On 8/24/05 7:38 PM, "Joe Abley" <jabley@isc.org> wrote:
On 24-Aug-2005, at 19:16, Lewis Butler wrote:
And what does every country ahead of the US have in common? Tiny populations.
And waht does every country but one have in common? Very small area. The US has states taht are larger than 10 of the 11 countries ahed of use, COMBINED.
(populations; population densities in people per square km, pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_countries_by_population_density>)
South Korea 48M; 491 Netherlands 16M; 395 Denmark 5M; 126 Iceland 0.3M; 2 Canada 33M; 3 Switzerland 7M; 181 Belgium 10M; 339 Japan 128M; 337 Finland 5M; 15 Norway 5M; 14 Sweden 9M; 20 United States 296M; 30
So, of the 11 countries that the OECD thinks have greater broadband penetration than the USA, 6 are more densely-populated than the USA and 5 are not.
Joe, I suggest you take another look at these numbers. Those countries with overall population densities lower than the US's all have something in common - they are really cold. Iceland, Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden. Folks in those countries are densely packed into relatively small regions of their overall land area (near oceans or in cities). Sure, some folks live out in Nunavut, but a relatively small number. Contrast that with the US where the population is far more spread out. This is an issue of both distribution and density, not just density.
Not that this necessarily means anything, but I thought your sentiments above could do with some numbers. I don't see a strong correlation between broadband penetration and population density here.
Joe
-- Daniel Golding