Broadband Technology Leaders

How's your broadband? Somewhere, sometime ago I read an article that said that broadband in Korea is better than in the U.S. The article mentions that one reason behind this was that the government promoted and even sponsored it heavily during the initial stages. Doing a little Googling right now revealed this little table from ZDNet, written two years ago. In terms of broadband penetration, Korea takes the number one spot, with 25.5 subscribers per 100 residents, which means that one out of four people have broadband over there. The U.S. is number twelve on the list.

With further digging I got the June 2006 version of the same table. Here are the conclusions:

Denmark now leads the OECD with a broadband penetration rate of 29.3 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
The strongest per-capita subscriber growth comes from Denmark, Australia, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Luxembourg, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Each country added more than 6 subscribers per 100 inhabitants during the past year.
Fibre to the home is becoming increasingly important for broadband access, particularly in countries with high broadband penetration. In Denmark, Danish power companies are rolling out fibre to consumers as they work to bury overhead power lines. Municipal broadband projects are also expanding in many northern European countries and throughout the OECD. Telecommunciation operators in several OECD countries have also begun or announced large fibre-to-the-premises rollouts.
Japan leads the OECD in fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) with 6.3 million fibre subscribers in June 2006. Fibre subscribers alone in Japan outnumber total broadband subscribers in 22 of the 30 OECD countries.
The total number of ADSL subscriptions in Korea and Japan have continued to decline as more users upgrade to fibre-based connections.
DSL continues to be the leading platform in 28 OECD countries. Cable modem subscribers outnumber DSL in Canada and the United States.
The United States has the largest total number of broadband subscribers in the OECD at 57 million representing 31% of all broadband connections in the OECD.
Canada continues to lead the G7 group of industrialized countries in broadband penetration.

It's interesting reading considering the emphasis on staying online all the time. These days it's almost laughable for any gadget or device not to have some sort of Internet connectivity. So if you're a gadget freak considering moving somewhere, just take a look at the list to find a suitable place to live in.

Source: OECD, Ubergizmo

TAGS: Broadband, Internet
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