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Land area of France: 640,679 sq km
Land area of U.S.A.: 9,826,675 sq km ---- even removing Alaska (1,717,854 sq km) one still has a much larger area to cover

Population density of France: 119.37
Population density of U.S.A.: 34.06

Land area of Finland: 338,424 sq km

Population density of Finland: 18

We have cellphone plans with 200 minutes of talk, 200 SMS messages, and unlimited data at "up to" 50Mbps for 20euro/month. BTW, in rural Finland 400km north of Helsinki, I have unlimited (no capacity limits, no blocked ports, etc.) 100Mbps symmetric fiber to the house at home, and it costs 42euro/month.

Blithering about population density is a poor self-justification for getting ripped off.

many of the countries with 100 Mb and gig to the home almost universally do not have for-profit privatized telcos.

Perhaps, but not in my case.

I have 100/100 Mbps symmetric fiber to the house with up to 5 IPv4 addresses and I live in rural Finland (about 400km north of Helsinki). There are no monthly caps, no blocked ports, and we run our own web server and mail server. We've only occasionally exceeded 1TByte per month between upload and download, but we exceed 500GByte often enough. Our service is from DNA, and costs Eur45 per month (apparently this includes some sort of IP phone, but we've never used that service).

Just out of curiosity, which ISP are you with? How do you get almost 200Mbps down for only 29e? DNA offers 200M for 55e according to this http://www2.dna.fi/fi/yksityisille/laajakaista/

DNA Joint subscriber cable(free up to 2mb/s), bandwidth guarantee for paid upgrades.

Just out of curiosity, which ISP are you with? How do you get almost 200Mbps down for only 29e?

DNA offers 200M for 55e according to this http://www2.dna.fi/fi/yksityisille/laajakaista/

The data is there all right. Here are a couple of maps from Finland - I don't actually know how they gather this data, but it's really thorough: http://www.elisa.fi/kuuluvuus/index.php / http://www.dna.fi/yksityisille/puhe/Kuuluvuus/kuuluvuuskartta/Sivut/Default.aspx

I think that the maps need to be this precise because a lot of people have second homes or cottages somewhere outside the cities, and naturally one would like to use the same operator everywhere.

Half the people I know (mainly younger) don't have land lines.

Not just young people. We stopped having a land line about 8 years ago - cell phone service became so cheap. Everyone in the family has their own cellphone (cost each: euro0.67 per month, euro0.07 per minute/SMS http://www.dna.fi/en/privatecustomers/mobilecommunication/Subscriptions/Sivut/dnaOnni.aspx). My teenage daughter's phone service was recently upgraded to have 384kbps data (cost: euro2.95 per month, no capacity limit, http://www.dna.fi/webshop/Sivut/Default.aspx). The combined monthly bill for the 4 phones rarely exceeds euro12, unless one of us is travelling abroad.

When our company moved office a few years ago, we also abandoned fixed telephone lines for several hundred employees. Everyone already had a company cellphone, so it was a clearly avoidable cost in furnishing the new offices. Now just reception and a few FAX machines have land lines.

Half the people I know (mainly younger) don't have land lines.

Not just young people. We stopped having a land line about 8 years ago - cell phone service became so cheap. Everyone in the family has their own cellphone (cost each: euro0.67 per month, euro0.07 per minute/SMS http://www.dna.fi/en/privatecustomers/mobilecommunication/Subscriptions/Sivut/dnaOnni.aspx). My teenage daughter's phone service was recently upgraded to have 384kbps data (cost: euro2.95 per month, no capacity limit, http://www.dna.fi/webshop/Sivut/Default.aspx). The combined monthly bill for the 4 phones rarely exceeds euro12, unless one of us is travelling abroad.

When our company moved office a few years ago, we also abandoned fixed telephone lines for several hundred employees. Everyone already had a company cellphone, so it was a clearly avoidable cost in furnishing the new offices. Now just reception and a few FAX machines have land lines.

I know of one, in Helsinki. Volunteer run non-profit association. Provides connectivity to individual houses and apartments around the area. I've been thinking of such an effort in my parts. It does require a bunch of tech-oriented people to keep it running.

I'm looking for a low-cost DAC/ADC chip for SP/DIF, something that takes audio and produces SP/DIF, and vice versa. If it can use fixed modes and doesn't require a uC that would be great.

The Phillips UDA1355H looks like what I want, but Phillips doesn't even list availability information, and DigiKey and Mouser say either nothing or non-stock, which leads me to think that the chip doesn't exist.

Does anybody have anything like this?

I already know about PCM2902 USB DAC project, and while that's useful (similar to the Griffin iMic) it's the opposite of what I want.

I agree, Sound Blaster products are not as good as they make out to be. Okay for gaming systems but rubbish for anything relating to hifi audio.

This is probably way ott but in the quest for decent sound out of a PC I have made an external USB 'sound card' which uses a Burr-Brown DAC. The advantage being that digital audio is outputted directly from the PC without any interference.

I've heard stories of Sound Blaster cards' digital output containing hiss when converted back to analogue - WTF!!!

Anyway have a look here for instructions on how to make the external USB Dac.