Government intervention - see Federal-Aid Highway Act, Rural Electrification Act, etc. Ray
-----Original Message----- From: Tom Vest [mailto:tvest@eyeconomics.com] Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 08:12 To: Jorge Amodio Cc: nanog@nanog.org; natalidel@mailinator.com Subject: [SPAM] Re: So why don't US citizens get this?
Sort of makes one wonder how the US came to have ubiquitous roads, or power, or water distribution...
TV
On Jul 28, 2008, at 1:06 PM, Jorge Amodio wrote:
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