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US Falls to 24th Place For Broadband Penetration
amigoro writes "According to research done by the consultancy firm Point Topic, the US has fallen to 24th place in terms of broadband penetration, with only 53% of households connected. South Korea led the pack, with 90% of households having highspeed connections. The US remains the largest broadband country in the world with more than 60.4 million subscribers in the quarter with 2.9 million new broadband additions, but China is fast catching up and has cut the gap to the US from 5.8 million at the end of 2006 to 4.1 million at end of March 2007. The firm's research also pointed out the disparity between the connectivity of first world nations and other places throughout the world. 'Many Sub-Saharan African states do not register in the figures at all: only South Africa, Sudan, Senegal and Gabon make it onto the list, with household broadband penetration running from 1.79% in South Africa - with 215,000 users at the end of March - to just 0.05% in Sudan - with a mere 3,000. North African states fare slightly better with Morocco scoring 6.78% penetration with 418,000 users and Egypt at 1.55% or 240,000.'"
Such is the nature of varying population distributions.
South Korea has 1/4th their population in a single city, packed in so dense that broadband penetration is relatively cheap - contrasted with the US population's fondness for distance from neighbors, and the resultant per-foot cost aggregation.
China has over 4x the population of the USA - we could wire everyone, and they could still out-subscribe us with 75% of their population remaining entirely unconnected.
Guess the report just reflects the realities of supply-and-demand.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
How come Canada is doing so much better than the US. Our country is bigger than yours, and has 1/10 of the population. The US has a population density of 31 people per square kilometer, while Canada's population density is 3.2 people per square kilometer. If it's all about population density, then why does Canada have a much better broadband penetration.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Interestingly, this is the opposite of the situation with respect to HD-TV in the UK and US. Here, we moved to colour later, and so got PAL, which generally has a better picture quality than NTSC, making HD less of an obvious requirement. While HD is better than PAL SD, the low quality of PAL is much less irritating than the quality of NTSC when you don't have the side-by-side comparison.
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Because you have some 90% of your population within about 100 miles of the US border. It's the "clumpiness" of the population that counts, not the average density.
Pleeeeease......
That is such bullshit. Not even in the densely populated areas you can get decent broadband in USA. The kind of figures you can get in Scandinavia, Korea and Japan is just not possible and that has NOTHING, NOT A BLOODY THING, to do with population density. Its about money and its about how involved the government is. Both in Japan, Korea and in Scandinavia the governments have been investing in black fibre just for the purpose to create a better internet for the people. companies that wanted to invest also got tax breaks and counties built their own black fibre networks. In my home town, Gothenburg, the city has built a large black fibre network. Unlike US cities where the city itself have run as an ISP (or tried to until they got sued in some case) the city doesn't provide internet access. other companies do that. I hear lots of baby whining from American "Why should I pay my taxes so someone else can surf porn" and I find it strange that I never hear some one whining about that your tax dollars goes to people paid by the CIA to rape young Iraqi girls in front of their fathers as a torture method (yeah, that actually happened). Hmmmmmmmmmm... Weird isnt it???
Just shut the bloody hell up with that "its not so densely populated here". California is the size of Sweden and have 4 times as many people but you can in Sweden easily get better and faster broadband than you. Yeah, right sorry, that is because the more people there is means that there is less of a market and less demand for it.
We don't even have as good broadband connectivity in Manhattan as South Korea has in their whole country. We're not just behind, our internet connectivity makes us the laughingstock of the developed world. Seriously, not only are these countries ahead of us in broadband penetration, they're doing it with their hands tied behind their backs - we define "broadband" as "128k download", they define it as anything from "2 meg download" to South Korea's "20 meg symmetric".
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
For a couple of reasons. Canada leeches off the trans-continental backbone that was built in the US and over 80% of Canadians live in urban areas which is very similar to that of the US. A great rural Canada is a myth. So is the great rural US. The numbers are similar which is not surprising. The higher position of Canada is probably due to having their broadband companies be a little less coercive.
According to Wikipedia, 75% of the Canadian population lives within 150 km miles of the US border. So, for that region, Canada's population density is closer to 23 people/km^2. Of course Canada still wins, but it kinda draws a better picture.
Here is the 2006Q4 data and 2003 population data from The Economist:
country, 2006Q4 broadband, 2003 population, 2003 area, median age
South Korea, 89.00%, 47.7, 99, 35.1
Monaco, 82.92%, 0.03, 0.002, 45.5
Hong Kong, 79.78%, 7.0, 1, 38.9
Iceland, 75.71%, 0.3, 103, 34.1
Singapore, 69.59%, 4.3, 1, 37.5
Netherlands, 69.38%, 16.1, 42, 39.3
Denmark, 69.34%, 5.4, 43, 39.5
Israel, 68.97%, 6.4, 21, 28.9
Macau, 68.82%, 0.4, 0.02, 36.6
Switzerland, 66.54%, 7.2, 41, 40.8
Canada, 63.02%, 31.5, 9971, 38.6
Taiwan, 61.40%, 22.6, 36, 31
Norway, 59.70%, 4.5, 324, 38.2
Finland, 59.52%, 5.2, 338, 40.9
Japan, 54.13%, 127.7, 378, 42.9
Germany, 53.23%, 82.5, 358, 42.1
Luxembourg, 52.29%, 0.5, 3, 38.1
UK, 52.25%, 59.3, 243, 39
Sweden, 51.76%, 8.9, 450, 40.1
Belgium, 51.73%, 10.3, 31, 40.6
Estonia, 50.35%, 1.3, 45, 38.9
Australia, 50.18%, 19.7, 7682, 36.6
USA, 50.07%, 294.0, 9373, 36.1
Population data is in millions, area is in thousands of square kilometers.
Canada would seem to throw a chain saw into the theory that this is driven by population density.
Copy-paste into a text document and import as csv into your favorite spreadsheet, make of it what you will.
The domestic market has a few options, hughes net, which used to be directv's offering, is out there. It's cheap enough for sat.
Directv is now pushing wildblue, which uses a new KA band launched a few years ago, and is not just a retro hack of a C band bird like everyone else. Wildblue is better, but it's not that great either.
If you want web browsing, it's adequate. If you want file downloads, it's better. Latency is the real issue, speed of light is too slow to talk to something in geo orbit 32K miles away. By time everything is said and done you're 1/2 a second to 1 second to more latency just for the 'local loop'. Clicking on a link on a webpage becomes annoying, forget realtime anything, many VPNs, gaming is out of the question.
Weather is rarely an issue unless it's intensive storms over you, or over the sat uplink facility. But a clear southern view of the sky can be an issue.
Having sold a variety of sat Internet systems years ago, it's better than dialup if that's your only option. As soon as DSL or Cable is available, it's not long before the sat internet is dropped. I'd stay away, far away from sat if there is anything else available.
Two comments:
First, population density can be a bit tricky to compare. Canada has an extraordinarily low population density if measured in the traditional way (number of Canadians / area of Canada). However, most Canadians live in a few strips near the US border. The actual distance between the average Canadian and his nearest neighbor may or may not be higher than that of the US. The latter is a much more relevant influence on broadband penetration than the former. The same holds true in some very populous countries such as Japan or the Scandanavian countries - these countries are very mountainous and large parts are uninhabitable. Yet these mountain areas drive down the "population density" as tradionally defined, while actually causing HIGHER population density in the rare flat areas along the coasts.
That being said, I don't think this is the issue. Nor do I think it has anything to do with technology or corporations or government, either. Simply put, lots of Americans just don't want broadband. Seriously. My boss is the perfect example. He has a PhD. WE WORK IN THE SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY. He is completely computer literate. He lives in a mid-sized city with several options for broadband. He chooses not to have it, so that he doesn't waste time on the net (for work or pleasure) when he should be spending time with his three sons.
I know it is hard for geeks like us to imagine someone not wanting broadband (or even net access) but I know many people who deliberately choose to do so.