US Does Surprisingly Well in Internet Survey

Herman's hermit writes "A new report from the World Economic Forum ranks the US number four when it comes to 'network readiness,' despite the fact that the same report has the US 17th broadband subscribers and 19th in bandwidth. 'While good news overall for the US, which is poised to take full advantage of information technology gains, the report probably won't change many minds when it comes to talking specifically about US broadband deployment.'"

Large

I think the main point in broadband that people just don't get is that the US is huge while many smaller countries are the size of one of the US's states, its is expensive to get broadband.

Re:Large

But we've got 50 of them. Maybe it's tougher to wire up the more rural states, but doesn't the lack of clusters of high-quality inexpensive broadband in our urban areas (comparable to, say, the level of service you might find in the Netherlands) suggest more issues than geography comprise the bandwidth problem?

Re:

Well, to that we can blame the government-funded monopolies that control 75% of all major broadband, but still, geography comes into play when there are just some places that so far can't even get broadband even if someone was willing.

Population spread a bigger issue

I live in New Zealand. Total population 4 million or so. Cities have good broadband at very good rates. I live rurally where there is no wired broadband option and get a terrestrial wireless service instead. This costs a lot more and is a lot slower.

If you

Re:Large

Does this count as a Slashdot meme already? Every time there is a story on Slashdot about how the net is somehow better somewhere else than in the US the result is "But the US is so big" and then we get "There is a country that is even less densely populated than the US that has better net connections.

Re:Large

I don't understand your point. A country that is huge, but has few people or a very low GDP per capita would logically have a problem getting everyone on broadband connections.
The US does not have a low population density and most certainly its population is not poor.
And I did not say it is easy to give broadband to every rural area. We can start from cities.
I live in NYC. In the middle of Manhattan the best you can do is 3/768 or 5/384 connections. I mean, really.
The same at my previous house in Queens (Long Island City) and Brooklyn. I was excited when I heard speakeasy was finally installing ADSL2+ connections (up to 10Mb/s in my area), only to find out they wanted $180/month without voice (yes, it is static, but I don't need it, and they don't have a dynamic option). At the same time I hear of much poorer countries where 24Mbit ADSL2+ connections are $50 or less.
So, who is not getting what? I guess the reason for having nothing done for years is that a lot of people share your mentality. Hey, we are a big country, it is expensive... Like ONE FRIGGIN CITIZEN has to pay for the whole thing???

Re:Large

The US does not have a low population density

The U.S. has roughly one tenth the population density of many western European countries at 80 people per square mile.

and most certainly its population is not poor.

Clearly you've never been to Appalachia. Or southern Louisiana. Or rural Mississippi...the list goes on. Some people along the Ohio River live in tar-paper homes.

Re:Large

That might be a believable argument if the denser parts of the U.S. had internet access on par with that of Europe.

Re:

Granted, there are regions of the USA that have very few people.

But the parent poster said the best he can get in New York is 768kbits/second broadband. The best sensible price broadband in most cities in the UK is 24Mbits/s, and it's higher in many other

Re:

Millionth time this little fact gets brought up in this type of discussion but:

The second-place winner is Sweden, which has a population density of 52 people per mile square, as compared to the US' 80 people per mile square.

Re:

24Mb/s ADSL2+ is £18-£24 in the UK (not available outside large settlements yet AFAIK). I'm really surprised you don't have that in New York yet (I'm sure it's been available in London for at least three years now, maybe more). Wh

Re:Large

>>>"The US does not have a low population density"

Oh really? I challenge you to drive from NYC to California on I-80, and then repeat that statement. You won't be able to, because then you'll come to realize what I have realized from my cross-country journeys:

- The U.S. is one large cornfield, sprinkled with a few cities here and there.

Re:

Except that US deployment typically works on the state level, not the national level, they certainly have the population and consumer demand to cover the price, and the government has paid them once already to take care of it. It is the telcos' fault that

Re:

I think the main point in broadband that people just don't get is that the US is huge while many smaller countries are the size of one of the US's states, its is expensive to get broadband.

Here in Australia with one tenth the population density the situation is almost exactly the same as in the USA. That doesn't sound right to me. I think the service should be better in the US.

Re:

Some DSL providers in the early years have done this as well in the US. I'm not sure if it still goes on, but there's a reason why routers still offer the ability to "clone" a mac address.

It's also worth mentioning that most cable modem arn't pre-programme

Re:

I don't understand:

Why do these surveys keep comparing a 2500-mile wide continental nation to tiny little states? There's a huge difference between wiring metropolitan France and the cornfields of America. Apples and oranges.

A proper comparison wo

Re:

There's a problem with that, though. In Australia and Canada, the vast sections of empty space really are empty. If you look at population density maps, you see that Canada is densely populated around the borders to the US, and the rest is COMPLETELY emp

Pretty much dead wrong there.

Here's a global population density map: http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/popden.html [usda.gov]

Notice how the EU is all dark orange, except for parts of central Spain. Lots of people, more financial incentive to wire everything.

Notice how 80% of Canada is completely deserted, because it's too far north to be habitable. The Northern Yukon does an awful lot to decrease Canada's average population density, but since there's NOBODY there it doesn't affect the difficulty of wiring up broadband. Australia, same thing, except it's like 95% instead of 80% empty.

China is enough of a mix that it might make sense to compare to the US, but I'm guessing there are enough other issues with development, etc. to make it a tough comparison.

Re:

Not to mention the ISPs in some countries (the police state, UK especially) will try to limit service by machine with mac address (forcing you to use mac spoofing to allow a router).

While others in the same police state will supply a wireless router as part of the subscription and couldn't care less how many computers are hooked up. Personally I have two desktops, an N800 and a Wii all happily accessing the Internet over here in Airs

"Network Readiness"

It took a fair bit of searching, but according to them, 'network readiness' means: the presence of an ICT-friendly and conducive environment, by looking at a number of features of the broad business environment, some regulatory aspects, and the soft and hard infrastructure for ICT; the level of ICT readiness and preparation to use ICT of the three main national stakeholders--individuals, the business sector, and the government; and the actual use of ICT by the above three stakeholders.

Re:

Network Readiness simply reflects the emotional state of male posters to Craigslist personals.
Offers of BroadBandWith (BBW) and big pipes don't correlate as well with reality.

Re:

The definition sounds like a hybrid of "JD Power & Associates" BS and some corporate jargon.

What about "Network Access per Capita" (the percentage of people in certain areas that can call their provider and start a broadband account/expect it to be

Don't look at the ranking, look at the scores

There's no statistical difference between the top ten or so (+- 4%) and the top 25 are all within a +- 10% band.

Given that online surveys are notoriously bad and need wide margins of error, I would not read anything into this except for the obvious: First world countries (EU, USA etc) are ahead of Chad, Zimbabwe etc.

Duh!

Definition of "broadband"

Just curious: What is the common definition of "broadband" these days, and in reports like this? Does broadband still mean communications that have been divided into many independent channels/applications (TV, phone, IP), or has it been dumbed down (and y

"Network readiness in 10 years" report needed

It's no use having all the networks if they are going to stop working in several years, after IPV4 address space runs out. The fair question would be which countries networks can be upgraded to IPV6 with minimum effort. Full support for systems that need i