Well, from my understanding...
It all started with all countries having nothing, obviously.
Telephone became big in all countries (by all i mean the 'wealthy' ones).
Cable became big in north america while europe stuck to using the airwaves for television.
So north america spent big money getting the country wired up on fibre for cable.
Europe never spent that much on laying fibre, so now that higher internet speeds are wanted they're spending big money on the latest fibre technology including running it right into the homes, same as verizon fios is doing in small areas of the US, because without it they're stuck with 'slow' DSL speeds from their telephone lines.
In North America they're not putting much money into the fibre systems because we already put a ton of money into our current, 'out-of-date' system.
In the future we'll probably upgrade and be far ahead of europe, then it will switch again. It's just a cycle.
That's my very basic understanding anyway.
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