Common wisdom is that the US is way behind developed Asian and European countries in Broadband (and also Mobility). Not quite so – says Professor Leonard Waverman of the London Business School, who published a study on the World’s Connectivity Scorecard. His key thesis is that penetration and connection speed is not enough to measure true connectedness: we have to consider to what extent the Consumer, Businesss and Government sectors put broadband to productive use.
The compound index reveals a few surprises: the USA is actually #1, closely followed by Sweden and Denmark. The fourth position is a surprise again ( at least for me): it’s Malaysia, leaving countries like Japan, Korea, Norway in the dust. To understand some of these surprises, let’s look at a few countries’ details.
Japan has a total score of 5.87: only the Consumer infrastructure is world-class but usage and skills are relatively poor in the sector, while in Business, where usage and skills are ate world-class levels, the infrastructure falls behind – and Government fares poorly in both.
Korea‘s overall score is only 4.17. Top-notch Consumer, OK Government infrastructure, poor Business infrastrucrure, and all sectors behind in skills.
Australia with a total of 6.14 presents the opposite case: it’s all about Business and Government, not Consumers:
(Ironically at this point in writing this post the Connecticity Scorecard site lost connectivity – perhaps brought down by their newly-found popolarity. )
Sweden leads Europe with a score of 7.47, and a well-rounded chart, but I wonder why super-connected Estonia is missing from the European list….
A surprise "winner" on the scorecard is Malaysia with an overall score of 7.07 – I certainly would not have expected them beating neighbor Singapore.
Finally, the USA tops the list with 7.71 and an almost well-rounded chart, except for that ugly dent on the Consumer infrastructure side:
Advance broadband penetration and usage in Business is a given – but Government? Really? I suppose the study only focused on access and usage, not necessarily results.
. That Consumer infrastructure is nowhere, is not really a surprise, but I wonder how realistic this sector classification is. Just how "consumer" Consumer is?
Given the large number of small businesses, freelancers, home-office based virtual businesses, the underdeveloped Consumer infrastructure no doubt has a serious business impact as well.
I’m still craving for Japan-, Korea-, even Malaysia-like infrastructure in the US.
Update: Vinnie Mirchandani points out the serious flaws in the Study Methodology.
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Bradband? I didn’t know Brad was into music. 😉
@leosaumure, thanks for catching my typo 🙂
Connectivity is one thing. Quality is another. Subjectivity further another. Having been in a number of the countries (particularly Malaysia) I am surprised at many of the scores – I have reservations about the measure of quality of infrastructure, whether things like downtime/customer satisfaction etc were really taken into account. And those things are very hard to measure.
In one country, you have a broadband outage, and it makes national news and the company apologizing and making refunds.
In another the ISP’s don’t even know when they themselves have outages!!
How can you compare those two thing??