China to Top U.S. in Broadband Subscribers

An anonymous reader writes "China already is rapidly approaching the United States as the country with the largest number of broadband subscribers, according to the El Segundo, Calif.-based firm, and by the end of the year, China is expected to have 34 million subscribers, compared to 39 million in the United States. By the end of 2007, China is expected to have 57 million broadband subscribers, compared to 54 million in the United States, with an even wider lead in the years to follow."

Comments

i would hope so

[hsmith]

considering they have 4x as many people than us in an are that is a bit more densely populated

Re:i would hope so

[Waffle Iron]

and I'll bet the only address they're allowed to connect to with FTP is 127.0.0.1

That's not so bad; it's a kickass site. Lightning fast, too.

1.1 Billion vs 280 Million

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a lot easier to have more subscribers/anything when you have almost 4 times the population.

This isn't very interesting news at all.

Next on slashdot: China Tops US in rice consumption.

Re:1.1 Billion vs 280 Million

[SaDan]

Yeah, but they'll NEVER beat us at BUTTER consumption!

Re:1.1 Billion vs 280 Million

[jmv]

Next: China tops US in fuel consumption. That's when it's going to get really scary (I guess it's already scary that 4% of the world population consumes 25% of the energy).

Re:1.1 Billion vs 280 Million

[TheKidWho]

and also produces 25% of all goods.

Makes sense doesn't it now? Turn off your selective memory.

Re:1.1 Billion vs 280 Million

[stupidfoo]

Actually the US produces closer to 29-30% of the world's goods with 25% of the world's "resources". So, we produce goods at a higher efficiency than the rest of the world (on average).

But you're right, that doesn't sound quite as sexy. It's like when people complain about the US's "record" deficits even though it, as a percentage of it's GDP, is no where near record levels and is lower than most of Europe. But again, that's not as sexy.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

High speed access to everything the government wants them to see.

So?

[Raul654]

Look at a population map of china. Now look at one of the US. Half of china has a population density of less than 2.5 people per square mile, and the other half has more than 500. Getting a large section of the country wired very quickly is pretty easy. The US population, on the other hand, is spread really thin. So it's not surprising that China could overtake the US quickly.

Re:So?

[anactofgod]

Riiiight.

So, you posit that rural dwellers are self-reliant and accountable for their own actions, while city dwellers want government handouts.

Well, actually, the real data shows that the opposite is true. Let's talk taxes. Consider this study of the 2000 Bush-v-Gore election results, as mapped against states that receive net benefits from federal spending. If you want more recent data, you can map the raw facts yourself against the result of the 2004 Bush-v-Kerry election using this data published by taxfoundation.org.

I'm come from plain talking folk, so let me just say it how it is. How red staters can keep posing about their hardy self-reliance while simultaneously sucking so hard on the public teat provided by the blue staters strikes me as being, at the very least, impolite. I don't mind contributing my fair share of taxes - I view it as an investment in my country for all that it provides to me- and for some of those taxes to go to support the undereducated, indigent or unfortunate, be they rural or urban. I don't even expect the recipients to say "please" or "thank you" when they take the money given to them. But do expect not to have my hand spit when I'm trying to give you the handout.

So, pass this around to your fellow self-reliant, hardy, accountable red staters -- Strut around and pose all you want, but if you can't be polite, give us back our taxes.

Thanks a bunch.

But most of the content is unavailable...

[binaryspiral]

So what if more people in China have broadband... most of the content of the Internet is monitored and filtered by the Chinese government.

Score one for the rest of the free world.

Re:Dialup

[red5]

I had to help my sister figure out some computer related things at work this morning. They had AOL dial-up internet. I didn't even know they made that anymore.

Re:Percentages

[Anonymous Coward]

China has 1,298,847,624 and USA has 293,027,571

So China has about 4% and USA has 18%.

Great firewall

[mrogers]

Now they can fail to find information about democracy, Falun Gong, Christianity or encryption software at blazing 2 megabit speeds! Hooray for broadband!

Further Developments

[Capella or Bust]

In other news, reports indicate that the China has far surpassed the US in terms of the number of households that contain "lungs." These "lungs" are being used by the Chinese to breathe "air," and it is widely fear that the Chinese may very well breath more "air" than any other civilized nation on earth, followed closely by India.

Of course...

[carambola5]

Of course for China, that's 2.9% while for the US, it's 13.5%.

Check for yourself: http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wp02/tabA-04.pdf

Hooray for manipulating statistics!

Re:Mmmmm....

[mrogers]

Nah, I hear they have a great firewall.

Dishnet aims for India-wide WiFi coverage in 2 yrs

[anandpur]

Other news by 2007 every Indian can be Subscribers of Broadband

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=tech nologyNews&storyID=8386370

Re:Breed Geeks, breed!

[Vombatus]

Geeks do your partiotic duty.

Go forth and multiply?

Where did I leave my pocket calculator?

Re:Population

[grumpygrodyguy]

that is nice coming from a non US citizen who called us the US of Asshole's in a previous post.

Actually, I _am_ a US citizen living in Atlanta, GA. Born and raised US, white, middle-class, etc. And I meant what I said in that post.

Not that simple.

[fm6]

1.1 billion people is just so many warm bodies --they mean nothing unless they're part of a vital economy. Fifty years the population ratio was almost as lopsided, but the Chinese couldn't even feed themselves, much less buy fancy technology. At that time, the U.S. dominated the planet in infrastructure, manufacturing base, skilled workforce, advanced, raw economic power, and a lot of other factors. Not led, dominated.

In 1955, most people wouldn't have had any notion what "Broadband Internet Access" was. But if you could make them understand that it was a key technology of the 21st century, and that it would be more available in China than in the U.S....

An American would have reported you to the FBI for spreading commie propaganda. And a Chinese would have shaken his head at your obvious dementia. The U.S. has lost its edge, and this is another sign of it.