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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

#381

Post by ahartmetz »

ElProlactin wrote: post #275
gleenn wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Because Europe didn't have as much... Europe isn't the developing world. There are countries in SE Asia that put the US to shame in terms of the speed, quality and cost of their internet. I'm literally in one now at a random cafe where I'm getting 400 Mbps down and 500 Mbps up while sipping a $1.75 cup of coffee.

South Korea isn't the developing world neither (at least since the mid 90s), but 10 years ago I could barely read HN on the subway in Berlin while I saw people watching YouTube on the subway in Seoul.

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

#382

Post by ironbound »

numlock86 wrote: post #186
ironbound wrote: post #152

Some in Poland have 2.5Gbit+ fiber, while other friends in Berlin have ADSL. Sweden has good fiber to, off the top of my head.

> Some in have X, while other friends in have Y Cool. What's your message here, though? I got 10GBit/s down and 1Gbit/s up fiber in a medium size city in Germany as a non-enterprise customer. I even went to buy a capable router and SFP+ network cards for our main PCs and NAS to be able to enjoy it fully. A friend in Poland (close to the border near Cottbus) doesn't have an internet line at all and always relied on mo…

The point is your main city is holding back having faster internet for average citizens

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

#383

Post by ahartmetz »

stefanfisk wrote: post #334
gleenn wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dude, this is what Stockholm looked like 1890 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Stockholm_telephone_tower . 2009 we made it a national strategy that 90% of the population should get internet access via fiber and by 2020 we’d reached 63%. Here’s a map of our broadband coverage https://bredbandskartan.pts.se/ . The US had a similar strategy and basically paid $400 billion for the same buildout but got nothing in return…

There is a real disadvantage of countries with large population: More layers of management in politics, more corruption.

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

#384

Post by Hikikomori »

hibikir wrote: post #147
GolfPopper wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The immense geography doesn't matter as much as you might think, because very few people one lives there . The Mountain West and Great Plains are largely empty and most of the people who do live in them live in a small number of urban and suburban areas. I think geography is an overused excuse for America's poor delivery of residential internet.

It's a geographical difference, but it has little to do with the deserts, and more to do with the actual density of where people live, where the US is also among the least dense in the world. Those suburbs with 0.3-0.5 acre lots, roads that need to be everywhere and quite wide, extending every distance, just aren't standard worldwide, and increase bespoke infrastructure costs. In a denser place you need more capacity…

Yeah that sounds impossible. How are these places able to get power, sewage or water? Do they all just have solar panels in their huge backyard or something? Did they just get the Internet with starlink?

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

#385

Post by stefanfisk »

ahartmetz wrote: post #383
stefanfisk wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, this is what Stockholm looked like 1890 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Stockholm_telephone_tower . 2009 we made it a national strategy that 90% of the population should get internet access via fiber and by 2020 we’d reached 63%. Here’s a map of our broadband coverage https://bredbandskartan.pts.se/ . The US had a similar strategy and basically paid $400 billion for the same buildout but got nothing in return…

There is a real disadvantage of countries with large population: More layers of management in politics, more corruption.

Oh certainly. I'm not saying that "we did it so it should be just as easy for you". But neither having an existing copper network nor being sparsely populated is the reason for why the US does not have extensive fiber coverage.

AFAICT the required political will just isn't there due to how campaign financing works. Just look at the plain insanity of laws like this https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/07/16-u-s-states-still-ban-....

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

#386

Post by SkiFire13 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #330
Turskarama wrote: post #254

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…

Population density is the thing people are talking about when they say that. It's 6 times higher in Switzerland than in the US.

Density is not the correct measure here because empty land decreases density but doesn't need to be covered. What matters is how much the population is clustered.

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

#387

Post by zepearl »

dlcarrier wrote: post #351
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.

Everyone's mocking you for using more than 1 Gbps of internet bandwidth, but I honestly want to know how you are able to saturate it. I've found on even the fastest internet connections, it's difficult to get more than a few hundred Mbps, from any given sever. Do you have a bunch of people on the network downloading large files simultaneously, or are you connected to servers able to saturate your connection? I have t…

> I have trouble getting my computers to copy data between each other anywhere near the theoretical limit for a 1 Gbps NIC, despite being connected through only a single switch.

Maybe your LAN cables have deteriorated?

Reaching 100 MiB/s should be easy peasy for a PC; in my case (2 10Gbps switches) by using nvme SSDs I reach almost 950 MiB/s and with 4x raidz1 HDDs I reach 450-650 MiB/s.

Until a few years ago I was smoking in my flat and often I had to change lan cables (whatever's in the smoke was sticking to the connectors)

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

#388

Post by stinkbeetle »

defrost wrote: post #372
stinkbeetle wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Australia" doesn't really set records, multinational mining companies do. The records might as well be set on another planet. There is virtually no population, roads or utilities, no agricultural land beyond low density cattle stations that need up to 50 hectares per head, no mountain ranges, no large rivers, and employing people to work on site out there is might be 3x more expensive than the rest of the economy. T…

Like everything, it all depends on your metric. Again, same freight tonnages as the US .. and with fewer people == vastly greater rail performance per capita , and similar tonnages in absolute numbers. The US is just another G20 country, and one sliding down the rankings on freedom, and democracy.

Well the metric you replied to was rail network size, and was correct about the USA having the largest. "Rail performance" would more typically be measured by ton miles or tonne miles, not "tonnage". Australia still does a bit better there per capita there.

But in either case it is almost entirely these isolated short private coal and ore export lines that have no interconnection or interaction with the rest of the country's freight nor does it remove freight from any roads that the rest of the population would be using. These are virtually entirely in isolation from the rest of the country or economy or transport network and are built by and for mining multinationals. In the context of a country's governance or transport infrastructure or general rail networks, they don't say anything. If they were there or not there or private road and oversize road trains instead, it would not change anything about the rest of the country's transport.

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

#389

Post by wkjagt »

mrits wrote: post #246
yogorenapan wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Have you been to Europe? What area do you enjoy the public transportation?

The Netherlands

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

#390

Post by kalleboo »

ahartmetz wrote: post #383
stefanfisk wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, this is what Stockholm looked like 1890 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Stockholm_telephone_tower . 2009 we made it a national strategy that 90% of the population should get internet access via fiber and by 2020 we’d reached 63%. Here’s a map of our broadband coverage https://bredbandskartan.pts.se/ . The US had a similar strategy and basically paid $400 billion for the same buildout but got nothing in return…

There is a real disadvantage of countries with large population: More layers of management in politics, more corruption.

Maybe the US should split themselves up into 50 smaller divisions of populations that have more local autonomy to optimize things like this.
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