Thanks, everyone, for ruining webDiplomacy

[dargorygel]

I live in a rural community. The internet is very bad here. By bad I mean slow. My poor system can not keep up with all these gifs and such. It displays, "loading" indefinitely. I had to drive 15 miles to a McDonald's to get webDip to load.

So all you young whippersnappers have ruined it. Stupid modernity.

[Octavious]

Out of curiosity what counts as very bad for everyone?

I live in a rural community in Gloucestershire with a population of a little over 2,000 (and which is classed as a town rather than a village purely because someone built a castle in the middle of it). The best internet I could get here is around 900 Mbs, but that's a relatively new development and quite expensive (a smidge over $60 per month). What we make do with is closer to 60 Mbs, which is what's been the standard speed here for several years and is a lot more affordable.

I'm aware that's probably painfully slow compared to some parts of the world, but it does the job and is the price you pay for clean air and peace and quiet. Without making me too jealous, what do the rest of us get?

[dargorygel]

Rural Kansas... top speed available (for 105 per month) is 50 Mbs. $55 will get me 5 Mbs. We are 15 minutes from a city of 800,000 greater metro area. I live in a rural setting... no town center, etc. Our region is considered to have around 800 people.

I spent a long time in rural South Dakota, but it was more an actual town. We had 1250 folk, but had fantastic fiber optic internet when it first came out, because our state congress decided our school needed good internet, so the rest of us benefited. This was around 20 years ago or so. They have not upgraded, so now they are complaining about how slow it is.

[President Eden]

300 Mbps fiber gang reporting in.

I could have gone for 1000 but didn't feel like spending more money.

suburb of a somewhat large city (metro pop ~1.5M)

[kestasjk]

Hey darg if you're not j/k let me know and I'll find some workaround where you can block the images


edit: On the subject a cautionary tale from Australia: A couple governments ago (before 4G/5G/Starlink) they announced the NBN / National Broadband Network, which would be a government owned company that would run fiber optic cable to every house in Australia.

It would charge the same rate to everyone, so that people in the country would get decent internet at the same rate as people in the city for the same price.
The city users who would be cheap to provide for would balance out the rural users that would be very expensive to provide for.


It was costed at $42bn (to dig up every driveway on an entire continent, including driveways leading to farms), and once completed would make money for the taxpayer.

There were delays and cost increases etc where it was first rolled out to in Tasmania, and it became clear it would be way more expensive and take far longer.
Meanwhile 4G was becoming popular, there were new ways to run fiber closer to the home so that the copper cables were faster, and services like Starlink were coming online that could provide decent internet to rural areas at a much, much lower cost.


While NBN has a monopoly on wired home services they can't stop people using 4G/5G, their fiber connections aren't much faster, and most people just don't need >100mbit, so they've had to do big writeoffs, revise estimates down, compromise on fiber to the home (especially for rural homes).
Now it's a political blame game about which government ruined this doomed-to-fail project that in 2010 was premised on internet delivery companies/startups stagnating.

[kestasjk]

Out of curiosity what counts as very bad for everyone?

I live in a rural community in Gloucestershire with a population of a little over 2,000 (and which is classed as a town rather than a village purely because someone built a castle in the middle of it). The best internet I could get here is around 900 Mbs, but that's a relatively new development and quite expensive (a smidge over $60 per month). What we make do with is closer to 60 Mbs, which is what's been the standard speed here for several years and is a lot more affordable.

I'm aware that's probably painfully slow compared to some parts of the world, but it does the job and is the price you pay for clean air and peace and quiet. Without making me too jealous, what do the rest of us get?

I would get a 900 Mbs/$60mo connection in a second if I could..

Note I'm not yet eligible for the superfast option, the highest I can go is 90mbit/$90mo. My 5G mobile plan, also around $90/mo, gives around 50mbit.

So yeah.. don't feel too hard done by. (Though honestly I never really feel like I need faster internet, I probably wouldn't pay more for faster speeds)

[learnedSloth]

There was a time when user agents didn't download all content automatically.
If that's still an option it would fix this issue for all sites.

[dargorygel]

@kestas
"Hey darg if you're not j/k let me know and I'll find some workaround where you can block the images"

I was joking... not about the slowness of my interwebs... but that it is a problem. I was trying to be April Foolish.

[PRINCE WILLIAM]

Is the cost you mention for the internet only or for the whole communications package (internet and telephone)?

[gimix]

I hope you guys are joking about the prices.
Mountain village, just under 1,000 inhabitants.
My actual average speed is 100/30 Mbs download/upload (the company says it's faster, but that's untrue of course). Unlimited data and phone calls, etc, at €24.90/mo.
And mobile data+voice, unlimited in Italy and 10 GB/mo + unlimited calls in EU, actual average speed 30/1.25, at €12.00. This is so expensive because I chose the most reliable company, otherwise I could save at least 30%.

[JECE]

I just checked my internet speed few times with the website of my internet service provider. It clocked in at just 28 mbps, 18 mbps and 16 mbps for download speeds and 7 mbps, 17 mbps and 9 mbps for upload speeds. I pay 155.76 USD per month for these miserable speeds, though they claim that I should be getting 155 mbps. Of course, ask them to fix this and they will tell you that they might charge you a $80 service charge if they determine that it's your fault, and of course there is no way to prove otherwise so why bother with that. And it doesn't seem possible to lower my speed so that at least I'm paying less. There is only one competitor that provides internet service to my building. I used that company in my previous apartment and I was similarly frustrated with them at the time. This is the capital of the richest country in the world.

[brainbomb]

well this was a surprise

[teacon7]

We've all been there. But I do have a solution. Here's the flow:

user uploads image > image gets re-sized so it'll convert correctly > image is translated into ascii art > that ascii art is then printed on a postcard and mailed to darg, so he can pick it up when he rides a bison the 50 miles to town on his monthly trip to the post office.

[qrzy]

Don't use the forum!

[MajorMitchell]

Please do NOT include me in the generic "Everyone" who is being blamed for woeful internet thingy data transfer speeds in rural Kansas.
I had my suspicions that this was a clever satirical Wizard of Oz over Kansas parody or trap for gullible readers