I thought you said you had Internet...

The next time you hear someone claiming that the reason US Internet is slower than international peers is because of our vast landmass with low population density, encourage them to listen to "America the Slow" on American Public Media's Marketplace Tech Report. The title of this post comes from an anecdote in the middle of the story in which a person in NYC (the most dense area of our country) is hosting friends from France and they turn to him and say "I thought you said you had Internet?" in response for what passes as broadband there. I'm sure they laughed for hours if they found out what the host was paying for it. Our sad state of broadband is not an inevitability of geography but a failure of policy that puts private companies first and community needs second. And for the record, the population distribution in France is not so different from the US.
Geoterm