[dholowiski]

I think this actually has something to do with why we pay so much for this kind of service in Canada. Our population is so thinly spread (other than a few major cities, who do have these cheap alternatives) that I bet if they even tried to cover second tier cities, they'd lose money. European countries have the advantage of being really small.

[jarek]

There's plenty of small remote towns in Sweden

[dholowiski]

According to Wikipedia,Sweden has 20.6 people per square kilometer,compared to 3.4 in Canada. Also,Canada is slightly larger. Much easier to cover all (or most) of Sweden than Canada

[jarek]

Here's another stat to look at. Southern Ontario, roughly up to Algonquin Park, has around 12 million people on about 140,000 km^2. Sweden has around 9.5 million people on about 450,000 km^2. Going purely by area or density criteria, southern Ontario should have telecom service miles ahead of Sweden, even in towns that are tiny and remote by southern Ontario standards.

[jarek]

Sure, but you don't live in the middle of the Northwest Territories, and neither do the vast majority of Canadians complaining about telecom prices. The population density figure is a bit of a red herring.