My Trip to Australia: Experiencing Fast Mobile Internet

I now know what it's like to get fast internet to my mobile device everywhere I go.  I recently took a trip for business and pleasure to Australia and was pleasantly suprised with 2-5 Mbps download speeds (on Optus and Telstra networks) just about everywhere I went (from Sydney up to Cairns).  Despite seeing some unbelievable sites (beaches, rainforests, mountains, crocs, kangaroos), this had to be one of the highlights of my trip (can you tell I am a telecom geek?).  I guess it is because we are so starved in this country for consistent high speed service (we are lucky if we get 1Mbps on average)  Blame it on the iPhone driving 5000% data growth on AT&T's network over 3 years or the density of our population (about 5X Australia's), but somehow we are not getting it done.  I applaud AT&T for at least admitting they have a congestion problem and using a multi-prong approach to solve it including WiFi microcells.  An it is nice to see the little engine that could (T-Mobile) rolling out a nationwide HSPA+ network, but it is still not enough.  The US has been a pioneer in wireless technology since its inception, so it does not seem adequate for us to have wireless network speeds equivalent to third world countries.  Asia has 6X our population density and yet countries like South Korea and Japan are consistently ahead on wireless data speeds.  Japanese operators are now doubling the number of macrocells to get ahead of the growth expected with 4G.  The US will need to go through the same densification of its current cellular networks to have a chance to get ahead of the rampant mobile data growth with could exceed 1 GB/month per use in 2-3 years according to some industry experts.  This will take microcells, picocells, femtocells, WiFi, and lots of offload/backhaul points along with more macrocells to deliver the kind of speeds we should expect from a wireless leader.  Even though I loved Australia, I would prefer to live in the US and hope to brag about my wireless speeds someday.