Define "better".
My point is partially that "better" is so complex. If your just considering speeds and price per MB, most of the South Korean market is better in the area of high speed internet than most of the US. But those aren't the only factors even for people paying for internet service, and more broadly even having internet connections that are better by every standard someone either one of us could think of, both objective and subjective standards, wouldn't imply that South Korea is really getting a better deal, you have to consider not just the cost to the end consumer, but the overall cost (including forms of costs that can't easily be quantified in dollar or won terms). And if they really do get a better deal that doesn't necessarily mean we should copy them. Their better deal might be do to their population density and distribution, or other factors that we might not be able to, or might not want to, copy here.
To be fair to you, you where not saying "we should copy South Korea", but people supporting more government intervention in the broad band area often point other countries with higher average top connection speeds as examples for us to emulate. I'm not sure if you agree with them or not, but either way I'm responding to that argument.
Oh yes, and those Swedish high-density cities and skyscrapers on the Artic circle -- let's not forget them ;)
A country of less than 10 million people compared to near 50 mil for South Korea and over 125 mil for Japan. And which you are possibly presenting as an example for close to 310 mil in the US.
The three countries combined are far denser and more urbanized than the US.
In fact Sweden itself is more urbanized than the US, if only by a little bit.
Urban population (%) 2007 84.4
data.un.org
Urban population (%) 2007 81.4
data.un.org
And this is just a guess for Sweden (but I know its true for the much more populous Korea and Japan), but Sweden might have denser urban areas. Americans tend to have larger living spaces, and more land, than non-Americans.
So even Sweden looks to be a weak case of what I was talking about (as opposed to the strong cases in Japan and South Korea), and its small enough that you should probably compare it more to a state or large city (and the best from the US, since Sweden is not a random small country but deliberately picked because it has some of the best high speed internet connections). |
