ISP's In Uproar Over Verizon-MCI Merger

Fri Aug 26 00:56:23 UTC 2005

On 24 Aug 2005, at 18:38 , Joe Abley 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.
>
> 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.

I didn't say anything about population density.  I said the countries  
are all very very small (in terms of area) with the exception of  
Canada, but even with Canada something like 90% of the population  
lives within 150 miles (or is it 200?  200 seems more reasonable, but  
150 sticks in my mind) of the US border or something silly like that.  
The fact is it is easier for a country like South Korea or The  
Netherlands to string fiber all over the entire country because they  
don't need to lay a few millions of miles of fiber to do so.  And  
even with Canada, the population is mostly in a relatively narrow  
band along the US border.  How much broadband penetration is there in  
the Yukon, for example?  Echo Lake?

US area: 9.5 million km sq, with the large population centers at all  
four extremes and ~25 cities with more than 2 million GMSA populations.

South Korea: 100 Thousand km sq.  nearly half the population lives in  
ONE city (20 million in Seoul Metro Area) and there are only 2 other  
cities over 2 million in population (three, but one is part of  
Seoul's Metro Area)

Holland: 41 Thousand km sq, (and 7K of that is water), so call it  
34K. Sure, the population is pretty evenly spread, but the area is a  
postage stamp compared to the US.

Iceland: 100 km sq, population of nearly 300,000. But 2 out of 3  
people live in Reykjavik Metro Area.  Provide broadband to Reykjavik  
and you have 66% penetration.

-- 
Lewis Butler, Owner Covisp.net
240 S Broadway #203, 80209
mobile: 303.564.2512  fx: 303.282.1515
AIM/ichat: covisp xdi: http://public.xdi.org/=lewisbutler