The OECD has released annual broadband statistics to June 2007. These show broadband subscribers in OECD countries increased 24% to 18.8 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. Australia is in 12 th place at at 22.7 per 100, which is an acceptable figure. The countries ahead of us are small places with bad climate, where it is easy to run broadband cable and no one wants to go outside and do anything else anyway. ;-)
The OECD noted Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and Fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) comprise 8% of broadband connections and accelerating. Japan are at 36% and Korea 31% fibre. But I wonder if the high proportion of mobile phone Internet-like users in these countries are distorting the figures by not being counted as Internet users.
There is a footnote in the report for the Australian statistics which got the media and politicians excited, which says: "DCITA estimation in absence of official ABS statistics ". This lead to speculation that the government was cooking the books to make Australia look good. However, it seems that this is just because the latest ABS statistics available were to March 2007, so DCITA had to make a projection for June.
My own estimate for Australia is 22.9 per 100 population, which is higher than the DCITA one, but within an acceptable margin of error and would not change the country rankings. I worked this out from the latest ABS statistics, which were 4.34 million non dial-up subscribers (ie broadband), or about 21.2 per 100 population in March 2007. The broadband subscribers were increasing at about 2.7% per month, so allowing for three months increase this comes out to 22.9 per 100 population.
The next Australian Bureau of Statistics ICT Reference Group meeting is on Thursday morning and I assume this will be discussed.
Broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, by technology, June 2007
DSL
Cable
Fibre/
LAN
Other
Total
Rank
Total Subscribers
Denmark
21.3
9.7
2.9
0.4
34.3
1
1 866 306
Netherlands
20.4
12.7
0.4
0.0
33.5
2
5 470 000
Switzerland*
20.5
9.3
0.0
0.9
30.7
3
2 322 577
Korea
10.1
10.6
9.2
0.0
29.9
4
14 441 687
Norway
22.7
4.5
1.8
0.7
29.8
5
1 388 047
Iceland
29.0
0.0
0.2
0.6
29.8
6
90 622
Finland 24.4
3.7
0.0
0.8
28.8
7
1 518 900
Sweden 17.9
5.6
4.6
0.4
28.6
8
2 596 000
Canada**
11.9
12.9
0.0
0.1
25.0
9
8 142 320
Belgium 14.5
9.2
0.0
0.1
23.8
10
2 512 884
United Kingdom
18.4
5.3
0.0
0.0
23.7
11
14 361 816
Australia*** 18.3
3.4
0.0
0.9
22.7
12
4 700 200
France 21.4
1.1
0.0
0.0
22.5
13
14 250 000
Luxembourg** 19.8
2.4
0.0
0.0
22.2
14
105 134
United States**
9.3
11.5
0.6
0.7
22.1
15
66 213 257
Japan
10.8
2.9
7.6
0.0
21.3
16
27 152 349
Germany
20.2
1.0
0.0
0.1
21.2
17
17 472 000
Austria 11.4
6.6
0.0
0.6
18.6
18
1 543 518
Spain
13.3
3.6
0.0
0.1
17.0
19
7 483 790
New Zealand
14.6
1.1
0.0
0.8
16.5
20
683 500
Italy 15.4
0.0
0.4
0.0
15.8
21
9 307 000
Ireland
11.1
1.6
0.0
2.6
15.4
22
653 000
Portugal 9.2
5.4
0.0
0.1
14.7
23
1 555 641
Czech Republic 5.5
2.5
0.3
3.9
12.2
24
1 252 300
Hungary
6.8
4.7
0.0
0.1
11.6
25
1 170 290
Poland
5.5
2.4
0.0
0.1
8.0
26
3 040 000
Greece** 7.1
0.0
0.0
0.0
7.1
27
787 000
Slovak Republic
3.9
0.8
1.1
1.0
6.8
28
368 454
Turkey 5.1
0.0
0.0
0.0
5.2
29
3 767 912
Mexico
3.5
1.0
0.0
0.1
4.6
30
4 804 282
OECD
11.6
5.4
1.4
0.3
18.8
221 020 786
Notes: All data are supplied by member governments unless otherwise noted. Data are provided to member governments for verification before publication.* Data is from the Swiss government and the national cable association** OECD estimation based on company reporting*** DCITA estimation in absence of official ABS statistics
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