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Comment by dmuneka | Hacker News Reader

As a Brit, you should appreciate the level of infrastructure you get to enjoy. You are more than welcome to come live in the US with some of the most 'innovative' privately funded infrastructure.

I'd be happy to swap my overpriced RCN internet with TalkTalk or not have to get a new wheel on my bike every year thanks to the pot-holed roads of New York.

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US telecom industry is not exactly the best example of non-regulated market. It's not like you can just come and put a new cable network in New York or San Francisco without asking anybody. In fact, Google - if ever there was a company with money and clout - couldn't pull it off in the capital of Silicon Valley, San Jose.

And if you do try to innovate, you get lots of vested interests attacking you on every corner and tons of regulations you have to comply with and some new ones that would be lobbied into law and introduced specially to suppress you. Look how much pushback companies like Airbnb or Uber are getting.

US is big and sparsely populated. Also, telecoms there are heavily regulated. Contrary to common claims, there isn't a huge difference between the European and American models (both are free markets with heavy state involvement in pretty much all industries).

Even if we go as far as to say that the models are similar, the implementation differs hugely. Especially with regards to telecoms.

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