From: "David S. Isenberg" <isen@xxxxxxxx>
Date: October 15, 2004 12:01:21 AM PDT
To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Om Malik on: Shrinking consumer broadband
choices?
Dewayne,
Even #13 is wrong by now -- this summary statistic comes from data
that are over a year old. If you look at relative growth rates, it is
likely
that by now the U.S. has fallen to #15, and probably lower (because
the data the ITU has published, which I'm projecting, are only
collected
from the top 15 broadband per capita countries).
That is, it is probable that there are nations that the last ITU report
ranked below #15 (which we do not see in the top-15 report)
that have per capita broadband growth rates much higher than the U.S.
These would rise to above #15 the next time the ITU reports, so without
a huge growth spurt in U.S. broadband uptake, the U.S. might not even
be in the next ITU broadband report on the top 15 broadband per capita
nations.
This is why I've been saying that the U.S. is becoming a second rate
nation for broadband connectivity. I'm not using a mere figure of
speech.
The above takes the definition of broadband as a given, but we know
that
the U.S. has so-called broadband connections that are 100 times slower
than they should be (or 100 times more expensive, take your pick).
In Japan they're even rolling out gigabit-per-second Fiber to the Home
service priced at less than US$40 a month, see
http://isen.com/blog/2004/10/in-japan-one-gigabitsec-for-40-month.html
David I
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