So, of the 11 countries that the OECD thinks have greater broadband penetration than the USA, 6 are more densely-populated than the USA and 5 are not.
I wonder how they figure population density... Is it just a matter of land area divided by the number of residents, or something more complex.
It's land area divided by number of residents, and as people have noted, the US is unusual both in being large and spread out. Canada, for example, has a gargantuan area, but just about everyone lives in the 100 mile wide strip along the southern border and everyone else lives in a few cities like Calgary.
I've considered running my own conduit/fiber loop on the street with my other neighbors and providing that as a carrot to lower the cost for their network builds.
If you're going to do that, how about building your own system and then sign up with Comcast as a wholesale customer? If they said no, it'd be an interesting argument in front of the state PUC for them to say that they're not going to wire up individual houses, and they won't serve your system either. R's, John