> Do you have any links to Korea or Japan hitting these insurmountable problems?

You remembered me talks, about how enhanced was Hong Kong, so they in 1990s built very high-speed internet for all.

But than I read wikipedia, and seen, Hong Kong have 6800 people per square kilometer (Germany 200, France 300, Ukraine 80, Russia less then 30).

Sure, if you have more than tenfold number of clients, you have much more possibilities to pay for expensive new technology.

But even for not poor western Europe, fiber technologies was too expensive for wide usage until mid 2000s.

Sure, backbones built on fiber from early 1990s, but backbones is not all internet, in reality 90% of resources spent on last mile. And as I said before, until late 2000s, only copper last mile was economically effective without Asian density. Also was possible fiber backbone, and wireless last mile, but air speed also very limited (should read expensive :) ).

> But than I read wikipedia, and seen, Hong Kong have 6800 people per square kilometer (Germany 200, France 300, Ukraine 80, Russia less then 30).

Hong kong is essentially a city. You'd have to compare it with Munich (5k/km^2) in Germany or Paris (20k/km^2) in France to get equivalent numbers

I talked with colleagues in early 2000s, and they said, Paris central parts with high density was connected to broadband relatively early, but farther distribution was very slow, exact as I said.