US drops in worldwide broadband subscriptions rankings
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development website, broadband statistics highlights for June 2007:
* Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Korea, Norway and Iceland lead the OECD in broadband penetration, each with over 29 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
* The strongest per-capita subscriber growth over the year was in Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Norway, Denmark and Luxembourg. Each country added more than 5 subscribers per 100 inhabitants during the past year.
* Operators in several countries continue upgrading subscriber lines to fibre. Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and Fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) subscriptions/connections account for 36% of all broadband subscriptions in Japan, and 31% in Korea.
* The United States is the largest broadband market in the OECD with 66.2 million subscribers. US broadband subscribers now represent 30% of all broadband connections in the OECD.
In the past seven years, the U.S. has dropped from fourth to 15th among 30 developed nations in the percentage of households that subscribe to broadband Internet…
(Maybe it shouldn’t, but dropping to 15th bothers me. It seems to me that those with some insight have been stating that we are about to be, and/or have been, passed by other countries in regards to science/math/innovation/etcetera.)