Furthermore, afaik many small towns even in eastern europe(while making great strides, no particularly huge cities) boast 100 mbit connections.
Assuming both of those statements are true, It doesn't seem to me like the economies of scale argument is valid here.
EDIT: 100 mbit/$20, 500 mbit/$30, checked my ISP.
One of the first deployments of gigabit fiber in the U.S. was in Chatanooga TN, with a population density of 471.9/km2. New York City has a population density of 10,640/km2. Romania's third largest city, Timișoara, with population density of only 2,446.58/km2 is considered the city with the fastest internet in the world.
http://www.romania-insider.com/romanian-city-comes-out-first...
Everybody talks about the last mile being the most expensive part of infrastructure, but if the last meter is 90% of the cost of the last mile (I don't know what the exact proportion is, but it is definitely close), then 100 houses in 10 sq km census block is going to be in a cost category that is orders of magnitude higher than 100 apartments in a tower with a 9.9 sq km park around it.
It depends on where you are. Two different apartment buildings in DC or NYC could differn, one getting FIOS and the other on a congested cable network or low-speed phone company DSL circuit.
But don't get the idea that the internet is generally terrible in the USA. I'd imagine my situation is similar to most others - I live in a smaller town (population < 50,000) and about 90 miles from the nearest 'big' city (Detroit), but for $39.99 I get 30mb cable internet which I'm more than happy with. They offer 60mb and 100mb packages but I don't see the sense in spending any more.
The old NYC infrastructure and all of the physical work (and permits, contracts, everything else) means a huge overhaul would most likely not be worth doing in dense and already wired places like these.
Also rayiner pointed out in another thread that according to Akamai the US already is pretty high up in the list of overall bandwidth. Also I think the HN / Reddit / tech echo chamber overplays the demand for gigabit internet. Most of America has no need for this, nor the willingness to pay for a connection this fast. 10-25 Mb is fine for most people. Browse Facebook, surf the web, stream a couple of movies, play games.
As for the remainder--well of course they're not making use of a service that they have no way to buy in the first place...and your insinuations remind me of the people in the early 19th century who howled that the first locomotives' 10 mph crusing speed was far faster than any sane person would ever want to travel.
This is a common misconception. When it comes to actually using technology, the Japanese are at least a decade behind the West, thanks to their aging, collectivist, and risk-averse society. Fax machines continue to be widely used[0].
The primary difference is that in Japan, the government nationalized the last mile, resulting in a ton of competition. You can pick between a dozen ISPs in Tokyo.
0: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/world/asia/in-japan-the-fa...
Of course, I'm with Cablevision - when most of the city is limited to TWC.
