Legal Research

Next Generation Connectivity: Berkman on How Countries Measure Up

By Simon Fodden

Harvard’s Berkman Center has released the draft of a report, “Next Generation Connectivity: A review of broadband Internet transitions and policy from around the world” [PDF], which examines the position of the United States in relation to various other countries with respect to salient aspects of broadband connectivity. The report takes into consideration a country’s regulatory scheme and the economic model used to provide broadband services, in addition to the more usual measures by which countries are ranked.

The report has a lot to say about Canada, none of it very flattering. (The table of contents doesn’t adequately reveal the degree to which Canada is part of the discussion: do a search within the document to see the many references.) The following brief excerpt gives you a sense of how we fare:

Canada, for example, is often thought of as a very high performer, based on the most commonly used benchmark of penetration per 100 inhabitants. Because our analysis includes important measures on which Canada has had weaker outcomes?prices, speeds, and 3G mobile broadband penetration?in our analysis it shows up as quite a weak performer, overall.

This is a must-read for anyone even tangentially involved with life in the broadband — which, come to think of it, would include just about every professional in practice.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on December 01, 2009 (boomark / email).