http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21549824/



For the country who internet, I always wonder why the US is so behind other countries like Japan and Korea. When you and I are boasting our 10mbps speeds to our high speed providers, countries like Japan and Korea are laughing at us with 100mbps speeds. You can thank that bonehead in the whitehouse who let the telecom companies run the internet backbone. Bush does not see that regulating promoting the use of the internet to increase the competitiveness of our economy and getting onto the internet as 'optional.' The amount of money spent by the government is minimal yet it gains dividends in our state of our economy.

that's not entirely a fair average.. how big is Japan compared to the states. if we're talking an average, then you have to take into consideration the connection per population density.. i'm sure the big cities have an overall higher connection speed, but there are many more little places that you physically can't cover as well unless you want to devote a MASSIVE chunk of money into it

I'm interested to know which of the countries from that chart you believe are "3rd World Countries" .

Anyway why would the average internet user need such high speeds?. I have a 2mbps connection and it does me fine. I could get a faster package from my ISP but whats the point?.

To say the least, third world countries like Germany and Denmark??? There's not even a third world country on the list. I don't remember you as a disparaging person.

And I agree with crackfeen, it's harder for USA as it's such a large country with too remote places for fast internet.

The really embarrassing "country" is the U.K! That's a small place where a good internet infrastructure should be easy to implement. It has quite a few similarities with Japan. My country(Sweden) does quite well considering it's a big country(by european standards) with a lower density/km^2 than USA =)

That's not true. Big cities like NYC, Washington, Chicago, etc doesn't see any speed like 100mbps because the limit of choice of the ISP's, . You are lucky if you can get a choice of high speed connection from your cable or phone company. There are independent companies like Earthlink but the speed is limited by the last mile, but you will be lucky if you can get it.

Companies like Verizon is currently deploying FIOS which can support 100mbp+ speed, but chose to cripple the speed down to 20mbps download at most.

FYI, many people don't see what kind of applications we can use with high(er) speed internet. High resolution video conference calls, watching TV over the internet, online high speed file sharing, having a class over the internet, possibilities are endless...

Greater speed than say 8mbit, is rarely needed by anyone as of now, more important than anything right now is STABILITY! However, I agree that we will need greater speed, I'm not sure for what right now, but they'll eventually make useful software that demands greater speed.

I believe it is the other way around. Right now, people don't make applications that require reliable high speed connection because it doesn't work. Take an example of the US highway system. It was built during the depression era when most people don't have cars. Yet only after WWII Americans start to buy cars and using the highways.

The problem in the UK is our roads. Unlike the USA, our roads do not follow a grid structure, so nobody wants the responsibility of digging up all the roads to lay down fibre.

Currently, if you want a fast connection in the UK, you go for cable. Virgin Media offers a 20Mb service but the downside is the 768k upload. However 100Mbps cable connections were field tested earlier in the year, which brings hope of a better service.

germany and denmark are third world countries now?