Broadband Internet has become faster and cheaper in Switzerland

 According to a study by the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM), the price of broadband Internet connections in Switzerland has fallen by 39% in the last five years, while transmission rates have increased sixfold. These are the findings of the study "Costs of telecommunications services (fixed and mobile): Comparison and development", which compared various providers between 2001 and 2006. Bakom expects further movements in the broadband market in the future, particularly as a result of the liberalization of the last mile. While competition in 2001 and 2002 mainly put pressure on prices, it had an impact on both prices and transmission rates in the following two years. Since 2005, providers have been competing mainly on the basis of transmission rates. In principle, it was almost always the cable network operators, above all Cablecom, that triggered the fall in prices and the increase in speeds. The study sees the reason for this in the fact that cable network operators theoretically have a larger bandwidth and can therefore increase speeds more easily.
The study compared the services of Swisscom and Cablecom for the period 2001 to 2005. It was found that the prices of the two competitors do not differ greatly: Cablecom's products are at most 8 percent cheaper than those of Swisscom. For the 2006 period, the comparison was extended to four other providers: Sunrise, Tele2, Improware and Quickline. The cheapest offer from Tele2 is 20 percent cheaper than the most expensive from Improware, although the latter has three times the transmission speed.