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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

#81

Post by simoncion »

schubidubiduba wrote: post #55
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

Some markets just inherently turn non-free very quickly when left unsupervised. Especially infrastructure markets.

Most markets inherently turn non-free when left unsupervised. That's the insight that folks like Keynes came to (as does any honest, informed observer with two or more functioning brain cells). That's why anti-trust and competition-preserving regulators and laws are essential. Without them, a very few powerful players form [0] cartels and/or tri/du/monopolies and enrich themselves vastly out of proportion with the value that they provide to their customers.

[0] ...often legally protected...

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

#82

Post by youainti »

littlestymaar wrote: post #34
bestouff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

This is a perfect example of competition in microeconomics. If you've only been exposed to an introductory economics, you've missed out on a lot.

This type of situation sounds like an amalgamation of a few exam questions from my first year of an econ PhD. "Cheap talk in a Bertrand market with entry costs and capacity constraints" or something. No I haven't worked it out but my intuition is that it would predict exactly what was observed: the threat of a new entrant with enough capacity risks loosing your entire business so you invest to expand your capacity to prevent that entry.

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

#83

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

This article is technically incorrect on so many levels I didn’t even bother to finish it.

1. There may be a territorial monopoly on cable. But there is nothing stopping other companies from laying fiber. There are areas - including where I use to live that had cable and the phone company laying fiber

2. Everyone on the internet is using a “shared” connection. The difference is whether it is shared at the last mile or upstream. If your ISP doesn’t provision enough upstream capacity, the last mile doesn’t matter.

3. Fiber is rarely shared at the last mile.

4. Just a little research says 25Gbps is not universal across Switzerland

5. When I did have AT&T Fiber that advertised at 1GB u/d, it didn’t slow down no matter what time of day.

Please don’t suffer from the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. M

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

#84

Post by joe_the_user »

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.

OK, I should have said "economic competition" though I imagined that it was implied.

If you just say "competition", you can point at the efforts of ten people to gain a seat on the politbureau as a clear case of this.

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

#85

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

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.

Well and a little bit of research, tells me it’s far from universal across Switzerland. This article is so provable false in many of its premises it’s worthless - see my other comment.

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

#86

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #64
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…

I think you misunderstood the article, or perhaps didn't read it? So the way the system works is each house has 4 physical fibers into it, that go into a central office without being aggregated up. Inside the central office any ISP can offer any speed vs price option they want, because they just patch you in at layer 1. So of course, most people wouldn't necessarily need to get 26Gbit. But if you want to offer it as…

And a slightly more detailed Google search says it isn’t a sold or universally.

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

#87

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

manquer wrote: post #72
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…

And even at 1Gbps when I had it, the game servers couldn’t keep up.

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

#88

Post by simoncion »

hparadiz wrote: post #58
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…

I can actually get 7 gbit but have no idea what I'd use with it. I'd need to upgrade my entire lan just to make use of it.

> I'd need to upgrade my entire lan just to make use of it.

If the concern is cost (rather than recabling the house) Mikrotik sells solid, inexpensive gear. Its management UIs take a bit of getting used to, but are fine once you've figured them out. You can also find two-port Intel 10gbit NICs on the Newegg "Marketplace" for ~40USD [0], and -while most already come with modules (and you will be informed if they don't)- if the X520s you're sold don't permit non-Intel transcievers, the NIC's firmware can usually be easily modified to change that. [1]

[0] https://www.newegg.com/intel-e10g42bfsr/p/N82E16833106041>

[1] https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads%2Fpatching...>

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

#89

Post by yawnxyz »

cjs_ac wrote: post #7

Australia and the UK both have a similar business environment to the Swiss model (but without the superior bandwidth) due to the way that their government-owned telephone monopolies were privatised: Telecom Australia (now called Telstra) and British Telecom (now called BT) were required to allow their newly-formed competitors to sell services over their networks (for appropriate maintenance fees, of course). The US a…

Australia has the absolute worst internet

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

#90

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #23

Looks like a good article explaining some key concepts like natural monopoly. And yeah, the US model is to tout free enterprise to the skies but then have the state give control of a given market to a single or a couple of monopolists. The problem is the US has created a constituency of state-dependent small and large business people whose livelihood depends this contradictory free-enterprise ideology.

It’s not a good article at all…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47654841

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