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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

#191

Post by arjie »

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…

If the geographic factors are dominant then we should expect New Jersey to have 25 Gbps internet.

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

#194

Post by andriamanitra »

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…

That argument might be valid if there were no urban areas in America. However it fails to explain why, for example, New Jersey does not have affordable 25 Gbit residential internet either. It is half the size of Switzerland but has similar population and much more favorable geography. And even if you wanted to only look at a place like Idaho, the explanation (and solutions!) provided by the article is even more applicable to places where building infrastructure is hard/costly.

Claiming the lack of healthy competition in the ISP space is because of (geography|population density|[a-z]+) is a prime example of the defeatist attitude in which one seeks to explain/excuse problems instead of even trying to address them. I've started noticing this pattern more and more after Evan Edinger pointed it out in a video (addressing some American comments on his videos): [1]

> We all default to what we know, that is just very natural. The problem is when new information arrives and instead of sitting with it and thinking about it, we immediately reach for any reason that it must be wrong. Because if it's wrong, nothing has to change.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDyPHGZCmNE&t=17m17s

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

#195

Post by PeterHolzwarth »

mieses wrote: post #138
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…

It is a stupid comparison with a stupid anti capitalist agenda. All infrastructure in Switzerland is high quality and highly maintained because they are a tiny and wealthy country. Their wealth has something to do with banking. Maybe the author of the stupid blog post can ponder the relationship between free markets, banking, and wealth.

You appear to be sponsored by the word "stupid."

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

#196

Post by gleenn »

ElProlactin wrote: post #189
porknubbins wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not how bad must other areas be when NYC is this bad- its bad because its NYC. Corruption, aging infrastructure, enormous construction costs, diverse building types and complex ownership interests etc etc. The fastest and most competitive internet is in places like wealthy suburbs where you just roll it out without any issues.

> 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.

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

#197

Post by defrost »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #190
atoav wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now let's do trains.

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) trains daily.

( That's over 4.3 miles in length carrying 109,938 short tons for any readers from Liberia, or Myanmar )

Tech-wise Australia also operates the world's first (and still only?) fully autonomous rail heavy haul routes.

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

#198

Post by CalRobert »

LeonM wrote: post #109
not_your_vase wrote: post #32

Earlier 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…

The cachet of "Swiss" products is a lot higher than US. (Whether this is merited is another question entirely)

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

#199

Post by Aurornis »

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 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 8G, maybe more. I haven't looked that hard. I'm not going to pretend my situation is normal across the US just like you shouldn't assume your situation is normal either. It's a big country and things are different everywhere.

Switzerland is the same: Internet access options depend on where you live. The article sneakily tries to imply that 25G is everywhere, but it's not.

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

#200

Post by kvam »

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…

Average and median is not the same. Listed speed and actual speed is not the same (as mentioned in the article).

Also, about the size of the countries. The underlying model scales, that’s the point. Unless you were talking about political willingness to back large commitments. That’s a another question.

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