Call me paranoid, but as in an earlier post, I'm increasingly of the belief that China will take over the world much quicker than people expect. I don't know exactly what that means. I do know that they are quietly and rapidly making significant progress on the future technologies that matter most. It's easy to forget about them despite the fact that most lower cost items in your life were produced there. I read today in wired that they are installing fiber everywhere to skip over the copper/dsl thing:

To upgrade the country's technology, Hurley says the Chinese are bypassing copper wiring and laying fiber optic lines instead. Bringing fiber connections to within a kilometer of users' homes and businesses solves the problem of VDSL's shorter range.

It always seemd logical that the US should be about last in high speed wired/broadband connectivity. We live far apart. In Europe/Asia with much higher population density it is much easier to wire up everybody to broadband quickly.