If you travel outside the country occasionally (or ever), or, if you have a relative from another Western Industrialized Nation, you’ve probably bumped into a funny idiosyncracy:  A lot of those other countries have FAR better technology than we do — and FOR A LOT LESS MONEY.

By technology I mean THE INTERNET… or Television — what it looks like, not the content… They have better cell phone reception and in places Americans can’t even DREAM of getting coverage.  If I wanted to, I could go into health care, education, senior care, pensions… but I won’t — here, anyway…

Some of our having second rate tech while everyone has first world tech comes from timing.  Where TV is concerned, we started mass producing them first — just before the technology got better.  That’s why, before HDTV became a genuine world standard, there was NTSC & PAL.

The US mass produced TVs with the original tech state of the art NTSC… But, meanwhile, the TV technology evolved, refresh rates improved, it became possible to transmit far better picture and sound — and a new state of the art — PAL — was adopted by most of Europe and the rest of the world.  So, when TVs got mass produced for Europeans (for example), they were STARTING OUT with TV technology that was perceptibly superior to ours.

And that’s how it’s been — until HDTV.

But if you had asked any American who had the best TV in the world (speaking only in tech terms), how many of those Americans would have said Europe?  Unless they had traveled outside the country, they COULDN’T know.  And Americans always assume that whatever we have here?  Go TRY and find something better.

Problem is?  There’s lots.  Try CELL PHONE SERVICE.  Americans pay through the nose for it but don’t exactly get great coverage.  In part, that too goes back to timing and when mass roll-out of the original technology occured.  Nonetheless — we don’t show very well in a head-to-head with… well, pretty mucy ANYONE…
http://hightechforum.org/countries-best-mobile-networks/