Tag: oecd

Archaic Telecom

Download Speed Competition: US Is Definitely Not Number 1

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It’s not news that US broadband speeds ain’t world-class.

For confirmation, check the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Cooporation and Development) extensive data sets culled from the advertised speeds of ISPs across many countries.

The spreadsheet I looked at, based on data from 2010, shows that US cable broadband performance is somewhere in the middle: ahead of France, Chile, Luxemborg, and Germany, but behind Estonia, Slovak Republic, Portugal and Finland.

Those last two, by the way, have the best speeds in Europe.

And let’s not even get into fiber bit rates.
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Archaic Telecom

Broadband Data Caps: Worldwide View

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With the announcement that AT&T will be ending its all you can eat broadband for DSL and U-Verse customers, I decided to take a look at how US broadband compares with the rest of the world.

And I mean beyond Canada.

I perused data  from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),  which tracks broadband metrics, among many other economic indicators, internationally.

The US now joins Iceland, Australia, Turkey, Ireland,  and the UK,  as a place where major ISPs market monthly pricing plans with overusage charges.

From a global perspective, it appears that AT&T’s plan is (gasp) generous: a ceiling of 150 GB  for DSL (250 GB for its fiber-based U-Verse) and $10 per 50 GB of additional usage.

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