Slipping to 15th place...

The US is justifiably proud of inventing the Internet (or Internets...). Established in 1969 as ARPANet, a RAND corporation project in cooperation with the US Dept. of Defense, the first net connected four Universities and allowed limited sharing of data. The intent was to build a distributed military command and control system that would survive a nuclear war. Now we use it to watch Ugly Betty and view pictures from all over the world featuring squirrels.

Sadly, the civilian deployment of Internet technology in the US lags many otherwise less developed nations. Rather than being a leader in broadband speed and geographical deployment, the US now ranks 15th. The domestic cost of connectivity in the US (mostly through cable companies and traditional phone companies) is far higher than the leading countries. The bandwidth available to us even in major US cities is far behind that available to citizens of Japan and other developed nations.

I'm hopeful that some of Obama's initiatives will help to fix that. But we also need more competition between service providers, and Net Neutrality rules (which Bush resisted, but Obama seems to favor) before we can regain a leadership role in Internet technology.

Cisco (a network equipment manufacturer) sponsored the latest survey. It rated countries on many factors, including the percentage of connected households, and speed. The top 20 list is interesting:

1. South Korea


2. Japan


3. Hong Kong


4. Sweden


5. Switzerland


6. Netherlands


7. Singapore


8. Luxemburg


9. Denmark


10. Norway


11. Malta


12. Iceland


13. Australia


14. Lithuania


15. United States


16. Ireland


17. Canada


18. France


19. Estonia


20. Belgium

(Poor old Great Britain didn't even make it to the top 20)