Telecom Trends

Earlier in the week, I wrote about the the latest OECD broadband report which shows that as of June 2008, Canada continues to hold the number 10 position, based on connections per 100 people.

As you know, I like to view the reporting of OECD numbers with a grain of salt.

We used to gaze enviously at Korea as a pace setter for broadband connectivity. In Canada's heyday, we were second only to Korea in broadband penetration. In the current report, the OECD points out that "Korea’s fibre penetration alone (12.2 per 100 inhabitants) is higher than total broadband penetration in 5 OECD countries."

In preparing material for a talk next week, I noticed an interesting situation when combining a couple of the OECD's tables.

Something is strange with Korea's reporting of household data. I looked at the OECD's tables for households with computers [ Excel, 50.5 KB] and households with broadband [ Excel, 37.5 KB] and tried to combine them to look at the percentage of households with computers that have broadband internet access.

One would think that homes with computers would be the asymptote for broadband penetration - why would a household subscribe to broadband if you don't have access to a computer?

Well, apparently in Korea it doesn't work that way. In fact, 20% of their broadband enabled households have no access to computers.

What is going on there?

When you dig deeper, it turns out that Korea's household broadband data includes broadband enabled mobile phones. Since virtually every phone in Korea is a 3G phone, every household with a mobile phone is scored as having broadband access.

Sometimes, you need to scratch beneath the surface.

By the way, as a percentage of homes with computers, Canada's broadband penetration ranks 6th in the OECD, behind Korea, Iceland, Japan, Belgium and Netherlands.

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OECD, broadband