I was watching this video here and, at the end, the speaker, Ghislain Nkeramugaba, mentioned that there is an unwritten rule that broadband Internet access is built out with road construction. Hearing this makes me think that the countries which are building out their infrastructure for the first time must be at a great advantage to older nations that had to patch centuries old (or older) infrastructure to bring broadband access. Especially in Europe where various buildings and roads may have been there for a millennium or more, bureaucratic restrictions may slow down build-out regardless of industrial sophistication. That certainly is not to say that countries like Rwanda have no areas which are worth protecting; however, I think there is always greater difficulty in tearing up and replacing established infrastructure versus adding something that did not exist before.

What's the upshot of this alleged smaller burden of history? It's really unclear to me as I have no background in the development of infrastructure. I do suspect however, that there are opportunities for innovative plans for building the networks that power developing countries and that these countries will be the laboratories of exciting new Internet technologies.
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