August 6, 2007

The U.S. is unlikely to ever regain its broadband leadership.

In 1996 I had 384-kilobit-per-second (kbps) symmetrical DSL while my TV production partners in the UK had nothing at home and 128-kbps ISDN at the office. America was the top broadband country in the world. But now we're in the middle of the pack among developed countries and there are nine DEVELOPING countries that have more and better broadband service than does America according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). To those who say this is BS and that we're actually ahead of the world if you control for rural populations, family size, the effect of Wi-Fi hotspots, etc., I say that is simply wrong: we are behind and losing ground. And the countries ahead of us, a diverse lot including France, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, the UK, and even Canada, are for the most part growing faster than we are in large part because of this IT advantage.

Read more.

No comments: