Lets put aside for a moment the conspiracy theories of government intervention and the telcos evil doing, IMHO there is a simple reason why I don't have fiber going to my house: geography & economics. Japan: - area = 377,873 Km^2 - density = 337/Km^2 - pop = 127.5 mill USA:: - area = 9,826,630 Km^2 - density = 31/Km^2 - pop = 304.7 mill I belive there are just few major cities in the US that have a comparable or higher concentration of people like other large cities around the world. I'd bet that if you deploy fiber in a given radious in a suburban area in Japan you may reach hundreds or thousands of potential customers, do the same a little bit north from where I live and you will reach a dozen guys, 50 cows and a couple of hundred chickens. The US is so spread out that anything to do with transportation, being people, packages, or ip packets becomes quite costly. Still I beleve is interesting to analyze why the US is lagging behind on high speed services. My .02