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

431–440 of 726 posts

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

#431

Post by direwolf20 »

franga2000 wrote: post #429
direwolf20 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are too afraid of breaking the law. Look at every multi billion dollar company - all of them got where they are by breaking the law. How's it going to look in front of a jury when the government says "this man illegally brought cheap and fast internet to a neighbourhood?" The companies don't even have narratives that nice. Even YC startups are encouraged to break the laws. The key is knowing which laws you can…

You can break the law if you have money. That's it. You won't be in front of a jury for "setting up fast internet". You'll get caught climbing into a manhole with electrician tools and charged with terrorism. The jury will be fed a story of how you had expensive specialized equipment on you, so this was a well-funded professional attempt at sabotaging critical infrastructure. You'll have a shitty public defender who…

You'll have money because you'll be selling fast internet to people. If YCombinator startups can make it work, so can you. Wear a hi-vis vest.

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

#432

Post by Ray20 »

Liftyee wrote: post #147
throwaway27448 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I mean, it's hard to start wars when you don't get along with anyone and can't find a single ally.

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

#433

Post by toofy »

VorpalWay wrote: post #424
toofy wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would we do that? not everything has to skim profits to a certain group of people just because they exist. they can use magical competition and build it if they want a piece. if an area has been waiting for… (what would it be now? around 30 years since the internet took off?) so these companies had 3 decades to build out and have refused, if we the tax payers step in and we pay for it, why should we let them in?…

Having the municipality run the whole thing would be even better sure. I'm not sure why we do that mix here in Sweden, but it worked out OK for us I think. Also, wouldn't those subsidies come with a legaly enforceable requirement to actually build out infrastructure? If not, I think that is where you went wrong.

im saying we shouldnt give them subsidies at all. if they cant make it work in the marketplace, if they arent up to the task, then the competitive marketplace is a failure in that instance. and thats ok.

no subsidies. if they cant do it, fine, we'll do it and we'll provide cheaper than they ever would have. and in the case of fiber, we know this is the case. there are plenty of municipally owned fiber areas that are solid and cheap af.

its ok to admit that the market doesnt always work. often, absofuckinlutely. always? not at all.

a lack of subsidies would make it obvious where those failures exist so we can just do it ourselves (the spooky government) for cheaper. tell them "you had your chance" and move on with our day.

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

#434

Post by 0x3f »

littlestymaar wrote: post #430
0x3f wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty reasonable to me. Is your contention that we _have_ achieved some pure form of free markets or Communism?

The thing is none of the “pure forms” are realistic outside of books. If your system needs absolute theoretical purity to work, then it's worthless. And that's true of both communism and free market.

I'm not sure this is true. What you're describing is the local optimum problem. Yes, the local optimum is better if you can't push through to a better one, of course. And heading merely 'towards' the better optimum often makes things immediately worse. But that doesn't make the better optima worthless, or ever-unreachable.

It seems a bit like saying humans will never fly. It's a question of technology level, in the sense that governance is a form of economic technology. Which is what leaves it open to people saying it can be done better.

The best solution changes over time, essentially. It's a question of fitness to the current context.

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

#436

Post by mexicocitinluez »

eqvinox wrote: post #248
harrall wrote: post #74

This article gets ahead of itself. The issue isn’t the splitting. There is no fiber to even split in most places. A lot of places in America had their “network” infra built 50-100 years ago on copper and no one wants to pay to basically rebuild all of it. I happen to live in an area where there are still above ground utilities. We got >5 gig fiber fast. We have 700Mbps 5G. I literally watched them string the fiber on…

> A lot of places in America had their “network” infra built 50-100 years ago on copper That's no different to Switzerland so far… > and no one wants to pay to basically rebuild all of it. …but the Swiss seem to have decided it's worth the investment. > I happen to live in an area where there are still above ground utilities. If anything, that can make things cheaper. You don't need to bury everything, and in some pl…

> …but the Swiss seem to have decided it's worth the investment.

West Virginia is 1.5x the size of the entire country of Switzerland. Let that sink in.

Texas is 16x times bigger.

The idea that it should be doable in a country that is 100x bigger, with 50 separate states, god knows how many individual counties because it could be done in vastly smaller one is where your problem is.

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

#437

Post by mexicocitinluez »

Hikikomori wrote: post #371
wespiser_2018 wrote: post #227

The comparison feels off because it treats Switzerland and the United States as interchangeable test cases for “free market vs. not,” when they operate under completely different constraints. Switzerland is a small, highly cohesive country with strong local governance, high trust, and tightly scoped systems. The U.S. is a continental-scale federation with massive regional variation, different institutional layers, an…

Many states prohibit municipalities to do fiber. Regulatory capture and monopolies are your problem. Sweden managed to build out fiber almost everywhere and are much more like some of your states.

How much bigger is the US than Switzerland? Its like 200x the size of it. Do you think that it's size and division of 50 distinct states might make that task a bit tougher?

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

#438

Post by bsenftner »

palata wrote: post #435

The only reason I can see to not treat natural monopolies as government-owned monopolies is political: those in power benefit from privatising those. Maybe this shows that Switzerland has a sane political system?

Why doesn't X have Y? When talking about nations, that is typically corruption.

Why can't NationX have quality public transit? Corruption. Why can't NationX have quality political parties or politicians? Corruption. Why can't NationX have a quality education and produce people capable of understanding and supporting their own political system? Corruption.

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

#439

Post by kaelwd »

toofy wrote: post #202
ttul wrote: 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…

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…

Australia did that but also paid out the telecom companies a gazillion dollars for infrastructure that had only been privatised like a decade earlier.

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

#440

Post by econ »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #380
zeroCalories wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That’s not necessarily true. A lot of companies are very risk averse and will sit there creaming off profit and not making any investment. If someone came to you and said - you have two choices: Work incredibly hard, raise a lot of money, build a bunch of infrastructure. And at some point in the future you will make some more money. Or - keep taking your very nice high guaranteed salary for the foreseeable future. Wh…

I hear vending machine ppl often have 1-3 very profitable locations and 10-40 locations that only barely make sense often only because they already are in the business.

I imagine hiring someone to fix or restock them makes a lot more sense if you have 100 machine rather than just one.

It really depends what the goal is. Profit with fiber or fiber with profit?

Here public transport is required to cover all routes. Postal service is the same. Fiber doesn't seem that different?

Post reply on HN