Tech News
Broadband report reveals international comparisons
By Stevie Smith
Jul 18, 2007, 13:30 GMT

According to a new wide-ranging report published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), broadband statistics are varying wildly across the globe in terms of costing and performance.

More pointedly, the OECD study reveals that while 60 percent of its 30 democratic member countries are now utilising the advantages of broadband access, the differences in performance feedback sway substantially regarding speed and pricing.

In terms of best speed for lowest price, the report reveals that those countries to have made the switch over to super high-speed fibre-based networks were enjoying the most value – including the likes of Finland, Japan, Korea, and Sweden.

For example, broadband users in Japan have access to 100Mbps connections, which offer speeds some 10 times greater than the average offered up by the OECD. Japan also offers the lowest price point too, with a broadband per megabit per second rate of just $0.22 USD.

Japanese broadband users are also able to execute uploads as quickly as they download, which is a speedy benefit not readily available with either regular ADSL broadband or cable-based connections.

On the other end of the pricing scale, Turkey comes out as the highest charging nation with a whopping per megabit per second connection of $81.13, while the United States comes out with a 1Mbps rate of $3.18 USD, and the United Kingdom offers up $3.62.

Monthly subscription fees recorded by the OECD across its 30 contributing countries see Sweden emerging as the best broadband destination with $10.79 USD, with Denmark and Switzerland following close behind with a respective $11.11 USD and $12.53 USD. The United States sits in fourth with $15.93 USD. Mexico emerged as the most expensive with a monthly rate of $52.36 USD for a 1Mbps connection.

While the report suggests that broadband adoption is "very quickly becoming the basic medium for service delivery" across both fixed and wireless networks, Jupiter Research analyst Ian Fogg points out in a BBC report that, "It’s very hard to draw comparisons across 30 countries globally" due to vastly differing trends attributed to each of them. Fogg did concede, however, that broadband entry price was a hugely important aspect of comparison.

From that perspective, the OECD report shows that DSL connection prices across the 30 countries have dropped by 19 percent since October of 2006, while connection speeds have risen by 29 percent.

Fogg also outlined that the jump in broadband speeds across certain nations has arisen due to Internet Service Providers implementing ADSL+2 throughout conventional ADSL connections, effectively doubling the maximum possible connection speed to around 24Mbps.