You might not guess it from your Internet bill, but the United States has some of the cheapest broadband in the world -- right up there with Kazakhstan, India and Bangladesh. That’s one of many surprising, and occasionally puzzling, revelations in a new report from the International Telecommunication Union, which tracks the use, cost and penetration of information networks around the world.

Facebook’s global partnership to expand Internet access in the developing world is getting a lot of attention, despite the campaign’s initial lack of specifics on how it plans to achieve its goals. The initiative — which hopes to get two-thirds of the world’s population online through cheaper smartphones that make a more efficient use of current networks — has been both hailed as a step in the right direction and criticized as a thinly veiled business strategy to reached untapped markets in the developing world.

The point is that broadband service in the United States is neither what it could be nor what it should be. Yes, the vast majority of Americans have access to very basic Internet service, but here the devil's in the details. Too many rural residents lack even minimal access; too many big cities lack the competition that would create world-class service; and for whatever reason — be it access, cost, quality, or something else — 100 million Americans don't subscribe to broadband service at all.

He said the landing was expected to increase overall capacity for transmission of telecommunications data (bandwidth) in Ghana. "This single cable will catapult the country deep into the digital age."