said by maartena :

First off, although 90% of Canada lives near the U.S. border, they also have only about 30 million inhabitants. Southern Ontario (the 100 miles closest to the US and Toronto Area) is pretty much the same as Pennsylvania or Ohio if you are looking at population density.

Second, it doesn't explain why there are so many large metropolitan areas in the U.S. that still have lousy broadband. In the Greater Los Angeles Area, about 0.3% of the population can actually get FIOS, although about 50% of the population are connected to Verizon, (the other half is AT&T/former SBC). If you want to go fast, Time Warner is your only option. There are no DSL2 and hardly any FIOS rollouts in the Los Angeles area.

And to compare once again to a foreign country: There are several European countries who started offering DSL2 as early as 2004 with 12 to 20 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. Three years later, you cannot get 20 Mbps ANYWHERE in the United States using DSL2 technology. Not even in dense populated cities.

Why is it that a 50 million people city like Tokyo can be fibered up for more then 50% already, and the United States can't even fiber up Manhattan?

said by Tzale :

FIOS/FTTH is the future, Verizon is working hard on getting it rolled out. They just started a few years ago, give them time. It's not easy replacing all the copper with fiber, it will take 10-15 years for 99% of their customers to receive service, but they are quickly making progress in urban areas as we speak.