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

351–360 of 726 posts

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

#351

Post by somedude895 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #73
mft_ wrote: post #71

Earlier 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.

> Culture can be changed.

Over the course of a hundred or so years maybe. Culture is hard work.

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

#355

Post by delusional »

zeroCalories wrote: post #312
toofy wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a great example of where the government should step in and say “welp, you took too long, we’re now funding municiple fiber and we’ll give it to everyone cheap. sorry.” i truly do believe competition can often drivr things forward but we have countless examples where executives get comfortable and decide their best course of action for profits is to do little to nothing. if a community has been screaming for f…

[flagged]

This is a fundamental problem of value creation and value extraction. Just because the ISP's can't extract the value of adding the additional fiber capacity doesn't mean it doesn't confer that value to the customers. We live in an age of value extraction, what's colloquially known as "enshittification", that can't go on forever. Somebody has to create the value that is being extracted.

It's the old Marx quote: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Except you know, the opposite.

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

#356

Post by Broken_Hippo »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #119
ceejayoz wrote: post #63

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!

The US being different is no excuse - this is really just a shortsighted retelling of American Exceptionalism.

Intelligent folks look at a system and figure out ways they can adapt it to their own situation. You can take systems they use for rural areas and figure out ways to do it on your own. The US is enormous, but most folks live in cities. States are tiny portions of the US, and some of those states would likely mirror Switzerland in diversity, density, and size.

It wouldn't matter if the country had a population density similar to the US and was similar in many ways. It'd still need adaptation because of the differences in culture, laws, and so on.

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

#357

Post by malthaus »

alex_suzuki wrote: post #257

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.

i'm swiss and also own property in central berlin. while i was having insanely fast internet in all the places i lived in switzerland since the year 2000 (first cable, then fiber), german telekom has still not been able to connect my flat to fiber, even though the street facing building side is and i'm stuck with semi fast but fully overpriced dsl, which on top is spotty because someone decided to install cheap copper - while cable internet is not an option because 2 cable providers fight over who owns the access to the building.

whatever the roll-out in switzerland is, it's heaps better than in germany and most other places.

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

#358

Post by fainpul »

alex_suzuki wrote: post #257

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.

Indeed rural areas are not as well covered [1], but in cities it doesn't matter if you live in an old building. As long as your street has fiber (most do by now), when you switch to a fiber connection from your ISP, contractors will connect it to your house (even if you only rent an appartment) and install an optical outlet in your appartment, all for free.

[1] https://map.geo.admin.ch/#/map?lang=en&center=2634455.81,119...

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

#359

Post by panick21_ »

nextstep wrote: post #341
alex_suzuki wrote: post #257

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.

People endlessly complain that the SBB is 'always' late.
Post reply on HN