RSSUS sinks to 15th place worldwide in broadband, says OECD
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published May 21, 2008, 12:41 PM
In broadband access, the United States has now slipped from twelfth to fifteen place versus other countries, according to new research released this week by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The OECD study points to factors ranging from pricing to download speeds as possible reasons why the US may be losing ground, at least compared against other countries. Unlike some other broadband studies, which compare access rates across wider numbers of countries, the OECD research looks only at penetration rates among its own 30 member nations.
The US actually placed first in terms of total numbers of broadband subscribers. But the OECD's penetration rates are based on numbers of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
By these statistics, the US has continued a comparative slide for the past six years, ranking in fourth place in 2001, twelfth place in 2006, and now, according to the OECD's latest figures, fifteenth place by the end of 2007.
In an independent analysis of the OECD research, the media advocacy group Free Press has found that almost half of the other OECD countries offered higher maximum download speeds than those in the US.
The picture in the US was brighter for cable service -- since only ten other countries had faster advertised cable modem download speeds -- than for DSL, where the US landed in 26th place, only slightly above Turkey, Poland, and Mexico.
BETACHECK
For more:
- The complete international report on nations' broadband use from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Directorate for Science, Technology, and Industry.
According to the OECD's data, the highest advertised download speed in the US amounted to 50 Mbps, as opposed to 100 Mbps for Finland, France, South Korea and Sweden and 1,000 Mbps for Japan.
In an interview with BetaNews today, Derek Turner, research director for Free Press, said that the top speed of 50 Mbps for the US referred to the highest tier of service now available for Verizon Wireless' FiOS, a new broadband offering now available in some parts of the US.
Also in the US, Comcast now offers a 50 Mbps cable service. "But Comcast's [50 Mbps] service wasn't available until 2008," he told BetaNews.
The OECD's data also shows that consumers in the US pay more on average for broadband service than consumers in only seven other countries: Mexico, Poland, Hungary, Norway, Czech Republic, Iceland, and Slovak Republic.
As Free Press sees it, according to Turner, prices tend to be higher in the US and other countries where there is "a lack of meaningful competition" for broadband access.
The advocacy group is supporting initiatives such as a proposal now before the FCC to provide open access for wireless broadband services in the so-called "white space" of the spectrum -- the gaps between where services are already transmitting.
Although other research groups have come up with conflicting findings around broadband access, Turner said that the OECD obtains information on broadband penetration directly from reports produced by government regulatory agencies such as the FCC in the US.
The FCC, he noted, is now revising its policies around information collection to include "granular data" from broadband providers about connection speeds.
The OECD statistics are not adjusted for by factors such as geography, education, or income. But even in other studies -- which have taken other such factors into account -- the US still ranks below some other countries in terms of broadband access, according to Turner, who mentioned earlier research by the Phoenix Center and other think tanks.
****ING PATHETIC!
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|Not sure if Betanews knows, but FiOS is a Verizon service. It's not by Verizon Wireless, whose highest advertised download speed would probably be the theoretical limit for EvDO Rev. A (3.2 Mbps). Please make the change!
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|Had to laugh at the Australian statistics on 'time taken to reach bit cap' and the implied contention ratio taken from that data. Top of the list, our incumbent Telstra - implied contention ratio of 50,000 to 1! Nice work! So sell service to 50,000 users on suitable capacity for one. Brilliant! :p
And they say we don't need to regulate Telstra. :p
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|Yes, I used to live there. It's not the Shangri-La the rest of the world likes to think it is, that's for sure. Telstra, and particularly the Banking sector have been shamelessly and almost criminally profiteering, aided and abetted by the government for years. You have my sympathy.
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|And they would like you to believe that the States are ready for broadband digital content... Riiight... Hang onto your DVDs cause they're going to be around for a looong time.
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|I agree with smith288. Our demographics in the US are huge and some areas are not profitable to adopt the installation of cable.
My cable speed keeps increasing too. Articles like this suggest we are not doing enough but our service is regulated but not supported by the government like some other countries. The access providers must turn a profit to be able to survive.
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|Go figure - instead of Working together to everyone on High Speed Internet, the US 'net companies are figuring out how to profit from the public, how to sue other for "patent infringement", or price gauge it's users.
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|You might provide reasoning to the situation, however, it is what it is.
If ISPs could have more support from goverment or other consumer programs are available, then that could change. But then again, it is what it is and crying foul won't change anything.
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|Does this report take into account how freaking big and spread out the US is? Good God, how do you expect to get every Tom, Dic and Harry on high speed when half the country's population lives in rural locations not easily serviced by service providers? It's cake to serve a whole country when the cities are where most of the population is.
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|I don't think that's a factor; DSL is available pretty much anywhere there is a phone line. Even when that's not available, broadband sat connections are.
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|DSL is extremely limited..you have to be within 3 miles of the CO to make it work. That puts about 80% of most rural counties out of reach. Cable is only marginally more available. The fact is that if you're more than 2 miles outside of a municipality, you probably can't get terrestrial broadband. Satellite is an expensive, unreliable joke. Internet via GSM isn't much better (it barely qualifies as "broadband"). Broadband over power line would be a fantastic option, but some people are screaming about radio interference. That seems fishy to me because the phone and cable lines don't seem to cause this problem.
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|Canada is much bigger and wider than the USA is..... The US also ranks lower in many other areas when compared to other Western nations as well.
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|Land Mass
Canada 3,854,085 sq mi
United States 3,794,066 sq mi
Population
Canada 33,269,000
United States 304,124,000
Most Canadians live along the border making the inhabited population far less spread out then the United States.
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|Not just Canada either - Australia has similar land mass and 1/10th the population. You've got 10 times the incentive to invest in infrastructure, but you don't. I think you need to ask your 'corporatised' government "Why?"
Land mass is NOT an excuse for the US.
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|lie!
i live in an extremly rural and imposible to reach by car area in Mexico. . at least 20 miles away from my isp and i get a perfect and stable DSL connection, and so does my nearest neighbor 10 miles away from me . .
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|Nice try. Are you sure it's DSL and not something else? You do realize that DSL is not a generic term for broadband, right?
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