They will never give you more unless something forces them to. That could have been us, forcing them to, but we’re shit at accomplishing those kinds of things.
Thanks, this reminded me that I should check the competition for now. It’s not as well designed infra as in Switzerland, but I should check for an open fibre that has several service providers.
Lmao. I have 25 Mbps. Let alone 25 Gbps. Thanks Malcolm turnballs
I’m sure this will be lost in the comments but you CAN get 25GBit here in 'murica. My ISP offers it… But this ISP is also considered one of the best in the world so… https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/#choose-your-plan
Lol $1500 a month. JFC.
Just for reference Init7 offers 25 Gbit/s for 65 CHF a month. Thats about 83 USD.
They have the same monthly price for 1 Gbit/s 10 Gbit/s and 25 Gbit/s. Only the initial install for the higher speed optics costs 77 CHF or 222 CHF more respectively.
I’m still on their 1Gbit/s service because I’m too lazy and cheap to replace my router and LAN with 10 Gbit/s equipment.
Most hardware does 2.5Gbps out of the box these days.
I’ve had 1Gbps for 13 years now (in Denmark) and can comfortably say: it’s plenty
True most motherboards, even the normal ones, now come with 2.5G included. But upgrading to 2.5 G feels like a wasted middle step if the next tier of external connectivity is at 10G, so I’ve not done that either haha
Nice. Used to live in chat. Miss epb internet.
Dang I pay $900 for 5gbit
$30/mo for 10 Gbit here in Japan. They just started offering 25 Gbit in parts of Tokyo this month for $200/mo
I really am hoping to leave the US in the next year or so, unfortunately Japan wasn’t on my list but…maybe for that…
Your casually picking a country to move to based on internet speed is nuts lol.
If the internet had been around back when the U.S. Constitution was written, instead of post offices, the framers would have put in ISPs.
Here in Sweden I have over 20 choices of providers, many with specific a focus. One that is superb, which is the one I have, don’t do any tracking or information gathering at all. They are fully focused on privacy, an open Internet and have helped countries in need, like Ukraine, with hardware to keep Internet access on. They’ve been raided and taken to court over not following the required IP address storage laws and some other things of deliberately not collecting information. Their newsletter is so good too, all about privacy and relevant tech news. Seriously couldn’t dream of a better ISP.
I’m out in the country in Colorado. I have a small local ISP. I can get 10Gb if I want it. I have 100Mb because that’s all I need. Honestly, for most people, I really don’t know what you’d do with 25Gb. Even 10Gb is tough for alot of home users. The equipment is out there and not even that expensive, but its also not something most people own. Most people who own that sort of stuff are either home labbers or tech enthusiasts. And even if most people did, they would rarely use it to its full potential. For most people 2.5Gb is far more practical. Oddly enough it can be harder and more expensive to get your hands on than 10Gb because it’s just starting to really penetrate the consumer market, where 10Gb was common in datacenters for a long time, so used equipment is quite reasonable.
The biggest issue with ISPs in the US is that you have legacy players entrenched in a market and unwilling to spend the money to do upgrades. The main reason I have what I have is because a local company saw an opportunity to go into a space others were failing badly at and used a state grant to help fund the buildout. Soon, I may have a second option because my electric co-op is working on their own build. Since they answer to their members and not the stock market, now that fiber is cheap, they can build this stuff widely. We need more of all that.
Man, all I want is square speeds. I’d be happier with 100Mbps square than I am with my current 400/40Mbps down/up, even if it was the same price. I’m a video creator and self-hoster, 40Mbps up is not enough.
I live in a big city in the US and the best internet option I have is 1Gb through Verizon, and my apartment complex is making a deal with Comcast so that’s going to go away leaving only 100Mb. I have a homelab setup which is why I was willing to pay more for the 1Gb.
Oh wow not going to lie I’m kind of jealous. I’d pull the trigger on 10 gbps in a heartbeat. I’m in CA and crapcast offered me overpriced 1 gbps down & 40 mbps up. Yes, you read that right, 40 mbps up in 2026. Didn’t have much of a choice so I bought it. I have my own homelab, download a lot of 4k linux isos, and completely saturate my both download & upload bandwidth around the clock
To make you even more jealous, the 100Mbps I pay for tests as that, both up and down. For $48/month, no billing shenanigans. I had 1Gbps for a bit and it was testing near gigabit ethernet’s theoretical maximum, both up and down. Fiber to the rack is kind of awesome. Oh and when I call for tech support, I get somebody local. I’ve actually gotten one of the owners before. And they do a yearly Halloween party/customer appreciation day. Talking with one of the owners, it’s like he practically expects that people are going to be downloading those 4k Linux isos.
You’d probably like what I had before - awful DSL. I was near the maximum limit for DSL. The technician said the line could do 15Mbps. I usually ended up around 12. And I was the lucky one. Some of my neighbors were like 1.5. So glad to dump Centurylink.
In Spain most villages have some tiny local ISP that offers fiber. My town (population 30k) has two local ISPs. I can get 10Gbit for 30 euros/month. Even remote villages have fiber.
And then there’s germany: I pay 43 Euros a month for only 100 MBit/s via cable. Nice to see how fckn far behind we are lol.
Don’t sweat it to much. That’s almost the same pricing and speed I have in Finland, but it’s no fiber and there is just 1 internet service provider for the physical cable.
I don’t think that’s too bad, sounds like Germany has come a long way.
My 1Gbps would be around 50 in Denmark (if I didn’t work for an isp lol)
Pro tip: move to Schleswig-Holstein, where every village has fiber lol. 86% availability vs the german average of 12%
But do they also have reasonable prices? When Telekom finally put fiber at our street their offers were so stupid, that basically everybody kept cable.
For starters they limit upload for no reason. Then they capped at 1 GB and wanted like 130€ for that. At the time I had the very same on cable for only 45 € or such, so I basically told them “give me prices and speed like in Switzerland and you have a deal”. The sales guy only asked me “why do you want that much upload?”. Like, because there’s no reason for you to limit it at all, only greed.
Lot’s of places have local ISPs wth very reasonable pricing. Unfortunately the scamlords from Telekom also own some of the regions.
But here in merica cable internet providers have done everything they can to stop fiber from happening.
They do this through legal injunction. They don’t play fair they have the courts stop compilation for them.
Very good. My TL;DR take:
The American and German approach of letting incumbents build monopolies, allowing wasteful overbuild, and refusing to regulate natural monopolies is often called a ‘free market.’
But it’s not free. And it’s not a market.
True capitalism requires competition. But infrastructure is a natural monopoly. If you treat it like a regular consumer product, you don’t get competition. You get waste, or you get a monopoly.
The Swiss model understands this. They built the infrastructure once, as a shared, neutral asset, and then let the market compete on the services that run over it.
That’s not anti-capitalist. It’s actually better capitalism. It directs competition to where it adds value, not to where it destroys it.
The free market doesn’t mean letting powerful incumbents do whatever they want. It means creating the conditions where genuine competition can thrive.
so capitalism good when done right - couldn’t agree more
Some right libertarians actually believe the bullshit that free markets magically pop up out of the ground like weeds if you just don’t regulate anything. This is obviously untrue. You need the right type of regulation to have a free market. Otherwise you end up with cartels and monopolies.
Those that operate the cartels and monopolies know this, but continue to feed the propaganda machine that spouts the opposite.
Libertarian police
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
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Not that I am one, but I believe true libertarians should be rabidly pro anti-trust legislation, letting corporations fail, and a 100% inheritance tax above a threshold.
True libertarians are. Companies shouldn’t get tax payer bailouts.
What a terrific summary. Thank you
I would be happy to have any fiber at all. The only options here are satellite and DSL. The DSL is basically unusable and only available to existing customers. I’m pretty sure the ISP wants to make everyone cancel so they don’t have to maintain the copper lines anymore.
They do. Copper lines are all converted to digital and fiber upstream, but the government says they have to maintain the copper for now because some people still rely on it.
You know I wanted to defend America and be like no way of course there is 25 gbit…
But there isn’t. None. Not even in business offerings.
because America keeps giving money to broadband companies, who promise to improve internet speeds and access… give the money to executives as bonuses, do shit all with speeds or access, and their reward is another dumptruck of money to expand access and speeds… Which they 20 return to 10 and give it all out as executive bonuses again and do fuck all for the customer/citizens
oh, and when municipalities try to run their own broadband, they force them to shut down because its not fair for them to compete with the monopolistic internet companies. 🙄
I wish this was just in the USA but numerous countries in the EU handed out billions upon billions to private companies to roll out VDSL and then fibre connections (GPON) and the public owns none of what has been made despite paying for it all and the bonuses on top. Now the higher speeds are grossly more expensive than the old DSL lines used to be and they are turning those all off and getting to pocket the increased prices.
corporatism is a plague all over the world.
Because it’s more profitable to charge people without upgrading the infrastructure. That’s how privatized systems work. It used to be about building a better product to attract consumers, now it’s about squeezing consumers for the most profit and minimizing costs.
It’s only more profitable if there isn’t competition. He lays it out quite well in his blog post. It’s not like the Swiss ISPs are all publicly owned.
Yep. Infrastructure shouldn’t be privately owned.
Because America is a Banana Republic with nukes and wall street.
This isn’t particularly unique. India, Pakistan, France, UK, Israel and Russia would match that description. Many of the listed countries are better at doing internet than the states.
And fweedum!
fweedumb*
