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.'"

Comments

Large

[webmaster404]

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.

Re:Large

[Anonymous Coward]

But we've got 50 of them. Maybe it's tougher to wire up the more rural states, but doesn't the lack of clusters of high-quality inexpensive broadband in our urban areas (comparable to, say, the level of service you might find in the Netherlands) suggest more issues than geography comprise the bandwidth problem?

Re:Large

[tindur]

Does this count as a Slashdot meme already? Every time there is a story on Slashdot about how the net is somehow better somewhere else than in the US the result is "But the US is so big" and then we get "There is a country that is even less densely populated than the US that has better net connections.

Re:Large

[Ecuador]

I don't understand your point. A country that is huge, but has few people or a very low GDP per capita would logically have a problem getting everyone on broadband connections.
The US does not have a low population density and most certainly its population is not poor.
And I did not say it is easy to give broadband to every rural area. We can start from cities.
I live in NYC. In the middle of Manhattan the best you can do is 3/768 or 5/384 connections. I mean, really.
The same at my previous house in Queens (Long Island City) and Brooklyn. I was excited when I heard speakeasy was finally installing ADSL2+ connections (up to 10Mb/s in my area), only to find out they wanted $180/month without voice (yes, it is static, but I don't need it, and they don't have a dynamic option). At the same time I hear of much poorer countries where 24Mbit ADSL2+ connections are $50 or less.
So, who is not getting what? I guess the reason for having nothing done for years is that a lot of people share your mentality. Hey, we are a big country, it is expensive... Like ONE FRIGGIN CITIZEN has to pay for the whole thing???

Re:Large

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot "but service in densely populated parts of the US sucks too!" followed by "but cities like New York are old and hard to rewire!" followed by "City X in Europe has been there for a thousand years, still has the original roads, and has great broadband!"

Or "Nobody needs that kind of bandwidth" followed by "Well, if comcast had that kind of bandwidth, they wouldn't have to compress the hell out of their HD channels, and they could (yeah right) quit complaining about people downloading a file interfering with the TV."

Or my favorite, "Quit whining and buy a 155mbps OC3 already oh wait you can't afford it lol!" when talking about consumer broadband in Tokyo or Seoul.

It's not a meme, it's just the exact same stupid bullshit that gets trotted out Every. Single. Time. And every single time they get trotted out, they're debunked. Again. Nobody cares what kind of speed Billy Bob is getting out there on his tractor, most of us live in cities, some of which are very large cities. I don't care that some guy on the wrong side of a mountain has to use dial up, if I cared I'd go live on the side of a fucking mountain.

Re:Large

[EaglemanBSA]

The US does not have a low population density
The U.S. has roughly one tenth the population density of many western European countries at 80 people per square mile.

and most certainly its population is not poor.
Clearly you've never been to Appalachia. Or southern Louisiana. Or rural Mississippi...the list goes on. Some people along the Ohio River live in tar-paper homes.

Re:Large

[Anonymous Coward]

That might be a believable argument if the denser parts of the U.S. had internet access on par with that of Europe.

Re:Large

[electrictroy]

I don't understand:

Why do these surveys keep comparing a 2500-mile wide continental nation to tiny little states? There's a huge difference between wiring metropolitan France and the cornfields of America. Apples and oranges.

A proper comparison would do one Federation versus another federation:
- U.S. v. E.U. v. Canadian Confederation v. Australia v. China.
Those are comparable territories with similar challenges to overcome (lots of empty space).

Don't look at the ranking, look at the scores

[EmbeddedJanitor]

There's no statistical difference between the top ten or so (+- 4%) and the top 25 are all within a +- 10% band.

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!