I guess someone already said it but just to be sure Singapore also had Fiber to Home since 2010, roughly around the same time as Switzerland. But it’s less needed because Singapore also has 99% 5G coverage with 300-400Mbps
Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
671–680 of 726 posts
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#672Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Which coastal major city do you live in?
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#673Earlier quoted context omitted.
woah, I didn't know this. How many states have laws banning municipal fiber?
https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... It’s from 2023 but says 16 to 19 states.
Tennessee is listed, but it's only really restricting power companies from expanding outside their electric reach.
It doesn't really damper anything, Tennessee has among the highest rural FTTH coverage in the US. There are tiny companies you've never heard of running 8gbps symmetric to houses on acreage!
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#674Earlier quoted context omitted.
Municipalities don't know anything about the job and few have the resources and personnel to become sufficiently experienced. I know every other poster on HN has a story where they personally stepped in and saw their local government through the process for incredibly cheap, hey that's great, but how is some random municipality without an elder tech god living with them supposed to get "municipal" internet without co…
I guess we have different versions of HN cause the one I read has headlines on the front page pretty regularly about people (collectives, not individuals) doing their own broadband successfully. There's a reason right-wingers and lobbyists are against this and try to pass laws preventing it. It's because it works and undermines their position as rent-seekers who don't invest in their infrastructure.
The only "right wingers" that are backing things like this are the ones that get paid by the ISP lobbies.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#675Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Supply and demand” refers to the idea that under competition, prices will go down to the marginal cost of production. When a cartel sets a price it's very much not “supply and demand” who sets the price, it's the cartel…
The cartel setting a price is still subject to the Law of Supply and Demand. The Law is not about setting a price, it is about how much sales you're going to get at a particular price point. Maximizing the price is not the same thing at all as maximizing profit. Standard Oil made more money by reducing prices, not maximizing them.
There are many instances of “the” law, but your argument basically boils down to “who cares about markets, monopolies are good” which is a strange take.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#676Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 oth…
> But climbing a hill does make you closer to the moon. There's nothing wrong with incremental progress towards a goal,
I'm sorry to tell you we don't build spaceports on top of mountain, for a reason.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#677Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cartel setting a price is still subject to the Law of Supply and Demand. The Law is not about setting a price, it is about how much sales you're going to get at a particular price point. Maximizing the price is not the same thing at all as maximizing profit. Standard Oil made more money by reducing prices, not maximizing them.
There are many instances of “the” law, but your argument basically boils down to “who cares about markets, monopolies are good” which is a strange take.
> a strange take
and a strawman. Monopolies are still subject to the Law of Supply and Demand, whether they are good or bad.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#678Earlier quoted context omitted.
lol he thinks big ISPs upgrade their infra or care.
Did I say that? No, you made it up. Why you chose to make that up, I can only imagine (or should I make things up too?) Also everybody else responding to me is ignoring the point that most rural municipalities can barely afford keep their roads marginally flat, let alone tear up the roads, lay fiber, then repair those roads. Municipal fiber is a pipe dream in most scenarios, but workable in reasonably high density re…
Road infrastructure is extremely expensive compared to a little bit of glass fiber.
You also usually don't need to tear up the road. Maybe the pavement, but not the road.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#679Earlier 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…
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How do you trick a company into a calculated strategic play that benefits them? It sounds like something they would figure out on their own.
Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
#680Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m curious as to how those numbers skew rural vs urban, as my experience in France couldn’t be further from fibre - have had a house there for decades, and we went straight from dialup to starlink, as there still isn’t even DSL available there. Fibre… don’t make me laugh. It’s not like we’re super rural, either - small village, about 8km from two middling towns. The cell network isn’t much better - it’s 5g in the to…
Did you check on https://cartefibre.arcep.fr/ ? If your address is there, you will know the status of your address and notably the infrastructure operator, which has the obligation to cover your zone before 2030. If your address is not there (and the zone is empty, otherwise, this is up to your municipality to fix the missing address), it means there is no infrastructure operator yet. This is up to your local governm…
Thanks, this was genuinely helpful in my understanding of the situation!