[DuncanIdaho]

There has not been significant investment into mobile, there was regulation that forced carriers to cover even the areas that would otherwise prove unprofitable, if they wanted the frequencies that is.

And mobile network is also heavily dependant on landlines, which were built by government owned telcos.

[com]

Just to add nuance: mobile was heavily dependant on landlines. In my experience, not any more.

Recently began (2009) a national gigabit to the mast rollout project in a medium-sized European country which is almost complete now.

This didn't use a legacy copper investment (or even legacy fiber, not that there was a lot of that).

[DuncanIdaho]

I didn't know that. Thank you for clarifying - this project would be probably taking place in Finland?

However 20 years ago the ubiquity of state sponsored infrastructure is what enabled fast and competitive coverage of Europe with mobile telecommunications.

It's just an example of how what our US colleagues would call "socialsim" can provide better results than "free market".

There is a point I just realized. Whenever there is a state sponsored monopoly in Europe - it is forced to provide a service to all, even if it means loss in some cases. However whenever there is a state sponsored monopoly in US it just removes competition, while internally the organization still sticks to the "profit first" doctrine.