Iceland has replaced South Korea with the highest broadband penetration, according to 2005 broadband statistics released by OECD. Iceland now has 26.7 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, ahead of Korea with 25.4, and Netherlands with 25.3. US has 16.8 broadband connections per 100 subscribers.
Actually in sheer numbers Iceland has 78017 subscribers while Korea has 12.19 million subscribers. US has 49.39 million broadband subscribers, and represent 31% of all broadband connections in the OECD.
Korea, is getting ready for fiber band it seems. In Korea, fibre-based broadband connections grew 52.4% during 2005, OECD data shows, while there was a net loss of DSL (-3.3%) and cable (-1.7%) subscribers during the year.
What about China ? (even they are not be part of the OECD). Rumor has it that they may have over 100 million users (although I don’t know if they’re all broadband)
America is far too big in area to be number one in the percentage of people who have broadband.
How can the OECD say that 17% of US Internet users are on broadband, but Forrester (in the previous story) say that over 50% of households are on broadband?
Someone seems to be mis-stating the numbers.
actually it is 50% of online households are online according to forrester. i think i agree, it is going to be tough to get the overall penetration up by the sheer size of the country.
Now if only Australia could get up there…but we don’t seem to be doing too badly.
“The strongest per-capita subscriber growth came from Iceland, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands and Australia. Each country added more than 6 subscribers per 100 inhabitants during 2005.”
Renai LeMay
ZDNet Australia
I wish Aussie would get up there too! Broadband here sucks!
OK! Let the USA Telecom bashing begin! We need to be more like Iceland!
What has the small size of Iceland got to do with it, I wonder. Iceland is about as large/small as The Netherlands, but has only some 250.000 people living there, where The Netherlands have 64 times as many (some 16 million). Iceland has a lot of lava, which makes digging ducts kind of hard, compared to the Dutch sand. Still Iceland per capita has more broadband and more fiber-to-the-home connections then The Netherlands. Apparrently people in Iceland think being a frontrunner is worth the effort. That’s what makes a country different, not the size of it.
Vincent Dekker in The Netherlands
I would love to see stats for average speed. What qualifies for Broadband in the U.S. might not make the grade elsewhere.