Comment 1) Your map isn't Europe. 2) Size doesn't matter. (Score 2) 533
Not all of us think that. Some of us think "Puny European Countries". Have you seen an overlay of Europe verses the USA?
Have you seen a map of Europe? All of it, I mean. I have. Your map sure doesn't look like it. Apparently Poland is no longer European? Or Hungary? Or Finland? Etc.
Here's a slightly better example. Just eyeballing, it looks like all of Europe together (including places like Greece and Romania and Finland, etc.) is probably bigger than the lower 48 states of the US.
And please, stop with that ridiculous "population density" canard. Finland has better broadband than the US. Iceland has better broadband than the US. Former Soviet Bloc countries Bulgaria and Romania have better broadband than the US. Heck, even Utah has better broadband than most of the rest of the US, and Utah isn't exactly known as a cheek-by-jowl, high-population center. I live in Seattle, within the city limits in a reasonably dense part of town, and I can only wish I had a 50mbps symmetric up-down connection for $70 a month. Instead, the best deal I could find was an entry-level business plan bundled with phone service at 4mbps down / 1.5mbps up, for roughly $125 a month. Laughably bad, painfully expensive, infuriatingly limited.
The key common thread in the success cases is that the major ISPs don't get to dictate broadband policy. Population density and size of the country pretty much has jack shit to do with the issue (unless you want to go into meta-arguments about the size and density of a polity and how that impacts public policy).
Cheers,