The Brookings Institute recently released a comparative study of broadband deployment, adoption and policy around the world. The research offers suggestions to the US Government…
The United States should have three goals: 1) raising the household broadband adoption rate to 90 percent by 2020, 2) aiming for 100 Mbps of speed (similar to Australia and Finland) in order to facilitate new applications in education, health care, smart energy grids, public safety, video streaming and high definition television, games, video conferencing, civic engagement, and electronic government, and 3) improving data collection on broadband speeds and availability so consumers know what speeds they are paying for and policymakers have better adoption and availability information on which to base policy decisions.
What I found most interesting was a comparative chart (the citation for the chart is below; this isn’t its original publication):
| Country | Time Frame | Broadband Goals |
| Australia | 8 years from 2010 | Deliver broadband at speed of 100 Mbps to 90% of homes, schools, and businesses |
| Canada | 4 years from 2009 | Extend broadband coverage to all currently underserved communities |
| Finland | 7 years from 2009 | Provide broadband to every household, with download speeds of at least one Mbps by 2010 and 100 Mbps by 2016 |
| France | 5 years from 2008 | Provide universal access to broadband at affordable prices by end of 2010 |
| Germany | 10 years from 2009 | Provide broadband access at 50 Mbps to 75% of households by 2014 |
| Ireland | 2 years from 2009 | Provide broadband to all with minimum 1.2 Mbps |
| Japan | 2 years from 2009 | Extend broadband to all rural areas |
| Portugal | 2 years from 2009 | Extend broadband to 50% of homes by 2010 |
| Singapore | 5 years from 2009 | Universal connection to Next Generation broadband by 2013 |
| South Korea | 5 years from 2009 | Upgrade broadband to 1 Gbps |
| Spain | 4 years from 2009 | Extend broadband to rural areas |
Source: Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang, “Broadband Infrastructure in Stimulus Packages: Relevance for Developing Countries,”2009a.
Otherwise the report is a collection of interesting facts and statistics. Here are a couple that struck me:
- Between 1995 and 2005, the Korean government invested $900 million in broadband and this stimulated $32.6 billion in private technology investment (Qianq, Rossotto, and Kimura, 2009).
- A recent report by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission estimated that it would cost $350 billion to create 100 Mbps universal broadband coverage in the United States (FCC report, 2009).
It’s difficult to conclude that an investment in the US would have the same ROI as seen in Korea; the times are very different. But interesting to think about it, especially in light of the following tidbit:
- A Strategic Networks Groups (2003) study of broadband investment in a fiber optic network in the South Dundas township of Ontario, Canada found that an investment of $1.3 million led over several years to a “$25.22 million increase in GDP for Dundas County and $7.87 million increase for the Province of Ontario” and the creation of 207 jobs.