Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

stefan.schueller.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 464 posts

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

#81

Post by CarVac »

lxgr wrote: post #56
gregsadetsky wrote: post #25

Getting a Spectrum cable modem internet connection in NYC in 2026 is so deeply humiliating. Dealing with the ridiculously limited upload speed, the outages, the locked router. The 40 minutes it takes on the phone to get it disconnected. Their constant attempts at upselling you cell phone plans and other terrible tech you’d never consider. Truly, Fios is the most bare minimum. And there are much better options if you…

If you call FIOS the "bare minimum", what is an acceptable connection to you? In my experience, it's one of the best ISPs I've ever had. Installation alone was phenomenal. This is probably largely downstream of NYC allowing a sprawl of overhead wiring in many neighborhoods, but I was deeply impressed by an installation team building out an entirely new fiber line to our apartment within less than 48 hours of putting…

At my past place Fios was excellent but I've had mixed results recently, with ping spikes and a lot of suspected traffic shaping of things like Youtube.

Service is pretty good though.

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

#82

Post by arthurofbabylon »

I’m seeing a lot of misplaced cynicism in the comments, much of which fails to deal with the subject matter of the article.

The US really does have a capitalism crisis with declining competition — it does not require any form of special intelligence to see that.

Switzerland really does have vastly superior infrastructure — it does not take some stroke of brilliance to see that.

The essay elegantly articulates the why. Even if the anti-public commentariat doesn’t like Switzerland’s strong governance, even if there is a varying spread of speeds/competition or whatever else is being measured, even if one small country is out-performing a big one on many metrics… it doesn’t change the underlying insights of the essay, insights that the US desperately needs to understand.

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

#83

Post by oceanplexian »

bhhaskin wrote: post #54
oceanplexian wrote: post #49

We had this in Utah for over a decade now (Approx. 24% of the State) via Utopia, congrats to Switzerland on finally catching up. I believe 10G is around $200/month and you can select from a dozen or so ISPs on the other end. If you were really gung-ho about proving something to this annoying blogger I'm sure you could convince one of the mom and pop ISPs on the network to throw a 100G optic on both ends. Unlike Switz…

That's great for Utah, but most other places in the US don't have a system like that and are stuck with one maybe two ISPs.

Switzerland is 1/5th the size of Utah, seems like a fair comparison to me.

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

#85

Post by frollogaston »

oceanplexian wrote: post #49

We had this in Utah for over a decade now (Approx. 24% of the State) via Utopia, congrats to Switzerland on finally catching up. I believe 10G is around $200/month and you can select from a dozen or so ISPs on the other end. If you were really gung-ho about proving something to this annoying blogger I'm sure you could convince one of the mom and pop ISPs on the network to throw a 100G optic on both ends. Unlike Switz…

WEF says you aren't allowed to own things, -999 KYC points for you

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

#86

Post by earth_tattoo »

not_your_vase wrote: post #32
trynumber9 wrote: post #5

I guess they don't bother using Speedtest in Switzerland, as the average speed seems about the same as the US: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index Must be a sampling bias or something.

You know, in Switzerland there is a thing, that if a product or service has the name "Swiss" in its name, then it can be sold for any price regardless of quality - and it will fly off the shelves. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Swisscom is the biggest ISP in Switzerland - they charge high prices for very slow internet. But they have the word "Swiss" in their name, so it's okay to sell 100 Mbps connection…

I wish my country India was like that, because we are totally opposite. Anything made in India is considered very bad quality and will not fetch a good price even if better than imported goods.

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

#87

Post by jraby3 »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #82

I’m seeing a lot of misplaced cynicism in the comments, much of which fails to deal with the subject matter of the article. The US really does have a capitalism crisis with declining competition — it does not require any form of special intelligence to see that. Switzerland really does have vastly superior infrastructure — it does not take some stroke of brilliance to see that. The essay elegantly articulates the why…

Population of Switzerland is around 9 million people. Slightly larger than NYC.

Comparing a country with the population of a single city in America is disingenuous. There are probably some cities in America that have faster internet than Switzerland.

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

#88

Post by rootusrootus »

cogman10 wrote: post #51
danpalmer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fair to critique this article not covering this, but I also think this is largely a red herring. The vast majority of the issue in the US is suburban, where density isn't really a problem. The US has a lot of rural areas, but they represent a tiny fraction of the population. As a comparison, Australia has roughly the same land-mass as the contiguous states, but with less than a tenth of the population. It has it…

Rural and suburban line burial isn't a hard problem to solve. It's easier to put in lines in rural and suburban locations than it is to put lines in urban areas. You don't have to, for example, shut down a road when putting in rural lines. It's a mistake to think that population density has anything to do with the difficulty of getting high speed internet. It's nearly completely unrelated.

> It's easier to put in lines in rural and suburban locations than it is to put lines in urban areas

This is backwards in my experience, but I probably have a different definition of urban from you. In my area, the suburban area has mostly underground lines that pre-date fiber, and getting fiber is probably not ever happening. Comcast is all we got. But if I drive 15 minutes into the city, there are fiber lines on every pole, and I could choose from a couple different providers.

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

#90

Post by initramfs »

not_your_vase wrote: post #32
trynumber9 wrote: post #5

I guess they don't bother using Speedtest in Switzerland, as the average speed seems about the same as the US: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index Must be a sampling bias or something.

You know, in Switzerland there is a thing, that if a product or service has the name "Swiss" in its name, then it can be sold for any price regardless of quality - and it will fly off the shelves. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Swisscom is the biggest ISP in Switzerland - they charge high prices for very slow internet. But they have the word "Swiss" in their name, so it's okay to sell 100 Mbps connection…

I've noticed a similar thing when buying products online. Overseas sellers from Asia will package their product as "Designed in Germany" or include a red cross to indicate Swiss design, but may not actually be designed or manufactured in Switzerland. Nice packaging though :)
Post reply on HN