The developed economies of Asia have taken the top spots in global broadband table, according to the Oxford University’s Said Business School. This study combines quality of service and penetration. South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan occupy the first three positions and Singapore is fifth.
The survey has tested download and upload speeds along with latency in 72 countries. Korea, which topped the rankings last year, this year reported average download throughput of 33.5Mbps, up 55% from 2009, and average upload speed of 17Mbps, up 430%. It has 100% broadband penetration. The survey, said that as a result of increased network investment, broadband quality had improved by 50% since the first study in 2008, while penetration had grown from 40% of households to 49%. The tests on 40 million broadband connections found that average global download speed had lifted from 3.8 Mbps in 2008 to 5.9 Mbps this year, while upload speed has risen from 794kbps to 1.8 Mbps.
Yet, the fact remains that most of the Asia suffers from narrow-band-starvation, let alone broadband. Manifold expensive (up to 300%) wholesale Internet bandwidth prices have been barrier to Asia’s broadband growth. Telegeography’s Median GigE IP Transit Prices in Major Cities, Q2 2005-Q2 2010 provides a snapshot. As a result, Internet penetration is only 16% among 60% of the global population living in developing Asia.
The cost of transporting Internet bandwidth could be reduced by supplementing the submarine cables with a highly resilient pan-Asian long-haul terrestrial network. Europe has done the similar blending long time ago. That’s why Europe has higher Internet and broadband penetration than Asia.
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