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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

#421

Post by tom910 »

ragazzina wrote: post #295
tom910 wrote: post #130

> The Free Market Lie Why is it a lie if Switzerland actually uses a free market and gets bonuses from it? Yeah, the idea with 1 common infrastructure is a positive aspect. It's interesting how they solve an issue with maintenance. But still, low prices and good quality of service are benefits of the free market.

> low prices and good quality of service are benefits of the free market. All I see on the Internet is Americans complaining about high prices and enshittification of every product. Is your market not free enough?

I just checked Init7 price for 1gig internet in Zurich and the price is higher than I'm paing for 1gig in Seattle and payed in Bay Area. So, free market kinda works.

But even in this case, the article doesn't provide motivations for companies spent a lot money for building common infrastructure in rural places which usually have an issue with bad internet options

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

#422

Post by Hikikomori »

defrost wrote: post #411
Hikikomori wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are all Americans living in single person houses spread out evenly over the entire land area?

Is there any other way to ranch spherical cows?

Had to google it but that's pretty funny.

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

#423

Post by tom910 »

sschueller wrote: post #255
catlikesshrimp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market doesn't sort itself out. It has to be streamed through proper regulation.

I don't know why you are getting down voted. I wrote the article and that is the point of the article. A free market requires proper and smart regulation to work for all the people to get the best product.

Do we know places when it actually works well? I agree about a small regulation layer, but the issue is that regulation grows over time to the point when it limits free market power. The most problematic markets in the US is over regulated by my opinion

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

#424

Post by colechristensen »

matt-p wrote: post #290
colechristensen wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

So why don't you have ISPs that focus on one state or one geographical area. We have that all over in Europe.

They get bought out.

The wonderful Minneapolis-local fiber ISP US Internet recently got bought out by T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom) for example.

Wave Broadband in the bay area got bought by private equity.

All around the country you'll find local or municipal cable companies that got sold to the big players, Mediacom, Comcast, etc.

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

#425

Post by vlovich123 »

saghm wrote: post #119
vlovich123 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is forcing you to use their modem or router. Out on the west coast I’ve generally been fine with spectrum modulo the upload speed although they’ve did a recent upgrade to 100mbit/s+ due to new DOCSIS standards. I finally got Fiber in SF so I switched but Spectrum was finally kind of good enough for the most part.

At the apartment I lived at until last year, Spectrum only offered up to half a gig down unless you used their modem (which of course meant an extra $15 per month on top of the plan for a full gig already being more expensive). Of course, neither of these were symmetric, with the connection listed as "mixed" between copper and fiber. I stuck with the half gig since it was the best option without paying them for the "…

Maybe spectrum is different in different parts of the country, I don’t know. In SF I’ve been using my own modem for gigabit for 8 years. And now spectrum is giving you the modem for free if you get their 1000/100 service. Not sure if that’s just introductory or because ATT has started deploying fiber.

I don’t know why I got down voted so hard for saying I’ve generally not had spectrum going down regularly or that you don’t have to rent their modem. I used to hate Comcast too but in my opinion they’ve improved a lot so I’m not unhappy despite leaving them as a customer.

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

#426

Post by rmunn »

lefra wrote: post #41
rmunn wrote: post #18

Earlier 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.

You're right, I was misremembering "it takes all day to drive across Texas from east to west" (or west to east) as 24 hours, when in fact it's about 12 hours: on Interstate 10 (going from the southeastern corner of Texas to the westernmost point) it takes about 12.5 hours according to Google Maps, and on Interstate 20 (which enters Texas in the northeast and heads to the westernmost point, joining up with I-10 along the way) it takes about 11.5 hours. So it's "all day" in the sense of taking from sunrise to sundown (more or less), rather than 24 hours.

(And if you drive across Texas's "panhandle", the squarish part in the north, from east to west, then it's only 2.5 hours. But most people are referring to the longest possible drive, not the shortest possible drive, when they say "it takes X hours to drive across (place).")

Anyway, thanks for the correction. I'll try to remember next time that it's "from sunrise to sunset" rather than 24 hours. As the (rather silly) poem goes,

"The sun has riz, the sun has set. And we still is, in Texas yet."

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

#427

Post by saghm »

vlovich123 wrote: post #425
saghm wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the apartment I lived at until last year, Spectrum only offered up to half a gig down unless you used their modem (which of course meant an extra $15 per month on top of the plan for a full gig already being more expensive). Of course, neither of these were symmetric, with the connection listed as "mixed" between copper and fiber. I stuck with the half gig since it was the best option without paying them for the "…

Maybe spectrum is different in different parts of the country, I don’t know. In SF I’ve been using my own modem for gigabit for 8 years. And now spectrum is giving you the modem for free if you get their 1000/100 service. Not sure if that’s just introductory or because ATT has started deploying fiber. I don’t know why I got down voted so hard for saying I’ve generally not had spectrum going down regularly or that you…

Fair enough. All I know is living in New York, Spectrum is probably the worst ISP that I've ever experienced (and it seems to be a pretty common experience). I'm not one of the ones who downvoted you though, just someone who offered an alternate opinion, so I can't speak to why that happened.

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

#429

Post by TheScaryOne »

timcambrant wrote: post #407
mlrtime wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they do have it, but it does not need to be 25 gbps. Even if they had access to it, they wouldn't/shouldn't pay for it.

25 Gbps is a silly (but illustrative / clickbaity) take in this context. The more relevant measures as others have pointed out is how well-covered clusters of population are, but also what their broadband quality is. I live in Sweden, where we have extremely well-built out broadband networks, especially in cities. (My professional take is that quality is often very poor, but that is comparing to the rest of the count…

My 8mbps DSL line is $43USD/month after everything, and the cheapest internet I have access to.

The next tier up is Starlink or 250mbps Fiber, which have the same cost. I do not wish to support Starlink. But I also can't afford to almost double my internet bill.

I live on a major national highway in a crossroads town.

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