alt Hacker NewsInternet access sort of has a reason: the US is geographically huge and more sprawled out. But that's not enough to explain all of the difference.
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That really explains only small parts. Even the horrible suburbs have little real reason to be that expensive. In the end it is really about lacking actual free market and enabling corporate capture as voted by the voters.
That’s not the reason. The required build out has actually already been been paid for: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5.... But the US is so politically broken that corporations could just pocket the money without actually providing the infrastructure.
That does even begin to touch on crazy laws banning people from setting up their own ISP to compete: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/07/16-u-s-states-still-ban-....
That might explain internet pricing in North Dakota, but it doesn't explain it in NYC or DC or LA.
> the US is geographically huge and more sprawled out.
There is ample historical evidence that this is a poor excuse.
Long ago, leaders in the US understood the value of universality. You'll likely recognize this as the Network Effect, Metcalfe's Law, etc. Back in the day, they called this "universal service." That thinking was central to the policies established for both electrification and phone service in the US: it wasn't then, and isn't now, truly universal, but what could be feasibly accommodated was, even when costs were/are quite high.
It wasn't lost on the people of those times that such policies inherently meant the cost of including sparsely populated, distant areas would be subsidized by concentrated areas. Before those systems appeared, the founders welded the same thinking into the US constitution in the form of the US postal service, with exactly the same knowledge and concerns.
We've lost that. The change happened prior to the advent of the internet. You're free to attribute this to whatever you wish; I won't offer my view on that, except to say there are no innocents: every argument that fingers ebil capitalists can be countered by examples of urban leaders damning government policies that subsidize non-urbanites. What I know with certainty is, if packet switched networking was somehow a thing in the 19th century, availability would be a given for almost any structure more significant than a hunting cabin in the US today, complete with common carrier, service baselines and rates established with clarity.