[PeterHolzwarth]

I don't know that this is an easy comparison to make. Switzerland is 16k square miles in size (and about 9.1 million people). Taking a random, low-density American state as a comparison - say, the innocuous and sparsely-populated western state of Idaho - I see that it has a size of about 85.5 thousand square miles (and about 2 million people).

I've never understood the value in comparing relatively densely populated European countries to America. The practical realities of each just make them quite different in terms of basic utilities and infrastructure.

A nation-wide-ish utilities business in America is just a different kind of beast relative to whichever European country one wants to compare it to.

<edit> Some commenters have usefully brought up the example of Sweden. Sweden is a larger country than the rural US state of Idaho, and has a large population as well. But I notice that the population density is less widespread than Idaho, to a fair degree, and also has a GDP that is about 10x than the state of Idaho. I think the general idea of scale - given that basic infrastructure favors being nation-wide - plays into this. America is a very large country that makes infrastructure have it's own unique rules to play by. That is, infrastructure tends to favor being nation wide. Large countries have their own calculus to run with when it comes to very sizable scale (not to discount the important impact of regulation!)

<second edit: sorry! I know this is not cool when it comes to editing, but I keep thinking about this topic due to interesting comments>.

Another key point is what I'll call "distance from density." A person living in a typical European country is not that far from a major conurbation - not all that far from a place of serious population density. High speed infrastructure favors the customer-density of such places. But, when one looks at a variety of far-flung US states, you see that those states' major cities are, well, not all that major.

Looking at my example of Idaho, it's largest city (far to the south) has a population of about a quarter million within the state. Just west over the border is another city in a different state - also about a quarter million. The distance to a business-favoring high-density city for this kind of place is a bit staggering. These areas are truly far from anything the rest of us would call a proper city, with all the efficiency-favoring density (and business density) that it entails.

[ipdashc]

I feel like this argument doesn't work in all cases, because of course there are densely populated parts of America. Massachusetts is 7,800 sq miles of land and 7 million people. New Jersey is 7,354 sq miles and over 9 million people, so almost double the density of Switzerland!

So sure, nationwide policies in America have to account for all the empty space, but there's also wide swaths of the country that have relatively normal (if still overall low) levels of density. What's stopping MA or NJ from starting a similar scheme to the one in the article? Probably a lack of funding, state capacity, and political will.

If anything, the comparison probably falls apart because Switzerland is filthy rich. Apparently their GDPPC is $126k vs America's $94k, and crucially, I suspect the former is much more evenly distributed. All I have to go off of is visiting once, but it's certainly a very expensive and well-maintained country.

[callmeal]

>I see that it has a size of about 85.5 thousand square miles (and about 2 million people). >I've never understood the value in comparing relatively densely populated European countries to America. The practical realities of each just make them quite different in terms of basic utilities and infrastructure.

That's the lie everyone in America likes to tell themselves - it's very easy to provide electricity and phone service to all these people, but somehow internet is not.

[zdragnar]

> it's very easy to provide electricity

America didn't achieve near-total electrification until 1960 or so. The farm my dad grew up on didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing until well into his childhood in the 50's, despite urban areas being mostly electrified in the 1920's.

The fact that I have fiber Internet service while living in a forest in a relatively rural area is pretty much a miracle by comparison.

[charcircuit]

>but somehow internet is not.

Look up DSL.

[ipdashc]

In fairness, the phone network practically took a century to get fully set up, was quite expensive in its time, and it's pretty easy to run a dinky little wire pair to a house (sometimes they'd literally use barbed wire fences). And labor costs were a lot lower when the phone network was built out.

Electricity is genuinely hard and expensive, but we've accepted it as a basic need of modern life. Lighting, fridges, HVAC, kitchen appliances... People die if the electric grid goes down for long enough, but phones and Internet are a bit more of an optimization, a luxury.

Not disagreeing with your sentiment, though, just saying the scenarios are a bit different. Electricity and phone aren't "very easy", we just accept one as difficult but required, and the other (if you mean landline service) was already there and isn't really being maintained anymore.

[callmeal]

I know it's hard - but I was referring to companies taking tax dollars and not doing anything with it:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/att-took-283-mil...

>AT&T falsely told the US government that it met its obligation to deploy broadband at more than 133,000 locations in Mississippi, state officials say.

>Since 2015, AT&T has received over $283 million from the Federal Communications Commission’s Connect America Fund to expand its network in Mississippi. But the Mississippi Public Service Commission (PSC) said it has evidence that AT&T’s fixed-wireless broadband is not available to all the homes and businesses where AT&T claims it offers service. The PSC asked the FCC to conduct “a complete compliance audit” of AT&T’s claim that it has met its obligation

So it's that we cannot do it, it's that it's more profitable to say it's "difficult" to do it and then lie about getting it done.

[ascorbic]

The regulations here aren't about forcing companies to lay fiber to every home, it's enforcing a standard that when a company does lay fiber it lays four strands that any ISP can use.

[andriamanitra]

That argument might be valid if there were no urban areas in America. However it fails to explain why, for example, New Jersey does not have affordable 25 Gbit residential internet either. It is half the size of Switzerland but has similar population and much more favorable geography. And even if you wanted to only look at a place like Idaho, the explanation (and solutions!) provided by the article is even more applicable to places where building infrastructure is hard/costly.

Claiming the lack of healthy competition in the ISP space is because of (geography|population density|[a-z]+) is a prime example of the defeatist attitude in which one seeks to explain/excuse problems instead of even trying to address them. I've started noticing this pattern more and more after Evan Edinger pointed it out in a video (addressing some American comments on his videos): [1]

> We all default to what we know, that is just very natural. The problem is when new information arrives and instead of sitting with it and thinking about it, we immediately reach for any reason that it must be wrong. Because if it's wrong, nothing has to change.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDyPHGZCmNE&t=17m17s

[lowbloodsugar]

He’s talking about natural monopolies. Those exist in most US cities and towns. Simple rule of thumb: if you don’t have municipal water, this doesn’t apply to you either. If you do, you should have dedicated fibers.

[rullelito]

Now do Sweden.

[swiftcoder]

Or Spain.

We're one of the most spread out populations in Europe, and yet we have ubiquitous gigabit fibre to even the smallest of villages (I have it in a village of ~12 houses, an hour's drive from the nearest population hub), with a broad selection of providers.

Why? Because Movistar, the former national telecom, is required by law to connect the entire population to fibre, and then rent access to all their smaller competitors.

[timc3]

Well in the area of Sweden I live in a particular company seems to own the fibre, and then they have to allow access to resell it. The company owning the fibre has been finding interesting extra ways of charging me extra fees over the years and I don't have a choice of moving away from them (except paying for commercial fibre or using slower 5G with quotas)

[PeterHolzwarth]

Well I get your point, but Sweden has a GDP of just under a trillion. The example US state of Idaho has a GDP of about 100 billion. It really is just a quiet, no-frills, rural kind of state.

[ssivark]

If density is the primary factor, why doesn't an American city like NYC have faster/cheaper internet than Switzerland?

[adgjlsfhk1]

none of that explains why the dense states (e.g. ma, ny, ca, tx) have this solved

[microtonal]

Except that the people that I know in the US also say that internet is also overpriced and expensive with limited competition in many cities.

[mieses]

It is a stupid comparison with a stupid anti capitalist agenda. All infrastructure in Switzerland is high quality and highly maintained because they are a tiny and wealthy country. Their wealth has something to do with banking. Maybe the author of the stupid blog post can ponder the relationship between free markets, banking, and wealth.

[PeterHolzwarth]

You appear to be sponsored by the word "stupid."