[tompccs]

Some of the problems are unique to America - for instance, states each have their own regulations, as well as federal ones, which makes nationwide roll-out far costlier. You also have way more geographic concentration of homes in Europe, which makes the ROI for roll-out over a particular area way better.

UK's utilities are generally quite good (despite grumbling), which I think is because regulators focus on creating frictionless marketplaces - ie, easy to switch, providers can't obfuscate costs, proliferation of comission-based switching services.

[rsynnott]

I don't think the "US is big" argument really works when it comes to forcing telcos to get rid of their 20th century DSLAMs. Like, obviously ideally they'd be upgrading to something semi-modern, but even swapping out the last of the ADSL1 for ADSL2+, like it was 2006, would be an improvement.