains here: only one option (no cellular for tens of miles), which is Frontier dsl. Frontier won’t even deal with fallen trees on their lines (more than 25 visible from the road right near me, some stretching the wires to the ground. They’ve been there for over 5 years….). 6mbs plan costs $80 a month and it drops all the time, as well as clocking around 2mbs normally. It truly is robbery.
In my area there are 3 different ISP options. Internet is pretty reliable and the price isn’t super high. Our ISP was increasing prices but they price matched one of the other companies when we said we were switching.
this video hits close to home, only internet available where i live is comcast/xfinity, where just a half a mile up the road three's fiber run by another company, because comcast has my area in lockdown they werent able to expand the fiber down just a half a mile further meaning i have no access to it, with comcast for usable speeds im paying 140 usd a month for bout gbps reported speeds, but i only actually get (even when using high quality ethernet cables on my pc) areound 250mbps at max download, and our cap for upload is 25ish mbps which in reality is around 20mbps upload, yet just 3 minutes up the road i could have the 1.5gbps dl and 300ish mbps upload for around 60-70 dollars but it cant be given to me because the city name changes half way trough the road, theres some very small local companies here but the price to speed ratio is criminal as well, like 50mbps download for 80-90usd a month with a strong cap on how much is usable a month (like 15 or 10 gb a month without paying more) so i am forced to use comcast and pay criminal prices for speeds that dont come even half way to the reported speed im paying for and upload that is almost unusably slow if you do anything besides just watch tv and very light online work
His elbow gets so close to that MacBook
As a Chattanoogan preparing to move away in a couple of years our EPB internet service is high on my list of things that I’ll miss terribly when I go. And it’s sad that elected officials in this state can see an example like Chattanooga’s and bend over backwards to pass laws to prevent the state from benefiting from it. This selfishness and shortsightedness is one of the reasons I just can’t stay here.
Its very true. The cable contract for our city (San Jose, CA) came up for renewal, and the city begged them to renew the contract with Comcast, when they should have opened it up to all bidders. Now we have some of the worst service in the USA.
Switch to Sonic, if its available in your part of San Jose
The state im from has wireless spectrum covering the whole state. Suppose to be used for a statewide wifi network but the big companies sued to block it. So its not happening but the federal government has been giving out 30 dollar credits for wifi. My wifi bill is 29.99 now which is a huge help
Hey, you actually get "options" sometimes. I remember a time when we all got phone service from The Phone Company, and we liked it! Of course. it was regulated up the wazoo and other major orifices as a vital public resource, and the Internet is not.
OK, I'm 47 years old and have no memory of Ma Bell, but the point stands.
I live downtown in an apartment in the Netherlands. I pay 40 a month for a 1MB upload and 100MB download, while apartment blocks next to me have optic fibre. Real monopolies are a bitch
I live 35 minutes outside of Atlanta on a street where everyone has 3.5 acres of land and thankfully I have 2+ 1 Gb options. ATT Fiber and Xfinity.
I moved from the city out to rural country. I can say satilite generally is the high-speed option but is expensive. Then for latency applications I switch over to cellular. We had to install a small tower to run a repeater setup just to get reliable cululat lte. In a nut shell it cost us closer to 1000 dollars to get all set up
Live in a rural area on the east coast of the US - within an hours drive of a major metropolis. But none the less, all we have available are the two major satellite internet companies - both of which have data caps and significant lags and are almost by default out of commission in any weather-related emergency. Starlink? Technically yes, but not enough satellites cover our area so we would experience 10+ minutes of outage per hour (according to those I know who have it). Cable and Fiber? Ends about 4/10th of a mile from our house and there are no plans for expansion. Wireless? While I can in theory get 5G, it's not available as household internet. 4G isn't either. Microwave? Exists in our county but because we are in a valley, there are no transmitters that cover us. Because it's just 10-15 households, the county doesn't care. So we go with standard satellite and pay almost $200/month for sh*t service where you can't stream more than an hour a day, max, and have no connectivity during any storm (or until the snow melts if it's a snow storm). We used over half our monthly data allowance by daring to watch the Snyder Cut. We learned our lesson. Download a new game? Better wait until the end of the month. And for emergencies, we must still pay for a land-line phone. Sigh. But so good to know our local cable and fiber companies have been pocketing millions for the service they were SUPPOSED to be providing us.
I paid the equivalent of $35 USD when I lived in Korea for Gigabit Ethernet and 300+ channels of cable. Now back in Texas I pay $140. It’s goofy
That's because in South Korea, you're using the infrastructure built up by a former government monopoly, Korea Telecom. And the high population density of South Korea makes high-speed access anywhere financially viable.
In the uk I'm glad we have provider choices. I use my phone data mostly. Interesting video.
Working for an internet company trying to deploy in true rural areas. I see some of the down sides. Like road department decides to widen the roads as soon as we plow fiber on the side of the road. Covering our stuff up. Or ripping it up.
UK. I've been using 5G for my home broadband for a few years now. No fixed line phone. Not strictly unlimited but it might as well be. Lack of internet availability at a suitable high speed hasn't been a thing for me for ages. I think its 20.00 a month with EE.
Most annoying thing is apps that insist you download from wifi, not cellular data, despite them both being the same for me.
I've lived without home internet since graduating college and moving to a rural area. Currently navigating what having Internet is like because outside of libraries, I have never paid for my own internet (outside of my phone, which I live off a single bar, and yes that is monopolized, only Verizon).
Why am I getting internet? Because FINALLY fiber optic is coming into my rural town. Otherwise the options were sketchy satellite or actual dial-up (not DSL). And best of all, it's a local company bringing it in. Only downside is that it will be $100 per month for decent speed (but better than paying the $2k for installation when they are gonna do it for $150).
I took a road trip upstate New York and weirdly got better service in many parts of the rural areas than I do in my suburban area
At 8:25 when you said "And we're talking 2 Megabytes slow" I had to rewind thrice to make sure I heard that right. 2 Megabytes SLOW?! I live in a different country in a relatively developed city, and up until a few months ago, that was our *highest availble speed* on any carrier.
It's only now that the 90's coax cables were dug up and replaced with fibre optics (to make for 5G broadband) that the carriers thought "Hmm, maybe we should upgrade our cellular too". Matter of fact - with those coax I mentioned? Yeah that had a 500 Kb/s limit so our internet speeds were stuck in the year 2005 for 10 years too long; that is, until 4G carriers started revamping cellular speeds and prices back in late 2015.
The problem with cable companies is the asymmetrical speeds oftentimes the download is 300 times faster than the upload which is at a useless speed. I was so glad when symmetrical fiber came to my area now I enjoy a 1 gigabit connection and that's upstream and downstream.
around here so many crews are running fiber in just about every town around. One county seat north of here had some many crews working and hitting so much in the ground that made them all stop work until they can figure out how to keep them from hitting so many gas, water, sewer and electric lines. Not sure where their issue is because I know one of the crews up there is really good an doing their job and not hitting stuff. Guessing it is the locating company and the maps they have.
here in The Netherlands (and i think it works like this in most of the EU)
we have the infrastructure and it doesn't matter what company laid it. and we have the service providers,
and those providers pay to use the infrastructure. so not every provider needs to lay their own infrastructure.
and because we only have 1 set of internet infrastructure instead of one for each provider the infrastructure is easier to update/upgrade (going from copper to fiber optic/fiberglass i'm not sure how they call it)
and it's really easy for a new company to get in on the action, all the need is a license, bag of money to advertise and some cash to make the first few payments to be able to use the infrastructure.
and the customer (often) has a lot of choice.
I live in a area of a town in Texas that didn't even have internet till after 2010, while the rest of the town that wasn't on the outskirts had access to internet like spectrum and then we got access to the internet probably around 2011-2012ish and it was a relatively slow wireless internet we had that provider and then the provider we had merged into a bigger provider known as rise broadband a colorado based isp with coverage in multiple states in like the last year we got fiber optics laid out (which the area would have had earlier because spectrum tried to lay lines but the people they hired to dig a lay the optics kept hitting the waterlines and mains despite having the map showing where they were so the city told them to get out) and our internet quality and speeds skyrocketed to the point i get insane 50+mb download and fast upload speeds on an unwired connection which honestly isnt as great as it could be but so far the only issues we have had are power outages and other companies laying fiber optic cables cutting our lines intentionally and one of them even tried to get us to switch to their internet service which is dogwater by comparison so i guess the city has done something right since multiple providers are moving in.
Everything you talked about was valid, but I feel like you completely missed discussion regarding wireless internet providers that have popped up utilizing LTE and 5G tech as a growing market. It's not amazing, as I am using it now and have some pretty high highs and some crashingly slow lows, but it has been another angle to this tech that does need more exploration, especially because it's mostly at the healm of major cell phone carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon in the US.
as someone from Chattanooga, I'm really happy to hear you pronounce it properly. Chat-Tanooga not Chat-Anooga. and yes the cheap fiber is amazing!
Thanks so cool to hear from someone who actually lives there! Glad to hear that the story is a true one!
a gig is 67.99/month here @@FutureProofTV
In my area in rural Missouri, the government gave the ISP money to bury fiber optic cable, but no money to buy the rest of the infrastructure to hook it up. My ISP has fiber in the ground running through my property but no plans to hook it up in the near future. So despite investment of taxpayer dollars, DSL is the best available in my area, and still $100 per month.
I had a friend who rived in rural north carolina and I honestly couldn't wrap my head around how awful his wifi was, he actually got a better signal with mobile data
8:23 we've had like 3MB download speeds in the south of england, a lot of areas are getting faster speeds now though.
I live in Vermont. Our internet service provider is Comcast. We pay around $180/month on internet and unfortunately, we have two plan options. Unlimited at 180 or 5gb for 60. We asked them if there were other plan options and were told directly that we do not have other options whether I was referring to service providers or plan options. It was definitely the moment where I realized all of the problems I had previously been experiencing with Comcast was just going to get worse. We've been using Comcast for well over 30 years now. We've never had options and I want so badly for government to step in but unfortunately, we are going to be getting fiberoptic cables across the entire state... which are owned by Comcast... they're literally going to only spread their single-choice ways because they have legal permission to replace existing cables... you know... the ones not owned by Comcast.
Hey, I have 4 options in my rural community. Hughes net, insanely expensive, and useless. Star link, expensive, some issues, but clearly the best option. Comcast, slightly cheaper, great speed from 2 am to 8 am, bad the rest of the time, also lots of all day outages. Local microwave company, same price as comcast, lower peak speed, more reliable when people are awake. I'm using the local microwave internet until ready for that high initial hardware cost for starlink. I suspect both terrestrial services are limited at the main switch for the entire valley, possibly they use the same one.
meanwhile here in Cost Rica, the same phone providers also provide internet, as well as the government, and of course actual cable providers, yea we definitely have a decent healthy competition here XD
Come to Europe. I live in a very remote vilage withh 600 people. Still have gigabit fiber. And it's not even that expensive.