I’m confused by your description and comparison of NZ with Japan. I hazard a guess that there are many locations in Japan that are as rural or remote as much of NZ. Similarly, there are urbanized areas in NZ in which population density ought to be sufficient both for multiple providers of (near) state of the art technology. Absent regulation, sellers have difficulty recovering investments in rural or remote areas anywhere. However, there should be no technical barrier to satellite in remote areas, though I do not know if they have technical limitations.

Here in the Washington DC metropolitan area, I have cable rated at 3 Mbps, but it is noticeably slower (700 kbps) when everyone else is home from work. (I work at home.) I’d give my eyeteeth for 100 Mbps. But surely we don’t lack a sufficient population density to support Japanese-level technology. There must be other reasons.

Our regulatory system, which includes federal, state, and local layers, sometimes in conflict, is the best explanation for why we don’t. A prospective provider would have a terrible time negotiating the regulatory thicket, accommodating each of the regulatory agencies’ rentseeking demands, and having to fight off incumbents who would happily use every regulatory tool at their disposal to keep competition out.

Once you decide to regulate, the animal spirits of the market are preempted. They go somewhere else.

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Bernardo