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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

#441

Post by trashface »

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.

1 Gbps is still pretty good if you can get it for a reasonable price. Just did a speed test at my parents place in Philly suburbs, they only get 50Mbps down. They pay A LOT of money to comcast, every month.

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

#443

Post by AnthonyMouse »

danaris wrote: post #409
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jokes aside, I guess population density is just not the main factor in internet. It’s competition, it’s regulation, it’s corruption, and pop density is simply not a deciding factor. Sort of? If you're going to provide wired service in rural areas at all , doing it with fast fiber isn't a significantly different maintenance cost than using the old stuff, but it has a high one time cost to transition from copper to f…

But in rural areas, Verizon, at the very least, is deliberately neglecting their copper, and not replacing it with fibre. For people whose service degrades or stops working entirely, what do they offer instead? Wireless. Which has much higher margins and much looser regulations around it. At least for a while, Verizon was sending very strong signals that they wanted to get out of the wired connection business entirel…

You're anthropomorphizing the lawnmower. Corporations can't feel greed, greed is an emotion. Publicly traded corporations are automatons. It's the same reason they don't experience shame.

If you think a company could easily do something better than they're doing it right now then start a company and show them how it's done. If that's prohibitively difficult, e.g. because the incumbents have captured the regulators, then you've identified the root cause of the problem and what you need to change to make things better.

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

#445

Post by SamDc73 »

Honestly this reads like a badly-written propaganda that relies on no messured statistic.

From okla's Speedtest Global Index:

Fixed broadband (median download): US: #9 306.86 Mbps Switzerland: #10 300.70 Mbps

Mobile: US: #11 205.71 Mbps Switzerland: #42 118.93 Mbps

the "25 Gbit" is top tier prodcut that while avablie in the US (sure not the whole country) it's not sometinhg the avg in both coutnries actully buy/use...

> why Switzerland has such fast internet at a reasonable price

also on prices the per 2023 (couldn't find any newer resoruces) [2] 100 Mbps in the US seems a bit cheaper in the US than swizerland (but the diffrnece is honestly neligable to begin with)

> Every home gets a dedicated 4-strand fiber line. Point-to-Point. Not shared. Not split 32 ways.

form a quick serach, this seems to simply be not true, FTTP coverage is 50% in swizerland (comapred to 69% in europe) and 27% in rural areas (compared to 58% in rural europe) per 2024 [3]

> The United States prides itself on free markets

boradcam is one of the most regualted/restricted markets in teh U.S (for better or worse) so it really isn't really free market ...

Local governments grant the cable/telecom franchise and levy franchise fees up to 5% of gross revenue (Cable Act 1984, 47 U.S.C. §542). Entrants also need government-controlled pole and right-of-way access; pole/permit fights are what stalled Google Fiber. And ~16–17 states legally restrict or ban municipal broadband.

Section 301 China tariffs (10–25%) since 2018 (Trump) hit optical fiber, routers, and network electronics. Biden's 2021 Infrastructure Act (IIJA) also restriected using some certin chinesse technology when buidling internet infrastructure.

[1] https://www.speedtest.net/global-index

[2] https://www.picodi.com/us/bargain-hunting/internet-prices-20...

[3] https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/57c...

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

#446

Post by ritcgab »

initramfs wrote: post #52
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…

I'm guessing you saw this SNL sketch? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5DeDLI8_IM

It's a documentary.

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

#447

Post by phendrenad2 »

lxgr wrote: post #37
phendrenad2 wrote: post #11

> Every home gets a dedicated 4-strand fiber line Author kind of glosses over this, like it's the setup to the point. But it's obvious that THIS is the point. The government did the hard work of running 25Gbit-capable fibre (4 of them!) to each and every house, and the ISP just has to run (25 * NumHouses)Gbit-capable fiber to the POP. In the United States, which has 250x the land as Switzerland but only 30x the popul…

Are you arguing that a country as large and wealthy as the US can only solve one problem at a time or that fast, affordable Internet access is somehow a luxury problem?

I'm saying that if it's 8x as costly to run fibre to every American house, then it requires 8x the political willpower.

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

#448

Post by lyu07282 »

parineum wrote: post #432
lyu07282 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making the barrier of entry to the market so high that nobody can compete with existing players. You have to understand that some things can not be different. Lets take an example that is simpler, that even libertarians might understand: Streets, you can not privatize streets. You can not have a market where companies build streets and compete for customers to use their streets. Because you can not build 5 differen…

We have private streets in California.

Sorry don't have the crayons right now to explain it to you

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

#449

Post by guiambros »

jjav wrote: post #356
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.

> but the US situation in 2026 is appalling appalling? What exactly, in detail, can't you do with a 1 Gpbps connection?! My home ISP delivers ~22 Mbps and it is totally fine for all use cases.

You missed the point (and I should have clarified better). It's not that 1 Gbps is bad; it's pretty good, actually. And I do think Verizon is one of the least bad options.

The problem is that there's zero competition. And while many other countries have 2, 5, 8Gbps available, there's zero reason for Verizon to offer it, despite being a densely populated area.

And 1 Gbps has been the max available for 10 years. It's very likely in 2036 we'll be in the exact same situation.

I wish we had a model like Switzerland, where the fiber is centrally managed, and providers compete just to connect you to the network.

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

#450

Post by lava_pidgeon »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #393
lava_pidgeon wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok and you couldn't get my argument: Why not Rumania, South Korea? These countries have also a great quality of internet. On mobile Poland, France and Austria? This is also a difference between an ideologicopinion piece with a "Ive told you so" and "Markets are bad " to an scientific review.

I'm sure the analysis could be expanded – why don't you give your try at an essay? If you write it, I'll read it. How much should the essay be expanded? Surely we don't want a 1:1 scale model of reality. We probably should not factor in the conductivity of water and compare against the cost of 1 liter of milk; although if I wanted to attack the integrity of the essay I might lament those factors' absence. Snark aside…

I can judge an analysis even if I am not aiming to write another one.

Sorry this debate is getting weird and boring. Have a nice day.

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