ElTerprise: It's really embarrassing for highly industrialised nations that they're not able to keep their infrastructure up-to-date.
Well... One could say that essential infrastructure should be in the state's hand, and frankly, I agree with that. The problem is that state owned businesses can be terribly inefficient and slow (thinking of Deutsche Post...*shudder*).
On the other hand, leaving things like this to private companies leads to "squeezing the money". Costly infrastructure investments are not made, service suffers (costs money...)... The German power grid is a good example. For decades they have showered their shareholder with literally billions, but now that the infrastructure is ramshackle and would need lots of money to fix they all file for "we're going bankrupt if we have to pay for it".
I would like to know how the Scandinavian countries are handling this, esp. the communications sector. Fibre to the home is very common, for very reasonable prices even in more remote areas - who pays for this? In Germany the situation is OK in densely populated areas - because that's where the money is for the telcos. In rural areas it's still pretty bad. And the prices are ridiculous compared to other industrial countries. Two years ago an acquaintance of mine had 100 MBit fibre (up and down!) - for ~14€ - in Tokyo. I have 16/2 (MBit, down/up) for 35€ (Ok, I really should look for better offers).
When it comes to mobile internet many North-African countries are a lot better than Germany. That's party because radio towers are easily guarded while wires are easily stolen and so they were forced to go mobile but still...
