nordify

I don't know if all the words in this list qualify. Some of them exist in other languages as specific words as well.

For example:

Fremdschämen To be embarrassed by something somebody else did German

Myötähäpeä in Finnish (alongshame when literally translated)

"Free" if you pay for the 499€ service tier.

0% tax on retained earnings.

So don't put in the money as share capital.

Finland has unlimited (without the quotation marks) data on prepaid SIMs from all carriers. Usually for about 1€ per day or 20€ per month. Depending on the plan it will also include unlimited texts and talk.

Scans do not need to be crazy expensive.

In Finland, unsubsidized, undiscounted and no questions asked, just pay prices for scans from a private health company are 258€.

Expensive, yes. Crazy expensive, no.

That sounds miserable. Give me a good cold winter with snow rather than a miserable non-winter that is damp, wet and slushy. Dry cold is far better than than damp thaw weather.

Both Sweden and Finland have hotels in the capital city center which are former prisons. According to reviews they are well regarded.

We have a program that grants a short (4 week) sabbatical every 5 years. You can add an additional 2 weeks of PTO to get to a 6 week break.

That's not a sabbatical, that's a normal summer vacation in Europe :)

Why always the focus on free Wifi? Germany, like most of Europe, has good 3G/4G coverage. Rates are reasonable, so you can provide your own connectivity. Far more cheaper than renting a space just to get free Wifi.

That doesn't mean that the German laws about liability for offering connectivity don't suck.

That's something which is easy to change if there was a will

You don't really believe that, now do you?

Clearing the usage of new frequency bands is a huge regulatory undertaking involving multiple countries. It takes years and massive effort even when there is a very strong will and a clear need.

Again that is easy to say but it is meaningless unless there are quantifiable metrics by which you can prove that.

Consumer prices.

Geographical coverage.

Unlimited and unrestricted usage.

If you look at the actual coverage map Finland isn't considerably better than most countries including the US, 4G+ is available in a few hotspots only, and the LTE and 3G coverage is pretty similar.

How did you perform this comparison? I find this claim very unlikely to be correct.

The 4G+ 300mbit plans from Elisa cost 60 Euros a month without a device, I haven't seen anything so far that is that unusual

This is incorrect.

DNA 300M plan is 30€ per month. Elisa and Sonera are 50€ Per month. All plans without a contract, quotas or limits.

300M are premium flagship plans with a premium price. 100M plan are like 15€.

Starter plans with 50 minutes of talk time and 0,25 Mbps of uncapped, unlimited and unrestricted usage are free on Sonera's network.

What other country comes even close?

EDIT: You can count Ukko out completely they do not provide voice at all not to mention that paying 85 Euros on a 12 month contract for 3-10 Mbit/s without a device is laughable

Tell that to somebody who would have to rely on satellite if it were not for Ukko. And it's not like you can't run your choice of VoIP over that.

Yes.

Don't know about Ukko or what they cover, can't even figure out if they are an MVNO or not their wikipedia entry says that they operate LTE 31 which makes them sound like a rural/remote region operator since that's what most of these low bands are used for.

Ukko is an MNO, not an MVNO. They hold a national license for the 450 MHz band which they use to provide data services in all of Finland.

Here is their coverage map: http://www.ukkoverkot.fi/kuuluvuus/

If they indeed operate on the LTE 31 band this also means they are a speciality carrier which also means they have to provide you with their own devices since I'm not aware of any mass market consumer device which supports B31

Correct.

The cellular spectrum especially in regards to 4G LTE channels is pretty damn large, and most countries started with more than 3-4 cellular providers they just had decades of consolidation since then.

Not all LTE bands are available in all countries.

Clearly there are some other forces driving cellular communication in Finland other than only having 3 carriers.

The difference is that Finland has effective competition, whereas other countries have nominal competition.

A good and effective regulative authority has definitely helped, but the fact that Finnish operators actually both invest and compete makes for all the difference.

You are sorely mistaken with regards to Finland.

Regulation in Finland defines what broadband speeds are acceptable. This includes mobile broadband. Acceptable speeds are a minimum of 50% of top speeds using a 4 hour average or a minimum of 40% of top speeds at any time.

And this regulation is enforced.

Sonara is Telia, didn't knew about DNA I know that some of the islands and the more remote areas have had setup coop telephone/internet companies but overall there isn't much "competition" as far as number of companies go.

There are five mobile operators in Finland: Elisa, Sonera, DNA, Ålcom and Ukko Mobile.

There are lots and lots of wireline operators.

If you exclude MVNO's most countries have pretty similar number of mobile and broadband providers.

There are similar numbers of mobile operators in most countries because there is only so much spectrum to go around. However there is a great deal of difference in the amount of wireline broadband providers per country.

Core networks do not use QoS or congestion control in the traditional sense, as they are designed to be run without congestion in normal circumstances and because QoS is too expensive compared to adding more capacity.

I feel I missed something. How is the government extorting the telcos?

The telcos are of course under no obligation to invest in 5G. Do you know of any 4G provider that isn't?

Yes, either via an enterprise certificate or via a free developer account. Especially in China they are big on sideloading via enterprise certificates :)

Yes, I know it's not ideal, but at least it's possible.

That was literally the premise of the thread.

No it wasn't. The thread starter discussed how broadband connections should be marketed, and the suggestion was to use guaranteed bandwidth as a measure.

This then digressed into the cost of bandwidth, where one poster took it totally off the rails by assuming transit costs $25 per Mbps, when the true cost is two decades lower.

The fixed cost of providing guaranteed bandwidth in the last mile pales compared to costs like $25 per Mbps, which was my point. The last mile is a fixed cost and even high amounts of guaranteed bandwidth in the last mile are fixed costs which are easily covered by the monthly subscription fee.

That does not mean that the fixed costs are free or low by absolute dollar terms.

So there.

I made no promises of either free or low.

I didn't write that comment, but in my opinion net neutrality is mostly a solution in search of a problem.

Net neutrality is (partial) remedy for lack of competition. Cure that and a lot of the reasons for net neutrality disappear. However, it is not realistic to expect true competition in the US telecoms market anytime soon.

One reason a lot of people see net neutrality as a solution in search of a problem is that net neutrality was the default before and it hasn't been egregiously abused to date. I'm sure a lot of people will agree it's a problem once they get some first hand experience of it.

Hypothetically, ISPs could try extorting and controlling the entire internet, but realistically it's not going to work.

I don't know. Comcast seems to be doing a pretty good job at it in the US.

I'm more concerned about app neutrality. Apple is extorting 30% from app makers and enforces rules to ensure their dominance over my phone.

You do know you can sideload apps on your phone?

It's a well known fact that certain ISPs in France will not peer with YouTube and thus their connections are congested.

This is not a technical problem, but a business decision. The at only solution is to vote with your wallet and chose an ISP that sucks less.

Maintenance is a percentage of the fixed costs. Upgrades replace old equipment as they have been paid off and decommissioned, so just another fixed cost that replaces the old fixed cost.

So fixed costs all around.

True, but it would still be a fixed cost to upgrade.

This honestly isn't true, because if we had a marketplace for ISPs, most consumers would pick the cheapest option, which would probably be the one that subsidizes it's revenue from charging companies like Netflix.

The marketplace doesn't work that way. Neither Netflix or any other content provider has any interest in paying any ISP for the pleasure of serving their customers. Netflix would just refuse to pay the low cost ISP and tell it's customers to change ISPs if they complain.

The only reason Netflix is paying Comcast is because Comcast has enough market power and captive users to blackmail Netflix into paying them, lest Netflix be denied access. If there was any alternative to Comcast, Netflix would just say screw that.

If Google decides to pay to providers to speed up Google content.

The Internet doesn't work that way. If Google wants their services to work better at particular ISP they pay for bigger pipes to the ISP and/or install content caches at the ISP and everybody is better off.

No, but everything that's not transit is a fixed cost and thus as long as the internal network is properly designed and implemented, only transit costs matter. The rest (i.e. the fixed costs) will be covered by the monthly subscription fee.