The Californian Paradox

Right now, i’m in the famous Silicon Valley. The cradle of the internet. I’m having lots of meetings with legendary venture capital firms, with WiFi access point makers and with the giants of the internet. In each one of these meetings, i try out the internet connections that people use here and i come to the mind-boggling conclusion that internet connections here are REALLY BAD. Seriously, people here surf at speeds that we were used to in Spain back in 2000. I am astonished to see that the people who design the most advanced software, websites and hardware, surf at internet speeds not much faster than a dial-up modem. While in the Valley inquired why internet was so slow and I always got the same answer: that it’s due to the fixed line operator monopoly in the US where you have 1 or 2 main net providers per city seemingly colluding. Interestingly, in Europe, there is a lot of competition among fixed line operators and very little with mobile operators. Here, it’s the contrary, mobiles are much cheaper (terrible quality though) but fixed phone lines have smaller bandiwths and are very expensive. Clearly, this is not Sweden where Labs2 amazed me with their 1 Gig bandwidth for only 89 euros.