I moved into the Zurich area and am looking to buy a wlan - what did you take? Should be a good combination of high speed and price. Thanks!
Do you mean a router/access-point or an Internet service provider?
I assume you mean internet. How can you ask this question? It heavily depends on which building you live. I would check the availability. If you have fiber, then probably anythng will work fine. If not (like me), then it sucks. I use the 4G internet from Salt.
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I’m looking for an internet for my apartment where i can connect my desktop, notebook and phond, sorry for the confusion, I just moved out from my parents place. I’ll check if we have fiber or not.
I’ll get some quotes from Swisscom, Fiber 7, EWZ, UPC. What do I need to look out for? Thanks for your help!
Well if you are going to use mostly WiFi you have to keep in mind that even high end routers struggle to get > 300mbit actual throughput (the speeds they write on the box are mostly fantasy) in good conditions. So you do not have to get the 1gbit package if you are just going to use WiFi (unless it is cheaper of course).
In Switzerland there are 3 main types of internet connection (excluding the wireless ones like the one @bojack mentioned):
- Telephone lines (ex. ADSL), those are offered mostly by phone companyes (Swisscom, Sunrise, Salt …). Those are usually the slowest as the medium is the most restrictive
- Coax (Cable TV), those are offered by cable companies (Cablecom, quickline …). They are quite fast and usually relatively inexpensive but they do seem very keen on bundling a TV package.
- Fiber, fiber is the fastest and is offered by the big companies and a bunch of smaller ones. Where available there are sometimes very good offers (like the one by salt offered a while back).
It is definitely worth checking if you have fiber(in Zurich you might actually be lucky) but if you are just going to use it to browse Facebook on a phone I would just get the cheapest offer >20mbit. or a good mobile plan with infinite internet from any of the providers (I know that sunrise and salt offer a 2. sim-card for a small fee so you could install an LTE router).
Thanks, fabulous overview! Would it be faster to use an Ethernet cable? If so, what do I need to look for?
Yes Ethernet is faster and more reliable and cheaper (well except for fiber and some very exotic wireless solutions). If you can easily get cables to your desktop I would really recommend it. For phones and laptops it is still faster but not as convenient.
In cables? just get cat5e or more (the one wit all 8 wires not just 4 otherwise you are limited to 100mbit). For some stupid reason cables are super expensive most places in Switzerland. If your apartment is relatively new (or well built) it might even be already wired up, might be worth it to check.
For a WiFi router I would make sure it supports the latest WiFi standard (Wlan-ac/802.11ac). I am personally using mostly ASUS routers lately and they have served me pretty well but I am not exactly using them how the average user would.
But you should figure out where/how you get the internet before you buy something, some providers even provide a WiFi router (of varying terribleness) for “free”. If they want to charge you for it you are probably better of getting your own.
Re. Sunrise: apparently, you cannot use your second SIM in a router anymore. They will block access from it once they detect it’s being used in a router, at least they do it where I live. You’d need to buy a separate subscription for your router if you want to be on the safe side.
That would probably ruin the whole point of it. An unlimited internet connection from sunrise is > 60CHF (If I remember correctly) so you should easily be able to get some low to mid-range wired connection for that, especially if you have fiber. Pretty much any wired connection will be better than lte.
Also in a city mobile internet is probably an even worse choice as it is a lot more crowded.
If you have fiber. For us LTE is pretty much as good as it gets. And I like having more cancellation flexibility.
Has anyone studied the usage of a foreign SIM card for this use case? Most providers in the EU don’t allow roaming in switzerland as part of the EU-plan, but at least some german providers do. This people http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/Germany say that for example Deutsche Telekom regards EU=Switzerland=domestic as far as data is concerned.
Polish provider Play treats Switzerland as EU. It provides unlimited internet plan for 50 PLN / month (13 CHF). However, I think it includes a clause, that if you abuse it (use all the time abroad), they may introduce extra charges. In the end, the provider that has to pay for the abroad internet to the roaming providers, so they will do all they can, to avoid this cost.
Interesting. I’m not sure how much extra they pay or if they care as long as there are not thousands of users doing this.
Hi guys
Unfortunately, there is no fiber available in my house. I checked with Salt in regards to their special offer, would have been perfect as I am already a salt customer and could have gotten the internet for CHF 39 a month.
Here are the offers from Cablecom and Quickline:
https://www.upc.ch/en/internet/buy-internet/
https://www.quickline.ch/internet/
What would you do? Is there a way to do the salt deal via cable or somehow install fiber in my house?
Thanks!
Usually not unless you invest A LOT. What’s wrong with UPC?
UPC is fine but a bit on the expensive side compared to the Salt CHF 39 offer. Which option would you buy? I use it mostly to play a game of League in the evening.
That is sad but I know a few people in similar conditions. Some places apparently get their internet over a wet string XD.
Still, in my opinion, having to get a second subscription for a router defeats the purpose for most people. For 60CHF you can get a pretty stable 60/15 connection in most places whereas with LTE you might get better speeds sometimes but usually not when you need it.
Well if video-games are involved you should stay away from lte anyway as the latency is a lot more important for gaming than for webbrowsing and lte is cool and all but it does have a lot more (and more inconsistent) latency than anything wired. Sure you can do it (and I have done it) but it is more of a temporary solution.
If the choice is just between Quickline and UPC it seems that Quickline is the cheaper option. (60/15 for 35-65CHF vs 50/5 for 59CHF or if you are a little more heavy user 250/50 for 55-85CHF vs 200/20 for 79CHF)
They are using the same medium so reliability should be about equal ,I rarely have problems with Quickline and then it usually requires restarting the modem or making sure the antenna cable is properly connected (it is a little touchy and can get disconnected when cleaning).
Thank you, I will contact Quickline and see if they can create a good offer! What other providers do you recommend? How many mbit up/down do you recommend?
Is there a way to check if / when fiber will be available in my street? They are ripping apart the street right now so maybe it gets done soon!
https://www.ticino.com/home-connect?lang=de
49.- for 50/50 best effort
10chf more for tv.
I wanted to switch to it before cablecom made me an offer. Maybe next year if I don’t want to try salt.
All of them XD. No but seriously that highly depends on what you need. ~50 Should be fine for most uses though (Gaming, 4k youtube, netflix). That is of course assuming it is uses by one or two people, if you have a household of medium to heavy users you might want to up it a little.
Sounds interesting especially the synchronous connections which are pretty unusual fore home users but their availability check throws an certificate error which is a huge red flag to me (especially for an ISP) so I will disregard this for now.