[hannibal5]

>and to the fact that it costs more to build a network than it does in small, densely populated European countries.

No. Finland has population density 16/km^2, United States has 34.2/km^2

It's not ever correct for urban areas. Population density in Helsinki (urban area) is 1800/km^2 spread out American city like LA has urban area density 3200/km^2.

The number of cell towers is related to number of people using the services. If you have densely populated area you add them more close to each other because ether has bandwidth limits. The cost increases only if the population density is so low that towers are not utilized even when they are as sparsely placed as possible.

I could not find prepaid provider in Finland with strict limits for data transfer. For example in Saunalahti mobile prepaid 0.861 EUR/MB (maximum cost is 1.9 EUR/day, after that data transfer is free). In other words, you get unlimited data transfer for ~$57 per month.

[josefresco]

Population density alone should not be be used to determine the cost/complexity of setting up a network. Even with the same density of population, the overall geographic size (and land features) of the network is still important.

[hannibal5]

Overall geographic size adds logarithmic cost to the physical network but big networks also gives scale benefits that might be bigger.