I know you meant no ill by saying it, but I have seen the claim of homogenity in the Swedish population brought up in several discussions over the past months and being Swedish myself it does sting a bit. Sweden has a long tradition of accepting refugees, wherever they may come from. Along with Germany, we are currently receving far more than other EU countries and many more are expected over the next few years due to the current unrest in the world.

Sweden being all-white, all-Scandinavian is an outdated image. Many cultures thrive together here, bringing new food and traditions. Almost thirty percent of the current Swedish population is foreign-born or have foreign-born parents. Studies show that the average Swede has become increasingly positive to immigration.

I am certain that if something is holding back the progress of Internet connections, it's not minorities. If this post can change the image of Sweden as "all-white" in just one person on HN, typing it will have felt very worth the time.

Hmmm. "All-white like Sweden", is a poor way of describing Sweden.

"As of 2011, Statistics Sweden reported that around 19.6% or 1.858.000 inhabitants of Sweden had foreign background, defined as born abroad or born in Sweden by two parents born abroad." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden#Immigr...

That said, I think that the fact that the Swedish regulatory and legislative process isn't captured by commercial interests in the same way it is in the US, is the key thing that has allowed Sweden to move ahead with good broadband.

> And, the debate devolved into how there are too many minorities in the US and because of that, no one in any position of power wanted to allow everyone universal access because minorities (which I assumed to be Blacks, Mexicans, Asians, etc.) would need too many handouts to get the same speed, which no one would want to pay for.

If anything it's probably the other way around. It will be a long time before it's cost effective to run fiber to every farm and and shack in the woods in America. But if you let the telcos decide who to serve then you end up with $50/month for gigabit fiber in rich and middle class neighborhoods and $20/month for some tin can on a string in poor neighborhoods, where "poor neighborhoods" include most of the predominantly racial minority neighborhoods, which makes it a political quagmire.

So the telcos end up saddled with build out requirements which means no gigabit fiber for anybody. Which is really quite unfortunate because the justification doesn't require the remedy. Most of the urban poor neighborhoods might not be profitable but they're at least close to break even. The problem is the universal service requirements passed to make sure they get served also require providing service to sparsely populated areas that are a pure money pit.