I don't care about fancy numbers, I care about high quality peering. I'd rather have a stable 50Mbit than 1Gbit and 0.5Mbit international peering with packet loss.
Don't sign up with a Tier 1 or aspiring one
Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
231–240 of 464 posts
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#232should really look at the Australian system... it's not really a free market there and the internet is awful
We have our NBN fibre here in Australia and it works fine. We can get 1000 down / 400 up for ~100USD.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#233In Catania 10 gbit Internet costs 35 euros/month and is available everywhere in the city and even in a big slice of the small towns around Catania. And indeed public incentives played a big role. But what I believe it is more interesting is that 1 gigabit was common like 10 years ago or even more. Infrastructure is a bit too important to be left to what the market believes will be profitable.
Btw the paradox I have is that my local lan is 1 gbit...
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
It appears the author lives in Germany. In my experience, Europeans who haven't visited the US (I don't know if he has or not) often have a hard time grasping just how HUGE the country is. It literally spans an entire continent east to west. In Europe, you can usually drive to another country's border, or the coast, within 4-6 hours (sometimes more depending on where you are). In parts of America, you can drive for 2…
European here. Maybe I'm not typical, but I know that the contiguous US is about as large as the EU (around 4000 km from one side to the other). And if you need 24h to get to the other side if a state, you're either on dirt tracks in Alaska, or got stuck somewhere in the worst traffic jam ever. Texas is about 1000km wide, just like the larger european countries, that's a 10 to 12 hour drive.
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Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#235Earlier 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.
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?
I don't think you need to tear open busy streets to install fiber. In my area we got fiber (up to 10G now) and they didn't open any trench.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
It appears the author lives in Germany. In my experience, Europeans who haven't visited the US (I don't know if he has or not) often have a hard time grasping just how HUGE the country is. It literally spans an entire continent east to west. In Europe, you can usually drive to another country's border, or the coast, within 4-6 hours (sometimes more depending on where you are). In parts of America, you can drive for 2…
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.
Now thing about all the single houses on multiple sq mile plots and the fact that a $40-$100 subscription is never going to pay back the millions it took to get to each of those homes. There are tons of those. I've lived in several states like that.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#237This 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…
> 25G internet isn't available everywhere in Switzerland. It's just the fastest tier available in some locations.
It is available everywhere where fiber internet is available. As of May 2026 this is ~50% of all households in Switzerland.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#238In Catania 10 gbit Internet costs 35 euros/month and is available everywhere in the city and even in a big slice of the small towns around Catania. And indeed public incentives played a big role. But what I believe it is more interesting is that 1 gigabit was common like 10 years ago or even more. Infrastructure is a bit too important to be left to what the market believes will be profitable. Btw the paradox I have i…
Once you have 1Gbps Fiber it's not particularly hard to go to 25 if some other entity other than the Telco is covering the costs.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article makes it very clear that the fiber to the house is a natural monopoly and should be public infrastructure, just like communism. Once the fiber reaches a central office, access can be sold and metered off to a free market, just like capitalism. What most of us in the "free world" are suffering with is blood sucking parasites that own the pipe into the house and charge prices aligned with that fact. It's an…
Why would fiber to the house be a natural monopoly?
Overbuilding makes no financial sense for companies