[LINK] Aus ahead of US in broadband access

[Jan Whitaker]

Australia leads US in broadband access

http://business.theage.com.au/business/australia-leads-us-in-broadband-access-20090619-cmgo.html
June 19, 2009 - 9:49AM

Australians have greater access to broadband internet than Americans, 
according to a global survey.

Australia was placed 11th in the survey, with 72 per cent of homes 
using high-speed broadband. South Korea, where 95 per cent of homes 
have broadband, topped the survey.

Among other Asia-Pacific nations, Japan ranked 16th with 64 per cent, 
New Zealand ranked 25th with 57 per cent and China ranked 43rd with 
21 per cent.

The United States, where just 60 per cent of households had broadband 
as of last year, ranked 20th in the survey of 58 countries by 
Boston-based Strategy Analytics, released on Thursday.

Five of the top 10 countries or territories in the survey were in 
Asia and the firm predicted the broadband subscriber base in the 
Asia-Pacific region will increase on average by a further 15 per cent 
a year between 2009 and 2013.

Strategy Analytics said South Korea's highly-urbanised population and 
its government-backed broadband policy accounted for its high rate of 
broadband penetration.

With South Korea ranked first, the other top nine included Singapore 
ranked second with 88 per cent, followed by the Netherlands (85 per 
cent), Denmark (82 per cent), Taiwan (81 per cent), Hong Kong (81 per 
cent), Israel (77 per cent), Switzerland (76 per cent), Canada (76 
per cent) and Norway (75 per cent).

Thailand ranked 51st with 7 per cent, Vietnam ranked 52nd, also with 
7 per cent, the Philippines ranked 53rd with 5 per cent, India ranked 
57th with 2 per cent and Indonesia ranked 58th with 1 per cent.

Strategy Analytics acknowledged that measuring broadband penetration 
has been a subject of controversy with arguments being made over 
whether it should be measured by household or per capita.

"Broadband rankings are often the subject of great debate and 
hand-wringing,'' said David Mercer, vice president of Strategy Analytics.

"Though our rankings may differ from those of other organisations, it 
is because we are looking at the appropriate metrics,'' he said.

"In far too many cases, people are looking at the wrong things,'' 
said Ben Piper, a Strategy Analytics analyst.

"Residential broadband is overwhelmingly consumed on a household 
basis - not individually.

"Reporting broadband penetration on a per capita basis misses the 
mark, and can provide grossly misleading results.''

A survey released on Thursday by the Washington-based Pew Research 
Centre's internet and American Life Project found that as of April of 
this year, 63 per cent of individual adult Americans have broadband 
internet connections at home.

That was an increase of 15 per cent from a year earlier, Pew said, 
and an indication that the economic recession has had little effect 
on decisions whether to buy or keep a home high-speed internet connection.



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

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