Broadband Usage

New numbers out

[jbinbpt]

ITU reporting Broadband penetration in various countries [itu.int].

#1 South Korea 94% users on broadband
#2 Hong Kong 15 %
#3 Canada 11%

US with 7%

Total 5% worldwide.

Dialups not dead, Yet.

[jeremy goodrich]

Thanks for the link, reminds me, there is still no excuse for making a slow loading page unless you want your customers to go elsewhere ;)

[netguy]

jbinbpt, I see the ITU stats for South Korea, Hong Kong, and Canada, but where are you getting the U.S. numbers? If you are referring to percentage of broadband to all connections, the U.S. is much higher.

Currently, Nielsen is showing 36% for home broadband, and 67.4% for broadband at work.

[nielsennetratings.com...]
[radok.com...]

Obviously it is important to take care of dialup customers in our designs,
but it is significantly higher than 7% in the U.S. as you stated.

[jeremy goodrich]

That 36% seems way inflated, I recall reading something earlier this year that expected USA broad band penetration for home to rise to 25% by the end of the year.

Is it just me, or is 36% seem a bit on the high side / just as 7% seems low?

Then again, it's all statistics, anyway ;) I'm sure they are both spinning the numbers.

[claus]

Personally i don't believe figures in the thirties for BB - not in the US, not in any country. Seven percent (US) seems more likely. Btw. what is the definitions used for "broadband" in those surveys anyway?

What a can be derived from a browser in terms of "broadband" is typically LAN vs. dial-up, and LAN does not constitute braodband or even faster access than dial-up. Otoh, some surveys have dial-up vs. non-dial-up and this is just as wrong as ISDN is certainly not broadband unless you bundle a lot of lines.

The term "broadband" itself is very much inflated. Plus, even though we see, say, "21 broadband subscribers for every 100(*) inhabitants" there's no mentioning of how many persons are actually sharing those 21 subscriptions (and none whatsoever of the speed).

/claus

---

(*) 21% is the right figure for Korea, not 94% and it's really a pointless measure to hold subscriptions up against the total number of inhabitants, as you wouldn't really suppose that people below 18 years or so would be subscribers. Connections are the proper measure, not subscriptions.

---

Added:
The right Nielsen link is here, it's 13%:
[nielsennetratings.com...]
"13 percent of Americans, connecting via broadband in the U.S."

[edited by: claus at 8:45 pm (utc) on Sep. 17, 2003]

[cfx211]

We've surveyed our users on this and our survey numbers are in line with the 36% US home broadband numbers. To be fair our base skews towards the coasts, towards major cities, and towards higher incomes.

Do you think that 7% of the US at broadband could cripple the music industry? Sorry but it takes more than that.

[claus]

>> the music industry

-where did that come from? This industry has caused itself a lot of trouble in a lot of ways, i'm not sure it is correlated to broadband penetration at all, although i must jump on the bandwaggon for as long as it takes to say that broadband potentially helps a lot of people to get cheaper music, even pirated and illegal. Sneakers on the other hand, are a superior means of transportation - it's much more efficient than downloading.

/claus

[cfx211]

I meant have you ever tried downloading something over a dial up? Its not worth it.

My point is if the US was only at a 7% home broadband penetration then I do not think downloading of music would be as big a problem as it is.

One way or the other its a tangent to the current thread.

[Farix]

The thing is, how big of a problem is downloaded music? And is the RIAA overrating the problem?

But just how big is a music file? ~3-4MB? That's pretty tolerable on a dialup. Often, I don't think twice about downloading a file as large as 10MBs when I can only best 31.2Kbps on my dialup -- just down embed that into a webpage or I'll be really ticked off. So maybe the problem with downloaded music isn't with broadband users.

[claus]

-around 50-60M for an album if it's in mp3. An ISO image is heavier as mp3 is a compressed format. Thing is - you only need one person downloading one time, then s/he can burn and distribute off-line (sneakers). Even if this person has to use dialup, long time, and a high minute-charge, the shop price level for CDs is so high that these costs are easily recovered even when selling for a fraction of the shop price.

Anyway, you don't really need to download at all. Just go to a store and buy one album. Then go home and turn on your burner. It's much easier, it's quicker, and you won't get spyware and virus on your PC.

/claus

---

Added: All this is purely hypothetically speaking of course. Don't try this at home.

[killroy]

People sometimes confuse broadband with better speed. It MAY mean better speed, but often not in a one-to-one relationship with page downloads. Server delays and ping times can often be the same, only speedign things up a little. Keep tha pages small, your visitors will thank you, even on broadband.

SN

[EliteWeb]

I heard S.Korea was nicely wired and everyone had bandwidth like no other country, can this be verified for me ;)

[macrost]

Wow, went from broadband connectivity to the riaa... ;) I actually lean towards the lower end, maybe say 10-15% here in the US.

Mac

[cfx211]

Yeah back on track here.

Eliteweb: Wired has covered Korea's broadband numbers and culture fairly extensively. They had some big article about it that I cannot find on their site, but here are a few that toss some Korean broadband numbers out.

[wired.com...]

[wired.com...]

[jbinbpt]

The numbers I got were from a MSNBC article [msnbc.com].
They state that of the total population of South Korea 21% have access, but of the 21%, 94% of users are on broadband.

It's interesting that the numbers are all over the board. I thought that the US were low. I had expected in the 12 to 15% range, based on informal surveys taken at our website.

Please, someone at Pubcon finish the last of that Guinness in front of you. That last little bit of foam in the glass is the best.

[netguy]

jbinbpt, If you "expected in the 12 to 15% range" for the U.S., where did you come up with 7%?

The IBU report and MSNBC article didn't mention 7%. So where did you get those numbers you opened the thread with?

The MSNBC article stated "As for the United States, broadband penetration continues to rise, and could reach 25 percent of the population," which is at the very least ambiguous, and with 285 million+ population - rediculously high.

I think the key is "of those that have a connection," xx% are broadband. Nielsen may have it high, but 7% is low.

As jeremy stated, statistics can be spun a number of different ways. I just like to know the source of the spinning.

;)

[jbinbpt]

Sorry about that, I wasn't not trying to mislead.
My 7% was from the "original" MSNBC Article I read. I found them repeated here [apnews.excite.com] in an Excite/AP news item.

Hong Kong was in second place with 14.9 percent and Canada was third at 11.2 percent.

The United States was in 11th place in the per-capita broadband rankings at 6.9 percent, though it had the highest overall total with 19.9 million subscribers.

Japan was in 10th place, with 7.1 percent broadband use.

[claus]

That article suffers from the same mix-up of subscriptions and people, as it's based on the same ITU report. Anyway, it has re-calculated the figure for South Korea to be household-based:

Between 60 and 70 percent of all households in South Korea have a broadband connection

This is equal to:

a rate of 21.3 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

The quotes in post #17 use the latter measure.

I have no clue if the re-calculation is right, as no method or details are revealed (as usual in the press) - and i do not know the percentage of the population (household figures can be skewed - eg. if the last 30-40% have much larger household sizes).

/claus