Thursday 8 November 2007

Latest Broadband Stats

The OECD has released it’s latest broadband stats.

Over the past year, the number of broadband subscribers in the OECD increased 24% from 178 million in June 2006, to 221 million subscribers in June 2007.



Australia now has 4,700,200 broadband subscribers, and ranked 12th overall.

Rank (Broadband subscribers)
1 United States (66,213,257)
2 Japan (27,152,349)
3 Germany (17,472,000)
4 Korea (14,441,687)
5 United Kingdom (14,361,816)
6 France (14,250,000)
7 Italy (9,307,000)
8 Canada (8,142,320)
9 Spain (7,483,790)
10 Netherlands (5,470,000)
11 Mexico (4,804,282)
12 Australia (4,700,20)


In terms of Broadband access per 100 homes, Australia is now ranked 12th, at 22.7 connection per 100.


New Zealand has gone up one place to 20th. They were in 22nd for many years and now have 683,500 broadband connections which is a rate of 16.5 per 100 households.

The OECD average is 18.8 and the median is 21.7.

Fibre now represents 8% of all OECD broadband connections, and 36% of Japan’s, plus 31% of Korea’s.

Fibre rollout is the future. Sweden has 16% fibre, Slovak Republic 16%, Denmark 9%.Also get this - the price of fibe per MB/s of speed is: DSL:
USD 19.21
Cable: USD 18.96
Fibre to the home/building: USD3.75
Wireless: USD 18.69

Some other data in the OECD stats: They even have an infection rate per 100 broadband subscribers:- of 36 countries, Australia is 1.7%; New Zealand 1.1%; Poland has 6.8% infection, France 2.9%.

This overall growth increased broadband penetration rates from 15.1 in 2006 to 18.8 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in 2007.
  • Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Korea and Norway and Iceland lead the OECD in broadband penetration, each with over 29 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
  • The strongest per-capita subscriber growth over the year was in Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Norway, Denmark and Luxembourg. Each country added more than 5 subscribers per 100 inhabitants during the past year.

  • Operators in several countries continue upgrading subscriber lines to fibre. Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and Fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) subscriptions now comprise 8% of all broadband connections in the OECD, up from 7% a year ago, and the percentage is growing. Fiber connections account for 36% of all Japanese broadband subscriptions and 31% in Korea.

  • The United States is the largest broadband market in the OECD with 66.2 million subscribers. US broadband subscribers represent 30% of all broadband connections in the OECD.

  • The average price of a month broadband subscription in the OECD is USD 49. On average, fibre (cable - which we don't have in Cairns) to the home/building is the most expensive (USD 51) and fixed wireless the cheapest (USD 33).
  • The average price per advertised Mbit/s of connectivity in the OECD is USD 18. Japan, France, Sweden, Korea and Finland have the least expensive offers per Mbit/s o Japan: USD 0.13 o France : USD 0.33 o Sweden: USD 0.35 o Korea: USD 0.38 o Finland: USD 0.42
  • Fibre connections are nearly 5 times less expensive per Mbit/s than DSL, cable or wireless. o DSL: USD 19.21 o Cable: USD 18.96 o Fiber to the home/building: 3.75 o Wireless: USD 18.69
  • The average advertised download speed in the OECD is 13.7 Mbit/s.
  • The fastest average advertised download speeds are in Japan (93 Mbit/s), France (44 Mbit/s), Korea (43 Mbit/s) and Sweden (21 Mbit/s) \
  • Japan has the fastest residential download speed available in the OECD at 1 Gbit/s ( 1 Gbit/s = 1000 Mbit/s)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is obvious that Labor's fibre to the node plan is far superior than the government's wireless alternative. But then again the government's view has only ever been short term. Who else would have been stupid enough to not only flog off the government's (taxpayer's) telco but also the nation's hardware communication infrastructure for a song. It will now cost us billions more to get anywhere near the world broadband standard, particularly for those (us) in regional Australia.

Anonymous said...

"It is obvious that Labor's fibre to the node plan is far superior than the government's wireless alternative"


Don't be too fast to dismiss wimax and in fact any wireless technology, Telstra themselves are pushing their 3.5g product as an alternative. Hypocritical if they then blast wimax.

Opel will bring us what we need, competition and along with it an incentive for the incumbent to invest in competing products, like FTTN or FTTP - all to match speed, reach and pricing.

If only we had some credible competition in our local government choices...

Anonymous said...

For the effectiveness of wireless communication, look no further than Cyclone Larry when the transmission towers lost power and backup power ran out because they were inaccessible for maintenance. Most landlines remained intact and on line. Also I get a little nervous about the radio spectrum becoming saturated and the environment being zapped by increasing levels of RF, particularly in metropolitan areas. It would be interesting to see how much energy is required just to power the mobile phone network alone.