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Top 30 Countries for Broadband Internet Access
By The Editors
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30 Aug 2007
An Aug. 29 article in the Washington Post tells the story of how incredibly fast Internet access -- at very cheap prices -- is taking off in Japan, thanks to "better and more agressive government regulation." Compared to Japan, Internet access in the United States is slow and expensive -- and most of the rest of the industrialized world doesn't fair to well either by comparison.
Below are two charts we put together to illustrate how the world's top 30 Internet-connected countries fare on speed of broadband access available, as well as on the price of that access. The data all comes from a June 2007 report (pdf file) of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Japan and Korea are in a speed class by themselves, with Finland, Sweden and France -- all averaging near 20 mbps -- constituting a clear second tier.
The price of Internet access is under a dollar per month for each megabit per second in just three countries -- Japan, Korea and Sweden. The cost in all of the top 10 countries averages less than $5 per month/megabit.
