In terms of broadband usage, the U.S. is No. 1 in the world. It is also 15th. The disparity comes from different means of measurement in two reports that evaluate two very different sets of data.
The U.S. famously lags other countries in terms of penetration of consumers, earning a consistent ranking in the middle of the second decile of broadband adoption in one study that has been going on for years. That has not changed.
A new assessment, now in its second year, aims to take in more than just availability and consumer adoption. By including a variety of factors that include a measurement of business and governmental usage of broadband and an evaluation of the associated skills of a national populace, another set of researchers estimate that the U.S. is first in what they call “useful connectivity.”
The new report is called the “Connectivity Scorecard 2009” and was written by Leonard Waverman, fellow of the London Business School, in conjunction with researchers at LECG.
Referring to communications and technology as “ICT,” the report concludes: “The United States has seen more clear-cut productivity gains from ICT than has Europe, and a major source of this U.S. productivity advantage is the usage of ICT by businesses that are not themselves producers of ICT – for example, retailing. Within Europe, Nordic countries have seen a greater contribution from ICT than other parts of Europe,”
Rank of countries in the Connectivity Scorecard
The scores are averages of multiple factors; maximum score possible is 10. The researchers grouped countries by their economic models.
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Source: Connectivity Scorecard |
The researchers caution that merely leading the rankings is not enough (the U.S. is followed by Sweden, Japan and Canada). Scores are from 1 to 10, and no country achieved a 7. In other words, even the leaders have areas in which significant improvement is possible.
Further, using what metrics are available, the researchers demonstrate that improvement can translate directly into economic growth.
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OECD Broadband Subscribers per 100 inhabitants (Click on Image to Enlarge) |
That’s a major argument concerning broadband build-outs around the world, including the broadband provisions in the U.S. stimulus bill. The New York Times today reports that economists are having a hard time grappling with how to measure the benefits of broadband availability (story here; registration required), despite a headline and lead that suggest there are few.
Meanwhile, the most recent statistics (June 2008) from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has been compiling the most widely used data on broadband, continue to rank the U.S. in the middle of the developed-nation pack, coming in at No. 15 on the list of companies in terms of per capita penetration.
