@maynarkh
Romanian here: correct, but not in a way that Americans might think of.
Here’s how it went. When I was young (in the late 90s - early 2000) computers were becoming more and more of a thing. We were poor as shit so we got really crappy ones, Pentium 486, 586, I, II, that sorta stuff.
Now, being dirt poor meant that we could barely convince our parents to get us computers, there was no way in hell they would be convinced to pay for an expensive internet connection.
So what we did instead was we chipped in and bought network gear and then drew cables from one apartment to another, from one bloc to another and form tiny local networks in between us so we can share pirated movies/games/music/porn and also play network games.
Then we chipped in money so that one of us got an internet connection and share it in our tiny little local network (unless you had a rich neighbor who could afford it by himself and you could beg him to let you use his internet connection).
Of course, the primary motivator for that was: piracy, gaming and porn.
These local networks happened in every city, all over the entire country. Lucky for us, the government didn’t intervene at all, they just completely ignored everything that was happening.
Gradually those tiny networks started communicating with one another and some entrepreneurial people saw that as an opportunity. All sorts of neighborhood companies sprung up and started offering cheaper internet connection using as a base the existing infrastructure that we created with those tiny little networks.
The competition between these companies was so fierce that it became ingrained in the culture, cheap and good became such an expectation that people had that it carried over to mobile phone services too. And even though nowadays we no longer have small companies competing with each other, but a handful of large companies, that expectation for cheap and good services is there.
That’s how you get 1Gbps internet connection for $9 (tax included) - the idea of a data cap on a broadband connection is not even a thing, doesn’t exist.
You’ll get data caps for mobile internet, for example Orange’s current offer is for $6.6 you’ll get unlimited calls/sms + 20GB internet or for $9.7 you’ll get unlimited calls/sms/internet. But if you want something really cheap, there’s other available for example Digi’s connection: for $2.2 you get unlimited network calls/sms, 200 minutes with other networks and 50GB internet.
Data caps for non-mobile internet are not really a thing in Europe.
I mean just think about how does Romania have better Internet than the US?
Less/no regulatory capture.
@maynarkh
Romanian here: correct, but not in a way that Americans might think of.
Here’s how it went. When I was young (in the late 90s - early 2000) computers were becoming more and more of a thing. We were poor as shit so we got really crappy ones, Pentium 486, 586, I, II, that sorta stuff.
Now, being dirt poor meant that we could barely convince our parents to get us computers, there was no way in hell they would be convinced to pay for an expensive internet connection.
So what we did instead was we chipped in and bought network gear and then drew cables from one apartment to another, from one bloc to another and form tiny local networks in between us so we can share pirated movies/games/music/porn and also play network games.
Then we chipped in money so that one of us got an internet connection and share it in our tiny little local network (unless you had a rich neighbor who could afford it by himself and you could beg him to let you use his internet connection).
Of course, the primary motivator for that was: piracy, gaming and porn.
These local networks happened in every city, all over the entire country. Lucky for us, the government didn’t intervene at all, they just completely ignored everything that was happening.
Gradually those tiny networks started communicating with one another and some entrepreneurial people saw that as an opportunity. All sorts of neighborhood companies sprung up and started offering cheaper internet connection using as a base the existing infrastructure that we created with those tiny little networks.
The competition between these companies was so fierce that it became ingrained in the culture, cheap and good became such an expectation that people had that it carried over to mobile phone services too. And even though nowadays we no longer have small companies competing with each other, but a handful of large companies, that expectation for cheap and good services is there.
That’s how you get 1Gbps internet connection for $9 (tax included) - the idea of a data cap on a broadband connection is not even a thing, doesn’t exist.
You’ll get data caps for mobile internet, for example Orange’s current offer is for $6.6 you’ll get unlimited calls/sms + 20GB internet or for $9.7 you’ll get unlimited calls/sms/internet. But if you want something really cheap, there’s other available for example Digi’s connection: for $2.2 you get unlimited network calls/sms, 200 minutes with other networks and 50GB internet.
That’s fascinating. Thanks for the explanation!
That’s amazing and that’s how it should be. I did something similar back in the 90’s in my apartment building.