US Drops From 4th to 15th (and charges more)

The United States is falling further and further behind in bandwidth speed and availability, yet is charging more Internet connectivity:

Trifecta of lost opportunities: US #15 in broadband ranking

...the truth is that the US only has a broadband policy if you consider "doing nothing" to be a policy. When you're convinced that any form of government regulation, policy-setting, or program only mucks up the market, this makes sense; if you look at other countries and find that nations without a plan "will fare worse than if they had smart broadband policies," the continued refusal to do anything meaningful looks willfully ignorant.

A major new report on broadband policy from the nonpartisan Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) suggests that government action alone won't produce a broadband panacea, but that leadership from the top and a carefully-targeted set of policies can do plenty of good. After doing detailed case studies of nine countries, the report concluded that "those that make broadband a priority, coordinate across agencies, put real resources behind the strategy, and promote both supply and demand" do better than those which do nothing.

Critics of the current US approach to spurring broadband deployment and adoption point out that the country has been falling on most broadband metrics throughout the decade. One of the most reliable, that issued by the OECD, shows the US falling from 4th place in 2001 to 15th place in 2007. While this ranking in particular has come under criticism from staunchly pro-market groups, the ITIF's analysis shows that these numbers are the most accurate we have. According to an ITIF analysis of various OECD surveys, the US is in 15th place worldwide and it lags numerous other countries in price, speed, and availability--a trifecta of lost opportunities.

With an average broadband speed of 4.9Mbps, the US is being Chariots of Fire-d by South Korea (49.5Mbps), Japan (63.6Mbps), Finland (21.7Mbps), Sweden (16.8Mbps), and France (17.6Mbps), among others. Not only that, but the price paid per megabyte in the US ($2.83) is substantially higher than those countries, all of which come in at less than $0.50 per megabyte.

SD ranks near bottom in bandwidth speeds

South Dakota is 2nd to last in a state by state ranking of bandwidth speeds, and the US came in 16th for rankings with other nations in a report by SpeedMatters.org. David Warlick posted this blog about the reports:
2¢ Worth » State-by-State Bandwidth Ranking

eSchool News online quotes that large gaps exist among the average download speeds of various states as well as nations.

A pair of reports form speematters.org:

Broadband Mapping and Data Collection
Testimony of CWA President Larry Cohen before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

ViewDocument (PDF 40 kb) May 17, 2007 | Category: Data, Defining High Speed, Need
for National Policy

The Broadband Fact Book
This publication, from the Internet Innovation Alliance, presents a wide array of information
about broadband in the U.S.--user demographics, data on speeds and availablity, and statistics ono the growth of the internet.
View Document (PDF 2.7 mb) June 1, 2007 | Category: Data, Economic Growth

Interesting quotes from the factbook:

Less than 25% of rural Americans have
broadband connections By the end of 2005, 24% of rural Americans had high-speed Internet connections at home compared with 39% of adult Americans living elsewhere. In 2003, 9% of rural Americans had
broadband at home, less than half the rate (22%) of urban and suburban Americans. For overall Internet use (by whatever connection from any location), the penetration rate for adult rural Americans lagged the rest of the country by 8% at the end of 2005 (a 62% to 70% margin). This is about half the gap that existed at the end of 2003, Pew Internet & American Life Project reports.

Japanese can get 8.5 times the speed for
one-twelfth the cost U.S.
consumer pay more for slower speeds. In the U.S., DSL generally reaches speeds of up to 1.5 — 3.0 mbps at a price averaging $30-$50 per month (not including fees) while cable modems generally reach speeds of 3-5 mbps for $40-$50 per month. In Japan, the cost of an average connection with the speed of 26 mbps costs about $22.
The contrast is even more striking when expressed in terms of cost per 100 kbps. The top speed generally available in Japan is 51 mbps at a cost of $0.06 per 100 kbps. The top speed generally available
in the U.S. is 6 mbps available at a cost of $0.72 per 100 kbps. In other words, the Japanese have 8.5 times the speed at 1/12 of the cost.

Broadband telework – time savings equivalent
to 4 weeks of vacation a year A survey conducted by Sage Research offers further evidence of the benefits of IP communications. 100 organizations that have deployed IP communications reported an average benefit of 4.3 hours per week (or 28 days a year) for each remote worker.

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