Top 10 Country in Internet Subscribers

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) regularly conducts studies of 30 nations to measure broadband penetration. Broadband penetration refers to the number of broadband Internet subscribers compared to the overall population. The OECD usually breaks this down in a simple ratio: the number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

­­­The OECD includes DSL, cable modem, fiber-optic and local area network (LAN) connections in its calculations. It doesn’t include dialup modem users, because those users don’t qualify as broadband subscribers.

According to the OECD, the top 10 most wired countries are:

• Denmark
• Netherlands
• Switzerland
• Korea
• Norway
• Iceland
• Finland
• Sweden
• Canada
• Belgium

Each of these countries has at least 23 subscribers per 100 inhabitants — Denmark has 34.3. In comparison, the United States has 22.1 subscribers for every 100 inhabitants. Despite this relatively small discrepancy, the U.S. ranks 15th on OECD’s list.

So why is it that these countries have proportionally more broadband subscribers than the United States? There are several factors to consider:

• Population size: The United States has more than 300 million inhabitants. Denmark, the top-ranked country on the OECD’s list, has a population of 5.5 million. Out of the top 10 countries listed, Korea has the largest population (49 million) and Iceland has the smallest (301,931) [source: CIA].
• The size of the countries: The United States has an area of 9,826,630 square kilometers. Denmark has an area of 43,094 square kilometers. Out of all the countries on the top 10 list, only Canada is larger than the United States [source: CIA]. It’s more difficult and expensive to implement a broadband network in a larger country than a smaller one.
• The price of subscriptions: Out of the 30 countries the OECD examines in its studies, the United States ranked 18th in average monthly subscription price.
• National policies: The governments in the countries that make up the top 10 have a national broadband strategy. These countries consider broadband access a political priority and provide a framework for the Internet infrastructure. The United States does not have a comprehensive broadband strategy, leaving such decisions to corporations and utility companies [source: Foreign Affairs].

Source : howstuffworks