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Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

sschueller.github.io

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

#621

Post by illusive4080 »

aaarrm wrote: post #601
slibhb wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living paycheck to paycheck is usually a choice: people earn a lot of money and spend it immediately. The fact that this leaves them vulnerable to misfortune doesn't mean they're poor.

While this can be true, this absolutely is not true for the majority of paycheck-to-paycheck people. You truly need to get your head out of your ass if you honestly believe this is what is causing people to be poor.

Do you know any of those people? Yes it’s almost entirely a choice. Typically a combination of poor life choices in tandem with poor financial choices.

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

#622

Post by eqvinox »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #616
eqvinox wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been there a bunch, my colleague has lived there. We work in the telco area. My own experiences I would question, his I don't. It's oversubscription. Can I provide citations or proof? No. That's extremely hard to do with oversubscription in general, no telco will admit their exact ratio without being forced to. Sometimes you can reverse engineer it from peering relationships, but that doesn't allow identifying b…

It's oversubscription. You said that already, but repeating something isn't evidence. Oversubscription would be something that happens with cable internet on a node by node basis, so to say the problem is one thing and only that doesn't make any sense. Not only that but people will sign up for hundred megabit to gigabit internet but they only really need to watch some streams that use 3mb each. You can actually figur…

You seem to be making arguments with significantly less of a connection to the actual scenario being discussed. And you're explaining oversubscription to 2 network engineers, one of them having presented at APRICOT and APNIC.

I guess I should've focused less on oversubscription and made clear that we know it's not spectrum utilization. For that, we have the equipment to measure, and we did, and it's not the problem.

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

#623

Post by eqvinox »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #618
eqvinox wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but your stance is completely fing ridiculous. First of all, nobody is saying you need to do the entire US in one go by one approach and one provider. Second, the US has about 30× the GDP of Switzerland. Third, have you looked at Swiss geography? They're pulling fiber up the alps to the damn huts. Fourth, they're burying pretty much everything , as I said you don't really have to do that. Fifth, 26 cantons…

26 cantons with a functioning federal regulatory mandate isn't remotely comparable to 50 states where broadband regulation has been in a decade long battle over jurisdiction. > Third, have you looked at Swiss geography? They're pulling fiber up the alps to the damn huts. This is apples and oranges. The US is vastly more sparse. I think what is "f'ing ridiculous" is continuing to compare the 2 countries in ways they a…

I made 4 other points.

> 50 states where broadband regulation has been in a decade long battle over jurisdiction

Thanks for making my point, all I'm arguing is that Switzerland had the political will while the US doesn't (yet?) You're essentially arguing the problem exists because the problem exists.

It's a political problem, but a solvable one. Pretending that it isn't solvable really doesn't help.

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

#624

Post by littlestymaar »

0x3f wrote: post #606
littlestymaar wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With enough regulations, subsidies, strategic planning and government interventions when things turn bad, mixed economies do the job pretty well, that's right. And when the regulation is lacking the outcome is as well. And even these economies are structured around monopolistic and oligopolistic actors. They are as related to “free market” as northern European countries welfare state is related to Communism.

Right, those are the current technologies we have to make markets work in a particular way. They don't preclude other technologies which work with freer markets. Like there's a whole zoo of healthcare provision approaches, for example. Single payer can work fine (ala Norway), but so can Bismarck (ala Switzerland). The latter is a technological architecture that _enables_ similar or better outcomes, while being closer…

It's not “closer to a fully market-based approach” any more than climbing a hill makes you closer to the moon.

Also, if you call regulations “technologies” (which I don't disagree with) then “free market” means technology-free.

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

#625

Post by eqvinox »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #611
sschueller wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet somehow the US did manage to get power to most places... The thing with fiber is that it can go so much longer than copper without any active components. It is also very future proof, you won't be pulling it out of the ground/off the pole for at least 50 years if not longer. If size is such an issue, how did you get power?

> Yet somehow the US did manage to get power to most places... You're not conflating 2 different infrastructure processes and ignoring the one took decades, are you? This is like saying "The US has built a road infrastructure why can't it do all light rails?" The irony in your comment is that it government intervention, which is the opposite of a free market.

Who said free market? Swisscom is 51% government. A government-ish entity is IMHO the most efficient way to do this.

You can't have 2 road networks, highway systems, or railway networks. You can have, but it is pointless to, 2 water systems or 2 electric grids. Or fire brigades, or police. (criminal, not mall cops) Same applies for fibre in the ground. "Free market" doesn't work when you can't effectively compete.

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

#626

Post by rGoi5jelkjzdgfo »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #556
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.…

> It’s not realistic or feasible to have the US government generate a fiber optic connectivity for the entirety of every household in the United States. In fact, the free market was the only realistic possible to deliver this. They managed for water and wastewater, which are a lot more complex than fiber.

Electric is probably a better example, >20% of the US is on septic systems for their wastewater.

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

#627

Post by 0x3f »

littlestymaar wrote: post #624
0x3f wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, those are the current technologies we have to make markets work in a particular way. They don't preclude other technologies which work with freer markets. Like there's a whole zoo of healthcare provision approaches, for example. Single payer can work fine (ala Norway), but so can Bismarck (ala Switzerland). The latter is a technological architecture that _enables_ similar or better outcomes, while being closer…

It's not “closer to a fully market-based approach” any more than climbing a hill makes you closer to the moon. Also, if you call regulations “technologies” (which I don't disagree with) then “free market” means technology-free.

But climbing a hill does make you closer to the moon. There's nothing wrong with incremental progress towards a goal, assuming this is a goal for the free-market people.

Also, I'm not sure a free market is technology-free per se. What you're talking about is specifically ancap-like, but most free market frameworks involve a state actor that should (among other things) not allow for itself to be weaponized against other market participants.

Like the paradox of tolerance, you can't tolerate a free market for bribing your way to benefit from the state's monopoly on violence. I don't think the existence of this paradox destroys the value of free markets or tolerance.

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

#628

Post by gherkinnn »

These threads are always the same. "No way the we [the US] can have $nice_thing because density, size, heterogeneity". Applies to internet, trains, functioning democracy, a lack school shootings, and all things decent. It's all bollocks of course. Nobody is asking for a dense railway network across a desert or fast internet for every last cabin in Alaska.

It's such a bore.

Granted, Europeans (so me) can be arrogant about these things.

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

#629

Post by CyberDildonics »

eqvinox wrote: post #622
CyberDildonics wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's oversubscription. You said that already, but repeating something isn't evidence. Oversubscription would be something that happens with cable internet on a node by node basis, so to say the problem is one thing and only that doesn't make any sense. Not only that but people will sign up for hundred megabit to gigabit internet but they only really need to watch some streams that use 3mb each. You can actually figur…

You seem to be making arguments with significantly less of a connection to the actual scenario being discussed. And you're explaining oversubscription to 2 network engineers, one of them having presented at APRICOT and APNIC. I guess I should've focused less on oversubscription and made clear that we know it's not spectrum utilization. For that, we have the equipment to measure, and we did, and it's not the problem.

For that, we have the equipment to measure, and we did, and it's not the problem.

It has been a problem for basically everyone living in apartments that had network problems that I've seen. If you measure at the wrong time it's going to look fine. You have to be there when people are watching video over wifi.

Again, just because people can't get their full bandwidth, it doesn't mean oversubscription is the actual bottleneck.

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

#630

Post by joquarky »

sjm wrote: post #560
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…

This is the same American-branded copium we see during discussions of socialized healthcare, which every other first-world country on the planet seems to manage. China has 10G and 50G home fiber. Zurich is larger geographically than Manhattan, while having much lower population density.

Unfortunately, problems like socialized healthcare are just far too complicated for contemporary America to solve. We used to be able to tackle big problems, but unless you're looking for ways to dodge taxes or rip people off, we're just not equipped for complex problem solving anymore.

Guess we should have invested more in education.

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