The US is behind on broadband...

It should surprise no one that the US is behind in broadband compared to the rest of the industrialised world. However, to say that this is obviously due to policy issues or whatever ignores the fact that the US has by far the lowest population density of such countries, making ubiquitous broadband connections more difficult to construct, outside of urban and suburban regions.

Even in rural areas, Europe has the advantage. European rural areas tend to have a cluster of houses as a town, and fields surrounding them. American rural areas have individual homesteads separated often by several miles. Such a population distribution is much harder to wire up.