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Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

sschueller.github.io

341–350 of 726 posts

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

#341

Swiss here. Just a minor clarification on the article: fibre is not available everywhere in Switzerland. Actually the rollout has been quite slow, and chances are that if you live in a rural or suburban area (like me) or in an older building then you might not have fibre, and are limited to (fairly decent) copper.

Can confirm this guy is Swiss

Has arguably the best infrastructure and system in the world and will still find issue with it. A real Swiss hardly knows the horror show that is the rest of the non-Switzerland world.

yeah, fiber rollout is slow outside of the cities. It’s still better than 95% of the developed world. All perspective.

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

#342

Earlier 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!

My god, Switzerland is literally the least ethnically homogenous country on the continent (if we ignore tiny nations like Luxembourg, Lichtenstein and Malta), with a third of its population being foreign-born, which is percentage-wise double that of the US.

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 exact…

The problem isn't that econ PhDs don't have classes giving more nuanced views of the world, but the fact that people spend so much time with “introductory economics” that even Nobel prices will make nonsensical arguments based on those flawed concepts.

It seems that spending several years working with models assuming that the earth is flat isn't being well compensated by one class on “imperfect flatness”.

(I've contemplated doing an econ PhD myself before changing course, and I've been exposed to much more than econ 101).

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

#344
italy, a house in the so called 'rich' nord est, where 'Lega' party has been ruling for decades:

* no fiber in the neightbour I am * internet on mobile: 10M when lucky * all houses have no city water pipe

I'm glad they started to collect blak water (a month ago)

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

#345
post #320

Actually, Ziply Fiber offers 50Gbps symmetrical service in the Northwest of the US: https://ziplyfiber.com/internet/multigig >. The free market is not a lie, it’s just that a lot of our politicians have lost their faith in it. That lead them to agree to local monopolies. Ziply, however, has broken out of that model and has been growing aggressively. It’s not perfect, but it’s good.

oooooo how did I miss this before

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

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know but Swiss isn't the only train system that works but also Spain, Italy, France. Poland has a growing better train system . The swiss system has it's advantages but it is also very expensive. It might also worth it to check them out

The advantage of swiss system is fast transfers. Hsr would likely break this system (no point in arriving faster if your connection gets longer by 10-15min

That's a very National focussed perspective and thus definitely a disadvantage of the Swiss train system ;)

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

#347

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.

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!

Switzerland is one of the least homogenous countries in Europe! Four languages, relatively weak federal government with strong local (canton) governments. Most state services are handled on a localized (canton) level.

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

#348
post #153
post #9

In my small island community, I participated in a municipal committee whose mandate was to bring proper broadband to the island. Although two telecom duopolies already served the community, one of them had undersea fiber but zero fiber to the home (DSL remains the only option), whereas the other used a 670 Mbps wireless microwave link for backhaul and delivery via coaxial cable. And pricing? Insanely expensive for ei…

Either side of the spectre lies enshittification: - more competition comes with margin squeezing and cheapest source for service or goods - less competition brings the monopoly, the dream of any capitalist (owner, not user). Either way comes enshittification, and there's no middle balance, it drifts towards one of the sides always.

This German supermarket system has strong compettion , low margins but it is cheap and reliably good quality what most German wish.

So I disagree.

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

#350
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there is some sort of metric for classifying how similar cultures are to one another. Are e.g. German Swiss more dissimilar to French Swiss, than are Florida rednecks dissimilar to Compton gangsters?

I’m not even talking about the languages, we have 20% immigrants in the population, and an even larger part has foreign roots. We also don’t have weapons in every household, if we’re talking myths

> We also don’t have weapons in every household, if we’re talking myths

It all depends if you did your military service (which implies that you're swiss) and if you didn't decide to drop out of it or deemed as unfit. I don't think it's a myth really, it just happens to be that a lot of people don't do their military service and thus don't have to keep a weapon at home

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