[d_sem]

The geographic and demographic orders of magnitude when comparing these two places makes it difficult to extrapolate applicability of best practices. Who's to say the Swiss model scales? Article doesn't convincingly address this.

For context:

41 US States are geographically larger than Switzerland. It's most comparable state in area is West Virginia. West Virginia is .064% of the national area.

Some fun distance contexts. Driving end to end in Switzerland is comparable in distance to: Driving from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, Detroit to Chicago, or New York City to Washington DC.

[Sayrus]

Extrapolating with this method, large cities should be as well equipped as Switzerland.

Los Angeles has 10x the population density of Switzerland and around the same population density in urban area. Same for Washington dc, San Francisco...

It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing. Distance between cities may be large, but the order of magnitude is closer when comparing within cities.

[ryandrake]

Exactly. Whenever anyone trots out the "Bbbbut the USA is too large and sparsely populated to have X!" excuse, ask them why New Jersey doesn't have X.

[zer00eyz]

Sure, and we basically force users to choose one or two providers. Some of these are compelled to serve rural customers as well.

I live in the SF Bay Area, and have Sonic internet. 10gbe for 60 bucks a month.

I ended up building my own router/firewall because it was cheaper than anything off the shelf that could deal with that sort of speed.

It is entirely possible to have these sorts of services in the states, when competition is allowed.

[fennecbutt]

Yeah but like 10x the population, 10x the GDP, etc.

You're saying they laid down rail in the US from end to end during wild West times but modern infrastructure can't be built to the same scale even with mechanisation?

Lmao sounds like the UK. It does make sense tho, the world is now filled with middlemen and getting any job done costs 10x because of parasites.

[SubmarineClub]

> You're saying they laid down rail in the US from end to end during wild West times

At a time when labor was dirt cheap and safety regulations were non-existent.

The railroads specifically used Chinese laborers who were treated, and paid, like shit.

[danny_codes]

And also a time when people were laying down ties with their hands and a hammer.

This isn’t a labor issue it’s purely political. Some people get rich from the status quo and bribe politicians to prevent competition. America is increasingly corrupt, particularly since citizens united and accelerating under the current admin

[senordevnyc]

I believe you mean 0.64%

[sjm]

This is the same American-branded copium we see during discussions of socialized healthcare, which every other first-world country on the planet seems to manage. China has 10G and 50G home fiber. Zurich is larger geographically than Manhattan, while having much lower population density.

[joquarky]

Unfortunately, problems like socialized healthcare are just far too complicated for contemporary America to solve. We used to be able to tackle big problems, but unless you're looking for ways to dodge taxes or rip people off, we're just not equipped for complex problem solving anymore.

Guess we should have invested more in education.

[pb7]

I guarantee you 99% of China landmass does not have 50G. Most of the country is ultra poor rice paddy farmers. Get real.

[sjm]

Fine, 99% of China "landmass" does not have 50G. 100% of the US does not have 10G. The fact that in NYC, the richest city in the history of cities, most buildings still only have access to cable from a single provider is absolutely ridiculous. Urban centers is what is worth comparison here, and the US falls massively behind.

[vel0city]

> 100% of the US does not have 10G.

Very untrue. There are several providers in the US which offer 10Gbit services. Many more offer 2-5Gbit services pretty broadly. I've got friends in Kansas City with 40Gbit residential service. Sonic also offers 10Gbit in California.

[maxglute]

Not all landmass because most of Tibet/Xinjiang empty, but ~100% wireless coverage east of Heihe–Tengchong line where ~95% of population are. Including Tibet/Xinjiang remote areas, ~95%+ of administered population areas down to village level where poor farmers have access to 5g AND fiber hookup option by now.

Building infra and networking gear is cheap in society that knows how to build and carriers are required to install in administered villages even if it's not profitable. Fiber adoption rate actually higher among rice farmers because they get subsidies, 1Gbps gigabyte fiber for cost of 200 Mbps in city and because bunch of villages got hooked up in last 10 years - they skipped straight to fiber which was bundled with road/power buildout.

Meanwhile US so dysfunctional / can't brute force rural fiber, need to literally invent SpaceX to plug gap. Which TBH is good copium.

[danny_codes]

Why have fiber for a $1 when you can have space fiber for $1000!