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Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

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Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#71

Post by mft_ »

ceejayoz wrote: post #63
mft_ wrote: post #61

I have a gentle rule, which is when discussing (geo)politics with friends, we should try not to use Switzerland as an example. It's just too good, too rational, too sensible, too well run, in myriad ways that other countries should be able to emulate, but consistently and constantly don't.

I have a gentle rule, which is "if you can do it in one place, it is probably possible to do it in a second". The Swiss are not a separate species.

So one would think.

And yet, living in Switzerland after the UK involved one after another discovery of how well-ordered and -run a country could be. And then moving to Germany was like stepping back even further behind my memories of the UK.

I'm sure you could find examples of countries that do specific things as well as Switzerland; but I'm not aware of many places that do almost everything so excellently. (Maybe Japan, in many respects, but I lack sufficient direct experience to adequately judge.)

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#72

Post by manquer »

andy99 wrote: post #56

What does one achieve with 25 GB internet? Are speeds actually usefully faster, or is there some other bottleneck that makes the practical speed the same as in the US? Also any workload I have that is bandwidth heavy would be on clouds machines between data centres and generally very fast. Are there reasons why someone at home would benefit from 25GB internet beyond whatever is available? Is this a case of over engin…

Workloads emerge with higher capacity not other way around. Lossless media, to virtual reality applications all scale better with more available bandwidth.

An average AAA game is 100-200GB today. That is not by accident, The best residential internet of 1Gbps dedicated it is still 30 minutes of download, for the average buyer it is still few hours easily.

A 2TB today game is a 5 hour download on 1 Gbps connection and days for median buyer. Game developers can not think of a 2TB game if storage capacity, I/O performance, and bandwidth all do not support it.

Hypothetically If I could ship a 200TB game I would probably pre-render most of the graphics at much higher resolutions/frame-rates than compute it poorly on the GPU on the fly.

More fundamentally, we would lean towards less compute on client and more computed assets driven approach for applications. A good example of that in tech world in the last decade is how we have switched to using docker/container layers from just distributing source files or built packages. the typical docker images in the corporate world exceed 1GB, the source files being actually shipped are probably less than 10Mb of that. We are trading size for better control, Pre built packages instead of source was the same trade-off in 90s.

Depending on what is more scarce you optimize for it. Single threaded and even multi-threaded compute growth has been slowing down. Consumer internet bandwidth has no such physics limit that processors do so it is not a bad idea to optimize for pre-computed assets delivery rather than rely on client side compute.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#73

Post by ceejayoz »

mft_ wrote: post #71
ceejayoz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a gentle rule, which is "if you can do it in one place, it is probably possible to do it in a second". The Swiss are not a separate species.

So one would think. And yet, living in Switzerland after the UK involved one after another discovery of how well-ordered and -run a country could be. And then moving to Germany was like stepping back even further behind my memories of the UK. I'm sure you could find examples of countries that do specific things as well as Switzerland; but I'm not aware of many places that do almost everything so excellently. (Maybe J…

I don't doubt there are differences.

I doubt they're insurmountable. Again, because the Swiss aren't some genetically superior subspecies. Culture can be changed.

I see Americans talk about how impossible universal healthcare is as if the rest of the developed world hasn't largely figured it out.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#74

Post by harrall »

This article gets ahead of itself.

The issue isn’t the splitting. There is no fiber to even split in most places. A lot of places in America had their “network” infra built 50-100 years ago on copper and no one wants to pay to basically rebuild all of it.

I happen to live in an area where there are still above ground utilities.

We got >5 gig fiber fast. We have 700Mbps 5G. I literally watched them string the fiber on the poles.

It’s still not shared, but it’s fast because it’s new. Shared would be preferred, but you need destroy + “new” first, and most people are fine with what copper gives them. Shared may even be cheaper but most people don’t think we need to rebuild anything.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#75

Post by emtel »

littlestymaar wrote: post #36
chrismcb wrote: post #29

Because it isn't a free market in the USA. And those that regulate it don't seem to care. Or maybe it is those that have been granted a monopoly do everything they can to retain said monopoly. Things would be different if we actually had a free market

Free market enthusiasts' reasoning is literary the same as Communists': when their grand theory fails to deliver its grandiose promises, it's nver because their believes where nonsensical, but because “it isn't real Communism/free market”.

Communist regimes, especially the USSR, had nearly unlimited power to impose exactly the policies that supposedly would help.

Open societies, in contrast, must balance many competing interests and voting factions, meaning that free market supporters have limited power to enact their preferred policies, meaning they rarely can be implemented in a “pure” form.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#76

Post by karlgkk »

HauntingPin wrote: post #57
xboxnolifes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...one day, one of the municipal counselors just called up a friend who worked for a fiber laying company and asked them for a favor: put out a press release saying that they were “investigating” laying an undersea fiber to power a municipal fiber network on the little island. They called in a favor that put pressure on the company from public expectations.

Yes. What do you think happens in a competitive marketplace? Sony heard about Nintendo partnering up with Philips for the SNES CD expansion, so Sony made their own console. That's literally competition. The details of how the "public pressure" came to be don't matter, because the monopoly didn't know about that. All they knew was there was a potential competitor, so they behaved according to that information. That's…

Frankly, I think you're trying to poke holes in a straightforward concept. And now you've dug your heels in and you're trying to justify it. But... let's ignore opinions and interpretations...

> Sony heard about Nintendo partnering up with Philips for the SNES CD expansion, so Sony made their own console

This is completely inaccurate in every way possible. You even have the order of events backwards (Nintendo and Sony partnered first). There is in no way in which even the most charitable interpretation of this statement could bear out. Just about the only correct part is that you have some (but not all!) of the relevant parties involved.

If you're wrong about such a well documented, cut and dry matter of historical record, then what else are you wrong about? :)

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#77

Post by skeeter2020 »

dmix wrote: post #32

In Canada our internet became much faster for cheaper with better customer support when the government allowed competition from smaller players. Telecom also got better when they allowed a foreign competitor to compete against the government mandated oligopoly. But the market is still heavily regulated in a way that benefits the existing monopolies.

I think Canada is a great example of how not to do it, despite some price decreases in recent years. We seem to have (near) the worst of all worlds: huge geography, little competition, and government regulation that props up the oligopoly without driving prices down like Europe. Mobile data is even worse.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#78

Post by abc03 »

jeffrallen wrote: post #35

This is about urban Switzerland. Way out in the country, we still have crap copper up on poles, which maxes out at 25 Mbits. But yes, Swisscom (owners if the old crap copper) do have to let the competitors use it.

Currently also have copper and Sunrise cable. Just got the cables to the house two weeks ago. I’m now waiting for the local electricity company to get in-house installation. Everything at no costs. So yes, it’s progressing fast.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#79

Post by postsantum »

HauntingPin wrote: post #46
joe_the_user wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems incorrect to call this competition. I'm glad you got your broadband but what happened sounds much more like American politics than ordinary market processes. And in this political environment, corporations can engage in a variety of other tactics than placating a squeaky wheel - they can outlaw competition, buy off officials, pay for shrill media hit pieces and so-forth.

It's clearly competition. The incumbent company saw a potential competitor and acted upon it. That's literally what happens when there's competition. It doesn't matter that the competitor didn't actually exist if the incumbent behaved as if it did exist. I'm never sure what the point of comments like this is. "It seems incorrect". But it isn't. You just don't want to admit that competition is good and necessary.

No, it's called market manipulation. OP's action caused spending at the expense of the companies. Not going to "won't someone think of the shareholders", but calling competition is misleading

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#80

Post by sowbug »

Hikikomori wrote: post #62
andy99 wrote: post #56

What does one achieve with 25 GB internet? Are speeds actually usefully faster, or is there some other bottleneck that makes the practical speed the same as in the US? Also any workload I have that is bandwidth heavy would be on clouds machines between data centres and generally very fast. Are there reasons why someone at home would benefit from 25GB internet beyond whatever is available? Is this a case of over engin…

How many times has this argument been made?

Enough to make https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox into a thing.
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