816
The Free Market Lie: Why Switzerland Has 25 Gbit Internet and America Doesn't
(sschueller.github.io)
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
816 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
84643 readers
5493 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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.
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)
1Gb/s symmetrical fibre 9eur/month here in Romania... And happy to say it's rock solid/advertised speed.
Alas, Digi's 10Gb/s product seems to be mostly vapourware (the installer asked if I wanted it - for an extra eur/month IIRC - but any mention has disappeared from the website.) That said, I said no anyway because the thought of upgrading all my equipment to actually do anything with it doesn't make me at all happy...
Our economy is a bit different, no offense, and that pricing seems fair to me :)
I can download whatever I need in <5 minutes and that's totally sufficient for me.
Of course; that's why PPP is the only sensible way to compare economies when you're discussing individual experience.
There are much more interesting reasons than "ugh, me big rich western man, proud overpay not europoor" why Romanian internet is cheaper than western though; after all, GDP PP PPP in Romania is 60% of Denmark or half of Switzerland (and only a shade off the EU average these days), but fibre internet is between one fifth and one eighth of the price apparently. Particularly surprising when you consider that Denmark must be the easiest country to wire up in the world (very small and geographically unremarkable.) I would think a curious mind would want to know why...
I pay that much for 500 Mbit on cable Internet. Sadly it has carrier grade NAT.
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.