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Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

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

#521

Post by JumpCrisscross »

toofy wrote: post #409
philipallstar wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: rural fibre is unbelievably expensive and starlink is solving it in a better way.

i’m sorry, but no, starlink is not comparable to fiber. better than dsl? i mean, sure? but absolutely not even close to better than fiber. there’s a reason data centers in rural areas run fiber for miles and miles to their centers and aren’t on … starlink.

> starlink is not comparable to fiber

Straw man. It doesn’t need to comparable. Just sufficient. If a rich rural community wants to pay to lay fiber into the boonies, they can still do that. But it shouldn’t be a shared cost across society. (I live in a rural community.)

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

#522

Post by DiscourseFan »

toofy wrote: post #202
ttul wrote: post #9

In my small island community, I participated in a municipal committee whose mandate was to bring proper broadband to the island. Although two telecom duopolies already served the community, one of them had undersea fiber but zero fiber to the home (DSL remains the only option), whereas the other used a 670 Mbps wireless microwave link for backhaul and delivery via coaxial cable. And pricing? Insanely expensive for ei…

this is a great example of where the government should step in and say “welp, you took too long, we’re now funding municiple fiber and we’ll give it to everyone cheap. sorry.” i truly do believe competition can often drivr things forward but we have countless examples where executives get comfortable and decide their best course of action for profits is to do little to nothing. if a community has been screaming for f…

Isn't this the Chinese system? Using state corporations to spur competition.

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

#523

Post by halapro »

thelastgallon wrote: post #170

Most states in America ban municipal fiber. They saw EPB (Chattanooga) and said, no, we must make sure that doesn't ever happen again. That is how 'free' market is done in US, all the rules are to make sure the richest people become richer.

This is the most American shit ever. Pro-consumer regulations are rejected to the point that they start regulating against their own constituents.

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

#524

Post by throw0101d »

lachiflippi wrote: post #336
vbernat wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality, this does not happen that way. If a path already exists, you can pay to use the same duct (unless it's full) to install your own fibers. At least, it works this way in France.

It absolutely does happen that way in Germany. We had Fiber Company A rip up the entire city a year ago, and Fiber Company B ripped up the streets again just a few weeks ago. ETA from my ISP to actually get any of those lines into my apartment is still 2028.

This is a coördination problem: the municipality can mandate that every company has to install a larger conduit so that (say) 3-6 (?) other fibres can be run.

So if one company is doing the east part of the town, and another company is doing the west, at some point they could leverage the infrastructure of each other.

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

#525

Post by halapro »

sumedh wrote: post #484
halapro wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the benefits of living in Europe, which is relatively densely populated compared to places like the US.

Does New York, LA etc have 25 Gbit internet?

Density doesn't cause faster internet but it certainly facilitates it. The US has far too much lobbying to favor consumers.

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

#527

Post by Sayrus »

d_sem wrote: post #517

The geographic and demographic orders of magnitude when comparing these two places makes it difficult to extrapolate applicability of best practices. Who's to say the Swiss model scales? Article doesn't convincingly address this. For context: 41 US States are geographically larger than Switzerland. It's most comparable state in area is West Virginia. West Virginia is .064% of the national area. Some fun distance cont…

Extrapolating with this method, large cities should be as well equipped as Switzerland.

Los Angeles has 10x the population density of Switzerland and around the same population density in urban area. Same for Washington dc, San Francisco...

It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing. Distance between cities may be large, but the order of magnitude is closer when comparing within cities.

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

#528

Post by throw0101d »

ascotan wrote: post #481

The real reason for the “cartels” in the US is because of the cost of infrastructure versus the subscribers cost. Because the United States is so large there are only a few companies that can create the infrastructure required to service large area areas with fiber. So companies that have the ability to lay down, fiber do so in necessary cooperation with other providers to create a large patchwork across the country.…

> The real reason for the “cartels” in the US is because of the cost of infrastructure versus the subscribers cost. Because the United States is so large there are only a few companies that can create the infrastructure required to service large area areas with fiber.

The "US is large" argument is non-sense. 40% of the US population lives in a coastal county:

* https://coast.noaa.gov/states/fast-facts/economics-and-demog...

And two-thirds of the population lives with-in 100 miles of the border:

* https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/your-rights-bord...

The US population is fairly concentrated.

And even if it wasn't, looking at history, the US managed to bring electrical cables to just about every household in the country, and later telephone cables. If those two things could be done in the 1900s, why can't fibre be done in the 2000s?

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

#529

Post by ExoticPearTree »

I live in a country where you can get 10Gbps fiber for ~ 10EUR. And one 1Gbps for the same money if they don't have coverage for the 10G.

And, having worked with the US providers all I can tell you is this: greed, and lots of it. And if they're the only option in an area, they will charge you a literal arm and a leg.

Just a small example: in a mall, there was a single provider Paid ~ 300USD for 5Mbps in 2024. Once we were able to upgrade the equipment and get a cell router, we got to pay about $50/mo for ~ 50-60Mbps. Mall provider not happy.

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

#530

Post by sophrosyne42 »

franga2000 wrote: post #403
direwolf20 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you do know a way: Buy a spool of fiber and lay one from your house to the nearby block. Make it public knowledge that you're doing this and sharing internet with your neighbours (even if you're not). The incumbent will quickly upgrade your area.

A few years ago I learned that the only thing keeping me on 20/2 ADLS was a few 100 meters of already built but empty cable channel. I easily could buy that much fibre, borrow a fibre splicer and cable puller, patch it up to a relative in one of the already wired buildings and share their gigabit link with my entire apartment building. Half of my building was on the ISP that owned the empty channel, so moving to a co…

This, more than anything, is the cause of limited space utilities monopolies. Companies have to license use of the backing infrastructure, and most often municipalities only give these easements to a tiny number of players. It's a textbook government granted monopoly.
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