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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

#161

Post by Aurornis »

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 harder than Switzerland.

- 25G internet is also available in some locations in the United States.

- As another commenter discovered, the average speed test results of US and Swiss internet connections are pretty similar. The average Swiss person isn't connected to the internet faster than the average United States person.

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

#162

Post by ethersteeds »

cogman10 wrote: post #47
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.

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…

I agree with you about the effects of regulation and privatization. The installation challenges of dense urban environments are no joke either. But:

> Every home in america has electricity and plumbing even though those utilities have the same density problem.

Plumbing yes, but it might not leave the property. About 25% of US homes have septic systems, and some states are as high as 50%. For water, 15% of homes use private wells, which goes to 72% for rural households.

It's not everything, but density absolutely matters for rural households. The US is vast and contains many areas where you are your water and sewer company because there's no municipal option.

That said, your electricity example shows the way. That got to every home through massive public infrastructure projects. And internet could too, far easier than water or sewer.

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

#163

Post by AngryData »

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.

Except in my very rural and very poor part of the US we got a fiber co-op that formed a few years ago that provides 1 gig direct to home without a problem.

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

#164

Post by atoav »

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…

Now let's do trains.

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

#165

Post by timc3 »

rullelito wrote: post #127
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #123

I 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…

Now do Sweden.

Well in the area of Sweden I live in a particular company seems to own the fibre, and then they have to allow access to resell it. The company owning the fibre has been finding interesting extra ways of charging me extra fees over the years and I don't have a choice of moving away from them (except paying for commercial fibre or using slower 5G with quotas)

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

#167

Post by arthurofbabylon »

jraby3 wrote: post #87
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #82

I’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…

Population of Switzerland is around 9 million people. Slightly larger than NYC. Comparing a country with the population of a single city in America is disingenuous. There are probably some cities in America that have faster internet than Switzerland.

I'll briefly reiterate the essay's primary point, for your convenience, which is agnostic to population size: when a natural monopoly exists, the best solution – regardless of ideology – is to make the underlying infrastructure at once singular and public while fostering competition at the level of servicing that infrastructure. That is how Switzerland accomplished its highly functional fiber-optic network, a system that is at once cheaper, more reliable, and more performant than its US and German peers.

This is a perfect example of my earlier comment: you are talking around the subject, cynically dismissing the point of the essay without even addressing it.

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

#168

Post by badgersnake »

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…

It also assumes the US broadband market is free, which it effectively isn’t. There’s a huge moat of hard-lobbied for “regulations” put in place by the established players.

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

#169

Post by breznev »

gregsadetsky wrote: post #25

Getting a Spectrum cable modem internet connection in NYC in 2026 is so deeply humiliating. Dealing with the ridiculously limited upload speed, the outages, the locked router. The 40 minutes it takes on the phone to get it disconnected. Their constant attempts at upselling you cell phone plans and other terrible tech you’d never consider. Truly, Fios is the most bare minimum. And there are much better options if you…

[dead]

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

#170

Post by procaryote »

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.

Every story about how the US has awful internet has a comment like this. I suspect that the refusal to believe the US is worse at anything is part of the reason it never catches up in those areas.
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