Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by ttul » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

throw0101d wrote: post #508

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…

> Sadly, the municipality didn’t have any capital to invest a penny into that fiber […] Would borrowing money (issuing a bond) be an option in cases like this? Pay it off over the course a decade (two/three?), and make the payments part of the fee put to users?

Yes, they could have borrowed money. It requires a referendum, but I believe it would have passed. Alas, many small community politicians are retired folks (who else has time when you’re getting paid $500/mo) and in my case, they just didn’t get how crucial this stuff is.

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

#542

Post by troyvit » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

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…

> 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.”

That's what my town (Longmont, CO) did! We had laid a fiber loop around the city back in the '90s for traffic signal coordination. Over the years the town would engage different private companies to try to get them to lay fiber (or even directional wifi) to the door. None of them took off, so the city decided to do it themselves. Xfinity tried to sue us and ran a weak attempt at astroturfing, but after about five years of concerted back-hoeing most of the town has gigabit. It isn't 25 gigabit by any means but it works.

Bonus: you call a 303 number for support and somebody who lives here picks up like "What can I do for ya, hun?" (I exaggerate, but not by much). Half an hour later your problem is solved.

Edit: It's $50/month for that.

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

#543

Post by ttul » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

Hikikomori wrote: post #65

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…

Local municipality power companies put fiber in the ground whenever they put power. The result is fiber almost everywhere at very low cost. Even along rail and major roads.

Absolutely. Once you’re laying anything at all in the ground, tossing down a fiber costs nothing.

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

#544

Post by Hikikomori » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #437

Hikikomori wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many states prohibit municipalities to do fiber. Regulatory capture and monopolies are your problem. Sweden managed to build out fiber almost everywhere and are much more like some of your states.

How much bigger is the US than Switzerland? Its like 200x the size of it. Do you think that it's size and division of 50 distinct states might make that task a bit tougher?

Was talking about Sweden. But it's ok, I know Americans find geography challenging.

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

#545

Post by well_ackshually » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

zeroCalories wrote: post #509

delusional wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fundamental problem of value creation and value extraction. Just because the ISP's can't extract the value of adding the additional fiber capacity doesn't mean it doesn't confer that value to the customers. We live in an age of value extraction, what's colloquially known as "enshittification", that can't go on forever. Somebody has to create the value that is being extracted. It's the old Marx quote: "From…

I have a lot of ability. I'm not gonna flex it for others without pay that gives me significantly higher living standards than the average person. Are you going to force me to work?

No, however there's a bunch of people with your abilities that will do it because they're capable of seeing that something as crucial as internet access is a public good. You can choose to not work, plenty of us will make things move forwards without you, nor care about your living standards.

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

#546

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

troyvit wrote: post #542

toofy wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.” That's what my town (Longmont, CO) did! We had laid a fiber loop around the city back in the '90s for traffic signal coordination. Over the years the town would engage different private companies to try to get them to lay fiber (or even direc…

https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map

https://communitynetworks.org/content/municipal-ftth-network...

How to Build a Fiber Network on a Small-City Budget [video] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUhtdBZbOMc

Getting Fiber to My Town [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24424910 - September 2020 (126 comments)

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

#547

Post by mrits » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

geekraver wrote: post #538

Because it’s a functional society that has a government that works for the citizenry and not a small cadre of wealthy sponsors?

It's a tiny rich country. We should be comparing it to New York City not the US

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

#548

Post by FuriouslyAdrift » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC

You can run several mutually exclusive frequencies on a single strand of single mode fiber in multi-gigabit speeds. The biggest drawback is that the module price can get quite high.

There's nothing inherently "wrong" with a P2MP topology for public infrastructure.

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

#549

Post by fennecbutt » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

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…

Yeah but like 10x the population, 10x the GDP, etc.

You're saying they laid down rail in the US from end to end during wild West times but modern infrastructure can't be built to the same scale even with mechanisation?

Lmao sounds like the UK. It does make sense tho, the world is now filled with middlemen and getting any job done costs 10x because of parasites.

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

#550

Post by illusive4080 » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #493

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.

> That is how 'free' market is done in US, all the rules are to make sure the richest people become richer. In all fairness, we put an awful lot of effort into making the poor poorer as well.

This statement is easily refuted by looking up statistics on poverty.