ISP's In Uproar Over Verizon-MCI Merger

Thu Aug 25 02:41:36 UTC 2005

On 8/24/05 7:38 PM, "Joe Abley" <jabley at isc.org> 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.

Joe,

I suggest you take another look at these numbers. Those countries with
overall population densities lower than the US's all have something in
common - they are really cold. Iceland, Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden.
Folks in those countries are densely packed into relatively small regions of
their overall land area (near oceans or in cities). Sure, some folks live
out in Nunavut, but a relatively small number. Contrast that with the US
where the population is far more spread out.

This is an issue of both distribution and density, not just density.

> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> Joe
> 

-- 
Daniel Golding