14th Ranked US Continues to Trail Global Broadband Leaders

Broadband has become the global standard for connecting to the Internet. With fast, reliable connections, a recent OECD report found that the average fixed broadband penetration has slightly improved to 24.3 percent, up from 23.3 percent last year for its 33 member countries. Yet amid this global rise, the US remains far behind OECD leaders.

In a measure of fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants from June 2010, the US placed 14th with 27.1 percent. This puts the US far behind the highest ranking countries: the Netherlands (37.8%), Denmark (37.3%), and Switzerland (37.1%).

The connection types, which were broken down by technology, found that US broadband proliferation was split into 14.6 percent cable broadband, 10.9 percent DSL, 1.4 percent fiber/LAN, and 0.3 percent other. With little investment in new fiber connections, the US is letting this valuable broadband sector stagnate.

Other countries, specifically Korea and Japan, have invested heavily in fiber connections, with 17.9 and 14.6 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants respectively. These figures represent a huge chunk of all broadband traffic in both countries:

Fiber accounts for half of all broadband connections in Japan (55%) and Korea (52%). Other leading countries include the Slovak Republic (28%), Sweden (24%) and Denmark (12%).

For the US to compete globally, we need to make broadband universality a priority and promote the adoption of the leading broadband technologies, which are taking other countries leaps and strides above the US.

Internet Economy: broadband statistics (June 2010)

Total fixed and wireless broadband subscriptions by country (June 2010)