Standards for broadband access and beyond

With more applications coming to rely on high-speed access to the Internet, bringing broadband connectivity to residences and businesses as well as to mobile terminals is growing in importance. Yet, year after year, the data collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have shown that, among the developed countries, those with a large urban population such as South Korea, Japan, France and the Netherlands are more likely to achieve a higher rate of broadband penetration than those with significant rural communities such as the United States and Canada [1]. Figure 1 plots the data series in Table 1, which represents the broadband penetration per 100 inhabitants vs. the percentage of total landmass used by 50 percent of the population for various OECD countries.