Doesn't it depend on your area though. Our experience was that you can either choose swisscom or cable (and your location determines whether it is cablecom or a 3rd party offering a subset of the cablecom services). When we were in an area serviced by cablecom it was excellent, with most channels offered in multiple languages. We moved and had to sign up through a 3rd party, channel options were more limited and English channel options much more limited, so we now just take Internet and use apple tv instead.
If the address is not connected to cablecom (either because cablecom do not serve the area, or because the building or apartment was never connected) then no service is possible until a connection is made.
Likewise, if the address is not connected to Swisscom then no service is possible until a connection is made. Hwoever, as Swisscom have an obligation to connect every building, then it is unlikely that the building is not connected.
HOWEVER: if the connection to the local exchange is too long (in terms of physical cable length), then Internet and TV service may not be possible.
And all the other operators that use the Swisscom copper phone lines are in the same boat (Sunrise, Green, GGA Mauer, etc etc etc)
So no-one can say for sure what provider is possible until the exact street address is known.
The OP would be best to use every providers website to check for service availability at his home address
well, we had cablecom in our serviced apartment when we arrived here - in the city centre (Zurich) and it was an utter disaster (phone line almost never worked although they had changed even the phone, the internet was slow and for the TV we had to switch off the main switch and turn it on to reset it so that the channels would come up. So when we moved into our permanent place we chose Swisscom. Turned out to be useless. Internet dead slow - although we were paying for up to 20000 we only received up to 2000 at times. You could not use the internet, tape something and watch the TV at the same time. The TV channel would crash. Turned out that we were outside a certain range (only by 1 or 2 kilometers) and hence the paid for download/upload bytes could not be achieved. Cablecom has their office down the road - so we switched to it (although we had the bad experience in the serviced apartment). Everything is working much better since!
The technician from Swisscom explained to me that if you are outside the area that's easily covered than you can pay as much as you want they won't be able to provide what you are paying for - and that applies for all providers. He worked for another company before and had the same problem. He no longer uses any of them for everything.
So whoever you choose find out first if they can actually provide the speed and cover that you intend to pay for!
Thats only true for providers using copper phone lines
For providers that use cable TV networks or fiber optic cables, then the above statement is not true. On a cable TV network or a fiber optic network, the distance limitations do not exist in practice.
It really depends on the area, installation in the building and also the people you are dealing with. I only had problems with Cablecom and mainly its customer service. Well, I had some problems too with Swisscom, but at least they tried and finally fixed it. Bottom line, you most likely have to find out yourself which service fits best your requirements and works in the area you live.
Cablecom used to be beyond dire - mainly due to a nut crunchingly piss poor approach to customer service that took the concept of crap Swiss customer service to a truly surreal different level.
However since the UPC takeover/merger they've been pretty good, to be fair.
I might want to add that we always seem to have a slow internet connection between 9am and 10am! UPC cablecom seems better at that time. Swisscom meant more or less a standstill! Still, it seems like at that time they are both overloaded!
[1] ewz.Zürinet is the open access fiber network in Zurich. My provider of choice is GGAMaur. I get 20MBit/s up and down, this translate to 2.5 Megabytes/s both ways! For internet only there are specialized providers, some offering up to 3 fixed IPs for a very reasonable price.
Im with GGA, and am relatively happy, but their operating hours of their service line are rediculous, and that you get charged to call their service line (after a couple of free minutes) also sucks. Its rare to solve an internet down issue within a few minutes.