In American terms: The TV license pays for PBS programming, it's not a subsidy for Comcast to lay cables.
Wikipedia saith that, as of 2007, 93.5% of the Federal contribution to the Interstate Highway System was funded by gas and vehicle taxes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highways#Financing
And it notes that 1/6th of gas taxes and other user fee-like financing mechanisms are diverted toward public transit.
My favorite example: the price of books in the US and Canada. Just grabbed a random recent hardcover off my shelves. It's labeled "USA $25.95 Canada $32.50". I believe that price differential got established back when the US dollar was worth $1.25 Canadian -- but it still exists, even though the two currencies are now roughly on par. It's the exact same product with what is effectively a 25% markup for Canadians for no good reason.
I thought that our 19 cents/gallon tax on gasoline is what is used for road repairs etc. Is this not the case?
And here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...
$25 billion received via gas taxes at the federal level in 2006 (60% spent on roads). $70 billion spent by feds in 2012.
http://www.subsidyscope.com/transportation/direct-expenditur...
The 'local loop' to the home is provided by Openreach(BT) who have to make connections available to any company at an appropriate rate. There are also cable TV networks in many towns and cities.
http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/
My postcode says 'not currently in plans for rollout' so we are stuck on ADSL over copper for the foreseeable future.
The amount of fees and the costs I pay in America versus what I would pay in The Netherlands is absolutely mind-boggling.
Are you including health insurance? I'm pretty sure that I'm paying significantly less in taxes in the UK than I would be in the US with federal and state taxes plus health insurance.
Your employer might pay for health insurance, of course, but someone is paying.
I'd also like to see a fairer comparison here. If telecommunications infrastructure in these leading countries was subsidized by tax dollars, as the following article suggests they were, those payments should also be figured into the price of internet. These numbers are harder to get, but you're right that omitting them is disingenuous.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/the-broadband-gap-w...
Still, the broadband connection is subsidized by the gov, so somewhere there are taxes being collected to pay for it. But does it justify the 4 fold price markup in the US ? I don't think so.
I'm not aware of paying anything extra for fees, nor being forced ads.
Why doesn't NYC have 100 MBit to the home, when Singapore (population 5 million) does, and can get it for US$50/month?
Looking now, Cablevision serves the New York tri-state area. Their fastest rate is $45/month for "50 Mbps for downloads and up to 8 Mbps for uploads." Comcast has a much larger range. They offer 50 Mbit for $115/month and 100 MBit for $200/month.
Telia is a Swedish ISP. They offer 100Mbit for $50/month and 100/100 for $60. That's for the cities. So we see that a Swedish ISP can provide higher bandwidth, for cheaper, than two of the ISPs in the biggest metro area in the US.
I then pulled up Telia's numbers for the town of Skurup, population 10,000 in the Swedish countryside. They are limited to 30Mbit, also for about $50/month.
The south of Sweden is densely packed, for Sweden, with 290 people/sq mi in the county. The country is 54/sq. mil. That's about the same density as Pennsylvania. Is it possible to get 100 megabit to your home in Pittsburgh? For under $100/month? Likely not. Why not, when it is possible in mid-sized Swedish cities?
As a kid in Germany every household with a radio or TV had to pay a fee to operate those devices and there was a constant barrage of ads reminding new households to register and pay up. I'm assuming there are also other taxes that flow into building communications networks in Europe.