Starting with 2005 the bigger/"normal" ISPs started to buy these networks (the businesses that maintained them), and migrate the customers to a more standardized / legal (and more expensive) network link.
Also, in the last years an underground fiber backbone was installed in Bucharest, and the fiber above ground started to migrate (not really willingly) to that. The problem is that there is no incentive to uninstall unused fiber from the poles (it's not valuable as a second-hand object and hard to recycle) so that fiber just stays there, in many cases broken.
First they start with Ethernet to the buildings and one switch for each entrance to all occupants. And they was times when most of infrastructure was above the ground on poles. That was 20 years ago.
But like 10+ years ago they start making fiber to the buildings (FTTB) and now they're migrating to fiber to the home (FTTH).
For now most of infrastructure is underground.
There's no need for "telephone poles." That is complete nonsense, not least because Verizon has the monopoly on underground conduit in Manhattan. They literally own the Empire City Subway, the ostensibly vendor-neutral central conduit system that runs under every single street in Hell's Kitchen.
For some "mysterious" reason, no one other than Verizon can ever get conduit space in the ECS. Gee I wonder why that is. At the same time, Verizon has no interest in using that space for fiber -- they'd rather leave hundred year old dead copper lines sit than admit competitors OR upgrade their own infrastructure
Fios isn't failing to deploy to his building because it's hard to negotiate with landlords -- they are failing to deploy because they do not believe the city will enforce the terms of their franchise. It's more profitable to wire a few high-density buildings, and leave everyone else to rot, assuming the city never fines them. (That looks like a safe assumption from where I am sitting.)
Verizon has ample capability and they choose not to live up to their obligations.
I have a 200 down / 20 up connection at my office for $80/month - roughly the same at home for ~$50/month. At home, we don't normally get that unless actually wired in, as the wifi stuff around the house is bad (boosters don't help much). At the office, even over wifi, it can often be over the 200 - the wifi is probably a bottleneck there.
The town where the office is is offering 'gigabit to the home', but only in new construction homes. The downtown spot I'm in won't get upgrades for a while, from what I'm hearing.
I'm in the suburbs of a moderately large tech area, and almost rural by some measures. That said, I know some friends a bit further out aren't served very well at all, and are struggling with satellite connections as their last hope for 'fast' internet (6-10m from what I remember).
> I am surprised there's not more backlash about this.
FWIW, we (USA) get hosed around on so many things (healthcare, net, etc) and are also fed a patriotic diet of "America is the best" growing up. Because we're so large and isolated, many folks never travel, and a couple generations ago, most didn't have access to international publications/media like we do today. All that combines to give many of my fellow citizens a somewhat distorted view of our own standing and quality of life. There's little reason to 'backlash' when you think you're already "the best".
Often in apartment rentals in Romania, the link to the apartment is a fast fiber one, but 1) the installers didn’t properly connect all eight pins to the ethernet cable, and/or 2) the apartment’s owner has installed a slow router. Gigabit routers have until recently been a specialist item in Romania that had to be special-ordered, and the owners of rented apartments and cafes just bought a cheap slow router at the local hypermarket. So, the internet that customers enjoyed was always slower than the physical connection could have provided.
That's more about proximity than about bandwidth. Whenever I'm SF, I'm surprised at how quickly everything loads, mainly because the datacenter is next to me rather than on the other side of the world.
A lot of stuff was built out post-WW2 when everything was still green fields. Now, several decades later, all of this infrastructure still (mostly) "works" so everyone is not enthusiastic about spending money to make it 'better'.
I'm guessing that during those same decades many/most Communist countries did not have awesome infrastructure, and so when they became more open, there was a lot of catching up to do. So in many ways you are in a country that is (relatively speaking) like the US was during the 1950s and 1960s. In some ways you 'skipped' a generation and so leap-frogged America a bit.
Also, it seems that Romania has a population bulge of people our 40 years of age:
* https://www.indexmundi.com/romania/age_structure.html
When those people hit their 60s, like the Baby Boomers in the US now are, then you may find economic growth to be more of a struggle (see Japan).
* https://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/age_structure.html
In Kiev, I ordered an internet connection and to my surprise I was told that it was all done and ready to go without any visits to my apartment. I was surprised.
The wall outlet was an Ethernet port. No TV cable. No phone line. Direct RJ45.
Later I learned that everything is in the central wiring closet somewhere in the building. And many buildings are just connected roof to roof with cables.
I had 100/100 mbit connection, with unlimited data, for $15 USD/mo. Don’t remember having any issues. That was 5 years ago.
Back in the early days buildings often had their own LAN for sharing warez and gaming. Sometimes adjacent buildings were connected for extended network.
A year ago the price for a 100/100 connection in Kiev (Kyiv) was $8/mo. TV (over IP) with 40+ channels included. New condo. RJ45 right in the wall.
Huh, never thought of this as weird. I remember using a dial-up modem in the early 2000s in Romania, but since then I've just had a normal Ethernet port coming out of the wall everywhere, including Western Europe.
Or you get a phone outlet, for which you need a DSL modem.
For both cases, back in the day, you still needed a router. Nowadays it’s usually a modem-router combo, and usually they are terrible.
Everyone always has a rats nest of wires somewhere behind a TV or couch. :D
Given that my work has 1Gb connection, I just download the really big things at work.
For internet on your smartphone you have an option of ~ 2$/month for 50 GB, 4G speeds [1] You can check the coverage here [2]
[0] https://www.digiromania.ro/servicii/internet/internet-fix/fi...
[1] https://www.digiromania.ro/servicii/telefonie-mobila/optim/d...
I grew up there, I remember dial up and wasting a lot of my mother's money on it. Then the state run ISP rolled out ADSL and it got way better. In the span of 2-3 years, I went from 64/64 kbit/s to 6/1 Mbps.
In another year, it was 24/1 Mbps, and yet another year or so they started rolling out fiber, with free upgrades for everyone as long as you renewed the contract. 30/30 Mbps, then 100/100 Mbps, now you can get 1000/1000 for $20 or 300/300 Mbps for $10. Upgrading to a higher speed is still free afaik, but your contract gets renewed for 3 years.
Interestingly, it used to be possible to get multiple connections at the same house (like, literally, multiple fiber cables). Not sure if that's still possible and what the limit was per individual/house, but I always wondered if one could get something ridiculous like 4000/4000 Mbps aggregate speed.
And yes, the upload speeds are true, although their own routers won't reach them.
But good news, you can use any router with an SFP transceiver.
I am not aware of anything like the private networks created in Romania by individuals. There are a few other ISPs that started early, and technically competed with Moldtelecom (the state run ISP) with their own cables, but they did not operate outside the capital for a very long time. Moldtelecom had a monopoly.
There used to be a lot of Internet cafes that everyone would use for LAN gaming and Internet browsing, it was fun.
This might be the best thing the government has done in the country since independence, I don't know what motivations they had, they didn't seem to be lobbied by anyone since there were no Internet startups with significant influence. They just sort of... did it.
If anyone knows more about the history of Internet in the Republic of Moldova, please comment.
Now there's talks of selling Moldtelecom to Huawei, which might be a bad idea. They already use Huawei equipment, just not sure what they would do if they buy the whole company.
:(
Looking at their offers now, you even get unlimited 4G with the gigabit fiber package for an extra $5.
People in the countryside now use unlimited 3G/4G exclusively, so fiber rollout is slower, but afaik still ongoing.
Not really sure what to make of it. Maybe they want to attract and retain people working online/remote. But that clearly isn't working, citizens leave the country at the first opportunity. Digital nomads are certainly welcome, though.
The average user doesn't care one bit, they just want to browse Facebook/VK/OK/Youtube.
Still, have to admit, it's a pretty great thing they're doing.
* Have a time limit for responding to licensing requests. Eg. 14 days. If the government can't accept or reject a request in that time period, it is auto accepted. If it is rejected, a resubmitted request must be accepted if it addresses the rejection reason.
* Allow a business to operate for 30 days before, during, and after submitting a license request, and with no penalty if 'in good faith' they believed it was reasonably likely their request would be accepted.
