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Broadband is cheaper in many other countries than in the United States. "You have a pretty uncompetitive market by European standards," said Tim Johnson, the chief analyst at Point-Topic, a London consulting firm. Other countries have lower costs for the same reasons their DSL service is faster. Dense urban areas reduce some of the cost of building networks. In addition, governments in some countries subsidized fiber networks. But the big difference between the United States and most other countries is competition. "Now hold on there," you might say to me. Since I wrote that many countries don't have cable systems and the bulk of broadband is run by way of DSL through existing phone wires, how can there be competition? Aren't those owned by monopoly phone companies? True enough. But most big countries have devised a system to create competition by forcing the phone companies to share their lines and facilities with rival Internet providers. Not surprisingly, the phone companies hate this idea, often called unbundling, and tend to drag their feet when it is introduced. So it requires rather diligent regulators to force the telcos to play fair. And the effect of this scheme depends a lot on details of what equipment is shared and at what prices. Britain has gone the furthest, forcing BT Group to split off a unit that operates the actual network and sells to various voice and Internet providers, including its own telephone service, on an equal basis. The United States was early with this sort of approach, requiring telephone companies to allow rival Internet service providers to sell DSL service using their networks. The way these rules were written, however, meant the wholesale cost was so high that providers like AOL and Earthlink couldn't offer a better deal than the telcos themselves. And the plan was largely abandoned in 2003 by the Federal Communications Commission on the theory that the country is better served by encouraging competition

"Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies? That's the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public. Yahoo writes in its 12-page objection letter (.pdf), that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it "to 'shame' Yahoo! and other companies - and to 'shock' their customers.""