Thanks to Ann Higgins for sending me info on the Phoenix Center report, The Broadband Efficiency Index: What Really Drives Broadband Adoption Across the OECD?

They reshuffle OECD numbers to claim that the US is holding its own with broadband adoption when you figure in mitigating circumstances. So, that makes me doubtful – although if you jump to the recommendations they win me over.

The recommendation is (and I’m taking great liberties here) to invest in the mitigating circumstances such as education and computer ownership. They also allow that the answer will be different for each country depending on what the local mitigating circumstances are.

So they come up with a prediction for broadband adoption for a country based on “income, income inequality, education attainment, age, and so forth”. Then they compare the prediction with the actual broadband adoption.

Using their equations, the US fares better. “Significantly, the United States has an efficiency index of 96.7%, which is slightly higher than the purported “broadband miracles” of Japan and Korea (96.3%, 95.8%).” There are a few poorer countries that also do much better with this method of calculating broadband success.

In the end it reminds me of every quote I’ve ever heard about statistics – but as I said they won me over in by recommending that we take a look at the roots of the problems – the mitigating circumstances – to improve broadband adoption.

Also they bring up a good point by recognizing that each country has different mitigating circumstances. People try to dismiss the OECD ranking because of one factor or another – such as population density. Well this report demonstrates that sometimes population density is a factor and sometimes it isn’t – so to focus unilaterally on population density to dismiss the OECD rankings, doesn’t work. In that respect this methodology is more inclusive.

I looked into the Phoenix Center a bit. They are a nonprofit think tank that strives to promote free markets. The Phoenix Center President is Lawrence J. Spiwak, former senior attorney with the Competition Division in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel.