The OECD’s latest report on country broadband statistics places Canada in eighth position worldwide. While the release notes that this makes us the leading G7 country, this says more about how poorly the G7 countries rank than anything about Canadian success. Indeed, it wasn’t long ago – in fact, only two years ago – that Canada proudly proclaimed that it ranked second worldwide.
We’re Number Eight!
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Lies, damn lies, and broadband penetrati
Check the CIA “World Factbook” at http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ic.html and you’ll find that…
1) Iceland has a population of 299,388
2) “more land covered by glaciers than in all of continental Europe”, which doesn’t leave a lot of land for much else. It starts out with 103,000 sq km, smaller than the *ISLAND* of Newfoundland (*NOT COUNTING LABRADOR*) at 111,390 sq km, before subracting glaciated area.
Greater Reykjavik has a population of almost 200,000. The 25%+ broadband penetration is achieved basically by plopping cable and ADSL into 1 metropolitan area. If 22,000,000 of Canada’s 33,000,000 population lived in Toronto, we too could achieve 25%+ broadband penetration by servicing one metropolitan area.
Number 2 is South Korea, with over 48 million people in an area of 98,480 sq km. Yes, smaller than Iceland. The top 7 are rounded out by Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, and Norway. None of them are exactly huge in size.