International broadband standings challenged
An Australian research company has challenged the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s reports of global broadband statistics that showed Australia and the U.S. sorely trailing other developed nations.An Australian research company has challenged the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s(OECD) reports of global broadband statisticsthat showed Australia and the U.S. sorely trailing other developed nations.
Market Clarity called the OECD’s statistics “
The Australian company said it reviewed 60 sources from the 30 member nations of the OECD and found that broadband subscriber numbers were misreported for 28 nations in the June 2006 analysis. It concluded:
The U.S. State Department responded with similar complaints shortly after the OECD data was published earlier this month. That report cited the OECD’s failure to include muni-wireless deployments in its count.
Certainly, muni deployments must be considered but it is unlikely they would have a significant impact on the U.S. standing because, until recently, very few were online. It may be another year before they make a considerable impact on the standings. We, in the United States, can only hope that the impact will be considerable. It promises to be.
Click here to read the storyon Market Clarity’s report.
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As long as I have had reason to consider OECD statistics and conclusions in the broadband area, more than a decade, it has been problematic, at least in relation to the Nordic countries that I have kept reasonably well track of. Several of OECD member countries also seem to have administrations that trust their own gut feeling less than some of the outdated info that has been the basis of not only some OECD stats, often coming out of the ITU in a different format a year before, old & biased already then. But the worst is when some unscientific and unsupported conclusions are popping up as a headline.
Their approach seems to be totally “big industry centric”, missing out on any change but the fact that old industry will be selling more of the same.
So I am not surprised to see comments from other parts of the world in line with what I have seen. Time to rethink on how to look at broadband OECD. And different, non-vertical business models.
It will be fun to see how they deal with HDTV over IP….
I confess I’ve not looked closely at the OECD’s methodology but I suspect you’re right, Anders, and that they take a customer-count approach that uses billings as the touchstone. It is, after all, verifiable. I expect muni-wireless will make it more problematic. If a muni network provides coverage to all of Houston, let’s say, does that mean that every resident of Houston should be counted as connected? Dead zones and weak signals in some areas will still leave some people on the other side of the digital divide but I doubt that the data net is fine enough to sift out who’s connect and who’s not connected in a muni environment. How could you determine that without polling residents in the community? For the moment, however, I doubt the muni influence makes a significant difference in the standings as few in the U.S. are complete. It will be interesting this time next year to see if and how they account for it.