Here’s more information than you need about me – but I’m leaving for Ireland in three days. I’ll be there for six months and I’ve been looking for an excuse to do some traveling while I was there. So I owe a debt of gratitude to the Daily Yonder for their recent article on Broadband Lessons Beyond Our Border.

According to the Daily Yonder, “We have much to learn from other places, especially in connecting broadband in rural communities.” Well, I’m going to see if that’s true. (Not that I doubt it.)

As the Daily Yonder reports the US ranks number 15 in terms of the OECD International broadband subscriber rates. Some of the top countries have the advantage of densely populated areas. But many countries have are more like the US; again as the Daily Yonder reports, “These countries have higher rates of broadband adoption not because of fortuitous geography or densely-packed populations; rather, more of their citizens have access to high-speed internet connections because their governments made formal policy decisions which made the creation of such infrastructure a national priority.”

So it will be fun to learn more and report in. I’ll start with the latest on the Irish National Broadband Scheme. I know they have a goal of ubiquitous coverage by 2013 and have started by working with a provider to coverage the un- and underserved. I know they’ve been hosting broadband adoption meetings to promote especially commercial use of broadband. It will be interesting to see how it’s going.