Cynthia over at IP Democracy has an analysis (of an analysis) of US broadband in comparison with the world, to which I will add an analysis.
She contends that the US is falling behind in broadband and implies that we are in bad shape and need more government involvement. She makes some cogent points, but doesn't dig deep enough.
The first and most predictable example she points to is South Korea, and she claims that they have 100Mb/s upload and download speeds. I will make the equally predictable point that population density does matter (scroll down), but the real question is: how does she know that they actually get 100Mb up and down? She doesn't, and the original article doesn't -- it's just a meme that gets reported a lot.
An outfit called Analysys looked at actual network performance vs advertised performance [pdf], and found that South Koreans only get around 40% of what they pay for, at least for the "fast" plans, while the US gets over 90%. Their actual bandwidth is around 20Mb on the high end, while in the US we get around 13Mb.
Yes, Korea is still faster, but with 10 times the population density and the drum beat of a Korean miracle, shouldn't we expect something more miraculous?
Due to this inefficiency, the South Koreans pay around $3/Mb for connectivity vs around $5/Mb in the US. Since laying a mile of fiber will reach 10x as many people in Korea, shouldn't their prices be around 10x lower? Or even 5x? In fact, it sounds like the Koreans are getting ripped off, considering the efficiencies available to them.
Further, our actual throughput is well ahead of all of the European countries included in the Analysys survey. In working with colleagues at my company's European offices, I know this to be the case. I will take real bandwidth over advertised bandwidth any day.
Richard Hoffman (author of the original analysis) attempts to take apart the population density argument by pointing to countries with lower densities than ours who have better broadband penetration:
That argument falters, however, when one considers that five of the 11 nations that lead the U.S. in per capita broadband penetration, including Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Canada, have significantly lower population densities than the U.S.
...and that's fine. But notice that four of these five countries are Scandinavian welfare states. Really, he is offering a single counter-example with a number of different names.
These countries do not refute the population density argument. Rather, they illuminate what I have said before: that socialism can only succeed in a homogeneous population. These countries are among the least diverse in the world -- so much so that the Human Genome Project chose Scandinavia because of its limited gene pool.
If the goal is broadband penetration in a non-diverse economy, Scandinavia offers a good example. The government can make spending decisions with which a majority of the population will agree. The rest of world, especially the US, requires a little more diversity of opinion and priorities.
In fact, we can combine all of Scandinavia, call it a country and still be smaller than a single US state -- say, Florida, which is a leader in broadband. In just one year, the US added more new broadband users (24 million) than the total populations of Richard's Scandinavian examples. So what are we comparing, exactly?
So while Cynthia's and Richard's articles offer some interesting insights, they are not blowing the lid off of any broadband myths. In fact, they are often simply repeating them.
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Look, we can consider broadband policy to be about keeping up with some mythical Joneses, or we can consider broadband policy to be about making the best choices for our citizens and our economy.
The idea that our state of broadband is hurting our economy is betrayed by the facts: a look at our job creation, unemployment, per capita incomes and growth rates tell a very different story. None of this should be taken for granted, of course, but the "broadband = competitiveness" meme is not borne out. How many jobs is Iceland creating, by the way?
If broadband penetration in the US is relatively low, we might consider the possibility that citizens have given it a certain priority in their lives. We'll get higher rates over time -- Richard notes 24 million new US broadband users over the course of a year, a 40% increase. But to have the government setting policy on this is to impose a priority on citizens that they have not chosen for themselves.
Of course I would like to see more and faster broadband. We are building a lot of it in this country, and broadband use and availability are growing apace. Let's focus on doing the right thing, instead of making a superficial top-10 list.
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Related: Martin Geddes asks us not to panic:
If we separately ranked US states, or divided the UK up into regions, the picture would change radically. London and southeast England would look great. So would a few US states like Virginia.
Some of those little regions with greater connectivity have familiar name tags. Like ‘Norway’, and ‘Luxembourg’. Yes, they’re real countries. [...] Yet their position in the rankings is an artificial by-product of how we divide up the statistics. It means nothing to the median European or North American.
If North and South Korea had a massive reconcilliation tomorrow, and thus the Unified Korean Republic plummeted to #102 in the world, do you think things are getting better, or worse? (Hint: begins with ‘b’.)
That's the question. We can easily point out that California and Florida have broadband rates that exceed those of the cited "leaders", with similar populations. So aren't they on the list?
If we want a meaningful list, let's talk apples to apples: compare actual, usable broadband across a number of large and diverse economies. How about North America vs the Euro area? Or versus the greater Far East?
