OECD's latest broadband rankings: good news and bad

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 06 November 2007 05:43

IT Industry - Market

A statistic that will make communications minister Coonan happy in the run up to the election: the latest OECD figures show Australia has risen four places in its ranking of broadband penetration per capita and now sits in 12th place. Other figures will please her less. Penetration a 30 June 2007 stood at 22.7 services per 100 people. The OECD data for December 2006   had Australia in 16th position with 19.2 services per 100 population, well above the OECD average of 16.9. and up just one notch from 17th in June 2006 with 17.4 per 100.

The OECD has also launched a new broadband portal and has significantly increased the amount of information it provides on broadband in member nations.

Australia's increased broadband ranking was the good news. The bad was that, with FTTH presently stalled, we are falling even further behind the most advanced nations. The OECD reports that: "Operators in several countries continue upgrading subscriber lines to fibre. fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) subscriptions now comprise eight percent of all broadband connections in the OECD, up from seven percent a year ago, and the percentage is growing. Fibre connections account for 36 percent of all Japanese broadband subscriptions and 31 percent in Korea." The figure in Australia was so low as to be rated zero!

There is also now lots of information on data prices including a chart showing average monthly data cap size in those countries that use this pricing model: Canada, Czech Republic, Portugal, Iceland, New Zealand, Australia and Belgium. Australia had the second lowest cap size (15GB) after Belgium (13GB) as against leader Canada with 65GB). Australia's price per additional MB (in $US purchasing power parity) was way above any of the others, at $US.105. The nearest was Portugal at $US0.04 followed by Iceland at $US0.03. New Zealand came out quite well at $US0.10.