[rayiner]

Comparing population distributions makes the distinctions even more stark. 80% of the U.S. population lives in an "urban area" but that definition includes towns of 2,500 people. My friend in rural Georgia that has to drive several hours to get to an international airport technically lives in an "urban area" according to the Census Bureau.

The population of the 20 largest cities (New York down to Memphis) is 33 million, or about 10% of the U.S. population. 9% of Sweden's population lives in Stockholm, and the next 10% lives in the three largest cities after that.

Half the population might live in the 20 largest metro areas, but American metro areas are structured very differently than European cities. Stockholm's 900,000 people anchors a metro area of about 2.2 million people. That 40-50% ratio is typical of European cities, but atypical here in the U.S. Out of the largest 20 metro areas in the U.S., only San Diego has more than 40% of the overall metro population in the core city.

The population distribution in the U.S. is very different than in Europe, even if you restrict your attention to large metro areas. In the U.S., much more of the population lives in sprawling suburbs.

[kuschku]

I live in Germany, 1.5h from the nearest International Airport – and I can get 200mbps for 80$ everywhere here, in some areas even more. And these speeds are provided by for-profit companies, not by municipalities.

Your argument is invalid.

[foobarqux]

The easy way to account for problems with the non-uniform definition of urban area is to consider population density. As I said in another comment there are several cities in the US that have a larger density (for whatever defined area) and larger population.

[rayiner]

There's two separate issues:

1) What's internet services like in the U.S. at large levels of granularity?

2) What's internet service like in the U.S. in specific cities?

Re: 1, I think the available data shows that, at a large granularity, we can say that, e.g. the average speeds in big European countries like the U.K. and Germany, factoring in their rural and urban areas together, are comparable to U.S. cities that have similar density, like New York or Connecticut. I think that shows that the overall structure of our telecom market is not inferior to that in the U.K. or Germany or France.

Re: 2, the question is why certain European cities have much faster internet than comparably dense U.S. cities. And I think the answer to that is the same as the answer to: why do certain European cities have much better public transit than comparably dense U.S. cities?

The status of Stockholm within the political structure of Sweden, or the status of Warsaw within the political structure of Poland is very different than the status of New York or Chicago within the political structure of the U.S. Large U.S. cities don't have the political pull to get national-level infrastructure investment.

I've never been to Sweden, but I'm familiar with Bangladesh, where Dhaka (10% of the national population), is the center of political life. I imagine Sweden similarly views the infrastructure of Stockholm as a point of national competitiveness. That's not at all true of American cities. The bulk of the polity of the U.S. views our large cities with skepticism and derision. Instead of viewing investment into urban infrastructure as a point of competitiveness, the heavily-suburban American polity views it as a boondoggle to get poor urban votes.

[foobarqux]

> Re: 2, the question is why certain European cities have much faster internet than comparably dense U.S. cities. And I think the answer to that is the same as the answer to: why do certain European cities have much better public transit than comparably dense U.S. cities?

Public transit is typically state sector, telecom is often private sector. Are you saying that the reason for superior broadband internationally is primarily because of government subsidies or nationalized telecom infrastructure?

[rayiner]

The cities that have much faster broadband than what's available in the U.S. achieved it with targeted public investment and subsidy of fiber deployment. That's also how they achieved much better public transit than what's available in the U.S. The political will doesn't exist for either of those things in the U.S.

[foobarqux]

I'm pretty sure $/mbps for speeds over 25mbps (probably for all speeds) were much cheaper even before fiber.

[rayiner]

I don't know the history of Swedish broadband before the fiber investment. I do know that countries like Sweden and Japan that have very high fiber deployment did so through national governmental involvement: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/the-broadband-gap-w....

To the extent the federal government has demonstrated an interest in broadband here in the U.S., it has mostly been on issues like the rural-urban broadband gap (i.e. the "digital divide.") Which makes total sense when you consider the demographics: in the U.S., the locus of political power is outside the cities. It's the same reason Obama gets demonized by half the country for talking about rail and public transit.

With the federal government out of the picture, it's left to the state and local governments, which: 1) don't have much money; 2) are politically dysfunctional. Imagine proposing municipal fiber in San Francisco. Comcast wouldn't have to send any lobbyists over to shoot it down. You'd have NIMBY's complaining about the digging and the size of the network cabinets, and they'd paint the whole thing as a boondoggle sop to the "techie types that are ruining the city."