The Free Market Lie: Why Switzerland Has 25 Gbit Internet and America Doesn't

This wasn’t just a story about super-fast home internet in Switzerland — it turned into a full-blown comment-section cage match over whether America’s slow, pricey service is caused by greed, geography, or plain old government chaos. The article’s big claim is simple: Switzerland treats internet lines more like shared public plumbing, so multiple companies can sell service over the same connection. In the US and Germany, by contrast, companies often build their own separate lines, which the article says wastes money and helps lock in local monopolies.

But the community was not about to let that argument glide by uncontested. One camp basically shouted, “Hold on — America is huge,” with commenters hammering population density as the missing piece. Switzerland is smaller, denser, and easier to wire, they argued, so comparing it to the US without that context is like comparing a train set to a continent. Another group came in swinging with real-world horror stories: one commenter described Manhattan fiber work as a nightmare of permits, packed underground tunnels, and bureaucratic musical chairs, making the whole thing sound less like capitalism and more like a cursed city-building game.

Then came the fact-checkers and jokers. One person flexed that Ziply already offers 50 Gbps in a service area much bigger than Switzerland, while another tossed in the gloriously random quip: “Why Switzerland doesnt have its own Starlink?” And perhaps the shadiest side-eye of all came from the commenter who pulled up Speedtest’s global index and basically said: if Switzerland is so magical, why do average speeds look so similar? The vibe: everyone agrees the system feels broken — they just can’t agree on who to blame.