The United States is the world’s largest broadband market.
But the country lost considerable ground last year in the average broadband speeds its residents receive.
And the despite its affluence, the U.S. remains far from the top of the list of developed countries in the number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. With 26.7 broadband users per 100 residents, the U.S. is 15th and trails many Western European nations along with Korea and Canada. Denmark leads the world with 37.2 subscribers per 100 people.
The survey is interesting fodder for the debate that has sprung up over President Obama’s planned broadband spending initiative. With some of the leading nations having received government support, the analysis from the European based Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development points to their advantage.
The U.S. remains the world’s largest broadband market with 80 million subscribers, or 30 percent of those in the developed countries the OECD surveys.
But in 2007, it was 13th in the world in terms of the speeds its commercial providers offer users. Last year it slipped to 19th.
The average download speed available in the U.S. is 9.6 Mbps, or almost a tenth of what is offered in Japan, where the average speed is 92.8 Mbps. Korea, which like Japan uses a lot of optical fiber, provides an average speed of 80.8 Mbps, and countries such as France (51 Mbps), Finland (19.2 Mbps) and Netherlands (18.1 Mbps) also best the states.
The U.S. didn’t lose ground last year in broadband per capita. But that points to an interesting observation that should influence government policy makers as they allocate money to extend broadband into rural areas.
Perhaps some of the money should be used lifts speeds in communities that already have broadband since that is where the nation continues to lose ground.
The US is 19th in the world in average broadband speeds, according to the OECD
Posted by Mark Boslet 
