In a recent report commissioned by the United Nations entitled “Measuring the Information Society - the ICT Development Index”, 154 countries were ranked on their use of information and communications technology (ICT). Sweden was ranked number one, with South Korea, Denmark, the Netherlands and Iceland rounding out the top five. However The United States fell from 11th to 17th and Canada from the top 10 to 19th. The new top 10 includes Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Finland and the United Kingdom.
The report said “This is largely due to impressive fixed broadband uptake in some European countries, compared to, for example, the United States and Canada.”
“While Western Europe and Eastern Asia have made significant gains on the IDI (ICT Development Index), Eastern Europe is the region that has improved most its ICT levels between 2002 and 2007, with the most dynamic growth in the IDI of all regions worldwide.”
They also say the Global Digital Divide is still very much a challenge, despite the fact that “by the end of 2008… close to a quarter of the world’s population [was] using the Internet.” Still, “major differences in ICT levels between regions and between the developed and developing economies remain. This is particularly true in the area of broadband.”
While high-speed Internet is available in almost all countries, the developing world has only a 2% penetration, with still only 20% in the developed world. That’s for fixed line users. “At the same time, fixed broadband networks are increasingly being complemented by mobile broadband networks. Given the limited availability of wired access in many of the world’s developing countries and rural areas, and the rapid spread of IMT-2000/3G mobile cellular networks, mobile broadband is opening up exciting and new possibilities…[and] it has a clear potential to help more and more people communicate, and increasingly at high speed.”
Tags: Broadband, Digital Divide, High Speed Internet, Internet Speed
[...] know, the United States, the country where the Internet was invented, is ranked 15th (or below, as we reported in an earlier post) in the world in high-speed Internet [...]