321–330 of 464 posts
Ah yes, the classic gotcha: why doesn’t the world’s largest economy, spanning a continent, look exactly like a country of 9 million that fits inside West Virginia? Truly a mystery. Next up: why doesn’t the US have Monaco’s per capita yacht ownership?
This argument makes zero sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - 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 harder than Switzerland. I see this argument come up a lot with regards to all kinds of infrastructure, and the thing is it simply _isn't true_. What matters is population density, GDP per capita, geography, and will. A countries size doesn't matter since…
Wrong, there are scaling problems. Have you ever worked at both a very large and very small company? Were things that were easy at small companies much harder at large ones?
I don't know about anyone else, but I have *never* found this to be the case.
Dealing with a larger company you've got a far greater selection of people you can get to say "uh, yeah, I guess, why not? It's not really my department..." which you can take as a yes.
In a smaller company no matter what you're doing you've got to get it past Old Bob, who's been there since before most of the current management team were born and will argue over everything simply because he can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cannot comment on the cost in the US, but in the UK it would be the farm that’s more expensive because the cost is relative the distance. You still have to file the same government applications to close a dirt road as you would a busy city street. But you would have much more miles of road to file the application for, plus the actual expense of the engineering work, for rural destinations. And that’s without factor…
I've lived dense city to rural in the US, and it's suburbia that has the best internet. Can rip up the street for days no problem, but still a relatively dense population.
AT&T, which already had cable here, ripped up the street a few months back and put in fiber. There are two other high speed providers as well.
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.
Very few companies wanna get into deploying their own network (both in the states and europe), but the few that do make money out of it. I would be really surprised if Switzerland is any different.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Rural is complicated. You have more distance between subscribers, but it's much more likely to just be grass which you can mole plough into for about a tenth of the cost per metre of digging up sidewalk. I don't know about New York specifically but I do know laying new duct in central London is more expensive than it should be because the sidewalks are mostly now full. You need to close roads and track down them whic…
You've also most likely got existing telephone poles that you can dangle your fibre off, and (in farming country at least) you've probably got some handy grain silos to nail a microwave link to.
Here in rural NE Scotland there are several altnets, and it's not uncommon to see a massive cluster of microwave dishes and yagis hanging off the corner of a barn somewhere.
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…
Yeah, what a biased piece of reporting. Switzerland has one of the highest Internet prices in the world: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-... And don't talk to me about mobile data prices, it's out of the planet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
US has the largest railway on earth by a large margin
US annual freight tonnage per annum is much the same as Australia's (1.5 billion tonne /annum, IIRC). Australia has longer, more control complex trains (leading, trailing and midway locomotives). To the best of my knowledge the US has never once had a single train 7 km in length with 680+ cars and a gross tonnage of 99,734 tonne - Australia has set a record with such a train and moves smaller (but still at that scale…
Comparing USA's freight rail network to Australia's on those numbers paints a misleading picture. 3/4 of it is iron ore and coal being carried relatively short distances (few 100s of km) from inland out to the nearest coastal port, and most of that is away from any significant population centers.
By ton-mile, USA takes 5-6x more than Australia and much more interesting and varied conditions and freight types and destinations - not just ferrying it from a hole in the ground, across highway 1, then into a bunker at a shipping terminal.
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…
> - 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 harder than Switzerland. I see this argument come up a lot with regards to all kinds of infrastructure, and the thing is it simply _isn't true_. What matters is population density, GDP per capita, geography, and will. A countries size doesn't matter since…