In February 2020, Swisscom announced that it would be expanding its optical fiber network. Swisscom hopes to install genuine optical fiber connections in between 50% and 60% of all Swiss homes and businesses by 2025. Currently, only 30% of homes and businesses have genuine optical fiber connections.
Swisscom also plans to increase Internet connection speeds in all other homes and businesses by 2025. Swisscom aims to provide 300 to 500 Mbps connectivity to 30% to 40% of households by 2025.
In concrete terms, this means that by 2025, at least 80 percent of households will have the possibility of using Internet connections with speeds of at least 3000 Mbps.
A number of technologists and Swisscom’s competitors have criticized these plans. According to critics, Swisscom’s move to expand its FTTH-P2MP technology hinders competition in the market.
Analysis by moneyland.ch telecom expert Ralf Beyeler
Swisscom has talked about expanding its optical fiber network for many years. But so far, this expansion has amounted to little more than deceptive packaging. In many cases, products marketed by Swisscom as optical fiber did not actually deliver end-to-end optical fiber connections. In many cases, copper phone lines were simply shortened to achieve higher Internet connection speeds.
This time, it seems that Swisscom is more serious. Within 5 years, at least every second household will have the possibility of connecting to the Internet via genuine optical fiber connections. “Swisscom’s move to expand its optical fiber network is a welcome one, and is important for Switzerland,” states Ralf Beyeler.
But even if Swisscom can make good on its plans, Switzerland will remain a two-class society with regards to digital infrastructure. Half of the population will have access to Internet connections with data transfer speeds as high as 10 Gbps. The other half of the population will have to be content with Internet connectivity speeds of between 10 and 500 Mbps. At 500 Mbps, even the highest connection speed deliverable through copper phone lines is still twenty times slower than genuine optical fiber connections. Households with the slowest 10 Mbps connections can only access the Internet at speeds one-thousand times slower than the 10 Gbps optical fiber connections.
Tip: You can easily find out which Internet connection speeds and plans are available at your address using the interactive Internet plan comparison on moneyland.ch.
More on this topic:
Internet connection technologies in Switzerland compared
Interactive broadband Internet plan comparison (including data transfer speeds)
