If you want a comparison, look no further than the Hong Kong airport. It's not just restricted to broadband. This project was completed in 6 years, cost $20 b

If you want a comparison, look no further than the Hong Kong airport. It's not just restricted to broadband. This project was completed in 6 years, cost $20 billion to build and was the largest in the world at the time, and included flattening two islands and reclaiming 10 square kms of sea bed. It also involved building a new high speed railway link to the city. Can anyone imagine something like this being built in 21st century USA? At no time was the project held up by property disputes, political in-fighting, environmental disputes, corruption problems, lobbying efforts or anything else. They just decided to build an airport, found a spot for it, raised the money, awarded the contracts and then set about the serious job of running an airport efficiently, pausing only to collects endless awards. In the UK, the public enquiries for Heathrow Terminal 5 took longer, as did the build (8 years for enquiries, 8 years to build), and that was just adding a new terminal to an existing airport, and the new terminal was a fraction of the size of the Hong Kong airport. Add to this the fact that the Hong Kong airport cost more than 10% of the country's GDP yet the country still has no net debt. When the financial crisis hit, the airport announced a $500million relief package for airlines to encourage them to continue operations. The airport now generates around $1 billion per year for the government, after paying down it's debts, which are rapidly dwindling. Basically the people in south-east asia want to build the biggest and best infrastructure and have the best living standards in the world, and they're not sitting around pointing fingers and throwing buns and yelling at each other on TV while they go about it. Frankly I'm surprised they don't sit around laughing at the rest of us. There is no reason why things like the HK airport and broadband infrastructure can't be built, but they require a government to stop sticking it's fingers into lots of pies and get on with the basic provision of infrastructure.