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by foobarqux 4305 days ago
> 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?
1 comments
rayiner 4305 days ago
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.
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foobarqux 4305 days ago
I'm pretty sure $/mbps for speeds over 25mbps (probably for all speeds) were much cheaper even before fiber.
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rayiner 4305 days ago
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."

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