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Comment by monocasa | Hacker News Reader

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monocasa·

Sweden has lower population density than the US, but much better internet.

I think population density is a weak signal for competition in the US market, and that's what you're seeing.

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95% of Swedes live in the tip. I doubt upper Sweden has good coverage being that it's a barren tundra.

You'd be wrong. Sweden has a program to essentially guarantee everyone access to broadband coverage, even (and especially) those who live in rural areas.

This map is from Finland in 2016, and shows only a few regions have >90% 100mbps availability.

https://m.imgur.com/wU5WXBV

To be fair, in the US (which is what we're comparing all of this to), broadband is defined as 25Mbps up/3Mbps down.

Ah - by that definition much of central London doesn't have broadband as I get 8 down 0.5 up and can't get much better. Still I find the 8 it basically fine. Maybe the vid is 720p rather than 1080p - whatever.

I'm seeing Sweden as having a significantly higher population density. I have no particular reason to trust this source [1], but it's the only one I found. Why do you say Sweden is less densely populated?

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Sweden/Unit...

> Sweden - 45.43 sq km per 1,000 people

> United States - 30.16 sq km per 1,000 people

Looks like the US is half again more dense than Sweden according to that site.

Ah, my mistake. I think I was looking at the rural pop density stats.

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