I’ve always thought this is quite similar to the wireless service. Smaller, densely populated European countries (compared to the size of the US) can much more quickly deliver new technologies at a much cheaper cost compared to the US, which has to basically cover half a continent of sparsely populated towns of several hundred people 50 miles across and a gaping nothing in between. As a result, cell service is 5-10x cheaper for the same amount of LTE data in Turkey compared to the US. For example, the last time I was there, 15gb LTE was about $7 pre-paid.
The same kind of penetration efficiency is in play when you’re trying to bootstrap a whole new infrastructure network like electric car charging stations.
Communication infrastructure is more of a "US did bad" scenario than an "other countries did good" one.
US policy people were tied down to various abstract philosophical/economic ideas (and their refutations) which made comms, especially cellular services generally more expensive than other places. Coarse theory and such.
It's partly cyclical. Following the antitrust actions (Bell etc), the US had a great Telecom market. In the 90s, compared to almost any other country, US telecom service was amazing. Most other countries were highly ideological about "key industries" like telecommunications and it resulted in a mess.
In the cellular/broadband age, the situation reversed. Turkey is more of the "norm." US is the outlier.
The same kind of penetration efficiency is in play when you’re trying to bootstrap a whole new infrastructure network like electric car charging stations.