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164 Million Broadband Subscribers Worldwide
prostoalex writes "164 million people on this planet have a broadband connection, ZDNet reports, with 52 million broadband lines sold between March 2004 and March 2005. USA, China, UK, Japan and France currently lead the world in number of broadband hookups available. Poland was the first Eastern European country to join the 'million broadband lines' club."
Internet 2 is for research facilities only. Universities don't want your zombie subnets chewing up their much needed bandwidth.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
According to the article, USA, China, UK, Japan and France lead the world in broadband lines added in 2005 Q1. For overall number of broadband lines, the leaders are USA, China, Japan, South Korea, and France in order.
I don't have the link right now, but I remember seeing a graph of bandwidth prices for very large ISP's, for the backbone, or even colo bandwidth prices. Prices in those markets ARE decreasing over time, but at a much slower rate than, say, CPU speed or CPU cost. (bandwidth demand is indeed still growing fairly quickly, but prices are falling much slower) I tried to figure out WHY exactly bandwidth costs don't fall faster, but couldn't find much, because all the analyst types are so busy talking about the glut of fiber optic lines at the end of the 90's.
Why US Broadband Access Lags Other Countries
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make install -not war
The USA is only at 12.5% per capita according to the stats. Canada sits at over 18%.
I would be surprised if countries like South Korea and Sweden wouldn't be ranked among the top nations.
They are:
1. South Korea
2. The Netherlands
3. Denmark
4. Hong Kong
5. Canada
6. Switzerland
7. Israel
8. Taiwan
9. Norway
10. Sweden
The US of A is nowhere to be seen.