On 24 Aug 2005, at 18:38 , Joe Abley wrote:
On 24-Aug-2005, at 19:16, Lewis Butler wrote:
And what does every country ahead of the US have in common? Tiny
populations.
And waht does every country but one have in common? Very small
area. The US has states taht are larger than 10 of the 11
countries ahed of use, COMBINED.
(populations; population densities in people per square km, pasted
from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_countries_by_population_density>)
South Korea 48M; 491
Netherlands 16M; 395
Denmark 5M; 126
Iceland 0.3M; 2
Canada 33M; 3
Switzerland 7M; 181
Belgium 10M; 339
Japan 128M; 337
Finland 5M; 15
Norway 5M; 14
Sweden 9M; 20
United States 296M; 30
So, of the 11 countries that the OECD thinks have greater broadband
penetration than the USA, 6 are more densely-populated than the USA
and 5 are not.
Not that this necessarily means anything, but I thought your
sentiments above could do with some numbers. I don't see a strong
correlation between broadband penetration and population density here.
I didn't say anything about population density. I said the countries
are all very very small (in terms of area) with the exception of
Canada, but even with Canada something like 90% of the population
lives within 150 miles (or is it 200? 200 seems more reasonable, but
150 sticks in my mind) of the US border or something silly like that.
The fact is it is easier for a country like South Korea or The
Netherlands to string fiber all over the entire country because they
don't need to lay a few millions of miles of fiber to do so. And
even with Canada, the population is mostly in a relatively narrow
band along the US border. How much broadband penetration is there in
the Yukon, for example? Echo Lake?
US area: 9.5 million km sq, with the large population centers at all
four extremes and ~25 cities with more than 2 million GMSA populations.
South Korea: 100 Thousand km sq. nearly half the population lives in
ONE city (20 million in Seoul Metro Area) and there are only 2 other
cities over 2 million in population (three, but one is part of
Seoul's Metro Area)
Holland: 41 Thousand km sq, (and 7K of that is water), so call it
34K. Sure, the population is pretty evenly spread, but the area is a
postage stamp compared to the US.
Iceland: 100 km sq, population of nearly 300,000. But 2 out of 3
people live in Reykjavik Metro Area. Provide broadband to Reykjavik
and you have 66% penetration.
--
Lewis Butler, Owner Covisp.net
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