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This article came up before. It's heavy on the clickbait, if you couldn't guess from the title. Some important points that they leave out: - 25G internet isn'

• atoav 4mo ago
  Now let's do trains.
  • johnsmith1840 4mo ago
    US has the largest railway on earth by a large margin
    • yogorenapan 4mo ago
      Largest freight rail. Public transport for normal people is still shit compared to Europe.
      • BDPW 4mo ago
        And especially China. And Japan.
      • mrits 4mo ago
        Have you been to Europe? What area do you enjoy the public transportation?
        • sixothree 4mo ago
          Have you been to America? Public transportation barely exists.
        • DiogenesKynikos 4mo ago
          Switzerland.
        • wkjagt 4mo ago
          The Netherlands
        • yogorenapan 4mo ago
          Mate, I live in Europe. The UK (as bad as it is, is still better than the US), the Netherlands, Belgium, and generally anywhere else that has public transport.
      • dzhiurgis 4mo ago
        That doesn't seem to be stopping europeans from moving to USA.
        • seszett 4mo ago
          Apparently net migration has been towards the EU rather than towards the USA since 2022, but I can't find a better source than this: https://x.com/benbawan/status/2049303326999609846 https://x.com/benbawan/status/2049303326999609846
          • dzhiurgis 4mo ago
            Your source literally has been community noted as misleading.
            • seszett 4mo ago
              I had not seen it, but there isn't really an equivalent to a green card or permanent residency in most of Europe. Usually you just get naturalised after having spent 5 or 10 years with a limited-duration but more or less automatically renewable visa.
        • yogorenapan 4mo ago
          I'm a European moving to America. Unfortunately money > public transport, and until Europe can compete on salaries and available capital, I'll have to make do with shittier transport
    • defrost 4mo ago
      US annual freight tonnage per annum is much the same as Australia's (1.5 billion tonne /annum, IIRC). Australia has longer, more control complex trains (leading, trailing and midway locomotives). To the best of my knowledge the US has never once had a single train 7 km in length with 680+ cars and a gross tonnage of 99,734 tonne - Australia has set a record with such a train and moves smaller (but still at that scale) trains daily. ( That's over 4.3 miles in length carrying 109,938 short tons for any readers from Liberia, or Myanmar ) Tech-wise Australia also operates the world's first (and still only?) fully autonomous rail heavy haul routes.
      • stinkbeetle 4mo ago
        "Australia" doesn't really set records, multinational mining companies do. The records might as well be set on another planet. There is virtually no population, roads or utilities, no agricultural land beyond low density cattle stations that need up to 50 hectares per head, no mountain ranges, no large rivers, and employing people to work on site out there is might be 3x more expensive than the rest of the economy. The records are set on private lines that operate outside normal rail regulations by agreement set down by state governments that are beholden to the mining companies. Comparing USA's freight rail network to Australia's on those numbers paints a misleading picture. 3/4 of it is iron ore and coal being carried relatively short distances (few 100s of km) from inland out to the nearest coastal port, and most of that is away from any significant population centers. By ton-mile, USA takes 5-6x more than Australia and much more interesting and varied conditions and freight types and destinations - not just ferrying it from a hole in the ground, across highway 1, then into a bunker at a shipping terminal.
        • defrost 4mo ago
          Like everything, it all depends on your metric. Again, same freight tonnages as the US .. and with fewer people == vastly greater rail performance per capita, and similar tonnages in absolute numbers. The US is just another G20 country, and one sliding down the rankings on freedom, and democracy.
          • 4mo ago
    • mitthrowaway2 4mo ago
      How fast does it move? How's the latency?
    • sschueller 4mo ago
      But how much of it is electrified?
    • panick21_ 4mo ago
      This is kind of a dumb statement. Yes the US is one of the larges most populated countries and has been for a long time. Its just coping instead of actually engaging with the question about what makes railways good. The US put down lots of track in the 18-19th centuries as its industrial revolution was pre-car and its the biggest country where this happened. If you look into detail and not just very simple 'we transport this much cargo' you see the US system has many disadvantages and is not nearly as amazing as some US people barging make it seem. Frankly given the historical strength of railways in the US into the 20th century, the near perfect geography for rail and the lack of ports its quite embracing how little things are done with rail.
• badgersnake 4mo ago
  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.
• guiambros 4mo ago
  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.
  • porknubbins 4mo ago
    Its not how bad must other areas be when NYC is this bad- its bad because its NYC. Corruption, aging infrastructure, enormous construction costs, diverse building types and complex ownership interests etc etc. The fastest and most competitive internet is in places like wealthy suburbs where you just roll it out without any issues.
    • ElProlactin 4mo ago
      > Corruption, aging infrastructure... There are developing ("third-world") countries that have better overall internet than the US.
      • gleenn 4mo ago
        I heard someone argue that because original phones rolled out in the US much earlier and more broadly, we spend all this money on copper wiring. Because Europe didn't have as much, they transitioned to fast cellular quickly. Being first does not mean you will be best certainly.
        • jimnotgym 4mo ago
          Europe? I heard that about Asia and Africa, maybe post soviet Eastern Europe, but not Europe in general. We had telephones...
          • Foobar8568 4mo ago
• arjie 4mo ago
  If the geographic factors are dominant then we should expect New Jersey to have 25 Gbps internet.
• kvam 4mo ago
  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.
• pheggs 4mo ago
  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/ https://ftth.init7.net/
• monksy 4mo ago
  Chicago here, 2gbps via coax (so probably 40 or 60 down) is the max I can get.
• kovariantenkak 4mo ago
  > 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.
  • Youden 4mo ago
    Not quite. There are some homes where P2MP was installed before the court order that are still P2MP. These still have fiber but only 10Gbps shared, not 25Gbps dedicated. Also, the only ISP that offers 25Gbps is Init7 and they need to have their equipment at the other end of the fiber to offer 25Gbps. I don't think they quite have 100% coverage yet.
• rdiddly 4mo ago
  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?
  • sixothree 4mo ago
    That's exactly what he did. At least he didn't include any of the 300,000 square miles of water. This argument somehow appears every time there is an article comparing American internet to another country's, regardless of the country. And it's such a lazy argument, you wouldn't expect them to even get the match correct.
• Turskarama 4mo ago
  > - 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.
  • colechristensen 4mo ago
    Wrong, there are scaling problems. Have you ever worked at both a very large and very small company? Were things that were easy at small companies much harder at large ones?
    • matt-p 4mo ago
      So why don't you have ISPs that focus on one state or one geographical area. We have that all over in Europe.
      • AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
        To some extent there are, but in many cases it's because the law prohibits that. It imposes build out requirements so that if you want to offer service in the higher density area you also have to provide service over a wide area that includes a bunch of farmland or similar. In theory this is supposed to be to make sure someone is serving rural areas but in practice it's because the incumbents don't want new challengers showing up to provide better service in the areas where it's profitable to build a competing network and so lobby the government to saddle them with a huge barrier to entry.
• hkt 4mo ago
  > 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)
• khalic 4mo ago
  - 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.
• whizzter 4mo ago
  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.
• rdsubhas 4mo ago
  Yeah, what a biased piece of reporting. Switzerland has one of the highest Internet prices in the world: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-cost-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-... And don't talk to me about mobile data prices, it's out of the planet.
  • DiogenesKynikos 4mo ago
    Switzerland has some of the highest prices in the world for everything. This isn't unique to the Internet.
    • prmoustache 4mo ago
      Yes, comparatively to a lot of stuff (like food for example), internet connectivity is cheap in Switzerland. To take 2 countries where I have been living in the last 10 years, if you compare internet prices and average income in Switzerland and Spain, Swiss citizens end up in a favorable situation compared to Spanish ones.
      • swissdom 4mo ago
        That's right. Swiss wages are at least twice the European average (actually much more than that, but let's keep it conservative). If we exclude home rent and healthcare costs, the vast majority of things definitely don't cost twice as much. Switzerland ranks among the highest in Europe in terms of purchasing power, that's the figure that matters when determining how expensive a country actually is.
  • fransje26 4mo ago
    As posted above, for information. In Switzerland, fresh from their website: - Init7: 1 Gbit: CHF 44/month, 10 Gbit: CHF 77, 25 Gbit: CHF 222 - Salt: 10 Gbit: CHF 49.95. (CHF 39.5 when combined with a mobile plan)
  • swissdom 4mo ago
    Hi, that statistic probably looked at the full price of the various plans before discounts. The reality is different, all providers offer significant discounts, and you’ll hardly find anyone paying more than 50 CHF a month for 10 Gbps (including streaming TV channels). Personally, I’ve never paid more than 45 CHF a month for 10 Gbps and TV and I currently pay 38 CHF, but I know people with even better deals. The same goes for mobile service. The expensive plans are the “standard” ones from Swisscom or Sunrise, the two major carriers, but most people use low-cost digital providers that offer excellent plans for less than 20 CHF a month. Mobile prices, however, remain high compared to the rest of Europe and the world. Still, fiber-optic internet is available in virtually every city, with the exception of very small, remote mountain villages. I’m an Italian who’s lived in Switzerland for years, and fiber-optic prices here aren’t that much higher than in Italy, especially when you consider speed and reliability. You can find 25 Gbps plans for less than 70 CHF a month.
• dijit 4mo ago
  > 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.
• freak42 4mo ago
  All your points completely miss the point of the article, no?
• DiogenesKynikos 4mo ago
  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 So you can think of Switzerland as Delaware, but landlocked and full of 4,000-meter peaks.
• hdgvhicv 4mo ago
  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.
• jjav 4mo ago
  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.
  • msh 4mo ago
    25 gigabit might be overkill for now as there is not a lot of end user equipment supporting it but 22 megabit would be painful for me. My family have a number of gaming PC's and a playstation, downloading a game is easily 40-60 gigabytes so the difference between 22 megabit and a gigabit makes a huge change in usability. 22 megabit is also not really enough for 4K streaming (netflix 4K is 15-25 megabits, the better ones is even more).
• InsideOutSanta 4mo ago
  > 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.
• bulbar 4mo ago
  Any data available regarding the median or how many with no connection at all?
• chaz6 4mo ago
  On a similar note, there is 50G internet available in the UK, but there is only a single customer to my knowledge (on the Youfibre/Netomnia network). Another difference is that I believe Switzerland is using 25GBASE-X as the transport, whereas in the UK it is 50G-PON (alongside the regular XGS-PON service which most customers have).
• bicepjai 4mo ago
  [dead]
• insane_dreamer 4mo ago
  Two important points you leave out: 1G is the max available in many large cities in the US, if that. I live in one and that's the best I can get (residential). My "1G" (fiber) is definitely _not_ 1G most of the time, because it's shared (as the article points out).
• sharts 4mo ago
  Average is the wrong metric. US may be larger but also wealthier, more powerful. All the heavy hitting innovation is there. Broadband isn’t hard. Decision makers simply don’t care.