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I don't think your argument is all that sound

(1) the way to define up and coming economies seem to fit into confirmation bias and/or survivor bias.

(2) why is size such a strong variable?

(3) US had massive rollout of dial up, why/how did broadband get established if size of existing infrastructure is inversely correlated to adaption of new tech? (If I understand your argument correctly). Broadband should never really have rolled out. For that matter, there is a large deployment of satellite internet in the US, wouldn't your low earth satellite example also be a counterexample?

(4) why would advancement in one sector be counter evidence for market capture and regulatory hurdles in a different sector? The examples just seem unrelated.

(5) US internet speeds have been pretty slow for a long time. Could it be that market capture and lack of competition is a larger factor rather than the cost of adoption? Another example, Japan has been pretty far ahead of mobile phone tech for a while. If the cost of adaption of new tech were the biggest issue, wouldn't they have stagnated some time ago? That was an already saturated market for over a decade, yet still moved forward.

(6) could it be more important that new markets lack existing monopolistic capture?

Though, I will agree that existing infrastructure/deployments do create an inertia for stagnation. I have that view for US road infrastructure. It is all going to last many decades more, and with it the single occupancy vehicle.




Addendum/edit: strike the word "new" on point 6.




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