Richard Hoffman at Information Week has this very good article about U.S. broadband deployment and subscribership, and whether the country lags behind the rest of the world. Richard has unpublished data for December 2006 from the Pew Internet & American Life project that pegs residential broadband penetration in the U.S. at 45%.
That means less than half of U.S. homes have a broadband connection to the Internet. Policymakers continually debate whether the U.S. is in a good or bad position in terms of broadband deployment compared to other nations, and the answer depends on how you analyze the data. No matter how you cut it, however, the U.S. doesn’t rank anywhere near the top 10 globally on any broadband access measure.
The picture would be even worse if speed of service were taken into account, but nobody, particularly the FCC (which defines broadband speed as low as 200 kbps), has data on the speeds of broadband service in the U.S.
Japan’s fastest-growing broadband service offers speeds in excess of 100 Mbps, and Korea offers 100 Mbps uploads and downloads. Most current U.S. customers are lucky to get one-tenth or even one one-hundredth of that speed, particularly for uploads — and they pay more for the lower speed.
By OECD estimates, the U.S. price-per-megabit of connection speed is more than 10 times as high in the U.S. as in Japan. And for sheer speed, overseas offerings blow the U.S. away. While major U.S. carriers, such as Verizon, report initiatives to bring high-speed fiber to the home, and a Verizon spokesperson reported current plans to reach 3 million homes per year with high-speed fiber, that’s roughly 1% of the U.S. population, even if that target is met. Only 1% to 2% of U.S. broadband users in Pew’s latest study report having fiber or T1-speed access, while some other nations are more aggressively pursuing deployment of fiber to the home and other forms of very high-speed connectivity.
Experts who defend the country’s relatively poor showing do so using several arguments, all of which Hoffman knocks down. First, they say, the U.S. has a low-level of population density compared to, say, Korea, and it’s difficult to build infrastructure in rural areas. But, even less densely populated countries still beat the U.S. at the broadband game, Hoffman counters.
That argument falters, however, when one considers that five of the 11 nations that lead the U.S. in per capita broadband penetration, including Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Canada, have significantly lower population densities than the U.S.
Another argument: some of these other countries are more affluent when measured by per capita income. Um, no, says Hoffman:
Despite its comparatively high poverty rate, the United States is ranked second overall for gross domestic product among OECD nations, ahead of every nation except Luxembourg, and the World Ban”s latest numbers for 2005 estimate the U.S. is seventh in worldwide gross national income per capita, and third in per-capita purchasing power. As a rule, prosperity clearly correlates with broadband access, but the United States is comparatively more affluent than most of the nations it trails in the broadband arena.
Yet another argument: other countries have younger populations than the U.S. Think again, says Hoffman. The U.S. has a statistically younger population than virtually every other developed nation; only Korea and Iceland beat the U.S. on this measure.
The U.S. has no government policy that favors more and faster broadband connections, unlike most other countries (particularly Korea) that top the U.S. In fact, the free market approach so characteristic of this country is the cause of the country’s broadband failures.
Yet the intensely “hands-off” market-driven system in recent years seems to have resulted in a chaotic and inefficient marketplace, and one that doesn’t represent the true state of the United States as a technology leader. Laissez-faire isn’t a viable stance if the goal is to compete most effectively against other industrialized nations.
On January 31st, I listened to a panel of experts debate this very issue at the Congressional Internet Caucus’ State of the Net Conference. Mark Lloyd of the Center for American Progress spurred laughter when he pointed out that the U.S. isn’t even keeping pace with Canada in terms of broadband connections.
We are fundamentally behind Canada in terms of both speed and price. Forget some isolated island somewhere.
That comparison said it all to the group of policy wonks in attendance. It’s one thing for the U.S. to fall behind far-away and demographically different countries, but it’s another thing for the world leader to fall behind Canada.
Cynthia Brumfield at 9:21 AM|Comments(2)
We are behind Canada? OMG that sucks. It will be okay. There are more broadband companies competing in the U.S. and the price will become lower. Verizon and AT&T has poor customer support so that opens the door for http://ds3providers.com
to succeed with their quality of service.
Posted by: john at October 24, 2007 2:56 AM
I definitely agree that it is an insult to Americans that we are behind Canada in Broadband Penetration. I can understand how Korea and Japan have high Broadband Penetration because of their relatively small areas to cover, but that is not the case for Canada. Americans need to wake up and smell the coffee that we are technologically falling behind nations that don't even have armies!
Posted by: Fred at March 24, 2007 8:46 PM
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