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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

#261

Post by soperj »

parineum wrote: post #184
LeonM wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"made in" is completely different. A higher price is justified by supporting Americans in some way, rather than somewhere offshore. This is more like McDonald's putting a maple leaf in their logo in Canada. It changes nothing but, apparently, Canadians like it more (I frequently watch Canadian television and non-canadian companies are frequently adding a leaf somewhere in the advertising).

That's how we can tell they aren't Canadian.

Feels like it's only U.S companies that do that, because that's what works in the States.

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

#262

Post by dmbrThnU »

Terr_ wrote: post #218
Gasp0de wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is harder to install fiber in densely populated areas than in some backcountry farm. Imagine tearing open a busy street in NYC for a few weeks to install fiber vs. digging a trench in the dirt next to the farm road. Which one do you think costs more? For which do you think you need to jump through 1001 bureaucratic hoops?

So wait, a good deal from an ISP requires just the right Goldilocks zone of not-too-rural and not-too-urban, and for some reason almost nowhere in the US qualifies even though it's more-common in other countries? That doesn't really pass the smell-test, especially not compared to other explanations like national differences in regulation and competition.

I just commented this elsewhere. It does exist and is where the good internet is. Good internet being a few g, but still better than i've had downtown or rurally

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

#263

Post by dopadelic »

CalRobert wrote: post #201

Crazy idea but... Do I _need_ 25 Gb internet? Even when I had 1 Gb I never saturated the connection.

People really don't have a clue how fast 25Gbps is, no personal device can come close to taking advantage of it. SSDs barely will transfer that fast on the best case scenarios (buffered large blocks). Most wifi won't even clear 0.5Gbps. If you have the latest and greatest wifi7 where both your PC and router supports it, you can get up to 2.5Gbps if you're sitting next to the router. If you're wired, few people have 10Gbps ethernet. You have to get a dedicated adapter for it since practically no PCs come with it. And that's just for 10Gbps. For 25Gbps, there's nothing available for the consumer market. That's enterprise level stuff. A single 25Gbps ethernet card costs $500.

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

#264

Post by hkt »

Aurornis wrote: post #161

This 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…

> Covering the US with broadband is much harder than Switzerland.

I don't think anyone is suggesting the US be covered with broadband, just the bits where people live. That then becomes a comparable problem, insofar as Switzerland has comparable size communities (with the exception of the very largest end of US cities whose population exceeds that of Switzerland)

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

#265

Post by Youden »

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.

25Gbps is available but not common. Most average people will buy 10Gbps P2MP from Swisscom, Sunrise, Salt etc., the really big companies with marketing all over the cities. Then they'll use WiFi with the default modem and not reach anything like 25Gbps.

25Gbps requires pretty unusual hardware to use (see [0] for example) and you need to pay a couple hundred francs for installation so even among the geeks and nerds, it's not common.

I have it myself but recommend to friends and colleagues to use Init7 but 10Gbps instead.

[0]: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-07-10-linux-25gbit-...

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

#266

Post by piltdownman »

gleenn wrote: post #196
ElProlactin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corruption, aging infrastructure... There are developing ("third-world") countries that have better overall internet than the US.

I heard someone argue that because original phones rolled out in the US much earlier and more broadly, we spend all this money on copper wiring. Because Europe didn't have as much, they transitioned to fast cellular quickly. Being first does not mean you will be best certainly.

In Europe local calls were generally never free, and in many countries getting a line/handset installed in your home was an onerous and expensive task. In more socialist/ex-bloc regions it was generally down to how much social and political capital you could muster.

European telecom providers typically charged for local calls on a per-minute basis, often with connection/establishment fees. US telecom providers did it on flat-rate bundles at worst.

For the same reason, Europe completely skipped pagers as an interim step between landlines and mobile connectivity outside of specific on-call jobs like Medical practitioners.

Much more of an incentive to divest yourself from a copper network designed for voice traffic that was not cheap, fast, or available in many cases.

An unlimited calls, data and SMS 5G SIM in Ireland runs you about €15/monthly on a Pay-as-you-go basis. You tend to get about 20-50GB of Roaming Data in the EU bundled.

https://www.eir.ie/shop/mobile?simonly=true https://48.ie/ https://shop.gomo.ie/mobile-sim-only https://www.clearmobile.ie/

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

#267

Post by dzhiurgis »

guiambros wrote: post #173
Aurornis wrote: post #161

This 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.

I live in NZ, but work with mostly US SaaS'es. Got 1 gpbs fiber but I'm torn between downgrading to something like 500mbps which also downgrades your upload and upgrading to 6gbps so I get better international speeds (right now it's something like 100mbps tops).

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

#268

Post by dzhiurgis »

yogorenapan wrote: post #193
johnsmith1840 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US has the largest railway on earth by a large margin

Largest freight rail. Public transport for normal people is still shit compared to Europe.

That doesn't seem to be stopping europeans from moving to USA.

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

#269

Post by miki123211 »

serial_dev wrote: post #207
Aurornis wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no idea if Switzerland is any better, but the US situation in 2026 is appalling. Kind of amazing that we're calling 1Gbps fiber "appalling". Every thread about internet access attracts people with unique situations. NYC is a dense city that's hard to build in and has to deal with a lot of regulation. I don't live in NYC and I'm not even in a dense area, but I have my choice of fiber providers up to at least…

Rural area? Hard to build. Dense city? Hard to build. Got it. Jokes aside, I guess population density is just not the main factor in internet. It’s competition, it’s regulation, it’s corruption, and pop density is simply not a deciding factor.

Building in rural areas is hard for physical / engineering reasons. There's more cable to lay, more distance to cover, and fewer people to use that cable and offset the costs.

Building in dense cities is hard because we choose to make it hard. We could (and should) choose differently.

Ironically enough, rural areas now have a ceiling on how bad service can get (because Starlink is a viable alternative). That doesn't work for dense EU/Asian style cities where most people live in 5+ story buildings.

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

#270

Post by lancewiggs »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #267
guiambros wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live in NZ, but work with mostly US SaaS'es. Got 1 gpbs fiber but I'm torn between downgrading to something like 500mbps which also downgrades your upload and upgrading to 6gbps so I get better international speeds (right now it's something like 100mbps tops).

Yup. For those interested we have a similar approach where the fibre to the home is owned by a regulated provider that is required to offer its service to all retail service providers (RSPs) at the same price. Competition is strong.
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