[Theodores]

In the UK we were able to get something good enough using the copper that was in place 'since Marconi was a lad' simply by putting in better boxes at the local telephone exchange.

Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe, after the wall fell, the situation was 'well, let's start from scratch'. Hence in places like Latvia you have internet speeds both ways (uplink as well as downlink) that are ridiculously fast compared to what is offered in the UK.

When it comes to the fat pipes, a lot of it was put in place during a speculative bubble more than a decade ago. Remember companies like Nortel? I think the bubble burst before they got to places like Riga. So it does not surprise me at all what you are saying.

Incidentally 3G was also a weird speculative bubble in the UK, more than 20 billion or so went on the auction for the radio spectrum. Maybe things were a bit more realistic in Eastern Europe.

The situation in the USA is going to be quite scary. Lots of areas that were remote but sophisticated, e.g. Missoula in Montana, could fall off the map as a desirable place to live, just because of poor internet speeds. It does not seem the government is that alarmed about the country turning into internet have's and have not's.

[dzhiurgis]

My dad lived in a small town and his phone number (which we found in phone book from certain occupation before Russians), was 55.

So the phone lines were there for a while.