Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

sschueller.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 726 posts

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

#161

Post by martinald »

sschueller wrote: post #41
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.

Yes, that is sadly still the case but the expansion of the fiber build out is now rapidly moving forward. By 2030 +90% will have fiber https://www.swisscom.ch/en/about/news/2024/02/08-weniger-kup...

That's actually terrible. The UK (which has been a laggard in FTTH in Europe until very recently) is at 84% FTTH coverage already.

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

#162

Post by strictnein »

exabrial wrote: post #146

What? 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.

The amount of people here who think any market failure in the US is due to it being a "free market" is kind of astounding. There are exactly zero "free markets" in the US.

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

#163

Post by martinald »

some_furry wrote: post #141

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.

Yes but if you compare urban areas (where 80% of people live in both continents) in US and Europe it's not massively different (Europe maybe 2-4 more dense depending on the country/city).

Obviously you're not going to lay fibre to the last 1% of population in the US (for the most part).

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

#164

Post by ceejayoz »

strictnein wrote: post #155
ceejayoz wrote: post #73

Earlier 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.

Been an American my entire life. 45+ years. I've never heard a single person say that universal healthcare is "impossible".

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-not...

> President Donald Trump on Wednesday said it’s “not possible” for the federal government to fund Medicare, Medicaid and child care costs, arguing that it should be up to the states to “take care” of those programs while the federal government focuses on military spending.

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

#165

Post by kulahan »

hrimfaxi wrote: post #112
HauntingPin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't understand this line of thinking. The spreading of a false rumor is an example of a competitive marketplace? If this took place in a different domain wouldn't it be fraud? That it was in the public benefit seems orthogonal.

Yes, if a simple unsubstantiated rumor is enough to get your competitors to spend potentially millions of dollars to fight you, that's a competition. Literally what else could it be?

It can be two things, anyways. You can utilize fraud to manage your competitors expectations. CEOs lie constantly about the state their products are in, in order to drum up more sales.

It has absolutely zero requirement to be beneficial to the public in order to be a competitive marketplace. They're also competing to make as much profit as possible, which has effectively zero benefit for the public.

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

#166

Post by kube-system »

strictnein wrote: post #158
kube-system wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland and the US have almost identical government expenditure per capita. Maryland still doesn't have 25 Gbps home internet.

That's kind of their point. A lot of those government expenditures go to things that citizens of Maryland may not want or benefit from.

More federal spending goes to Maryland per capita than the US average per capita.

This isn't an an issue of people in Maryland not getting money -- they get robust federal spending and have a robust state budget of their own. This is simply: Americans getting what they vote for, which is notoriously not public infrastructure.

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

#167

Post by xethos »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #77
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.

I'm running out my contract with TekSavvy (~$80 CAD for gigabit) before switching to Novus (~$60 CAD for 2.5), and my partner and I just switched to Fido (~$30 CAD for 80gig and international calls/SMS).

Considering the geography and all the per-capita math (and pain), I don't think we're doing too bad as a country any more.

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

#168

Post by strictnein »

ceejayoz wrote: post #164
strictnein wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been an American my entire life. 45+ years. I've never heard a single person say that universal healthcare is "impossible".

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-not... > President Donald Trump on Wednesday said it’s “not possible” for the federal government to fund Medicare, Medicaid and child care costs, arguing that it should be up to the states to “take care” of those programs while the federal government focuses on military spending.

I guess I'm pretty confused on what your point is here?

Universal Healthcare would be a new program in the US that would see a drastic tax increase, in that our healthcare spending currently going to insurance companies would instead go to a new federal agency. The amount of money companies and citizens spend on it may or may not also increase, but your quote has basically nothing to do with that.

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

#169

Post by nothinkjustai »

simoncion wrote: post #81
schubidubiduba wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 va…

No they don’t. What happens is that people want to manipulate the market for a variety of reasons, so they do that, and then really really smart people come along later and try to claim that those manipulators weren’t actually the problem but the solution! It is completely backwards, like reversing cause and effect. It’s like blaming a person for standing in the path of a bullet instead of the one firing the gun.

Want a free market? Stop messing with it.

Post reply on HN