11 December 2018: Saint-Barthélemy (VD) is the 1,111th community in Switzerland to have access to more than 80 Mbit/s in the Swisscom network. This milestone represents the halfway mark in the national network expansion, which benefits small villages and big cities alike. All 2,222 communities are due to be covered by the end of 2021. 90 per cent of the population should be able to enjoy bandwidths of 80 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s with Swisscom. This is currently the case for more than 3 million broadband connections or 60 per cent of the around 5.2 million homes and businesses in Switzerland.

Located a few kilometres north of Lausanne, the village of Saint-Barthélemy is one of the smallest communities in the Canton of Vaud with 771 inhabitants. Its air of tranquillity is enhanced by the greenness of its landscape, old farmhouses and a castle dating back to the 12th century. Invisible, but new are the recently installed fibre-optic cables that now supply the village with ultrafast Internet, just like the surrounding communities of Bettens, Bioley and Oulens.

Communities in the Vaud typify rural areas, in that they have access to the same Internet speeds as urban centres. Half of all Swiss communities and more than three million homes and offices thus already enjoy bandwidths of 80 Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s. Every year, 300 communities – that’s one per working day – are being connected to the fibre-optic network while broadband access is being constantly extended.

In international terms, Switzerland is the only country to be covered to this extent by fibre-optic technology, enabling all citizens to enjoy access to highspeed Internet – irrespective of where they wish to use the network.

The current expansion status of every community can be checked online at any time and for every home

High investments for the whole of Switzerland

With investments totalling CHF 1.6 billion annually in IT and infrastructure, Swisscom makes a key contribution to the digitisation of Switzerland, ensuring that even rural regions and areas with challenging topography to gain network access. As Markus Reber, Head of Swisscom Network Expansion, explains: “Expansion in Saint-Barthélemy and its neighbouring communities is a perfect example of our promise to bring the latest fibre-optic technologies to all communities in Switzerland. The second half of the expansion will continue in the same vein and will be completed in 2021.”

Facts and figures

Since the start of national network expansion with fibre-optic technologies, Swisscom has laid 1,140,233 kilometres of fibre-optic cables. If you were to line them all up end to end, you could travel around the world 29 times or fly to the moon three times