

Swiss ISP init7 launches unlimited symmetrical gbit FTTH for $73/month - alternize
https://www.fiber7.ch/

======
sschueller
The city of Zürich voted on having fiber to every home/building. The fiber is
independently operated from the service providers (EWZ (City of Zürich
electricity) and Swisscom manage the fiber). You can pick from as many as 15
different providers in the area of internet/television and phone [1]

[1] [https://www.stadt-
zuerich.ch/ewz/de/index/telecom/ewz_zuerin...](https://www.stadt-
zuerich.ch/ewz/de/index/telecom/ewz_zuerinet/ServiceProvider.html)

~~~
CaptainZapp
Wouldn't it be for the EWZ we would still be waiting for fiber.

I remember clearly how the telecoms, most notably Swisscom, argued that it was
overkill and not necessary.

The telecoms also invested into massive lobbying efforts and an intense
advertising blitz in order to kill the necessary referendums. (At least the
first, I think when it came to the second referendum covering the rest of the
city they where pretty mute. But then Swisscom was already in the boat).

The referendums where necessary, since the voting public needed to decide if
the city owned utility is allowed to invest the money. Both referendums sailed
pretty much through in a landslide.

Basically all public utilities in Zurich are city owned and operated. And
while it may appear weird in other parts of the world, people here actually
love their public utilities.

This probably has to do with really high service quality being quite
reasonably priced. But I digress.

~~~
rayiner
> Basically all public utilities in Zurich are city owned and operated. And
> while it may appear weird in other parts of the world, people here actually
> love their public utilities. This probably has to do with really high
> service quality being quite reasonably priced. But I digress.

Here in the states, our public utilities are more often than not of poor
quality for the price. For example, I lived in Atlanta, GA for many years.
Much of its sewer system dates to the rebuilding of the city after the Civil
War. It's in violation of federal environmental laws, and when it rains too
much it overflows and dumps untreated sewage into the local river.

I'm not sure why municipal services are so bad in the states versus in parts
of Europe. After all, there's no private water/sewer company lobbying to blame
for the water/sewer system in Atlanta (or Chicago or D.C. or the numerous U.S.
cities with similar problems). I suspect it has to do with the locus of power
vis-a-vis urban and suburban voters in the U.S. versus Europe. That is to say,
most U.S. metro areas take the form of poorer central cities supported by
wealthier suburbs, at least to a greater degree than I think is true in
Europe.[1] Thus, there is less concentrated political will, as well as less
money, to spent on infrastructure within cities.

Regardless of the reasons, I think many people in the U.S. are justifiably
skeptical of public utilities. I personally would very much trust the city of
Zurich to build my internet infrastructure. I wouldn't so much trust Atlanta,
or Wilmington, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore . . . maybe Chicago or New York
City. I say this as someone who has lived or worked in these cities, and
relied on the municipal infrastructure more than the vast majority of
Americans (because I take public transit and don't like to drive).

[1] For example: Atlanta has a core city only a little bit larger than Zurich
proper (though only 1/3 as dense), but has a metro area 3x as large as the
Zurich metro area. The vast majority of the wealthy voters in Atlanta live in
the surrounding suburbs. Thus, funding for road construction to get these
folks to and from work in the city takes priority over funding for services
used by people who reside in the city.

------
pilif
Tangentially related: Init7 is one of the few providers here in Switzerland
that offer native IPv6 connectivity to end-users (they might be the only one
offering it to end-users).

This makes this already amazing offering doubly interesting because it would
finally allow me to play with native IPv6

~~~
rsync
Init7 is the ISP that we (rsync.net) have been using in Zurich since 2007, and
we highly recommend them.

------
hocuspocus
I'm very glad to see it happening. Finally we might catch up with Baltic
countries...

Switzerland has the money and a population that isn't particularly hard to
cover thoroughly compared to some nearby countries. Yet we wasted nearly 15
years in some cantons arguing about roles and responsibilities, while it was
pretty clear that local utility companies need to be in charge of horizontal
fiber deployment, and the ISPs of the rest, preferably without bitching about
the costs of vertical deployment. Sadly our politicians are apparently more
interested in letting UPC have nearly full control over the cable network, as
long as the duopoly situation allows for ridiculous profits and dividends from
Swisscom.

~~~
Haiperlink
Living in the canton of Zurich and having my office in Dübendorf this makes me
happy! :) We are currently paying about 250$ for 10Mbit/s symmectrical fiber.

~~~
vstm
I'm living in Rüti (which is about 30 km from Dübendorf but still in the
canton of Zürich). If I do the availability-check on the fiber7-page it
returns something like "that's a black-hole for us" \- I'm not surprised.

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kosinus
The provider Tweak here in the Netherlands is also launching symmetrical 1Gb/s
FTTH in select cities:

[http://www.tweak.nl/consument/fiber/productoverzicht_odf.htm...](http://www.tweak.nl/consument/fiber/productoverzicht_odf.html)

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damian2000
Damn, I'm paying $80/month here in Australia for 3 mbit/s. The local exchange
has been maxxed out for the last 10 years. Its possible we have the worst
Internet of all developed countries.

~~~
pugz
I'm paying a bit more ($89/month) for unlimited 100/40mbit on the NBN.
Consider moving! (That's Turnbull's advice>

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wrboyce
[https://www.fiber7.ch/fiber7-bestellen/](https://www.fiber7.ch/fiber7-bestellen/)
[https://www.fiber7.ch/fiber7-verfugbarkeit/](https://www.fiber7.ch/fiber7-verfugbarkeit/)

Django with DEBUG = True in production.

~~~
carsonreinke
Wow, thats a lot of debug info.

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nonuby
Have much capacity do they have to offload that traffic, I imagine they have
largest ports on peering exchanges locally, with some other local private
peering, and perhaps they got some backhaul to AMS-IX, LINX and others, but
you can read the issues peering exchanges are facing with capacity and the
cost of highest 100G ports (where available). How much transit do they have to
carry the rest? I jut cant see this being feasible unless its p2p on their own
network. Last mile is only a small part of the problem.

~~~
alternize
init7, the company behind fiber7, has already a pretty good peering and
international pops:
[http://www.init7.net/en/backbone/](http://www.init7.net/en/backbone/)

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yjh0502
Seoul, South Korea. Gigabit internet is available for ~$18/month.

~~~
shock
Same price (~$18) for gigabit internet in Romania, but it's not symmetrical.

~~~
oblio
I saw a Steam (Valve) graph for Dota 2 download speeds. Roughly 8 million
players, spread across the world, quite evenly.

The "fastest" countries were South Korea, Sweden, the Netherlands and Romania.

We might be lacking quite a few things, but Internet speed is not one of them
:)

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rasur
Hmm, Swisscom have been waving FTTH here (Winti..) for the past few months,
and I've seen lots of workers actually laying cable, but nothing to the actual
apartment yet..

Fortunately I work for a Swisscom owned co. so there are some benefits that
hopefully will eventually trickle down, otherwise I think I'd be very tempted
by init7's offer (we also use them at work, and they're a good bunch).

~~~
chli
Swisscom FTTH is available in my building (Biel/Bienne), but at the moment the
price is too steep plus you need to have the Vivo XL package to be eligible
[1]. That brings the whole TV + Phone + 1Gbps/100Mbps internet at 169 + 80 =
249 CHF / month. I like fast Internet but not THAT much !

[1]
[http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/packages/options/1giga...](http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/packages/options/1gigabit.html)

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Nanzikambe
Love it, hopefully they'll add coverage for the French part of Switzerland
too, or else I'll have to consider moving cantons :)

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pling
Well that shits on my 12Mbit/1Mbit here in London that costs nearly that
much...

~~~
snowwolf
Where in London are you and which provider are you with? Pretty much all
cabinets in London now support FTTC so it should be pretty easy to get 80/20
and plenty of ISPs are offering unlimited FTTC for around £20/month. You might
want to consider switching.

~~~
pling
South West near Kingston. Andrews and Arnold. Unfortunately for some reason we
can't get FTTC. I think its an issue with the cabinet near me which looks like
it has been run over by a bus. The local exchange is also an ancient branch
exchange so it may not have the capacity.

------
tedchs
There is a nice "gigabit community" being built in Sout Carolina near
Charleston: [http://www.nextonsc.com/gigafi/](http://www.nextonsc.com/gigafi/)

~~~
jtsnow
Interesting. This looks like the same concept as the community in which I
reside:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_(community)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_\(community\))

Every home has fiber, but the bandwidth is throttled to about 12/4mbit by
Century Link, which is the contracted provider. This contract expires soon, so
hopefully we'll be able to negotiate better speeds.

~~~
tedchs
Yes, FTTH itself is common for greenfield developments built in the last
several years. Unfortunately, as you have found, they are often operated in a
way that does not capture their bandwidth potential. I suspect that in the
case of Centurylink, they feel constrained by feeling like they can't sell 100
Mbps service to a FTTH customer for the same price as 10 Mbps service to xDSL
customer.

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brunnsbe
xDSL-prices are still quite high here, at least in Gèneve.

I'm not 100% sure if Swisscom has a monopoly as I have only lived here since
January but here are Swisscom's price list for xDSL (rough calculation from
CHF to EUR):

5/0,5 Mbit: 30 euro

10/1 Mbit: 40 euro

20/2 Mbit: 55 euro

For these connections you also have to pay for a fixed telephone line (hello
Swisscom, this is the 21-century, not the 19:th!) which costs 20 euro per
month.

(Source: [http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet/internet-
at-h...](http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet/internet-at-
home.html))

Back in Finland I got a 50/10Mbit connection for 40 euros which included IPTV.

~~~
Nanzikambe
DSL is expensive everywhere in .ch , switch to cable if its available in your
area:

[http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet/internet-
at-h...](http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet/internet-at-
home/fibre-optics.html)

Not sure about Geneve, but in Vaud and Neuchatel it's available.

~~~
brunnsbe
It still seems to cost a lot, e.g. Vivo Casa __package which has 8Mbit
download speed is 74CHF, I have the same connection but with a VDSL-model. The
interesting part is that my connection really is 27Mbit so that the IPTV gets
enough bandwith, then Swisscom adds this "artifical" speed reducer so that the
Internet traffic only reaches a maximum of 8Mbit. :-(

------
coldcode
So what I pay for 15/1 at $60 a month from TWC. Oh wait... I live in a third
world internet country.

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Zelphyr
Meanwhile, Comcast is patting themselves on the back because they just
upgraded me to 50MB! I feel like I'm being served $25 boxed wine by an idiot
waiter while across the street a guy is getting a $16,000 Richebourg for the
same price.

------
lugg
Fuck it I'm moving to Switzerland.

Honestly if I could find symmetrical adsl2 I'd be happy. Download speed is
nice but I'm a gamer upstream is everything.

~~~
cliveowen
Symmetrical ADSL is an oxymoron, the word you search for is SDSL.

~~~
zokier
I don't think anyone uses SDSL anymore, VDSL2 is where the action is at (in
DSL tech).

------
GBiT
In Lithuanian FTTH 500 mbit connection is only 23 euro or $31

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billiam
I hope one of Tom Wheeler's minions prints out this thread for him on the dot
matrix printer they use over at the FCC.

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hsx
It's giving me an "UncompressableFileError at /"

