UPDATE, Jan. 21, 2013: The original post on this page featured charts we put together with data from a June 2007 report of the Information Technology Innovation Foundation. However, the original images of the charts were lost due to a technical problem.
At any rate, since 2007, there has been a lot of new research into the question of broadband speeds across countries, and much of it has been devoted to debunking the idea that the United States lags significantly behind other countries.
The best recent post we could find on this subject comes from Entropy Economics, a research firm focused on technology and the global Economy. So, we commend to you Bret Swanson’s Dec. 14, 2012, post on broadband speed around the world.
ORIGINAL AUG. 30, 2007 POST:
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.
ORIGINAL CHART LOST DUE TO TECHNICAL PROBLEM.
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.
ORIGINAL CHART LOST DUE TO TECHNICAL PROBLEM.