Mastodawn

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/

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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Sylocule 1d ago

@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.

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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...

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Dave Mc 1d ago

@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.

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wobah

@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.