TL;DR: BitTorrent being the reason doesn't sound so interesting for a Vice article.
As a person who helped build a "district ISP network" back in the early 2000s, I can tell you that that reason is just some Vice.com style linkbait.
Romania has great Internet speeds because the authorities tolerated us installing cables all over the darn place. Back then it wasn't uncommon to have almost half a dozen ISPs in a one square mile neighbourhood, all offering 50-100 mbps in the city and 1-2 mbps actual Internet speeds, without any FUP.
We were almost the same age and people didn't care about the low international speeds because we could all share movies and music at 50+ mbps (and 0.5 mbps was more than enough for browsing).
This was happening way before the video chat industry took off. Also, for that kind of stuff you need good sustained upload, but the ISPs are still limiting the upload speed to around 30 mbps even for gigabit connections. This doesn't affect BitTorrent (which can be left open over night).
According to http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/treg/broadband/BB_MDG_Romania_BBCOM... , there was only a broadband penetration rate of 5,5% . Perhaps some of the Vice article are lies, but probably not all of them.. As bittorrent doesn't generate as much money as the webcam industry...
Could be, it's just "believing" that the article isn't a whole lie.
As a person who helped build a "district ISP network" back in the early 2000s, I can tell you that that reason is just some Vice.com style linkbait.
Romania has great Internet speeds because the authorities tolerated us installing cables all over the darn place. Back then it wasn't uncommon to have almost half a dozen ISPs in a one square mile neighbourhood, all offering 50-100 mbps in the city and 1-2 mbps actual Internet speeds, without any FUP.
We were almost the same age and people didn't care about the low international speeds because we could all share movies and music at 50+ mbps (and 0.5 mbps was more than enough for browsing).
This was happening way before the video chat industry took off. Also, for that kind of stuff you need good sustained upload, but the ISPs are still limiting the upload speed to around 30 mbps even for gigabit connections. This doesn't affect BitTorrent (which can be left open over night).