Poor showing for U.S. in latest high speed rankings

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development released its latest high speed Internet rankings last month. Not surprisingly, the findings paint a bleak picture of high speed Internet access in the United States.

Among OECD's 30 member countries, the U.S. ranks 15th in high speed Internet penetration -- the percentage of the population with high speed access. Just 22.1 percent of Americans have high speed connections, compared to more than 34 percent in Denmark, the top-ranked country.

The U.S. fares no better when it comes to the speed of Internet connections and the growth of high speed Internet access, coming in 19th place in both categories, behind nations like New Zealand, Portugal, and Luxembourg.

These findings are distressing, because they show the United States continuing to fall farther behind the rest of the world in an area crucial to our economic health. As the Computerworld blog puts it:

All this is cause for concern because broadband is an engine of economic growth and innovation. The further we fall behind, the most likely that our economy will suffer, and that others will catch up.

We hope the continued release of data showing the poor state of high speed Internet access in the U.S. will spur a stronger movement toward improving the situation. After all, recognizing the extent of the problem is the first step in crafting an effective solution.

Robert Atkinson -- president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), which released its own comparative study of high speed Internet access earlier this year -- said of the OECD report:

"It will give people interested in broadband comparisons more fine-grained data to better assess the relative condition of broadband deployment and take-up in the United States. The new portal also reflects a change in the broadband policy issues, from a concern largely focused on adoption rates to one that now recognizes the importance of higher speeds."

The full OECD report is available at the new OECD Broadband Portal, which will be the permanent online home of all high speed Internet-related work by the OECD.

New report: U.S. broadband is still a miserable failure (Computerworld Internet Insider blog)

New broadband data: The U.S. is still behind (InfoWorld)

U.S. Falls Further Behind in High Speed Internet Access (Speed Matters)

OECD Broadband Portal (OECD)