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mlrtimetoday at 11:43 AM2 repliesview on HN

And they do have it, but it does not need to be 25 gbps. Even if they had access to it, they wouldn't/shouldn't pay for it.


Replies

timcambranttoday at 12:42 PM

25 Gbps is a silly (but illustrative / clickbaity) take in this context. The more relevant measures as others have pointed out is how well-covered clusters of population are, but also what their broadband quality is. I live in Sweden, where we have extremely well-built out broadband networks, especially in cities. (My professional take is that quality is often very poor, but that is comparing to the rest of the country). We are a small country too, but we have still chosen symmetric active ethernet over the assymmetric PON, we have largely discontinued DSL, our cable/coax offerings have largely been replaced with fibre, and where DSL was not profitable, 4G is generally built out well enough to cover most people. Swedes in rural areas buy Starlink not for their reach, but for redundancy or even price.

I would say most of those things are not true in the US market. The united states IS a much, much bigger country, but my guess is that the median reach, stability, and speed is way lower than the Swedish and Swiss examples, compared to what it could be. The US has way higher military costs, still relatively high taxes, and most of all a stronger buying power. I pay $35/month for 300/300 Mbps Active Ethernet FTTH, and consider that overprized. When I last looked, the median American could generally afford more than that, but had access to less. Sorry, I don't have the numbers at hand.

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AnthonyMousetoday at 11:48 AM

Which of the things you said don't also apply to the people in Zurich?

Also, if you say people in Kansas don't need fiber then you have to expect that to get averaged in. The population density in California is less than half what it is in Switzerland. Only 10% of US states have a higher population density than Switzerland and those states represent less than 10% of the US population (because of those 5 states the one with the largest land area is Maryland).