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Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

sschueller.github.io

631–640 of 726 posts

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

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which way this is a viable strategy that you can repeat more than once?

> In which way this is a viable strategy that you can repeat more than once? I’m not saying commit to bluffing. But after the other guy has folded, continuing with your threat just to be petty is kind of dumb.

> after the other guy has folded, continuing with your threat just to be petty is kind of dumb

Your community is still going to be paying whatever the cable company wants to charge for the service. There's definitely a reason to run it yourself.

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

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t really true though, monopolies are not sustainable. Pretty much the only way to create a long lived monopoly is to collude with the government (also a monopoly btw).

> ...monopolies are not sustainable. You might be surprised to learn that the private sector can enter into durable agreements much like the public sector does. It's how things like mon/oligopolies and cartels form and persist. Anyway. I'd suggest you go read your histories, but you're either unlikely to, or don't have enough supporting information to understand what they're telling you. If you're young enough [0] to…

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

#633

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 a…

The argument loses even more weight if you look to China's infrastructure over their massive country.

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

#634
post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1Gbps is even slower than a SATA SSD that can saturate a 6Gbps SATA link. 10Gbps gets you speeds only a few times slower than a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD. Except you can run that over the Internet!

I'm aware of how fast an SSD is, but you're probably only accessing your home NAS from your phone or laptop which most likely won't have more than 1gbps, if that. If you're a power user you probably already have high speed networking inside your own home to max out a 10G link.

If I only have 1Gbps, I'm not going to be using a NAS for something like /home, or other things that need to be performant.

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

#635
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I don't know. I feel like "price fixing until maybe there was a hint of competition" is pretty far from frictionless sphere, supply and demand economics. Competition was possible but was not working. A fake news brief is the supposed solution. That's not really competition actually lowering prices. That's the price fixing regime blinking for an unsubstantiated reason. It would be a different story if the friend's fib…

ISPs and other extremely capital intensive industries with a relatively fixed demand are always going to be warped markets. Nobody thinks they’re a spherical cow.

Despite that, the single mechanism that works so well in a competitive market, the threat of competition, (this time) worked just the same in a 2 person market where you would expect the inefficiencies of a price fixing regime and for all decisions and investments to have to pass through (and have funds allocated to) an army of lawyers, politicians and special interest groups.

That is objectively what happened and reframing it into a negative light is a choice grounded in emotion and not analysis.

Have you ever taken an economics course? Nobody finishes a basic micro/macro course without an introduction to game theory. Game theory is the EXACT reason that N=2,3,4 markets struggle with competition and provide insights into the regulation and “rules” needed for markets with very low suppler cardinality.

You thinking that anyone else expects a local ISP market to function efficiently and competitively is a failure of your own understanding, not of the system.

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

#636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm pretty confused on what your point is here? Universal Healthcare would be a new program in the US that would see a drastic tax increase, in that our healthcare spending currently going to insurance companies would instead go to a new federal agency. The amount of money companies and citizens spend on it may or may not also increase, but your quote has basically nothing to do with that.

That’s sleight of hand. “Ooooh! A tax increase! Scary!” If I can pay $100 in tax to save $200 in premiums and copays, that’s a win. The US is an extreme outlier in healthcare spend.

It's like you're purposefully misreading what I'm saying. I wasn't saying it was scary. I was saying that Trump saying we can't afford current programs has nothing to do with universal healthcare. Universal healthcare would be funded through a large tax increase, the majority (or entirety) of which would be redirecting the money going to health insurance companies.

Again, no one has said this is impossible, which is my original point. Even Trump's idiotic rambling, which was mainly about child care costs, said nothing about the impossibility of universal healthcare.

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

#637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...one day, one of the municipal counselors just called up a friend who worked for a fiber laying company and asked them for a favor: put out a press release saying that they were “investigating” laying an undersea fiber to power a municipal fiber network on the little island. They called in a favor that put pressure on the company from public expectations.

Yes. What do you think happens in a competitive marketplace? Sony heard about Nintendo partnering up with Philips for the SNES CD expansion, so Sony made their own console. That's literally competition. The details of how the "public pressure" came to be don't matter, because the monopoly didn't know about that. All they knew was there was a potential competitor, so they behaved according to that information. That's…

Maybe i misinterpreted the original comment, but having the government step in to pressure a company is not usually what i find people mean when they talk about competitive markets. Let alone when the pressure is through a side channel.

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

#638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't have to refute all your points to prove it's impossible.

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

Pretending like you hvae any clue how the US works doesn't help either. There are over 3,000 different counties in the US all with different rules around right-away (which could be one of like 6 different jurisdictions). There are quite literally hundreds of ISPs in the US. And even if one did want to build in NYC for instance, it would be have to interact with dozens of jurisdictions that don't magically go away with a strengthened FCC.

And again, you're totally ignoring the physical geography of the land. So how exactly does that work at a legislative level? Forcing ISP in which communities specifically? Then, it not only becomes a political, but fiscal issue as well.

Which is why saying "it's a political problem" is grossly over-simplifying the situation.

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

#639
post #592

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> 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.)

What exactly made it possible to get copper wire into effectively every house in the country? We didn't say "if a rich rural community wants telephones or electricity in the boonies..." Maybe we need a new Ma Bell that's Uncle Fibre. Give them a very tightly bordered but lucrative monopoly in exchange for mandates to actually build and maintain the network. Perhaps some sort of scheme where consumers actually pay the…

> What exactly made it possible to get copper wire into effectively every house in the country?

Subsidies.

> making sure people in rural counties are getting modern infrastructure

Sure. This is inefficient when an alternative is more than sufficient.

Again, I live in a rich rural community. I have gigabit fiber to my home. I have neighbors ditching wired internet for Starlink because it’s cheaper and good enough and they can also put it on their truck when they travel.

My property value does well from the subsidy. But it’s inefficient.

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

#640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not if you want the threat to work a next time You don’t care if it works next time. It worked this time. If it doesn’t work next time, build it next time.

Cool, but isn’t this “the next time”, after “the next time”, after “the next time” already? These companies have been threatened, sued, and incentivized in numerous ways over many years, which has yet to be successful, and yet it seems like you are suggesting “just one more time” will be the impetus for change…this time…you swear…probably? Note: I don’t disagree or agree, rather, I’m pointing out how flawed the logic…

> isn’t this “the next time”, after “the next time”, after “the next time” already?

No, it’s the time that it worked. The cable company upgraded. That’s all that matters. Whether it’s happened many times or not is irrelevant. The next time will come next time.

> which has yet to be successful

OP said they laid the fiber. It was literally successful. Preëmptively striking your service provider because they might screw you in the future is silly.

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