Mastodawn

Cory Doctorow 1d ago

If you live in Switzerland you can get a 25Gbit fiber link to your home. That's 25Gbit *symmetrical* - upload *and* download. On a dedicated connection that's yours and yours alone. From multiple providers. It's the *ne plus ultra*, *magnifico*, *wunderschön*:

https://www.init7.net/de/internet/fiber7/

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/07/swisscom/#stacked

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@pluralistic Spain have a similar system to Switzerland. Fibre to the house and you can use any provider. Most are around 1Gb symmetrical, but 10Gb is available from 1 company.

Troed Sångberg 1d ago

Can't say we have a national system in Sweden but most regions have built out "black fiber" (not tied to a specific provider) where we then can select amongst a few.

I'm on 1/1 Gbit and I think some places can get 10/10.

flatplanet 1d ago

@troed @Sylocule @pluralistic we have National Broadband Ireland #NBI here. The idea was to run fiber everywhere that wasn't commercially viable, and have multiple resellers sitting on top. Haven't seen any offers for symmetrical, but no technical reason not to. I'm on 500/50 (1G+ services available but don't really need them) on an island in the extreme South West of the county.

@flatplanet @troed @Sylocule @pluralistic There is a "technical" reason not to, which is that much of the fibre rollout in Ireland (whether from open Eir or NBI or SIRO) plugs into infrastructure which is largely based on passive optical networks. While many of the recent installs are based on XGS-PON, these networks by their nature are quite asymmetrical, focusing on download speed.

Björn Hesthamar 1d ago

@troed The fiber is not true black fiber. It is operated as a “layer 2”* network by an “infrastructure operator” and you can choose the “communications operator” on “layer 3* yourself. This was supposed to increase competition in the user facing layer (communication) while still coalesce investment in the infrastructure layer to keep it viable since that is the expensive part to build out. It is not incredibly efficient as every provider have their own multicast TV and other OTT services. I’m paying appx. 60 eur / month for 1Gb symmetric service. I could be cheaper.

* The split is done per port and with vlans and not between layer 2 and 3.

@Sylocule @pluralistic

Bad News Nobody 1d ago

@Sylocule @pluralistic In Italy we cheaped out and got 1G/300M, and we are stuck with that for decades to come. In big cities there's 10G/2G, but otherwise there's only Temu fiber - and some poor souls are still on VDSL...

Paolo Redaelli 1d ago

@dukeboitans my family still got 100M/30M and it satisfies our needs quite well @Sylocule @pluralistic
I just wonder what use can a "plain user" do of 25G fiber!

@paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic I did some work in the R&D department of a European cable network provider. They were researching faster and faster home broadband options. But at the same time, they were struggling to justify to customers why they needed more bandwidth. Faster game downloads is about the only use case with "plain users".

@paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic 30/8 on copper in semi-rural UK. We rejected a bunch of houses we liked when we moved in 2020 because they only had 1K down.

Fortunately it was just before Starlink was an option or we’d be part funding Elon now.

@paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic (30/8 is pretty OK for most domestic use. It can make streaming a little frustrating … it never stops or drops quality noticeably, but ⏪⏩ is impossible with any accuracy.

@daycoder @paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic 80/20 here non-remote village UK E Anglia FTTC SOGEA.

⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️1d ago

@annehargreaves @daycoder @paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic Snap. Two working from home, fine. Sky Q also fine.

@falken @annehargreaves @paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic we do as much as we can on Sky Q native because it downloads or records to HDD and then <<<>>> is amazing.

Videoconferencing, whether tied to work or play.

Synchronization of large file systems.

Or, a notable moment when on a 300/30 cable connection 10y ago: Dad and mom working from home, on conference calls from time to time, when kids got a snow day and (I am not joking) they had homework on laptops, a TV playing an anime stream, a laptop looking up playthru/cheat videos, and two online games going. That, for reference, was 2 adults & 2 teenage children.

Someday, let’s talk of my epiphany a decade ago, when 4 souls in an SUV north of Gilroy CA had 4 phones, a laptop and two tablets working accommodations, college reviews, gps/mapping, and misc. “if you build it, they will come” applies to all modes of data capacity.

@dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic

Cory Doctorow 1d ago

@cascheranno @paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule

All the film editors, SFX people and sound editors in my neighborhood in Burbank who spent the first three months of the pandemic parked outside the studio gates on their work wifi, because the assets were too large to transfer otherwise.

@pluralistic Good point. And it’s not a ‘only in Hollywood’ career. Local tv companies’ news crews, local ad firms, etc. hit this wall: A friend’s career has largely been for local tv / radio / streaming ads, working out of his home. He shoots in 4k, shares with remote clients, digitally crops, etc.

One never quite knows who’ll find a use case. #longtail #goviral #KillerApp

@paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule

ferricoxide 1d ago

@cascheranno @paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic

Live video-streaming (as opposed to "I need to upload/download an entire movie's worth of 4K content as quickly as possible"), especially video-conferencing isn't all that taxing. Streaming services that even offer 4K streams usually only offer a subset of their catalog in true 4K. Most video-conferencing tools top out in HD. Even one's running a maxed-out 4K stream, that'd still peak at 25Mbps/stream. Even with "just" 1Gbps, that's a pretty healthy number of simultaneous streams. And, while you can get consumer-grade devices capable of competently displaying 8K, the amount of 8K content is significantly less than what's even available at 4K.

Right now, unless you're part of the Duggar clan and everyone wants to individually and simultaneously stream at maxed-out 4K, you're unlikely to need even 1Gbps (especially if everyone's running wifi on a consumer-grade AP). The only real (current) driver for higher residential bandwidth needs is if you're frequently needing to transfer large files over across a network that will support it (and, given how frequently even corporate WAN gear implements session-limits, you'd need to be doing multi-part transfers to work around that).

@ferricoxide The wobbly moment for me your reply is when you note how many of these get downgraded by platforms, or raise difficulty in the apps and protocols not fully supporting us.

My adult kids edit video on their phones. I’m old enough to remember needing specialty equipment to WYSIWYG a printed page. That. Is. Glorious. Cropping footage, image overlay, color filters, audio tracks, split-screen… blows my mind how all that advanced video capability and more is wrapped in a UI kids use.

We can’t simultaneously declare ‘it isn’t useful’, ‘silly use cases’, and ‘software limitations prevent doing so transparently, so let’s not.’

@pluralistic
@paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule

RealGene ☣️1d ago

@cascheranno @paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic
It took ~15 hours to upload 100 GB of music to a cloud drive, on a 500/15 Mbps cable modem link (15 on a good day; depending on the weather, up is typically 8-12 Mbps).

Paolo Redaelli 14h ago

@RealGene I can't even figure how many thousands hours of music are needed to sum up to 100GB 😅 @cascheranno @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic

Sylocule 1d ago

@paoloredaelli @pluralistic @dukeboitans We’re on 600/600 - I work from home, my wife sometimes teaches online, we stream a lot and my children are often streaming and gaming online and there’s never lag

@dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic maxed out VDSL is about 60Mb down and 15Mb up. That's enough for a couple of UHD streams, tons of video calls, and online gaming doesn't even touch the sides.

So what are the use cases for >1Gb broadband? GTA6 will download fast... But outside huge game downloads, what are people needing it for?

I've recently renewed and downgraded to 350Mb to save a bit of money. It'll probably cost me a few minutes a month waiting for game patches and distro ISOs.

@guigsy @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic in France we are past 95% fiber coverage. That's mostly at least symmetrical 10 Gbit/s, including in rural areas (90% population covered). I've seen tests for 50/50Gb, which feels cool but totally overkill 😅. All of it is some sort of public initiative (either funded or regulated) so you can get a contract with any of 4 major ISPs. So that's pretty much like Switzerland, yeah.
The historical operator (Orange, formerly France Télécom) has actually started tearing down copper landlines since they are now useless.

Andreas K 1d ago

@Sylocule
Sniff

Now if I didn't live in a complex that has been cable company territory since it has been built.

Actually no one would admit it in writing but no fibre company would bother to lay fibre into our houses.

So it ends with with 1gbit/100mbit

Actually for what T-mobile charges for that I can get a potentially better upstream via 5G but there it's that "potentially".

While cable generally delivers the bandwidth. Sigh.
@pluralistic

@yacc143 @Sylocule @pluralistic

I finally managed to get fibre.
It was laid in my street a few years ago but they missed the 3 houses on the top path. It took my broadband provider nearly 10 maths of nagging but I finally got it. Free. And compensation from Openreach meant I didn't pay anything on my usual bill for 9 mths.
Just occasionally the rules work, not without a battle but eventually.