Why Is Connectivity So Cheap In Stockholm? 443
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."
Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Stokab is a municipal owned company that runs most of the cables in the Stockholm area. Fiber is cheap to own and most of the conducts was already built for other utilities. The bedrock of Stockholm is solid granite and easy to tunnel.
There is no subsidized on the cable costs. The difference is the pay back time on the cable. Stokab probably have calculated a payback time equally the life time of the cable (20 years or more). And because they regularly have to replace there other cable infrastructure adding a few new cables isn't that expensive when the crew is in place.
Another factor that reduce the cost is that most of Stockholm have district heating with concrete ducts that run all over the city. In those conducts there is easy to have an RC robot laying cable besides the existing pipes.
By selling the fiber and black fiber telcos and other are renting fiber from Stokab instead of putting there own in the ground. That is also an factor that reduces the costs for the ISP.
My ISP (Bahnhof.se , of late ./ fame) runs part of there subscriber network in Stokab fibers.
Must be nice (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is one place local governments have failed (Score:3, Interesting)
For reasons that, I assume, have to do with a mixture of lobbying by incumbents and a strong distrust of "socialism" we've mostly been denying this fact for years.
It is a simple matter of empirical fact that free markets work pretty well. However, when you are dealing with natural monopolies, free markets aren't really an option, so that is irrelevant. The choice is pretty much between (ill) regulated monopoly and municipal ownership. Frankly, municipal ownership is likely the better choice. I know that I have way, way less trouble with my water service than with my phone service or ISP.
Fiber in gas pipes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:More like 80/20 (Score:4, Interesting)
No, that's Norway.
Finland has the world's best Punk bands.
Germany provides the best Heavy Metal artists.
In all three cases, I think the native languages lend themselves well to the success of these genres.
Sweden has.... choir singing and ABBA.
Re:Some crazy conspiracy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly what happens in the places I am familiar with where the city owns the fiber network. At first it is leased out as a low-cost non-profit utility for anyone that wants to use the fiber but over time they begin to view it as a profit center, jacking up the prices as much as they can get away with to put more money in the government's coffers. The finale is when the city decides to compete with the companies who are leasing the fiber to capture even more revenue. Eventually you end up with the rough equivalent of a telco monopoly in both services and prices.
In my experience with a couple municipal-owned fiber networks, it is about providing a low-cost public utility in the same way speeding tickets are about public safety. It becomes a revenue source to the de facto exclusion of the nominal purpose, but with the power of government to prevent outside competitors. Naturally, these all started out as noble forward-thinking projects.
Re:Some crazy conspiracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some crazy conspiracy? (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, I am Swedish.
We don't debate "socialism v.s. capitalism" in contemporary politics. We debate "security v.s. real jobs".
Re:Some crazy conspiracy? (Score:2, Interesting)
One book that looks at both of those countries specifially is P.J. O'Rourke's "Eat the Rich." P.J.O'R is certainly "conservative" (actually, quite libertarian in most aspects, I think, which is why I've just scare-quoted that word) and could I think be called a free-market evangelist, but I don't think political orientation of any sort would be a sticking point in finding the chapters in which he describes and contrasts Sweden and Cuba interesting / informative / enjoyable.
I don't have the book in front of me to quote, but it's recent enough and high-selling enough it shouldn't be too hard to find, if you're in the U.S.
You'll also find plenty of Sweden and Cuba mentions in the podcasts at econtalk.org; for instance, this one: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/10/bernstein_on_in.html [econtalk.org]
Cheers,
timothy
Re:Some crazy conspiracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, when the party that has ruled Sweden for most of the past century and still has the most voters is called the "social democrats" I think you can have a guess how "taboo" socialism is here. It is true we are a mixed economy however. The main difference to places like the US is that we don't pretend to be capitalist. We have a reasonably free market with necessary regulations that is complemented with a comprehensive welfare state. Oh, and over here "liberal" is something you accuse politicians of NOT being, as opposed to the surreal American situation where you're apparently pro freedom but anti liberty. Doublethink at its finest.
Re:Some crazy conspiracy? (Score:1, Interesting)
Are you kidding me? I myself is currently in Stockholm on a 100/100 Mbit connection from the company Bredband2. Almost all broadband connections are unmetered in Sweden (some mobile ones excluded) and I get around 11.4/10.8 MB in actual download/upload speed.
There were some problems with speeds on some *dsl lines years ago, but since The Swedish Post and Telecom Agency released an opensource bandwidth tester with an online version, reports about speeds are spread quickly. The largest cable modem operator have also just upgraded to 50/10 Mbit ($40).
The price on the other hand is somewhat wrong, because it depends on which network you are on. I'm on OpenNet which seems to be one of the more expensive ones and the price is more like $35/month. I can choose from about ten different providers.
Why do you think all the news from Sweden is about filesharing (The Pirate Bay, The Pirate Party, The Pirate Bureau) of course it's because the broadbands connections are slow and capped...NOT
Re:Because... (Score:2, Interesting)
There's lot of BS going on about Sweden here today. Swedens debt used to be exactly the same as the USA relative GDP, 80%. That was some time ago. We have been paying for that quite some time and the debt is down to 40% of GDP though it is rising, but so is USAs. We pay the highest taxes, some public services work, many (such as law enforcement) do not. We have practically not created a single new enterprise for the last 50 years. It's all pre-war and disappearing one by one (please understand that I'm not talking seven-eleven or McDonald's here). The lack of privately held venture capital makes all capital institutionalized and there's really no risk taking going on. Brilliant Swedes go abroad, to the US for example (figure that).
Re:Some crazy conspiracy? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:BEHOLD.... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/77/The_income_taxes_people_really_pay.html [oecdobserver.org]
"The average production worker in Sweden pays no income tax at all to the central government."
The personal exemption is a tenth higher that the average income. So unless you are doing better than most your taxes are in the form of sales tax and other flat taxes or fixed fees.
Re:Some crazy conspiracy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Whats all this talk about "guaranteed" bandwidth?
If you pay for something it should be guaranteed anyway, otherwise the merchant is a fraud.
Re:Some crazy conspiracy? (Score:1, Interesting)