I think it is simply the matter of ROI - Return on Investment - issue. I'm still living in the area without city water, and when there is power outage, I don't have water at all since my water pump still needs electricity. But some rural area has FTTH because of government funding RUS (http://www.usda.gov/rus/) project. And most of urban area, people are still happy with cable modem service. People in Japan and South Korea are more of tendency to become early-adapters. So when they have new products, they wants to try it by majority. But in U.S., we are still cost oriented, and if we don't need it, we don't buy it. ^^ That's my 2 cents. Hyun Tom Vest wrote:
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