Don't look up the 40+ Billion spent trying to get every American service.
https://broadbandusa.ntia.gov/funding-programs/broadband-equ...
Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
171–180 of 464 posts
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#172The 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.
Density doesn't really make the sort of difference you might think. Every home in america has electricity and plumbing even though those utilities have the same density problem. Up until the rise of cell phones, every home had a telephone line as well. In many ways, the lack of density actually makes it easier for you to install new lines. It's a lot easier and faster to plow through a long strip of grass next to a h…
> Every home in america has electricity and plumbing even though those utilities have the same density problem. Up until the rise of cell phones, every home had a telephone line as well.
Those utilities are also far older than the Internet, so they should be expected to have more penetration. Also, the fair comparison here wouldn't be "how many American homes have a super fast Internet connection", but rather "how many American homes have the Internet at all".
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#173This article came up before. It's heavy on the clickbait, if you couldn't guess from the title. Some important points that they leave out: - 25G internet isn't available everywhere in Switzerland. It's just the fastest tier available in some locations. - The United States is 85 times larger than Switzerland. The entire country of Switzerland is the size of a small US state. Covering the US with broadband is much hard…
I live in NYC, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, and yet Verizon Fios 1 Gbps is my only option. I tried to upgrade to Fios 2 Gbps, but it's not available. Spectrum only goes to 200Mbps; no other providers in my area.
I have no idea if Switzerland is any better, but the US situation in 2026 is appalling. If we're this bad in NYC, imagine what someone in rural America goes through.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#174I don't know that this is an easy comparison to make. Switzerland is 16k square miles in size (and about 9.1 million people). Taking a random, low-density American state as a comparison - say, the innocuous and sparsely-populated western state of Idaho - I see that it has a size of about 85.5 thousand square miles (and about 2 million people). I've never understood the value in comparing relatively densely populated…
>I see that it has a size of about 85.5 thousand square miles (and about 2 million people). >I've never understood the value in comparing relatively densely populated European countries to America. The practical realities of each just make them quite different in terms of basic utilities and infrastructure. That's the lie everyone in America likes to tell themselves - it's very easy to provide electricity and phone s…
In fairness, the phone network practically took a century to get fully set up, was quite expensive in its time, and it's pretty easy to run a dinky little wire pair to a house (sometimes they'd literally use barbed wire fences). And labor costs were a lot lower when the phone network was built out.
Electricity is genuinely hard and expensive, but we've accepted it as a basic need of modern life. Lighting, fridges, HVAC, kitchen appliances... People die if the electric grid goes down for long enough, but phones and Internet are a bit more of an optimization, a luxury.
Not disagreeing with your sentiment, though, just saying the scenarios are a bit different. Electricity and phone aren't "very easy", we just accept one as difficult but required, and the other (if you mean landline service) was already there and isn't really being maintained anymore.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#175> The Free Market Lie Why is it a lie if Switzerland actually uses a free market and gets bonuses from it? Yeah, the idea with 1 common infrastructure is a positive aspect. It's interesting how they solve an issue with maintenance. But still, low prices and good quality of service are benefits of the free market.
Free market doesn't sort itself out. It has to be streamed through proper regulation.
That is not what the article is saying, at all.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#176I’m seeing a lot of misplaced cynicism in the comments, much of which fails to deal with the subject matter of the article. The US really does have a capitalism crisis with declining competition — it does not require any form of special intelligence to see that. Switzerland really does have vastly superior infrastructure — it does not take some stroke of brilliance to see that. The essay elegantly articulates the why…
The US has fantastic fiber optic internet that's why this is total BS. I have multi-gig symmetrical fiber in UT, so does family have access to it in New Hampshire, and my friends who live in the Southeastern US. The only places that have shit internet are states like California and New York. That's not an "America" or a "Capitalism" problem. That's a problem of living somewhere with a dysfunctional government that do…
Look, as mentioned in the prior comment there are varying spreads of performance across geography (including in Switzerland), and while you might be experiencing one expression of that variance (good internet connection in Utah) you need to look beyond that anecdote to trace the bigger picture and observe performance/cost/reliability beyond your narrow environment.
> "That's not a capitalism problem"
It literally is a capitalism problem, as clarified by the essay; capitalism requires competition to work, and the essay eloquently describes how to accomplish competition in internet service provision.
(Also, what are you talking about, California with "shit internet"?)
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#177> The Free Market Lie Why is it a lie if Switzerland actually uses a free market and gets bonuses from it? Yeah, the idea with 1 common infrastructure is a positive aspect. It's interesting how they solve an issue with maintenance. But still, low prices and good quality of service are benefits of the free market.
The article makes it very clear that the fiber to the house is a natural monopoly and should be public infrastructure, just like communism. Once the fiber reaches a central office, access can be sold and metered off to a free market, just like capitalism.
What most of us in the "free world" are suffering with is blood sucking parasites that own the pipe into the house and charge prices aligned with that fact. It's anti-capitalism in the guise of capitalism.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#178While the article does have its shortcomings, it drives me crazy that we'd have to build 3 or 4 fiber lines to each house individually here in Germany. Imagine we'd have done it that way with water or electricity. It's completely braindead. Just one town over, there are houses that had the street dug up 3 times to lay fiber. But only to connect the neighborhood 2km down the valley. No internet for them. It's absolutely stupid.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, in Switzerland there is a thing, that if a product or service has the name "Swiss" in its name, then it can be sold for any price regardless of quality - and it will fly off the shelves. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Swisscom is the biggest ISP in Switzerland - they charge high prices for very slow internet. But they have the word "Swiss" in their name, so it's okay to sell 100 Mbps connection…
> in Switzerland there is a thing, that if a product or service has the name "Swiss" in its name, then it can be sold for any price regardless of quality That's just basic marketing. You'll see that in most countries, I don't believe that it is unique to Switzerland. For example: in the US you'll see many products that say "made in America" on the box. Those will likely outsell competing products, even if those are c…
I feel it's a little more extreme for swiss companies though, especially outside the country. My aunt who works in Rome in the tourism industry told us of a local company that had 'swiss' in the name, simply because of the positive connotation, even when they don't seem to have any relation to the country.
It's why I feel wary of making business with any company with the word 'swiss' in it's name
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, in Switzerland there is a thing, that if a product or service has the name "Swiss" in its name, then it can be sold for any price regardless of quality - and it will fly off the shelves. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Swisscom is the biggest ISP in Switzerland - they charge high prices for very slow internet. But they have the word "Swiss" in their name, so it's okay to sell 100 Mbps connection…
There really is this bias — it’s crazy. Not just the name “Swiss,” but allusions to the Swiss flag, Swiss typography, other Swiss branding. It almost looks like some of the products are state run. (Also, the internet connection actually is phenomenally good.)
> allusions to the Swiss flag,
It is a big plus.