said by Nightfall :

The US is the largest country of all those and ranks 8th? I think thats pretty darn good considering all the area we have to cover.

said by nasadude :

well, China ain't exactly small and it looks like they are close to the U.S.

and Sweden and Norway are small but have low population densities, much lower than major U.S. cities, which our wonderful incumbents can't seem to bring fiber to.

size and population density are not why we are 8th or 15th or whatever place instead of 1 or 2 - it's our monopoly/duopoly market and the incumbents lack of capital expenditure to lay fiber; upsets investors, you know, to be spending all that money instead of giving them dividends.

the way I would say it is: 8th is pretty darn good considering the U.S. market has no competition.

said by DaveNJ :

Plus the fact that most have cable, and have Docsis2. Fiber isnt as necessary in todays cable environment, yet. Its really only telco using fiber.

said by Matt :

I don't believe anyone but Cablevision has deployed DOCSIS 2. The vast majority of cable systems are DOCSIS 1.1.

said by Nightfall :

Which is fast enough for 98% of the broadband users out there since all most people do is email and web browse.

said by Nightfall :

....

I could go on and on here....

said by firephoto :

Oh, that's it. We only need "good enough". Make sure grandma is good with her quest for recipes and seeing small blurry pics of the grandkids.

The land of the free becomes land of the good enough.

said by nasadude :

here have a drink of some facts, then you're welcome to have at it:

1st google hit on my search, but references the OECD data I knew existed; I'm sure the most recent OECD data could be found directly with a little more effort:

»www.saschameinrath.com/2006apr13···relation

A closer look at the recent OECD data (through December 2005) offers a pretty damning critique of this position.

The population density of the United States is roughly 31 inhabitants per square kilometer. While some countries with higher broadband penetration rates do have much higher population densities (e.g., South Korea has 483 inhabitants per square kilometer; Japan has 338), others have much lower (e.g., Iceland has 3 inhabitants per square kilometer, as does Canada). In the end, with the US in 12th place, 5 countries have lower population densities, 6 have higher.

What this points to is that broadband penetration rates don't correlate well with population densities. Which begs the question, what then, if not population density, accounts for why so many countries are doing better than the US; and, relatedly, how has the US managed to do so poorly (slipping from first to 12th in a single decade)?

Here's the full info for population for all 30 OECD countries covered the first number is the broadband penetration rate, the second is that country's population density (inhabitants per square kilometer -- as of December 2005):

Read more...

Iceland 26.7 3.0
Korea 25.4 483.0
Netherlands 25.3 399.0
Denmark 25.0 125.0
Switzerland 23.1 179.0
Finland 22.5 15.0
Norway 21.9 14.0
Canada 21.0 3.0
Sweden 20.3 20.0
Belgium 18.3 341.0
Japan 17.6 338.0
United States 16.8 31.0
United Kingdom 15.9 244.0
France 15.2 110.0
Luxembourg 14.9 174.0
Austria 14.1 97.0
Australia 13.8 3.0
Germany 13.0 231.0
Italy 11.9 191.0
Spain 11.7 85.0
Portugal 11.5 114.0
New Zealand 8.1 15.0
Ireland 6.7 58.0
Czech Republic 6.4 129.0
Hungary 6.3 109.0
Slovak Republic 2.5 110.0
Poland 2.4 122.0
Mexico 2.2 52.0
Turkey 2.1 92.0
Greece 1.4 84.0

Which is fast enough for 98% of the broadband users out there since all most people do is email and web browse.

said by EPS :

Those numbers can be misleading- like Canada, the numbers average out to 3.0, sure, but most of that broadband is likely in the most densely populated part of the country, the strip along the US border. Iceland is also very unevenly distributed.

Of course, the US isn't evenly distributed either- much of population is in more densely populated areas than the density numbers reveal.