I talked about this with a Swedish coworker a couple months ago. I'm trying to leave the details vague where I don't remember them (long conversation, this was

I talked about this with a Swedish coworker a couple months ago. I'm trying to leave the details vague where I don't remember them (long conversation, this was a small part of it), so please correct me if I'm wrong. He said that the population distribution in Sweden is vastly more favorable for setting up networking infrastructure than in the US (more urbanized), and that, several years ago, when the government was digging up cables for some other utility infrastructure (power lines?), they decided it was a good idea to also lay inexpensive optical fiber while the holes were already dug. Such an initiative would almost certainly be politically infeasible in the US, except at a local level. Tax dollars, you know. It's probably somewhat comparable to public transit systems. Subways systems take a lot of work upfront, so many cities only have buses, if anything. City wi-fi initiatives have had rather mixed results, too, and those don't even involve digging to lay cables.