[ NNSquad ] China overtakes US in broadband

[Rahul Tongia <tongia@cmu.edu>]

"China Overtakes U.S. In Number Of Broadband Lines"
http://www.informationweek.com/news/services/data/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210604264

1) Naturally, per capita or household the US is far ahead, but by that 
measure, it is also far behind some other countries
2) The article says both used to have 78 million broadband connections.  
Surely this has to include commercial lines?  Given the US is about 110 
million households, I doubt we're at that level of household broadband? 
(unless, of course, you take every Sprint and Verizon Wireless customer 
as having broadband :P).
3) We have limited information on what people consider broadband, FCC's 
upward minimum speed revision notwithstanding. 

Rahul

p.s. I found it telling that Obama specifically mentioned broadband in 
the way he did.  For every "free market" proponent out there (and there 
are certainly LOTS of problems with how universal service is 
administered in the US), rural electrification and even telephony 
wouldn't have progressed nearly as fast without policy interventions. 

--
************************************************************************
Rahul Tongia, Ph.D.
Senior Systems Scientist

Program in Computation, Organizations, and Society (COS)
School of Computer Science (ISR) /
Dept. of Engineering & Public Policy

Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA
tel: 412-268-5619
fax: 412-268-2338
email: tongia@cmu.edu
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rtongia