# Why Switzerland Has 25 Gbit Internet and America Doesn't

> Switzerland gets 25 Gbit/s residential fiber by mandating shared neutral infrastructure open to any ISP, while the US and Germany produce monopolies.

Published: 2026-04-06
URL: https://daniliants.com/insights/the-free-market-lie-why-switzerland-has-25-gbit-internet-and-am/
Tags: infrastructure, regulation, telecom, broadband, open-access, natural-monopoly, switzerland, policy

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## Summary

Switzerland achieves 25 Gbit/s dedicated residential fiber because regulators mandated shared neutral infrastructure: one 4-strand point-to-point fiber per home, open to any ISP at the physical layer. The US and Germany treated infrastructure like a consumer product, producing territorial monopolies and wasteful duplicate builds. The difference is not more vs. less regulation - it's whether regulation protects competition on services or on infrastructure ownership.

## Key Insight

- **Natural monopoly distinction is the crux.** Infrastructure (fiber in the ground) is a natural monopoly - you don't want three companies digging the same trench. Services running over that infrastructure (ISPs competing on price, speed, SLA) are where real competition works. Switzerland separates these layers; US and Germany conflate them.
- **Switzerland's OTO system enables instant switching.** Every home has a printed Optical Termination Outlet number. Switching ISPs requires only a phone call and that number - no truck rolls, no new digging. Multiple providers can run simultaneously on separate fiber strands in the same home.
- **25 Gbit/s exists today** from Init7, symmetric and dedicated (not shared). The bottleneck is endpoint equipment cost, not network capacity.
- **Germany's overbuild problem.** "Infrastructure competition" policy led to multiple companies digging parallel trenches meters apart - billions wasted on redundant concrete. Bundesnetzagentur published a final report in July 2025 documenting this waste.
- **Swisscom tried to close the market in 2020** by switching to P2MP (shared splitter) architecture, which would have locked competitors to reseller status. Regulator COMCO blocked it via precautionary measure, courts confirmed it in 2021, and Swisscom was fined 18 million francs in April 2024.
- **The US "free market" is a cartel.** Territorial incumbents (Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T) carve up cities with no overlap. The Point of Presence (central fiber hub) is privately owned, so competitors cannot physically access your home's fiber without building their own entire network.
- **Shared P2MP architecture hides real speeds.** US "gigabit" connections are often split 32 ways; peak-hour speeds drop to 100-200 Mbps while customers are billed for 1 Gbit.