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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

#641

Post by WalterBright »

littlestymaar wrote: post #501
WalterBright wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Margins are not owed to customers, whether they are large or small. Supply & Demand sets the price.

For example, if you buy a car for $5000 and flip it for $10,000, you don't owe your customer a discount.

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

#642

Post by AnthonyMouse »

toofy wrote: post #422
VorpalWay wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an elegant way to solve this. Mandate that whoever install the fiber lets other companies run their ISP on top of it (with a small but reasonable cut of the profit presumably). I believe this happens (mandated or not) already for mobile phone networks in the form of MVNOs. And here in Sweden we have the same for fiber. I don't think it is mandated here, since not every place has multiple options like that, b…

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?…

The physical cable that goes to every house is a natural monopoly. Really it's even more like the conduit the cable is installed in. Doing that part more than once is both fairly inefficient and tends to market failure.

The rest of the service isn't. Transit is a fairly competitive market. You may also have providers willing to use more expensive terminating equipment and then offer higher-than-gigabit speeds on the same piece of fiber. You want the competitive market for every aspect of the system where it can work and to keep the monopoly as narrow as possible.

Notice that the point isn't to let just Comcast use the municipal fiber and then get ~100% of the customers again, it's to let this happen with fiber to the home:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_virtual_network...

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

#643

Post by simoncion »

nothinkjustai wrote: post #632
simoncion wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...monopolies are not sustainable. You might be surprised to learn that the private sector can enter into durable agreements much like the public sector does. It's how things like mon/oligopolies and cartels form and persist. Anyway. I'd suggest you go read your histories, but you're either unlikely to, or don't have enough supporting information to understand what they're telling you. If you're young enough [0] to…

[flagged]

[dead]

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

#644

Post by bsenftner »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #449
bsenftner wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a thought-terminating cliché [1]. Not an actual explanation. Like, why is the assumption that countries should be homogenous? Since when did geography, culture, industrial structure, natural-resource availability and national wealth become irrelevant? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...

Maybe thought terminating but it is discussion instigating, and if stated in a public conversation by anyone of authority and power, it's a nuclear bomb going off. This is the unstated conversation that needs to occur in public, and not by me or you or anyone less than a ruler of a major country, and not that idiot Trump.

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

#645

Post by zeroCalories »

well_ackshually wrote: post #545
zeroCalories wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, however there's a bunch of people with your abilities that will do it because they're capable of seeing that something as crucial as internet access is a public good. You can choose to not work, plenty of us will make things move forwards without you, nor care about your living standards.

If you could find people to do this work below market rate this wouldn't be a problem to begin with.

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

#646

Post by ididieicueu »

alsetmusic wrote: post #444
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…

I guess we have different versions of HN cause the one I read has headlines on the front page pretty regularly about people (collectives, not individuals) doing their own broadband successfully. There's a reason right-wingers and lobbyists are against this and try to pass laws preventing it. It's because it works and undermines their position as rent-seekers who don't invest in their infrastructure.

> There's a reason right-wingers and lobbyists are against this and try to pass laws preventing it.

There’s a reason POLITICIANS are against this and try to pass laws preventing it.

There, fixed it for you.

Let’s not pretend this is a red or blue problem. It’s a big boot hovering over your head problem. It’s a politician problem.

It doesn’t matter if their colour underwear matches yours. This is about people in power doing what they can to stay in power while guaranteeing their easy money.

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

#647

Post by laurencerowe »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #576
petra wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a possibility to create a wireless point-to-point link ?

Yes. You can actually buy pairs of antennas (basically an AP pair) that do just that. The only downside is that the signal quality varies based on weather. If you want something more or less weather proof, you can get microwave P2P links that run in licensed bands and you don't get any signal interference from similar nearby antennas. Both WiFi and Microwave equipment act just like bridges and you can connect them to…

We have an ISP (Monkeybrains) that offers this in SF but it’s only up to 100 Mbps each way.

I recently tried AT&T fixed wireless which runs over the mobile network but it seems too congested to offer high speeds so ended up back with Comcast.

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

#648

Post by littlestymaar »

WalterBright wrote: post #641
littlestymaar wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Margins are not owed to customers, whether they are large or small. Supply & Demand sets the price. For example, if you buy a car for $5000 and flip it for $10,000, you don't owe your customer a discount.

“Supply and demand” refers to the idea that under competition, prices will go down to the marginal cost of production.

When a cartel sets a price it's very much not “supply and demand” who sets the price, it's the cartel…

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

#649

Post by laurencerowe »

fragmede wrote: post #325
laurencerowe wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was a way to achieve that same outcome in my internet backwater of San Francisco. Nearby blocks have symmetrical GB fibre from Sonic but we only have shity 30MB up from Comcast.

What speed can you get from Monkeybrains?

I believe they only offer up to 100mbps. Having 1Gb down from Comcast is definitely useful at times. I just wish I could get more than 30Mb up.

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

#650

Post by vel0city »

Zopieux wrote: post #610
phkahler wrote: post #494

Switzerland is 1/6 the size of Michigan and has 90 percent as many people as Michigan (9M vs 10M). With a higher population density I'd expect better rollout of things like internet service. And that's just ONE average size US state - there are 50, some of which are larger with even fewer people. It's not really a fair comparison regardless of which business or political factors are in play.

I was wondering why there wasn't yet a comment dismissing any change or progress in the US citing its land size, forgetting that the US has hundreds of large, dense cities where this "argument" does no hold. Never change!

> forgetting that the US has hundreds of large, dense cities

Those large US cities really aren't anywhere near as dense though once you're comparing the actual MSA (US) or FUA (EU). The population densities of those actual whole areas are nowhere near the same.

For comparison relevant to this article, only 25% of the Swiss population live in single family detached houses. About 60% of US households live in single-family detached housing.

https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/construction...

Zurich and Milwaukee both have ~1.5M people in their Functional Urban Area/Metropolitan Statistical Area. One has a density of ~750/km^2 and the other is ~418. Guess which is which. Or compare Lausanne to Modesto CA. Both have ~550k populations. One 637/km^2, one is 144/km^2.

Such big and dense cities we have here in the US!

Either way though, I do think its often less to do with population densities and more about political will of the local populace and regulatory capture.

I have family that lives in a pretty newly developed area in the middle of an already well-developed area with tons of homes having fiber-to-the-home. The local cable company managed to convince the builder to let only them install coax services to these homes. Now it will cost the fiber company a lot more if they want to eventually go into that neighborhood, so they haven't bothered.

You see the same thing with pole attachment rights in our cities. Incumbents shut down competition and prevent those who push for change.

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