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US Does Surprisingly Well in Internet Survey
Herman's hermit writes "A new report from the World Economic Forum ranks the US number four when it comes to 'network readiness,' despite the fact that the same report has the US 17th broadband subscribers and 19th in bandwidth. 'While good news overall for the US, which is poised to take full advantage of information technology gains, the report probably won't change many minds when it comes to talking specifically about US broadband deployment.'"
Using broadband.
I think the main point in broadband that people just don't get is that the US is huge while many smaller countries are the size of one of the US's states, its is expensive to get broadband.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
It took a fair bit of searching, but according to them, 'network readiness' means: the presence of an ICT-friendly and conducive environment, by looking at a number of features of the broad business environment, some regulatory aspects, and the soft and hard infrastructure for ICT; the level of ICT readiness and preparation to use ICT of the three main national stakeholders--individuals, the business sector, and the government; and the actual use of ICT by the above three stakeholders.
Given that online surveys are notoriously bad and need wide margins of error, I would not read anything into this except for the obvious: First world countries (EU, USA etc) are ahead of Chad, Zimbabwe etc.
Duh!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Just curious: What is the common definition of "broadband" these days, and in reports like this? Does broadband still mean communications that have been divided into many independent channels/applications (TV, phone, IP), or has it been dumbed down (and yet: become more useful) to meaning internet access faster than some threshold (e.g. 56Kbps), or what?
It also seems that whatever threshold you pick, is going to be arbitrary and not immediately obvious to whoever is reading the list. 256Kbps is still pretty fast (in my book; I'm sure others will disagree) but I can think of a lot it can't do. Diddle with the threshold, and I bet you can rearrange the order of countries on lists like this.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you lived in the woods in USA you'd probably also only get limited broadband.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's no use having all the networks if they are going to stop working in several years, after IPV4 address space runs out. The fair question would be which countries networks can be upgraded to IPV6 with minimum effort. Full support for systems that need inbound connectivity, working NAT gateways for the rest.
...then, when something contradicts that assumed inadequacies, be surprised.
A derivative of Blame America First.
The US rules the Internet. There is no nation on Earth more "Internet Ready" than the US. Any result to the contrary is, by definition, flawed.
The US Government has not chosen to subsidize consumer Broadband build outs. The vote-buyers have had other priorities. Whoopdeedo.
Canada has a huge lead on the US in those categories despite being even larger and more sparsely populated. (And yes, broadband has been available in rural areas for over a decade.) Unfortunately, under the Conservatives, the companies here have been evading the regulations that are supposed to control them.
The "clumpiness" of the population determines the ease of networking. There's just no realistic way to have inexpensive, high quality internet access in a place like Emblem, WY (Population 10, last I was there). Canada has low density, but the population tends to clump near the US border. Australia has the population clumped on their East coast. Therefore, these countries aren't representative of the difficulty of penetration in the United States.
In major urban centers, internet speeds have been skyrocketing. We have high speed fibre, cable, DSL, and traditional dedicated lines where I live in Southern California.
...but are those Koreans playing SC2??
In my experience, those who string together the words "blame America first" tend to be of the "America can do no wrong" camp.
Whoever pays Zealot to rake whatever dogma shit is what a Zealot dogmatist will do ... profit before honor, spin-lies to pseudo truth. He is close to clueless on telecommunications, like most/all politicians and the FCC management.
Zealot/Z34107 is another name for a professional-troll
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Oh yea? Well, you have an e-mail from Comcast.
Who's clueless now?
DATABASE WOW WOW
Size does matter, but not here.
Some people just don't get how huge Europe is, about the size of the US. In some parts most people have broadband in others not. Just like in the US.
Richer, more densely populated parts tend to have more broadband. No matter the size, or the name space.
And surprisingly bad at teaching proper spelling, apparently.
All I could find in the study was:
Canada
Internet bandwidth (Mbps per 10000 inhabitants) 2006
67.34
United States
Internet bandwidth (Mbps per 10000 inhabitants) 2006
33.06
...and internet users per 100 people, which is even less useful. Source?
Here's a global population density map: http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/popden.html
Notice how the EU is all dark orange, except for parts of central Spain. Lots of people, more financial incentive to wire everything.
Notice how 80% of Canada is completely deserted, because it's too far north to be habitable. The Northern Yukon does an awful lot to decrease Canada's average population density, but since there's NOBODY there it doesn't affect the difficulty of wiring up broadband. Australia, same thing, except it's like 95% instead of 80% empty.
China is enough of a mix that it might make sense to compare to the US, but I'm guessing there are enough other issues with development, etc. to make it a tough comparison.
The top spot, Denmark, is 2.2 million square kilometers, or approximately three times the size of Texas.
Of course, most of it is uninhabited ice, but the point stands, absolute size doesn't matter much here. Population distribution is more important, almost all the population of Denmark lives in an area only twice the size of New Jersey, with a bit more than half the population.
And the top #2 spot, Sweden, is the size of California, with quarter of the population.
I don't live in Helsinki or any other large city; in fact, I live in the countryside outside a small city a few hundred km north of Helsinki. A 100/10Mbps fiber connection here costs 75euro per month, with NO capacity limits or throttling. That price also includes telephone and a basic TV package. Wherever a new house is built in my area, the ISP puts down fiber to it (2km fiber to reach me and 4 neighbours). They stopped putting down copper a couple of years ago, and are progressively replacing existing copper with fiber. On fiber, they give you two choices: 20/2 or 100/10 Mbps, unlimited and unthrottled.
In places with existing infrastructure (cable or decent telephone lines), I can understand ISPs preferring to "extract the value" from their assets rather than add fiber beside the existing lines. But from much commentary on
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I live in central Finland (yellow on that map), in the countryside, and have fiber to the house. 100/10 Mbps unlimited and unthrottled costs 75euro per month. That price also includes TV and telephone.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I'm kind of suprised that the headline is spelled incorrectly.
I giggled at that.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I have an 100 Mbit connection in Atlanta, for about $40/mo. Granted I don't get 100 Mbit service all the time, but it typically bottoms out around 10 Mbit. In much of the south, it's common to find newer-construction apartment complexes with pre-wired 100 Mbit ethernet throughout the complex, with the connection to the complex itself being fiber.