Happier Abroad Forum Community

Internet in The US: Slow and Expensive
http://globalsociology.com/2013/02/11/i ... expensive/

http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
"US Ranks #34 in worldwide internet speed"

Add slow and expensive internet to the list of reason to hate America. Read the article and listen to the video to see just how bad it is. People in America are paying higher prices for slower internet speeds.

Feminist women, unwelcoming people that don't want to be your friend, dysfunctional government, corruption, trash culture, price-gouging, few consumer protections, overpriced healthcare, GMO food, expensive food, expensive housing costs, lack of social benefits, high taxes that pay for nothing, broken tax code, no consumer protections... and now I can add slow and expensive internet to that cost. The reasons why I hate living in America keeps increasing.

In many countries they have everything prepaid and cheap. Here they try and draw you into all these contracts and debts and all. Then, also when you buy a prepaid phone, you need to activate and put in all these weird numbers and codes to register it. And even then you can only call a select number of countries overseas and even then, you can't dial directly.
I finally got prepaid Internet from Verizon but there is no unlimited service- they sell it by GB. 10 gigs is $90.
But it's amazingly easy to get credit here.

Tell me about it...Canada is the same. In Eastern Europe even the crappiest hotels have free wi-fi at least 3 times faster than my home connection.

Plus in Canada they charge BOTH the caller and the receiver on a pre-paid plan. In EE only the caller gets charged, not to mention the prices for smartphone data plans twice as cheap.

Can't you get internet , for instance, in the Philippines 6 mbps for 30? Heck, that is double the speed of where I live. Shesh, you would think I was using Hughesnet compared to the Philippines.

Fellas,

Have you guys noticed the lesser feminized countries have slower internet...it's harder to stream in that ad nauseum dribble of feminist videos and mindless-banter videos although text serializes on the browser in KBs, which isn't s.hit.

Just food IV thought.....

In Mexico, I have two Internet services in the hopes that one will work. The cable company was bought out by another business and just stopped the Internet without telling anyone and it will take at least two weeks to hook up with the new company. I am lucky to get 5 Megabytes. Compared to Mexico, the US is a dream.

MrPeabody wrote:In Mexico, I have two Internet services in the hopes that one will work. The cable company was bought out by another business and just stopped the Internet without telling anyone and it will take at least two weeks to hook up with the new company. I am lucky to get 5 Megabytes. Compared to Mexico, the US is a dream.

Mexico is #68 which makes America two times better than Mexico.

Good thread.

Effective "virtual distance" from U.S. servers, where most business websites are hosted I believe, is also going to be a factor for some expats overseas. I know it screws up VOIP phone calls and multi-player video games. Has anyone experienced this?

I mean has anyone experienced having good MIpS rate -- so local sites download (and upload) fast -- but high "latency" -- so there is a lag that slows more distant websites.

From my research the best example of this could be a place like Vietnam, with blazing fast MIpS, but a long internet road to reach the U.S.

This issue wouldn't affect a guy who, say, works in Chiang Mai, and writes an e-book while working at home (offline), then goes to the internet cafe and uploads it to Amazon or whoever.

It WOULD affect him if needed to do lots of internet research, surfing websites and downloading pages fast.

Jester wrote:Good thread.

Effective "virtual distance" from U.S. servers, where most business websites are hosted I believe, is also going to be a factor for some expats overseas. I know it screws up VOIP phone calls and multi-player video games. Has anyone experienced this?

I mean has anyone experienced having good MIpS rate -- so local sites download (and upload) fast -- but high "latency" -- so there is a lag that slows more distant websites.

From my research the best example of this could be a place like Vietnam, with blazing fast MIpS, but a long internet road to reach the U.S.

This issue wouldn't affect a guy who, say, works in Chiang Mai, and writes an e-book while working at home (offline), then goes to the internet cafe and uploads it to Amazon or whoever.

It WOULD affect him if needed to do lots of internet research, surfing websites and downloading pages fast.

I can attest that Bolivian wi-fi is awful. It had taken me an hour to upload a 5mb file to my 4shared. I would love to play Quake III overseas. Here in the US of ____, I have been playing Quake III with people from Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil and they had smaller ping than me whooping my arse!

South Korea's Internet speed is amazing! It makes the U.S. Internet look 'Third Worldish' in comparison.

zboy1 wrote:South Korea's Internet speed is amazing! It makes the U.S. Internet look 'Third Worldish' in comparison.

I used Chrome on weaker LAN wireless points. Chrome precache's and pre-serializes the data somehow to make it seconds fastest in weaker LAN situations.
Firefox sucks on slow connections.

zacb wrote:Can't you get internet , for instance, in the Philippines 6 mbps for 30? Heck, that is double the speed of where I live. Shesh, you would think I was using Hughesnet compared to the Philippines.

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No, Philippines internet is generally slow and doesn't work half the time unless you live in the downtown business district of a major city like Manila or Cebu. They don't have fiber optics yet, they are JUST starting to install them in the business districts but it will take years to even attempt to bring them to the outer parts of the cities let alone the provincial cities.

I supposedly have a 2 mbps DSL plan for around $35 a month, but it is more like 1mbps or less most of the time. They offer plans that claim to reach speeds of up to 10 mbps, but they don't mention it's only mostly working in select areas where most people don't live. Also depending on where you live the squatters will come around and cut the telephone cable lines to steal and use or sell for their own purposes. So if you don't live in a gated community or in a condo in the city you have to constantly deal with your line being cut and stolen, then yelling and screaming at CS to get someone to replace it no matter how regular it happens. Dealing with CS in Philippines is not easy cause they have to give you their panned catch phrases and solutions even though you tell them 10 times what the real issue is. Then half the time the repair guys don't show up or will pretend they did and say you weren't home so you have to call up again and yell and scream about it. It can be days to get service fixed. One time i rode the merry go round with CS-repair-CS-face-to-face CS-repair, ect for over 2 weeks and I was livid. Basically I'm the guy CS service hates to talk to cause I can't deal with their BS and I call them out on it. But it's the Philippines and CS WILL NEVER GET BETTER in this country cause they are taught not how to solve and deal with customer issues directly but with non-thinking scripts that just piss you off listening to them and the CS reps can't deviate from them. It's a nightmare, much worse than in the states.

The cable companies are trying to lure customers away from DSL by offering faster speeds at lower prices but they cap the amount of data you can use per month so it defeats the purpose of having high speed if you download a lot of stuff or watch a lot of online video.

I remember I was using 56k dial up in the middle of Makati up until around 2007/08, that's how lame the telephone/internet providers are here, completely backwards.

The speeds in the states are generally at least twice as fast as Philippines. Basically I have figured out that PI is roughly 8-10 years behind in most recent technology being used in 1st/2nd world countries. The reasons are many but the main factor is infrastructure, they just don't upgrade it enough or maintain it properly to sustain emerging technologies. It's one of the factors why the Philippines is so backwards in many quality of life areas, however it's one reason why older foreigners like living here cause the technology changes are so slow they don't really need to adapt to them like they would in their native 1st world countries. They can run around with the primitive Nokia candy bar phones where the most sophisticated feature is a working flash light and get away with it.

However you can get prepaid DSL without having to sign a long term contract but the usability of the USB sticks are grossly misrepresented by the phone companies and your lucky if you can get 200kbps regularly. Also if you use it for more than a couple of hours they will cut your speed down to less then 100kbps to get you to stop using it, so they are only good for a crutch like checking basic websites and emails, not for watching Youtube videos all day. Basically there is a lot of false advertising here in this country, it's just a bit more blatant and obvious than in the West once you try out the product. This includes all products, not just technology though.

The speed/performance and cost of internet service in the US varies greatly from location to location. Due to the size of US, it's not possible to be as "wired" nation-wide as smaller countries like SK.

Here in LA/OC, cable modem speeds usually top off at ~50 mbps (depending on provider) vs. Verizon Fios goes up to 300 mbps, assuming that you're willing to to pay for it.