> - The United States is 85 times larger than Switzerland. The entire country of Switzerland is the size of a small US state. Covering the US with broadband is much harder than Switzerland.

I see this argument come up a lot with regards to all kinds of infrastructure, and the thing is it simply _isn't true_.

What matters is population density, GDP per capita, geography, and will. A countries size doesn't matter since twice the area will, all things being equal, also give you twice the workforce to make it happen. In fact the only change a larger area typically makes is better ability to make use of economies of scale, which makes things _easier_.

The only correlation between larger countries and trouble with infrastructure is that a large country is more likely to have large areas with nearly nobody in them, but these areas also typically account for a vanishingly small percentage of the population so they don't really count when people are talking about bad infrastructure.

I live in NYC, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, and yet Verizon Fios 1 Gbps is my only option. I tried to upgrade to Fios 2 Gbps, but it's not available. Spectrum only goes to 200Mbps; no other providers in my area.

I have no idea if Switzerland is any better, but the US situation in 2026 is appalling. If we're this bad in NYC, imagine what someone in rural America goes through.

> It's just the fastest tier available in some locations

It's available where I live, and I live in some backwater little town. I think around 60% of the population currently has 25G, and that's expected to reach 80% by 2030.

> 25G internet isn't available everywhere in Switzerland. It's just the fastest tier available in some locations.

It is available everywhere where fiber internet is available. As of May 2026 this is ~50% of all households in Switzerland.

- Swiss here, you’re coping, 25G is available almost anywhere,

- the size doesn’t matter that much, you also have considerably more money and urban density comparable to us or higher. If you want to start counting reasons it’s harder here: we have mountains to go over, strong environmental regulations, can’t build at night in cities, must stop working on Sunday… no cheap labor, etc.

The United States might be 85 times larger than Switzerland but it still has a higher population density than Sweden, and even in rural Sweden (similar population density to Wyoming) where my father lives he has a similar ability to pick providers at will as the Swiss.

Average and median is not the same. Listed speed and actual speed is not the same (as mentioned in the article).

Also, about the size of the countries. The underlying model scales, that’s the point. Unless you were talking about political willingness to back large commitments. That’s a another question.

> The United States is 85 times larger than Switzerland.

All other things being equal; it's a lot easier to dig huge amounts of fibre runs (following roads) where there isn't a heavy density of people.

Distance is practically meaningless for fibre optic cabling, but digging up historic cities, digging through mountain ranges, avoiding subways, plumbing and ensuring you have enough cables for the density of humans is hard.

Much harder than running cables between buildings that house 10 people which are 50ft away from each other.

Switzerland is larger than New Jersey and with a lower population and higher per capita gdp. I assume therefore New Jersey is better than Switzerland in all these metrics, from public transport to internet.

If the geographic factors are dominant then we should expect New Jersey to have 25 Gbps internet.

The area of just the contiguous US is almost 200 times as big as Switzerland. Where did the 85 come from? Did you divide square miles by square kilometers?

Other than running a commercial CDN at home or something.. what possible need is there for a 25 Gbit home connection?

My home ISP connection (in Silicon Valley) is ~22 Mbit. That is enough for just about everything I can think of. We can run 3 zoom calls simultaneously (3 people in the house), stream movies, play online games, etc, all works fine.

The only time I wish for a bit more is for huge downloads, but that is so rare (once a month? probably not even) that it's just a footnote.

And at my personal office I have ~150Mbit connection and that is overkill for everything I can think of.

for those curious, regarding your first point, as far as I know any home that is dark red on this map has access to it, and any light red is planned to get access: https://ftth.init7.net/

Chicago here, 2gbps via coax (so probably 40 or 60 down) is the max I can get.

It also assumes the US broadband market is free, which it effectively isn’t. There’s a huge moat of hard-lobbied for “regulations” put in place by the established players.

Switzerland is small but mountainous.

And just for reference:

  * Delaware: 200 people / km^2
  * Switzerland: 230 people / km^2
  * Massachusetts: 350 people / km^2
  * New Jersey: 490 people / km^2

> Covering the US with broadband is much harder than Switzerland.

I don't think anyone is suggesting the US be covered with broadband, just the bits where people live. That then becomes a comparable problem, insofar as Switzerland has comparable size communities (with the exception of the very largest end of US cities whose population exceeds that of Switzerland)

All your points completely miss the point of the article, no?

Now let's do trains.

Yeah, what a biased piece of reporting.

Switzerland has one of the highest Internet prices in the world: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-...

And don't talk to me about mobile data prices, it's out of the planet.