Broadband infrastructure is expanding job opportunities and increasing access to healthcare in rural villages across the world. The latest example comes from Uttar Pradesh, India. Read More »
France announced public investments to promote the deployment and adoption of fiber networks. As in the United States, major French cities such as Paris are quickly becoming connected to high-speed networks. The challenge is extending that coverage to the more rural provinces that make up the majority of the country. Read More »
A report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows the U.S. with 26.7 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, or fifteenth among the thirty OECD member nations. Read More »
The Communications Workers Union (CWU), the British telecom workers' union, is pushing to make the British national broadband plan more ambitious. The mobilization campaign, similar to Speed Matters, is directed at members of Parliament and other policy makers as the UK further develops its national broadband goals. Read More »
The Finnish government passed legislation that guarantees every person in the country will have the right to broadband access, starting in July 2010. Read More »
The United States is behind Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and eleven other countries in terms of broadband speed and latency, according to a new study from the University of Oxford. Read More »
In the United States we value fast cars, fast food and fast Internet. Well, two out of three isn’t bad. Speed Matters third annual study on Internet download speeds was released last week and the results are in: The United States made little progress since in the last year to improve the speed of our Internet connections. Many media outlets and bloggers cited the new report as evidence for the U.S. lagging behind other nations including: USA Today, CNET, the Chicago Sun Times, The Christian Science Monitor, LA Times, PC Magazine, Life Hacker and GigaOm. Read More »
Italy announced a 1.47 billion-euro ($2.06 billion) investment in a national broadband plan that will help overcome the existing digital divide. Italy is currently listed as 22nd in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's broadband rankings, only slightly behind the United States' 15th ranking. Currently 13% of Italians have no access to the Internet or insufficient bandwidth, and the majority of those without broadband live in rural areas. The Italian Government's undersecretary for telecommunication, Paolo Romani, said the goal is to provide the entire population access to broadband technology, with a speed of between two and twenty megabits per second, by 2012. Read More »
The United States remained stagnant - at 15th - in the latest Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) broadband penetration rankings. Read More »
In a report that ranked 154 countries on their advanced use of information and communications technology, the United States fell from 11th to 17th between 2002 and 2007. Read More »
