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Slovenia is poised to pass the U.S. (source)
A recent report by Telecompaper showed that Slovenia is in the global top twenty when it comes to per-capita broadband penetration. It’s also poised to overtake the United States next year. (A fact that this site seems to relish.)
Of course, the country is still nowhere near the heavyweights of Asia (who account for 4 of the top 6 spots) but Slovenia is definitely on top of the region.
Interestingly, despite its rapid growth, Slovenia still boasts one of the highest "digital divides" in Europe. Quoth the Eurostat: (pdf)
In all Member States for which data are available, there is a higher level of internet use among the higher educated than among the lower. There is no significant link between the overall level of internet penetration and the size of this divide. The largest gaps were recorded in Portugal (70 percentage points), Slovenia (68 pp), Spain (61 pp) etc…
More general facts and figures here.
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Indeed… But the broadband "revolution" and widening digital divide is not all that suprising - given the fact that Slovenia never really experienced the "dialup boom" the US has. I’m not sure if my data is correct, but AFAIK more than 40% of US households still use a dial-up connection. But then again there is a helluva lot more households which have net access in the US than in Slovenia.But on the other hand mobile phone penetration in Slovenia broke the teorethical limit of 100% :))
I think we have an advantage of being small. Shorter distances mean less expenses for breadband. I’m still amazed at how no one I know in the States or Canada has ever had remotely as fast of a connection as I do (excluding the crazy fast college connections). Not to mention they’re paying at least twice as much as I do for mine. It’s funny how we still bitch about our ISPs with the best of them, though.
Be afraid, USA - Slovenia is right behind you!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I’m not sure how accurate this is, but this website indicates that as of Nov 2005, 63.76% of Americans had some sort of high-speed internet connection. This is up from 42.85% in Jan of 2004 (also known as "the dark ages") http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0511/ This study seems to take into account not just households, but also businesses (which is where most people do their web-trolling anyway. Ahem.) I’d venture a guess that if we were talking about JUST households, that number would drop to 50% or less. Broadband isn’t even AVAILABLE in many rural parts of the country. But, in defense of the giant mega-humongu-conglomerate companies that take care of these such things and certainly need my defense, it is an awfully big country to cover. And if you can’t afford shoes, let alone a computer, do we really want to spend the bucks to cover your area? (that is not me talking — I would at least make sure you had shoes — that is the voice of the giant conglomerate)
Of course they have such high penetration. With such a dinky country and about two million people, they can roll out broadband to everyone in their country in no time. The country is so small that one run of Cat-5 is enough to network the whole country.
The country is so small that one run of Cat-5 is enough to network the whole country. I think Croatians could add this to their list of jokes about us.
I dunno, last I checked, crappy broadband in SLO was at least 8000SIT/ month, while you can get started at around $25/month in the US for the same bandwidth. For around $50 you get 3Mbit DL speed and 512Kbit UL (I think). About the same price for cable, with slightly better UL speed.
I get by with 6000SIT/month for 1Mbps/1MBps. With 50$/month I would be able to get 10 Mbps/2 Mbps line here.
crni: I think things have really picked up recently. Last week I started with 4096/512 kbps for about 6000 SIT/month. (with kick-ass Triera) Students can get it for even less.
Wow, that’s great. Prices have dropped a bit in USA, too but not that much. Very nice.