What you seem to be saying, in general, is that a country's population is inversely proportional to its ability to maintain its infrastructure, that, despite the advantages of a correspondingly large economy, large nations are essentially nonviable.

That's not an unreasonable supposition, and I've wondered myself if the US hasn't grown too large to govern and operate effectively. But still, to paraphrase Rummy [god help me], you have to live with the country you have and make it work.

When it comes to telecom infrastructure, excuses don't cut it. An economy requires an excellent telecom infrastructure just to survive, let alone thrive, in the modern world. The fact that we have a t.c. infra that's well behind the curve and at the same time we're falling behind economically is not a coincidence. As I noted earlier, India's a good example of an economy that's able to take away American jobs because it has decent international bandwidth, and good connectivity in selected dens of outsourcing.

We need to improve our own network infrastructure just to survive; Internet bandwidth has become a strategic resource with national security implications. If fixing the problem means using government to accomplish the job, then so be it. That's what governments are for.

And yes, it does mean something when nations have government-owned utilities installing technologies invented by the free market.

Sure does. It means that those nations are keeping their eyes on the ball and not letting themselves be blinded by ideology. We seem to be the only nation on Earth willing to slit our own throats on a matter of political/economic dogma.