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Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

stefan.schueller.net

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

#11

Post by phendrenad2 »

> Every home gets a dedicated 4-strand fiber line

Author kind of glosses over this, like it's the setup to the point. But it's obvious that THIS is the point. The government did the hard work of running 25Gbit-capable fibre (4 of them!) to each and every house, and the ISP just has to run (25 * NumHouses)Gbit-capable fiber to the POP.

In the United States, which has 250x the land as Switzerland but only 30x the population, running fibre to every house is therefore 1/8th as economical. We have bigger problems. Is Flint, Michigan going to get fibre before they have safe water?

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

#12

Post by lmz »

kyralis wrote: post #4

The article does not include the word "density" at all. Switzerland has 2.5x the population density that the US does. I absolutely believe that US regulation choices encourage telecom monopolies and suppresses service in the US, but it's impossible to make a credible argument for that without acknowledging the density challenges that the majority of the US (geographically) faces.

Surely there are cities with the same density in the USA?

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

#14

Post by ivell »

initramfs wrote: post #8

The fact that some in Switzerland wanted to cap population at 10 million says a lot about their free market. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/14/switzerland-re... Fortunately, the referendum failed. I mean, sure it's nice to have a small population, but I think it's also important to try to improve economic migration everywhere. I actually live in a rural area in the U.S, and was surprised to see that I now…

It was a referendum. Anyone can trigger a referendum if they have 100k signatures. This was not the government position.

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

#15

Post by avalys »

Switzerland has a population of 9M people - the entire country has fewer people than the third or fourth largest US metro area - and a GDP per land area 8x that of the US. What works for Switzerland as a matter of policy, is essentially irrelevant when it comes to governing the US.

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

#16

Post by nixon_why69 »

kyralis wrote: post #4

The article does not include the word "density" at all. Switzerland has 2.5x the population density that the US does. I absolutely believe that US regulation choices encourage telecom monopolies and suppresses service in the US, but it's impossible to make a credible argument for that without acknowledging the density challenges that the majority of the US (geographically) faces.

The vast, vast majority of Americans live in more dense areas.

A naive average national density obscures more than it reveals.

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

#17

Post by danpalmer »

trynumber9 wrote: post #5

I guess they don't bother using Speedtest in Switzerland, as the average speed seems about the same as the US: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index Must be a sampling bias or something.

I ran speed tests a lot more when I had internet that varied from 5-20MB depending on the day/weather/etc. Now I'm on >1GB it's so rarely a concern that I don't bother. I suspect this skews the data significantly.

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

#18

Post by rmunn »

kyralis wrote: post #4

The article does not include the word "density" at all. Switzerland has 2.5x the population density that the US does. I absolutely believe that US regulation choices encourage telecom monopolies and suppresses service in the US, but it's impossible to make a credible argument for that without acknowledging the density challenges that the majority of the US (geographically) faces.

It appears the author lives in Germany. In my experience, Europeans who haven't visited the US (I don't know if he has or not) often have a hard time grasping just how HUGE the country is. It literally spans an entire continent east to west. In Europe, you can usually drive to another country's border, or the coast, within 4-6 hours (sometimes more depending on where you are). In parts of America, you can drive for 24 hours in the same direction without even crossing into a different state. I heard about one German auto engineer who was visiting Los Angeles. He looked at a map and thought it would be a fun drive to go to Portland and back on a Saturday. He was shocked when his American colleagues told him to look at the map's scale more closely, and that it would be more than 24 hours of driving just to get there and come back.

So yes. Regulations certainly play a part, but so does geography.

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

#19

Post by waetsch »

There is criticism on how Germany organized the ISP market going around for ages.

Ironically we had a monopoly for building wired connections - that was run by the government.

Then someone had the great idea to open this market for the private sector. Since then we kind of lice in the stoneage in terms of fast internet.

I heart that Scandinavian countries have a similar approach for what is described in the article. Didn't know Switzerland also does it right. That's the way to do it, will work for Germany as well.

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

#20

Post by rurban »

kyralis wrote: post #4

The article does not include the word "density" at all. Switzerland has 2.5x the population density that the US does. I absolutely believe that US regulation choices encourage telecom monopolies and suppresses service in the US, but it's impossible to make a credible argument for that without acknowledging the density challenges that the majority of the US (geographically) faces.

The higher the density, the more problematic to dig up the streets to bury the fibre lines. And US streets are much wider to dig the lines.

I've seen city-level street works in the US and they are incredibly slow compared to national highway work, or street work in Europe. Like 10x slower. And getting the permissions? Impossible

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