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.'"

Comments

Re:Not a surprise

[N3WBI3]

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_per_liv_in_u rb_are-people-percentage-living-urban-areas

I would not be so sure about that:

Percent of people living in urban areas:

#40 Sweden: 83%
#43 United States: 80%
#88 Finland: 61%

Now the real question is what are the other percentage of people doing? are they in communities which are not urban but still sizable? are in farming?

DEFINITION: Percentage of people living in urban areas. Data for 2003. Urban-rural classification of population in internationally published statistics follows the national census definition, which differs from one country or area to another. National definitions are usually based on criteria that may include any of the following: size of population in a locality, population density, distance between built-up areas, predominant type of economic activity, legal or administrative boundaries and urban characteristics such as specific services and facilities.

I don't care to start searching about the US vs Swedish or Finish definition but my basic point is, its not as simple as people are making it out to be.

Re:"Falling" means what again?

[ls -la]

So we've got more broadband users than anybody else in the world, and more this year than last year, and they're calling that "falling"? The absolute number means little to nothing. We're 24th (down from 19th if I remember last year's number correctly, it's been a while) by percentage, which matters more.

And that's only counting households - that's not counting the number of people there That's only counting households for the rest of the world too, and I think our average household size is lower than most of the world (not china though).

IMHO, the people pushing the "oh, no, we're falling behind" FUD are mainly trying to sell television over broadband I think they're trying to induce competition which much of the US lacks, leading to higher prices and lower bitrates.

Re:I thought we covered this already

[Frenchy_2001]

Actually, no. You have 80% of your population in urban areas and those still cant get correct connections.
In the US, broadband is defined as any link that is both constant and above 128kb/s. In Korea, broadband is a link over 20Mbps both ways.

By your definition, you should be able to get the same type of connection in downtown New York city, but it is not the case...