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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

#501

Post by littlestymaar »

WalterBright wrote: post #193
matheusmoreira wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with the notable exception of people with lots of capital to wipe the competition out of the market then do a rug pull after the fact They used to be called robber barons.

Ironically, during the anti-trust trial of Standard Oil, Rockefeller's market share kept slipping. His competitors figured out how to compete with him. As for Rockefeller being a "robber", the rise of Standard Oil resulted in the price of kerosene dropping 70%.

If technical advances make cost go down 90% but prices only goes down by 70%, someone is making tons of money at the expense of consumers.

That's what happened with the telco by the way, the price is is still significantly lower than 40 years ago, but in the US it's still more expensive than it should.

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

#503

Post by zeroCalories »

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…

Depends on how much margin there was. Sounds like there's not enough.

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

#504

Post by zeroCalories »

philipallstar wrote: post #393
zeroCalories wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The problem is all the regulatory stuff that means the bigger you are and the longer you've operated for the better you understand and have relationships with the often pretty inept regulatory bodies that can stop you.

Then as the local government, maybe start by removing that regulation. Or if the regulation is required, you're going to have to pay a premium for people willing and able to put up with it.

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

#505

Post by mikkupikku »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #492
mikkupikku wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Municipalities don't know anything about the job and few have the resources and personnel to become sufficiently experienced. I know every other poster on HN has a story where they personally stepped in and saw their local government through the process for incredibly cheap, hey that's great, but how is some random municipality without an elder tech god living with them supposed to get "municipal" internet without co…

lol he thinks big ISPs upgrade their infra or care.

Did I say that? No, you made it up. Why you chose to make that up, I can only imagine (or should I make things up too?)

Also everybody else responding to me is ignoring the point that most rural municipalities can barely afford keep their roads marginally flat, let alone tear up the roads, lay fiber, then repair those roads. Municipal fiber is a pipe dream in most scenarios, but workable in reasonably high density regions that have a tax base to work with.

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

#507

Post by ranman »

everyone wrote: post #483
ascotan wrote: post #481

The real reason for the “cartels” in the US is because of the cost of infrastructure versus the subscribers cost. Because the United States is so large there are only a few companies that can create the infrastructure required to service large area areas with fiber. So companies that have the ability to lay down, fiber do so in necessary cooperation with other providers to create a large patchwork across the country.…

"It’s not realistic or feasible to have the US government generate a fiber optic connectivity for the entirety of every household in the United States. In fact, the free market was the only realistic possible to deliver this." Why? Other countries with similar population densities have done it. A bigger country should have an advantage due to economies of scale.

Which countries? Density matters but raw volume matters too.

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

#508

Post by throw0101d »

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…

> Sadly, the municipality didn’t have any capital to invest a penny into that fiber […]

Would borrowing money (issuing a bond) be an option in cases like this? Pay it off over the course a decade (two/three?), and make the payments part of the fee put to users?

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

#509

Post by zeroCalories »

delusional wrote: post #355
zeroCalories wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

I have a lot of ability. I'm not gonna flex it for others without pay that gives me significantly higher living standards than the average person. Are you going to force me to work?

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

#510

Post by projektfu »

A couple of nitpicks (or nut-picks). AT&T is usually in competition with the local cable monopoly and runs FTTH where they run fiber. Google Fiber is installing as well, on the German model.

The problem in the USA is that we protect an incumbent's profits at all costs. Natural monopolies end up serving the monopoly instead of the community. For example, in Atlanta, natural gas is delivered by Atlanta Gas Light, priced on some theoretical capacity number for the most gas you'll ever need at one time (DDDC). We then pay marketers to supply the gas. AGL gets paid whether or not we use gas, and the marketer gets paid both a monthly fee and a rate per therm. It's the most expensive gas I've had in this country.

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