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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

#261

Post by tredre3 »

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.

> In Canada our internet became much faster for cheaper with better customer support when the government allowed competition from smaller players.

What the CRTC did was force the big players who own all the infrastructure to allow resellers to resell their services, and have to pay no more than cost to the big guy.

Those "smaller players" have a marginal involvement in the entire network aspect. They usually host ISP emails and sometimes DNS. Some of them do provide better customer service than the upstream big guy. At least until they need upstream help to resolve your issue, then it takes forever.

The other type of small players, who install their own infrastructure in smaller municipalities, were not impacted by this change. Some provinces (SK, QC) do give generous grants to those small players to install fibers. But AFAIK there is no federal involvement specifically to help them.

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

#262

Post by kortilla »

cogman10 wrote: post #220
kortilla wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> The only place monopolies tend to emerge is heavily regulated areas that allow for regulatory capture (laying fiber is a great example of this). No, actually laying fiber is a great example of the problem with a free market. It's not regulations that make it hard to put down fiber, it's property rights. Without some sort of regulation or government action (such as eminent domain) it's impossible to build out modern…

Property rights are regulation. You’re just vehemently agreeing with me. Markets filled with laws that make entry difficult are subject to monopolies.

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

#263

Post by kortilla »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #157
kortilla wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> Western free market doesn’t create monopolies. To quote myself: "the Western-style free market is very keen on creating and maintaining monopolies" Guess who's the highly influential investor, with strong connection to the WH who said the following: "Competition is for losers". This sums up pretty well what the free market is keen on.

A participant is not the market. Competitors very famously hate competition.

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

#265

Post by jancsika »

ceejayoz wrote: post #184
mgfist wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's got 9m people. The US has 30x the people and 250x the space. It's not comparable.

So why do we struggle to get the infrastructure to work in dense urban areas still? Or even just “not Wyoming”? Switzerland and California have the same population density. Why can’t CA build high speed rail?

> Switzerland and California have the same population density. Why can’t CA build high speed rail?

Go find the last major Swiss route that was built, and compare its land acquisition difficulties to what happened with the California project. I'll rankly speculate that difference will be the meat of your answer.

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

#266

Post by gnabgib »

xethos wrote: post #167
skeeter2020 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That last one is a phone plan.. not exactly apples to apples (it's good, but an 80GB/mo cap is rarely enough for home.. and nothing like a 2.5gbps internet plan).

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

#267

Post by candeira »

dlenski wrote: post #223

I don't understand the desire (fetish?) for high speed home Internet connections at home. I have 25 Mbps up. 10 Mbps down. Have had it for years. It's fine. It's fine when both my wife and I are working from home and doing calls. It's fine for software development. It's fine for email and web browsing, and everything other than downloading maddeningly large files, 99% of which shouldn't be that large anyway. It's fin…

I've been consulting a long time, and my home is my office.

Besides the uses other people have suggested, here are some uses I would have for a fast symmetrical connection:

- Backing up data to my home/office NAS while away.

- Remoting to my workstation desktop from any location, for any reason.

- Using my home as a Tailscale exit node for clients for whom it's already a hassle to allowlist my home office's IP, so I can work from anywhere.

- Switching my nixos configuration using the caches in my home office where my custom derivations are built.

I have 90Mbps down and 20Mbps up. All of the above is workable but it would be great, amazing if it were faster.

The remote places I would do this from:

- the doctors' waiting room because we have teenagers

- the bleachers of the pool for the diving lessons because we have teenagers

- the in-laws spare bedroom where we're visiting for an extended time during school holidays but not work holidays because we have teenagers.

Some of us have different needs, under choices that we make that are optimal for other aspects of our life but not for having a slower asymmetric connection at home.

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

#268

Post by remarkEon »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #128
HauntingPin wrote: post #49

Earlier 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…

Markets are just a tool. This tool functions on information. OP explained how information (in this case, the rumor of a competitor laying fiber) caused action within the market.

Hmm. Seems the tool is working as expected.

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

#269

Post by WalterBright »

kulahan wrote: post #243
WalterBright wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're also competing to make as much profit as possible, which has effectively zero benefit for the public. The end result is plenty of cheap stuff for people to buy. It's why free markets have full supermarkets and socialist markets have long lines. Take the free market in software, for example. My entire software stack on my linux box cost me $0.

"Companies optimize to make as much money as possible, which is why there is cheap stuff" does not logically follow. I get what you're saying, but it's not related to the concept of companies trying to make as much profit as possible. Some will simply chase higher profit margins.

> Some will simply chase higher profit margins

That's constrained by the Law of Supply and Demand.

> "Companies optimize to make as much money as possible, which is why there is cheap stuff" does not logically follow.

Standard Oil gained great profits by reducing the price of kerosene by 70%.

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

#270

Post by piperswe »

ukd1 wrote: post #178

I get 10g symmetric in Austin for $150/m. I had Cox before, and it was $180ish for 1g down and ~50mb up. Things are improving!

What provider has 10G? Highest I've seen is 5. Genuine question - I'll keep them in mind next time I move across town!
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