Xander Veitch5h ago
Cory Doctorow

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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Apr 7 at 8:09amWeb
Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

In a fascinating blog post, Stefan Schüller unpacks how this came to pass, in Switzerland, a country known for its impassable mountains and its impossible national telco (Swisscom):

https://sschueller.github.io/posts/the-free-market-lie/

Schüller describes the Swiss system as a kind of Goldilocks approach that's midway between two failed systems: the American "free market" system and the German state provision system.

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The Free Market Lie: Why Switzerland Has 25 Gbit Internet and America Doesn't

The Free Market Lie: Why Switzerland Has 25 Gbit Internet and America Doesn't

Stefan Schüller
Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

Most people in the US can't get fiber at all, and if you can get it, it's probably 1Gbit, and available from a single provider (that's nearly my situation in Los Angeles, where I can buy 2Gbit symmetrical fiber from AT&T, who run a shared connection on old Worldcom fiber they've lit up).

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

Some (very foolish) people say that Starlink represents a competitive alternative to fiber. This is nonsense - first, because Starlink is another natural monopoly (how many competing satellite constellations can we cram into stable orbits before they start smashing into each other?), and second, because satellite is *millions of times slower* than fiber:

https://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/starlink-nov-2022-data-caps.html

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Nelson's Weblog: tech / bad / starlink-nov-2022-data-caps

Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

In Germany, most people also have a single provider, and the connection they get is shared, and caps out at 1-2Gbit.

Meanwhile, the Swiss can get connections that are *far* faster, and cheaper. How did they do it?

For starters, the Swiss recognized what any Simcity player knows: fiber is a "natural monopoly." It doesn't make any sense to build multiple, competing fiber networks - any more than it would make sense to build multiple, competing sewer systems or electric grids.

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

In the US, private fiber providers get city permits to dig up the roads and lay their network. If you have two competing networks, they dig up the road twice.

You'd think that the (more regulated) Germans would lay a single network, but they, too, have multiple, competing networks.

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

German regulators have a complex set of priorities and constraints: to encourage competition, they promote the idea of competing networks in competing trenches, often just meters apart (rather than on competing services running over the same fiber and/or fiber run through the same conduit - pipe - laid in a single trench).

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

This makes setting up fiber extremely capital-intensive, so Germany backstops this system with "essential facilities sharing" - a rule that requires the incumbent (formerly state-owned, now partially state-owned) Deutsche Telekom to offer space in its conduit to smaller ISPs that want to thread their own fiber from their data-centers to their customers' homes.

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

This is a good idea in theory - but in practice, DT has largely captured its regulators and so it is free to place all kinds of administrative hurdles in the paths of competitors seeking to use its lines.

The result is that Germans can get fiber from multiple, heavily capitalized network providers who overbuilt redundant systems under the city streets, squandering capital digging trenches that they could have spent on providing faster and/or cheaper connections.

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

Meanwhile, in the US, they leave this all up to "the market" (though, of course, there's no way "the market" could get fiber laid down without public participation, because the clearing price for privately negotiated licenses to dig up every street in town is "infinity").

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

The US is dominated by a cartel of massive incumbents: there's AT&T (formerly a regulated monopoly that was so entangled with the US government that it was effectively a for-profit state enterprise) and the cable giants, Comcast and Charter, who divide up the country into exclusive territories like the Pope dividing up the "New World."

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

These companies generally enjoy regional monopolies, which means they're less interested in making *profits* (money you get by mobilizing capital) than they are from extracting *rent* (money you get from sweating assets).

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

For example, when Frontier went bankrupt in 2020, we got to look at its internal bookkeeping system, and learned that the company treated 1m customers who had no alternative carriers as special assets because it could charge them more for worse service and poor maintenance:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/

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Pluralistic: How cable monopolists tricked conservatives into shooting themselves in the face (15 Dec 2022) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

This means that US fiber networks tend to be *under*built (the opposite of Germany's overbuilt networks), meaning that even if you're buying "gigabit" fiber, you're probably sharing that one gig connection with your whole block or neighborhood, so you only get your nominal throughput at weird hours when all the other subscribers aren't streaming Netflix.

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

(Note that there *are* cities in the US with a better situation; particularly cities served by Ting, which is owned by Hover, the amazing domain registry. Ting operates an excellent mobile carrier *and* a fiber networks in many cities. If you are lucky enough to have Ting as an option, then you should *treasure that option*.)

So, that's Germany and America. What did they do in Switzerland?

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

For starters, they ran a four-strand, *dedicated* line (an insulated wire with four separate strands of fiber in it) to every house. That wire terminates at your wall with a "neutral, open hub." Any carrier can provide service over those four strands: Swisscom (the incumbent, majority state-owned carrier); Init7 or Salt (national, commercial carriers); or a local ISP.

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

Each of the strands in your neutral hub operate independently. That means that you can switch from one carrier to another with a click. You can also run two or more carriers' signal through your hub, meaning that you can try out a new carrier before canceling your old one. The carriers compete on price, speed and customer service - but they don't compete on who can actually connect your home to the internet.

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

The origins of this excellent system are in 2008, when Switzerland's Federal Communications Commission convened a roundtable to determine the future of the country's broadband. Incredibly, it was Swisscom that pushed for the multi-strand, dedicated fiber system, on the grounds that anything less would lead to monopolization.

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

I say "incredibly," because in all my travels over the past three decades, a single encounter with Swisscom stands out as the most absurd and backwards run-in I ever experienced with a telco.

It was while I was working as EFF's delegate to the United Nations in Geneva, as part of an infinitesimal coalition of digital rights group convened by James Love and Manon Ress of Knowledge Ecology International.

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

Geneva is not a forgiving city for someone working for a cash-strapped NGO: it's a city where everyone (except you) is on a lavish expense account courtesy of a national government, or (better still) an industry body that lobbies the UN.

My usual daggy two-star hotel (which cost as much as a four-star in London) didn't have its own wifi: instead, you signed on through Swisscom, which did not offer its own payment processing.

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Show threadCory Doctorow1d ago

To get onto the Swisscom wifi, you had to buy a scratch-off prepaid card that was good for a certain number of hours or minutes. The hotel was *always* sold out of these cards.

So my normal ritual upon my arrival in Geneva was to scour the tobacco shops around the train station for scratch-off cards.

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Show threadSylocule1d 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.
Show threadTroed Sångberg1d ago

@Sylocule

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.

@pluralistic

Show threadflatplanet1d 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.
Show threadColm1d ago
@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.
Show threadBjörn Hesthamar1d 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

Show threadBad News Nobody1d 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...
Show threadPaolo Redaelli1d 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!
Show threadDave Mc1d ago
@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".
Show threadHywel1d ago

@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.

Show threadHywel1d ago
@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.
Show threadAnneH1d ago
@daycoder @paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic 80/20 here non-remote village UK E Anglia FTTC SOGEA.
Show thread⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️1d ago
@annehargreaves @daycoder @paoloredaelli @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic Snap. Two working from home, fine. Sky Q also fine.
Show threadHywel1d ago
@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.
Show threadD21d ago

@paoloredaelli

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

Show threadCory Doctorow1d 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.

Show threadD21d ago

@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

Show threadferricoxide1d 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).
Show threadD220h ago

@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

Show threadRealGene ☣️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).
Show threadPaolo Redaelli9h ago
@RealGene I can't even figure how many thousands hours of music are needed to sum up to 100GB 😅 @cascheranno @dukeboitans @Sylocule @pluralistic
Show threadSylocule1d 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
Show threadDave Mc1d 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.

Show threadwobah1d ago
@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.
Show threadAndreas K23h 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

Show threadTiggy21h ago

@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.

Show threadTonyC1d ago
@pluralistic A friend in rural Aberdeenshire couldn't get broadband to his property. So he leased a pipe to the nearest place that could get broadband and set up a microwave link to his home from there. He's now selling the surplus bandwidth to the rest of the village and surrounding farms.
Show threadKrist van Besien1d ago
@pluralistic the nice thing about Init7 is that they are very geek friendly. You can run any hardware you want at your. end of the link, as long as your tranceiver sends/recieves the right frequencies.
Unfortunately not all of Switzerland has fibre yet though. The Urban core has it, but in remote mountain villages you are still stuck to either slow copper or cable, or have to use 5G. That is however a good option. I get 600M down, 200 up over 5G, with no caps (easily do over a Tb per month) for around 35$.
Starlink btw. is rather cheap here. Probably because there would be no takers otherwise...
Show threadtizilogic1d ago

@krist @pluralistic It's not even necessary to live in remote areas or mountain villages to be stuck with dead slow copper.. I live a stone throw away from the largest city in Switzerland and all I get is 300M/50M via copper.
I asked the company in charge of the network build out in my area and I was told that we will get fiber in about a year or so.. given how slow they have been so far, I'm not sure if I can believe them.

what provider gives you no caps 5G for 35$ ???

Show threadKrist van Besien1d ago
@tizilogic @pluralistic Wingo. But I took advantage of a special discount.
Show threaddecapitae1d ago
@pluralistic Folks still scrounging for 1Gb in a lot of places. Can't afford much better
Show threadferricoxide1d ago
@pluralistic

I think the best I can get with the providers around here (Verizon and Cox) is 2Gbps. Looking at Verizon's page for my address, they're only showing 1Gbps (for $80/mo). Cox wants $100/mo for their 1Gbps plan. While Cox has traditionally favored asymmetrical provisioning, Verizon's plan is bi-directional. That said, I've only bothered with a 500Mbps plan:

1. There's just two of us living here

2. While we have two large-screen TVs and three computers, only one of the TVs and one of the computers is 4K

3. When we're streaming video, it's not frequently 4K (most YouTube videos caps out at HD and little of the programming via Hulu — etc. — is 4K)

4. We don't really watch 4K content on other than the one TV (below 50", 4K is kind of a waste, even on my laptop's OLED …and definitely not worth a bother on our phones)

5. With the exception of the TVs, we're usually VPNed and the VPN service's per-session throughput doesn't go at our broadband plan's maximum throughput

Mostly, I opted for the plan I did because it was the cheapest FTTH option Verizon still makes available in our service-area.
Show threadAaron Sawdey, Ph.D.1d ago
@pluralistic Maybe it’s a different Ting mobile, but the one I have used for years does have decent rates but has been sold for Boost (which is what my phone now reports) and is quite backwards in that they do not support eSIMs (at least as of the last I asked at the end of last year) which means I’ll have to switch carriers if I want to use a newer phone than my current iPhone 13 Pro.
Show thread! ʁ ą ʄ α ω ɻ • ® 神 •1d ago
@pluralistic !
Show threadJacob Olness23h ago
@pluralistic we recently got 8gig fiber (granted I live in Montana) and I’ve never felt so smart for buying 10 gig networking gear. 25Gbe is insane. I’d definitely be buying a bunch of used mellanox SFP28 cards and optics
Show threadRBuzz21h ago
@jolness @pluralistic what? I cant imagine any decent way a person could utilize this. You are building AI data center to flood last strongholds of human internet with images of cat stippers or what?
Show threadJacob Olness15h ago
@rbuzz @pluralistic I often work with large repositories and other large files. I was paying $110 for 1gig/30mbps (down/up) before and this is $90. And I can stream my media library anywhere with no buffering from my home connection and VPN my traffic through it when I’m away if needed.
It’s a little overkill still for me but being able to push a 7GB file in less than 10 seconds instead of a half hour is nice.
Show threadwall-e7h ago

@jolness @rbuzz @pluralistic the usecases will come when the infra's there. Infrastructure shapes reality.

Imagine if this kind of "enterprise level" networking had been widely available to private households during the dotcom years...

I'd like to imagine we'd have a lot less centralized, less consumption-centered Internet today

Show threadSvavar the Neurospicy6h ago

@wall_e @jolness @rbuzz @pluralistic

This along with the increasing proliferation of IPv6 certainly opens the door for a lot more self hosting of Mastodon, Nextcloud, video conferencing, Counter Strike, and more.

Of course also ring cameras and telemetry from every device in your home.

Show threadJohn Francis 🇨🇦🦫🍁💪⬆️6h ago
@wall_e @jolness @rbuzz @pluralistic "home robosurgery with realtime MRI and particle physics experiments.com"
Show threadAllyPally19h ago
@pluralistic We ran a video company from our rural home. The location was handy to deliver tapes to the city. We sent broadcasters full bandwidth sports highlights on a 512k up “broadband” connection, sending in chunks so that if one failed we’d have less to redo. We’d start in the afternoon after the edit, and first thing next morning I’d rush into the office to see what had failed, and restart it before deadline. Fibre rolled out here after we retired.