Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 01 May 2007 04:06
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
The results were, to say the least surprising. Forrester found that "The data demonstrates that broadband consumers in some highly connected territories don't exhibit intense online usage. While consumers in most Asian countries take advantage of their high-speed Internet access, European broadband consumers lag behind."
And the winner was...Metropolitan China! "From Beijing to Shanghai, broadband-ready Chinese city-dwellers lead the way in four of the five entertainment activities we measured in the Index: playing games, downloading music and videos, and watching streaming video. This leadership pushes metropolitan China from seventh in broadband adoption to first in the BAI."
Australia did not do too badly either. "Despite the fact that Australia only ranked 11th of 16 countries in broadband adoption, uptake of a wide variety of online activities raises it to second in the BAI. Most impressive are Australia's high rankings in a variety of different types of online activities: first in checking stock, mutual funds, and bond quotes, second in downloading music, and second in participating in online auctions."
A similar exercise has been undertaken annually by the Economist Intelligence Unit., with its
e-readiness ranking of the world's largest economies. The ranking model evaluates the technological, economic, political and social assets of 69 countries and their cumulative impact on their respective information economies.
The EIU defines e-readiness as "the state of play of a country's information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and the ability of its consumers, businesses and governments to use ICT to their benefit." The e-readiness rankings are a weighted collection of nearly 100 quantitative and qualitative criteria, organised into six distinct categories measuring the various components of a country's social, political, economic and of course technological development."
