Another thing that I think Europeans often fail to take into consideration is scale.
USA: 9,147,590 km^2
Switzerland: 41,295 km^2
That's a factor of 221.5 to 1.
Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
141–150 of 726 posts
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#142Earlier 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.
There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in a enormous, diverse country. If my house were a country, I'd be in the top 0.1% of household internet speeds compared to other countries. Obviously everyone should be just like me!
Rich is a key attribute here. Tiny, not really. The key is dense. That makes terrestrial connections cheaper. A country with the population of the US and the richness and density of Switzerland would be just as capable of building out high speed internet connections. It would have ~38x the population of Switzerland, cost ~38x more to wire, and have ~38x the resources with which to do it.
Incidentally, the northeast of the US has a similar or greater population density as Switzerland and is pretty rich. That area, at least, should be as capable of this sort of thing. Doing it for, say, everybody in Alaska would be a bit tougher.
I don't know what diversity has to do with anything here. As far as I've seen, people from all sorts of different places and cultures seem to like high speed internet about equally well.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#143Because Switzerland is the size of Maryland. Imagine pouring all federal resources into one cramped state.
I thought spamming your own blog was not allowed here.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> What exactly did they prove? They proved that the Free Market doesn't automatically provide functional competition, if you think about it, the Western-style free market is very keen on creating and maintaining monopolies, even cheating isn't going to help you here. > The company laid down fibre because of what they saw as a potential competitor (municipal fibre). The OP is about free market failures, not about comp…
The OP is about telecom. I took a look and learned [1]:
> The telecommunications industry in China is dominated by three state-run businesses: China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile.
A little slippery to bring China into the telecom free market discussion and contrast it with “Western-style” while failing to mention the structure of its telecom industry.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_industry_in...
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
For me, this is the point of the article. People fought and the best decision was the result. And I suspect there's a fundamental cultural difference that makes the fight much less fair in America.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#146What? There is no free market with wired internet. State, federal, and municipalities entrenched local monopolies through "tax breaks", subsidies, over regulation, piles of permits, and many more.
The cable/fiber providers played all areas of government like a fiddle.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Switzerland has a population larger than all but ~11 US states.
What is this supposed to imply? us states are also a poor representation of humanity. This matters a great deal: switzerland is notoriously ethnically homogenous and unable to get along with anyone. Life on easy mode!
"unable to get along with anyone" is an interesting claim given that the last armed conflict in Switzerland was in 1847 (Sonderbund War).
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What exactly did they prove? They proved that the Free Market doesn't automatically provide functional competition, if you think about it, the Western-style free market is very keen on creating and maintaining monopolies, even cheating isn't going to help you here. > The company laid down fibre because of what they saw as a potential competitor (municipal fibre). The OP is about free market failures, not about comp…
Western free market doesn’t create monopolies. Where did you get that idea? The only place monopolies tend to emerge is heavily regulated areas that allow for regulatory capture (laying fiber is a great example of this).
Or in places where network effects make it impossible to compete.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#149Because Switzerland is the size of Maryland. Imagine pouring all federal resources into one cramped state. I thought spamming your own blog was not allowed here.
Switzerland and the US have almost identical government expenditure per capita. Maryland still doesn't have 25 Gbps home internet.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Nothing is insurmountable; however each one of us must play within the practical constraints of our local geographies (political, social, financial and physical). The parent comment probably means that Switzerland is in a positive on all axes unlike the rest of the world.
It’s politics. Boil most things down and the technical is inconsequential when compared to the politics.
Look at the political system of Switzerland and you will see a radically different setup.
And I think that’s the horse. The rest is cart. Yes they are rich but why? Yes they are relatively stable socially but why? Decentralised Canton government structure + direct democracy (referendums all the time for things that matter). That, I think, is why all the rest.