According to the latest international study on broadband use, the United States has fallen from 16th to 24th in number of households with broadband (53%). South Korea is the world leader, with more than 90% of homes connected. Japan, Germany, France, and the U.K are all well ahead of the U.S., so we cannot just dismiss South Korea's lead as simply a factor of household density.
Unfortunately, the U.S. also has the most expensive broadband at the lowest speeds. While it is true that the size of the U.S. makes broadband deployment a bigger challenge than in many other countries, the real problem is outdated business models for telecom services. The incumbent providers have stubbornly resisted reforming or changing their business models for telecom, which has led to very slow deployment, and a rather circular red herring argument about broadband.
The argument goes something like this: "There is no money in broadband. So we cannot afford to invest in high performance fiber and wireless systems." The circular part is "we would invest if there was money in broadband, but there is not any so we can't." The red herring part is blaming "broadband" when in fact that has nothing to do with the problem. A correct statement of the problem would be, "Our current business model stinks, so we have no money to invest in better networks."
That would be honest, and would lead naturally to a sensible discussion about changing business models. But there are some local governments that are not waiting. Expect to see new open services networks emerging from local government and regional projects in the next year or two that will have viable business models. These new business models will help create enormous new community and economic development by offering businesses high performance networks with a wide variety of service offerings from many providers, not just one or two.
These open service network projects have the right business model and will transform the local economies that make telecom essential public infrastructure.