Beating us in both broadband and…whatever!
EETimes.com – Iceland claims to be top broadband user — USA! USA! We’re NUMER 12! Alright! We’re number 12! There’s a chant in that, right?
Broadband usage in the United States is mired in the 12th position internationally as Iceland and South Korea battle for the top concentration of broadband users, according to a broadband survey released Wednesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Iceland supplanted South Korea in the latest survey, recording 26.7 broadband users per 100 to South Korea’s 25.4 users. However, the OECD suggested that South Korea’s setback may be temporary while the country switches to the next generation of fiber optical broadband.
“Korea’s broadband market is advancing to the next stage of development where existing subscribers switch platforms for increased bandwidth,” the OECD report stated. “In Korea, fiber-based broadband connections grew 52.4 percent during 2005.”
Hey but we’ve GOT excuses!!
U.S. government officials have noted that the low population density of the U.S. makes it difficult to deploy broadband over large areas of the country, but the advance of other low population density countries like Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden seems to indicate that broadband can be deployed in rural and remote areas if there is a will.
Will? Or motive to gouge?
This country has far more “technologically impaired” people who don’t understand what “all this fuss about computers is about”. My parents a two such people (they will never read this).
What confounds me is the inability of corporate America to see the benefit from an educated, knowedgable nation. That is, after all, the premise of governments in Iceland, South Korea and others populating the list ahead of the United States. They serve the long range needs of their national economies.
It’s easy enough to understand crass reactionary politicians who feed off an ignorant electorate — and I guess you can make a case for globalized investors being willing, eager and ready to move capital to wherever the smarts and wherewithal sit waiting. But, Liberal and Conservative joint capitulation to smarmy and corrupt bureacrats on one hand — and the greedy counter-productive barons of telecommunications on the other — once again provokes an interest in 3rd-force grassroots politics.
Damned near any kind will do at this point in time. I don’t care if it’s fundamentalist Libertarian or the usual boring consensus Greens. Opportunity for our coming generations shrinks, crushed in the conformist clenched sphincter of American ennui, day by day, month by month.
To the USA Haters: The ‘excuse’ that the US has a lower population density might not be an excuse. Those countries have a very large percentage of their population in very few places.
We are a very large country with a heterogenious population, lots of immigrants, etc. We also spend a lot of money and energy being the world’s policeman, which by the way includes protecting South Korea from the bad guys that surround them.
I do agree that we (the USA) need to manage our priorities better, including better educating our population and distributing needed technology to everyone.
But, most statistics comparing us to other countries are meaningless.
It’s all such a waste. “Low density” population is the ultimate goal. If you can see you neighbor, you’re too close. Broadband enables more remote work / telecommuting which enables urban sprawl and lower density population.
Pushing cheap broadband everywhere should be the number two goal of the US govt. right after better weapons systems.
Well, we might be No. 1 in consumer debt though. Let’s add broadband 45.00 per month, and oh yeah a computer 500.00 to 2000.00. I don’t think alot of Americans can afford or need broadband.
If you don’t have the need, why bother? Many people consider broadband a luxury item that can be done without. Oddly enough those same people can’t do without a $120 cell tab a month. There may be a lot of government subsidy to defray infrastructure costs there. There’s subsidies here, but that has to be used to make large shareholders wealthier.
“…We are a very large country with a heterogenious population, lots of immigrants, etc….”
Sounds like Canada…
Canada has 70 per cent of its population in urban areas compared to 80 per cent for the U.S. yet is in 8th place with 21.9 compared to 16.8 for the U.S.
Responce to “Me”. “Low density” population is the ultimate goal.
Low density is a crappy goal, in so many ways. Number one is energy waste. Heating in winter is mulitple times more costly, per capita, in single family homes verses apartment buildings. There’s also mass transit vs. cars. The 3.5 million people that commute via mass transit in New York City, use electricity, produced by resources found in this good ole USA, not foreign oil.
That said, telecommuting/remote-work is great and an admirable goal, but true (not necessarily large) cities will always be the engine of new thoughts and ideas, because the best and brightest young people out of college want to live around others like themselves, in person, to hang out with, flirt with, etc.
Mass transit should be illegal. If nothing else it imposes someone else’s schedule on you.
It sounds like you want everyone to model their lives like the idiots of Friends – staagger around doing a bunch of useless crap followed up bit sitting around yammering about nonsense in some crappy coffee shop. Bleah…..
You have to have cities to group industry, but cities are for working in, not living in. Apartment buildings are a horrifying way of existing in squalor.
Cars are even crappy, you can’t get a 4×8 sheet of plywood into a car. Trucks and full size SUVs are the only acceptable vehicles. You can haul what you need on a whim whenver you need to.
Winter heating is irrelevant because Global Warming is eliminating winter and we’re all going to die from that anyway.
In some parts of the country, like where I live (the south), many of the industries do not want an educated populace. Because once they’ve become populated, they’ll realize they could make more money and then realize to do so they have to move and then move out of state. I read that a study be the universities in my state found that a majority of the top percent of high school graduates leave the state after they graduate college (if they go to college in state, which many do not).
I also remember an article I found on digg that reported about the telecoms big subsidizes to give all americans high-speed access years ago, and they just pocketed the money. Its pretty sad that the country that invented the internet is not using it the most.
Ok…..I have learned not to get into the tech stuff to much because I’m an idiot. But several comments dealt with the low usuage of the internet by people in this country. There only what, 5 or six countries in the world with more population, and your telling me we don’t have more internet users than all the rest, and probably most of the 4 or 5 other heavily populated nations(i’m thinking of Russia, China, Japan, India, Indonesia)
Like Iceland has what 2 million tops. South Korea….30, 40 million.(maybe more), the U.K. has 50 million……..it’s like comparing the number of fish in a pond to the number in an inland sea.
What’s the point of having so much broadband? People have gotten by without computers up until about 1990, and now suddenly it’s a bad thing if people don’t have a superspeed connection?
Yeah, bot at what cost. I am from Iceland and a 6MB connection cost 80$ and the cheapest ADSL you can find is 50$ so at that prices it’s kind of funny.
But one thing that is with Icelandic brodband providers that is intresting, they are all first and foremost TV providers, or at least focused in that direction. “OgVodafone” own’s the biggest TV provider in Iceland and “Siminn” has bought TV station “skjár 1” and is focused on TV on demand. Both companys are rolling out ADSL2 later this year (speed’s of 12-30 mbps. And then we will se real TV on demand with little or no real content except crappy movies and local shows.