# Internet providers need to be subject to competiton

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-providers-need-to-be-subject-to-competiton/718397>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [April 23, 2015, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-providers-need-to-be-subject-to-competiton/718397 "2015-04-23T22:40:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 23

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**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2015, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-providers-need-to-be-subject-to-competiton/718397/23 "2015-04-25T06:11:57Z")

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> [@Wesley\_Clark](#):
>
> [The Myth of Population Density and the High Cost of Broadband](http://www.circleid.com/posts/20130201_myth_of_population_density_and_the_high_cost_of_broadband/)
> 
> [The myth of low population density - The New York Times](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/the-myth-of-low-population-density/)
> 
> The population density argument is a red herring, many people in the US live in large metro areas. It costs something like $500 per home to set up the infrastructure to allow fiber optics, plus another $500 or so to wire up each house.
> 
> I believe those figures are from Kansas city, in a place like NYC where there are a lot of apartment buildings and more density the costs could (but may not) be lower.
> 
> Google built fiber optics to ‘shame’ the major providers into providing better service. Apparently shame is not a good motivator.

Major cities in the US have far LOWER population densities than many major cities in other countries.  
The following list gives people per square kilometer, for some reason:

Seoul/Incheon   
16,700

Taipei   
15,200

Madrid   
5,200

London   
5,100

Tel Aviv  
5,050

By contrast, Los Angeles–the most densely-populated American city–ranks 90th in the world at 2,750. New York is 2,050. Dallas/Ft. Worth & Houston, with about 8 million residents between them, are 1,150.

> **[City Mayors: Largest cities in the world by population density (1 to 125)](http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html)**
>
> City Mayors: Largest cities in the world ranked by population density (1 to 125)

Seoul is **6 times** more densely-populated than LA.

In other words, your cavalier dismissal of population density is wildly incorrect.

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