> Which is it? Or is it a combination of all factors creating some "perfect storm" of awful service and slow speed?
Enough regulation (and entrenched interests/semi-monopolies) to make new entry in the field prohibitive, but not enough to force incumbents into e.g. line-sharing and local loop unbundling, compounded by incumbents holding great sway over politicians and (directly or indirectly) over those supposed to oversee them.
The geographical claims are cute, but they're either excuses or convenient misdirections:
* I hear americans go "states states states" all the time. Several states have european densities yet don't seem to have the service. Some big cities are in the ballpark's of HK's densities yet are nowhere near its quality/price ratio (New York City actually has a higher population density than HK)
* Alternatively, if the claim is federal equality across the land, the claim is invalidated by the terrible service in rural areas where speeds (at the same insane price as in more urban zones) are in ranges which have not been seen in a decade in western europe, when it doesn't get to dialup (in 2008, 10% of american adults were using dialup, and it seems this number grew with the recession to escape the high costs of DSL and cable; by comparison, in France in Q4 2008 dialup was about 5% and falling)
> Enough regulation (and entrenched interests/semi-monopolies) to make new entry in the field prohibitive, but not enough to force incumbents into e.g. line-sharing and local loop unbundling, compounded by incumbents holding great sway over politicians and (directly or indirectly) over those supposed to oversee them.
Enough regulation (and entrenched interests/semi-monopolies) to make new entry in the field prohibitive, but not enough to force incumbents into e.g. line-sharing and local loop unbundling, compounded by incumbents holding great sway over politicians and (directly or indirectly) over those supposed to oversee them.
The geographical claims are cute, but they're either excuses or convenient misdirections:
* I hear americans go "states states states" all the time. Several states have european densities yet don't seem to have the service. Some big cities are in the ballpark's of HK's densities yet are nowhere near its quality/price ratio (New York City actually has a higher population density than HK)
* Alternatively, if the claim is federal equality across the land, the claim is invalidated by the terrible service in rural areas where speeds (at the same insane price as in more urban zones) are in ranges which have not been seen in a decade in western europe, when it doesn't get to dialup (in 2008, 10% of american adults were using dialup, and it seems this number grew with the recession to escape the high costs of DSL and cable; by comparison, in France in Q4 2008 dialup was about 5% and falling)