[opendtv] News: Study Gives High Marks to U.S. Internet
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 08:09:35 -0400
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/technology/09internet.html?th&emc=th
Study Gives High Marks to U.S. Internet
SAN FRANCISCO - Contradicting earlier studies, conventional wisdom
and politicians' rhetoric, European researchers say that the Internet
infrastructure of the United States is one of the world's best and
getting better.
The Global Information Technology Report issued on Wednesday found
that the United States now ranked fourth in the world behind just
three European nations: Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. Last year
the United States was ranked seventh.
The study, which has been issued annually for the last seven years,
is an effort to draw a more complete picture of national network
readiness.
The study was done by Insead, the business school near Paris, on
behalf of the World Economic Forum, a policy and conference group
based in Switzerland. It used an index generated from 68 variables
including market factors, political and regulatory environment and
technology infrastructure rather than just bandwidth capacity and
data transmission speeds.
Some Internet industry veterans were skeptical of the positive claims
about the United States compared with the rest of the world. "My gut
feeling is that we don't have the type of deployment you have
abroad," said David J. Farber, an Internet pioneer and a professor of
computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. "If you are looking
at broadband, we have a lot of problems. We are slow as molasses in
deploying the next generation."
The Insead assessment offers a stark contrast to other appraisals
based on single measures that have portrayed the United States, the
nation that invented the global data network, as both lagging and
declining in the broadband boom. Last year a range of statistics on
global bandwidth use indicated that the United States was trailing
other industrial nations in both broadband network consumption and
penetration as a percentage of population.
For example, statistics maintained by the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development gave a conflicting message. The average
advertised broadband download speed of 23 American providers was 8.8
megabits a second, while the average for 23 providers in Denmark was
a considerably slower 5.9 megabits. At the same time the number of
broadband subscribers in Denmark was 34.3 for every 100 inhabitants,
compared with 22.1 in the United States, according to a study in
October 2007.
However, one of the authors of the Insead report said the narrow
measures had failed to capture the true impact of the Internet when
it was considered in a cultural, economic and political context.
"What the U.S. has is a number of strengths along a number of
dimensions," said Soumitra Dutta, a professor of information systems
at Insead and the director of the study. "It is not just a question
of technology. Political and economic factors become extremely
important."
He pointed to France as a country that was a technology leader in
terms of network services that had trailed in the study, ranked at
21. "It's not because France is lacking in technology," Professor
Dutta said. "If you look at other kinds of regulatory issues and
labor conditions, you find a rigid situation that prohibits companies
from making the most effective use of technology."
An O.E.C.D. economist acknowledged the nuances in taking into account
government regulatory and related factors, and said it was hard to
draw a single conclusion from the data. "I think we can say that a
lot of the situation in the United States is a result of the lack of
competition," said Taylor Reynolds, an economist in the Internet and
Telecommunications Policy section of the O.E.C.D. "In Europe we have
adopted an unbundling strategy wholeheartedly."
That has led to more competition in markets outside the United
States, he said, which in turn has driven Internet service providers
elsewhere to offer speedier service and lower prices.
One aspect of global competition that is being watched closely, he
added, is the way fiber optic networks are being introduced in
different regions. Even though the United States has begun to
accelerate the availability of fiber optic services, it is lagging
Europe and Asia in network speeds.
While Verizon is offering 50 megabit FIOS in the United States, 100
megabit services are common in Europe, and the Japanese are offering
1 gigabit services.
Still, there are puzzling aspects to the American market, which has
higher broadband availability than many countries but lower adoption
rates. More customers have retained dial-up services than most
countries, which might be explained by price or lack of attractive
broadband services.
Industry executives in the United States said the Insead report was a
significant counterweight to the one-dimensional O.E.C.D. statistics.
"Being an optimist, I'm seeing some significant and promising things
happening in the United States," said Robert Pepper, senior managing
director, Global Advanced Technology Policy at Cisco Systems, the
world's largest networking equipment company.
The study portrayed a number of global trends. Five Nordic countries
were reported among the world's top 10. South Korea posted one of the
most significant improvements in the last year, moving up 10 places
in the ranking to ninth, and China moved up five positions to 57th.
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