> a much more economical way of communicating I've read about this, I think it's called "leapfrogging your infrastructure" or something like that. Since the U

> a much more economical way of communicating I've read about this, I think it's called "leapfrogging your infrastructure" or something like that. Since the US has had reliable and ubiquitous land lines for a long time, we were a lot slower at uptaking mobile phones. Whereas many African and Asian nations are only deploying land lines in a limited way, and mobile has been red-hot since well before the first iPhone. Basically, if you don't develop technology in a certain area for a while, then it's actually easier to modernize because you don't have a large long-term investment in older technology. See post-WW2 Japanese manufacturing for another example.