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I think you made an arithmetic mistake. Look at it another way:

10 minutes per person per day * 8kbps = 600 kB per person per day. 600 kB / person / day * 365 days /year = 214 MB / year.

That's nothing. Consumer flash media is something like $0.30/GB. Let's mark that up 100x because the three letter agency doesn't care about costs and has an inefficient procurement process, so $30/GB.

0.209 GB / year * $30 / GB = $6 per person per year.

There are 300 million people in the US, but phone calls are between at least two parties, so:

300 million people * 0.5 * $6 per person per year = $900 million per year.

You can't even build a mile of highway for that little. Hell, some big cities in the US have a bigger annual deficit than that.



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