Why Is Connectivity So Cheap In Stockholm?

lpress writes "Symmetric, 100 Mbps service in Stockholm, costs $11/month. Conditions in every city are different, but part of the explanation for the low cost is that the city owns a municipal fiber network reaching every block. They lease network access to anyone who would like to offer service. The ISPs, including incumbent telephone and cable companies, compete on an equal footing."

More like 80/20

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on the Stockholm network mentioned in the summary, and it's more like 80Mbps downlink and 20Mbps uplink in actual usable bandwidth. But I can live with it.

Re:Some crazy conspiracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Western Europe socialist is not the same as communist. Socialists believe in a government-corrected free-market (e.g. Sweden) in contrast to communists who believe in a government-planned economy (e.g. Cuba).
Personally I think prices for products depend more on the local market situation, the price people are willing and able to pay for goods and services. In Sweden telecom services, house rents and medical services are cheap, but food, alcohol, cars and taxes are expensive.

Re:Some crazy conspiracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, I get 100/10Mbps from BBB for 225 or 275/month (can't remember which) through my homeowner's association. IIRC, normal price is 320/month.
Also worth noting is Bahnhof (of recent datacenter and delete-the-logs fame) do 100/10 for 289/month, 100/100 for 319/month.

My mother living in the boondocks of Stockholm (i.e., no subway, train or tram lines -- bus only) can get 100/100 for 500/month through one of the *private* landlord networks (i.e., not STOKAB), or 100/10 for 250 - 350/month.

Re:Hmmm

[nine-times]

Name one price set in the economy, outside the price that government charges for it's "services", that isn't ultimately 'take it or leave it'?

The problem with monopolies isn't whether a price, once set, is "take it or leave it." It's that they have much more power at the point when they're setting the price, which leaves the customers with the choice to "take it" or simply live without it. Customers don't have other options because there isn't meaningful competition.

People wanting to make laws that restrain the power of a monopoly does not constitute "theft".

this is a private company providing the service

[falconwolf]

The company is owned by the city of Stockholm and is not a private business. Stokab [stokab.se] was founded in 1994 and is owned by the company group Stockholms Stadshus AB, which is in turn owned by the City of Stockholm.

Falcon

Re:Some crazy conspiracy?

[mariushm]

The guaranteed bandwidth is around 7-9$ per megabit in US, less if you order bigger chunks like 1gbps or 10gbps.

But this applies to datacenters, not home users.

Re:Some crazy conspiracy?

[nx]

They order 100mbit and its usually 4-6MB/s.

I seriously doubt this is true, for at least two reasons.
(1) All broadband providers have a minimum bandwidth guarantee (and I'm talking about normal consumers here). As far as I understand, it's mandated by law. In fact, they don't market it as "100 Mbps", they market it as "50 - 100 Mbps" or similar. E.g., Telia has a 50+ Mbps guarantee and Bredbandsbolaget has a 60+ Mbps guarantee.
(2) As a previous employee of one of the larger ISP I have first hand knowledge of at least that company's delivered speeds. While a few customers do in fact receive the download speeds you mention, it's usually end-point related (meaning if you switch rj45 or remove your router, it's no longer an issue). Most customers are located at the higher end of the spectrum, 70+ or 80+ Mbps.

One group of customers which actually do have a large variation in bandwidth are DSL customers, where the bandwidth is very dependent on the length and quality of the copper lines. Another piece of evidence, anecdotal as it may be: I currently have a 100 Mbps subscription. When wired, and even through a somewhat crappy router, I usually reach about 90 Mbps.

What are you, some kind of hippie?

[Anonymous Coward]

It just goes to show the importance of moderation in all things. Moderation in regulation. Moderation in privatization.

How DARE you imply that the Invisible Market Fairy is anything other than the perfect solution?!?!?!

I DEMAND that you retract your statement. This is America, where anything less than 100% unfettered unregulation is pure unadulterated evil!

Re:Uhhh, yeah...

[brusk]

Your father lied to you.

First-class postage in the US was never exactly 7 cents. It went straight from 6 (1968) to 8 cents (1971). It's very difficult to compare prices over time meaningfully, but in inflation-adjusted terms postage rates have actually held pretty constant since about the 70s. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_Postal_Service_rates [wikipedia.org]> Wikipedia. Given that the two main costs of the USPS are fuel and labor, which have gone up faster than consumer prices as a whole, that's not bad.

As for "often as not, takes six times as long," that's not been my experience. I've lived all over the country, and had mail take anything from one day to a week, but never -- unless there was something like mail forwarding involved -- had domestic mail take 12 days. Heck, international mail from Europe often gets to me in rural upstate NY in 4-5 days.

Re:Some crazy conspiracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you conveniently left out any figures I'm gonna respond with some.

First of all, all consumer lines everywhere are over subscribed. That's how consumer ISPs stay in business.

From experience I know that you're (maybe not during peek hours) able to fully burst a 100Mbit connections from the ISP Bredbandsbolaget. But of course your mileage may vary. Still 4-6MB/s (~50Mbit/s) is not bad for a consumer line.

Also, I know of no (major) Swedish ISPs that have a limit on the amount of data you can transfer.

A premium guaranteed 100Mbit/s in Stockholm costs from $600 to $1200 (5000-10000 SEK) (this is also from experience).

(Heck, Bahnhof (the villan-datacenter-ISP) offers a premium 1 Gbit/s connections to companies in STHLM for $1200).

Re:Really?

[arth1]

It's so funny how everyone outside of the U.S. (mostly Europeans) think they have such a forward-thinking, intellectual society. How can this be?

Because they compare themselves to the reactionary superstitions-based society we have here in the US?

Every major technological invention happened in the U.S., or by a European who, 9 times out of 10, moved to the U.S.

Even when excluding the inventions that occurred before the US existed, like the wheel, steel, and printing press, this is still patently (no pun intended) false:

• Jacquard's Loom, which started the industrial revolution? Sorry, Not Invented Here.
• The Automobile? While there are dozens of possible "inventors", none of them were in or moved to the US. The father of the "modern" automobile was Karl Benz, not Henry Ford.
• The camera and photographs? While this too is hard to establish who was the real inventor, it certainly happened LONG before Kodak Eastman, by people who never set foot on American soil.
• The lightbulb and electric generator? The lightbulb was invented in Russia, and the generator to run it by the well-known British professor Faraday. Edison was really only good at patenting, skimming what inventions had been done in other countries and be the first to patent them in the US.
• Flight? You have to tweak the definition of flight quite a bit to believe the Kitty Hawk jumps were first. Almost everyone now acknowledge that at least Richard Pearse was earlier, and probably several others. And the invention, not the actual flight? That too is across the sea. Otto Lilienthal had plans for adding engines and propellers to his gliders when he died (the Wright brothers based much of their research on Lilienthal).
• The electrical telegraph? Baron Pavel Schilling.
• The telephone? Also disputed, but it's indisputable that Johann Reis demonstrated his Reis Telephone publically in 1861, 14 years before Bell. (In fact, the phone had already been patented and expired in the US before Bell re-patented it.)
• The programmable computer? Konrad Zuse was first. But if you think of electronic computers only, the British Colossus preceded the American Eniac by several years. The invention? Babbage.
• Antibiotics? Louis Pasteur. Who also gave us pasteurization.
• The atomic bomb? Yeah, I'll grant us that useful contribution to mankind.

As for people moving to the US, that has nothing to do with this country's greatness, but the amount of money this country is willing to pay smart people precisely because they are such a scarce resource here. While Wehrner Von Braun, Tim Berners-Lee and Linus Torvalds all moved here, that doesn't mean that the US can claim credit for their inventions.

Wrong summary

[denoir]

Stockab has fibers connected to municipal housing. That's about 20% of all fiber, and they cost more as both ISP and stockab get paid. The reason why it's so cheap is because of fierce competition between the different broadband providers. There was zero regulation and great tax benefits during the IT-boom era which led to a large number of broadband providers. That made a huge difference.

I pay (in Stockholm) about $7/month for a 100 Mbit connection and that's through privately owned fiber, not the municipal one. It also varies from city to city. In the case of Västerås (another Swedish city) they did actually build a full municipal fiber network and through laws and regulations made it a monopoly (the fibers, not the service). Prices there are about $30-40/month for a 20 Mbit connection.

Re:Some crazy conspiracy?

[nx]

It simply means that if you, through no fault of your own (they usually require you to do some debugging, i.e. switching rj45, bypassing your router, and so forth), cannot reach the guaranteed speed when measured to a reference server, they'll fix it. (Oh, and it probably has to happen with some regularity - I don't think they'll send a technician if you got 47 Mbps just the once.) I actually don't know what happens if they can't, I've never seen that happen. You'd probably be able get a refund, at a minimum. Now, while they do oversell bandwidth, it's my understanding that this mainly applies access outside each providers' own net. I.e. you should be able to max out your bandwidth to the reference servers (commonly the ones reached through bredbandskollen.se). Don't quote me on this though, I'm sure there are other slashdotters with better knowledge of this.

If all their customers was always maximizing their bandwidth, my guess is that the policy would change, or rates would spike. There are no caps in place on regular broadband right now, that I know of. Though, if memory serves, the mobile broadband providers have caps.

Nonsense

[Skitsnack]

I live in Stockholm, please tell me where I can sign up for a 100Mb/s connection for $11/month. The blog post is pure nonsense. The uplink speed is not really that interesting. Sure you can get a connection with that kind of uplink but how does that differ from a 1Gb/s service? Hell I can sell you a 10Gb/s service for 12$/month. It won't connect anywhere but it will give you a really cool uplink and you will a nice 10Gb/s to all my other customers in your appartment.

Re:Some crazy conspiracy?

[SlashWombat]

The thing with ethernet is there is a mandated quiet period between packets, they are not generally cued back to back ... plus, there is often preamble and post-amble info ... the preamble is to "lock up" the receiver. Then, there is the header info associated with the packet ... this is not data. The header info can amount to several percent of the data payload (depends on the size of the packet ... often configurable)

The outcome of all this is that you will not get 100MBits of data out of a 100 MBit link! you are doing well if you end up with 8 megabytes a second across a 100 megabit link!

Re:Some crazy conspiracy?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Bredbandbolaget's prices are variable depending on the fastighetsägare

According to google translate, that means "property"...

There's a reason that Google Translate is a beta. Actually, it's the owner (ägare) of the property (fastighet).

Not a native speaker, but have lived in Sweden for the last 2 years and taken some language courses.

Back on topic: I live in Bagarmossen (south end of Stockholm, next-to-last T-bana station), and pay Bredbandsbolaget SEK 349/month for 24/3, including the phone line. Still a much better deal than what I had in Brisbane AU, where I paid Optus about 1.5 times that much for 3/1 connectivity -- and a 10 GB/month cap.

I still remember fondly when I rang B2 to get signed up and their response to my question about that last issue was, "What's a bandwidth cap? [*/me explains...*] Oh! [*chuckle*] But why would we do something like that?"