While existing infrastructe surely matters, it does not matter significantly in terms of such things as the nearly ubiquitous cell phone coverage in China. In this country, I will lose a signal on the fringes of major metropolitan areas (I live in New York City). But when I was in China, I too was impressed by the efficiency and ubiquity of the cell phone network. For the US to have a comparable network would not involve rebuilding the current cell phone infrastructure, rather it would require an upgrade to the current infrastructure. The difference between the US and much the rest of the developed world and a few developing countries like China is that these other countries invest much more heavily in the public infrastructure than the US. By any account, especially for a country as wealthy as the US, the public infrastructure in this country is poor and greatly underfunded.
Slashdot Mirror
While existing infrastructe surely matters, it does not matter significantly in terms of such things as the nearly ubiquitous cell phone coverage in China. In this country, I will lose a signal on the fringes of major metropolitan areas (I live in New York City). But when I was in China, I too was impressed by the efficiency and ubiquity of the cell phone network. For the US to have a comparable network would not involve rebuilding the current cell phone infrastructure, rather it would require an upgrade to the current infrastructure. The difference between the US and much the rest of the developed world and a few developing countries like China is that these other countries invest much more heavily in the public infrastructure than the US. By any account, especially for a country as wealthy as the US, the public infrastructure in this country is poor and greatly underfunded.