A broadband indicator being devised by the Organization for Econo...

broadband use, but Reynolds told us he hopes the new system will be in place next year. The organization now assesses broadband markets using 5 criteria -- penetration, choice and competition, coverage, services and speeds, and price -- a system that has provoked outrage in the U.S., whose broadband penetration ranking continues to slip. This year the U.S. ranked 15th as of December 2007, the OECD said in a report earlier this week. Several years ago the U.S. and others urged the OECD to redo its broadband penetration analysis. The body has made no changes but has tried to allay misunderstandings about what its data mean, Reynolds said. The OECD counts subscribers based on the number of lines and connections, but there can be more than one user per connection, he said. The data are “fact-checked with the FCC” and member country counterparts, he said. The OECD publishes subscriber and user data but subscriber data is easier to get, he said. The entity’s new broadband portal posts all the information collected, which Reynolds said has eased criticism. The U.S. wanted the data “put in context” and not tied to a single indicator such as the number of subscribers per 100 population, Reynolds said. The OECD agreed, and believes its data now has more context, he said. It ranks nations to raise the question of why the top countries do well and how their experience can help those lower down, he said. Among the December report’s key findings: (1) Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, Korea and Sweden have broadband penetration well above the OECD average of 30 subscribers per 100 inhabitants threshold. (2) The U.S. is the OECD’s largest broadband market, with nearly 70 million subscribers, representing 30 percent of all broadband connections among organization members. (3) Fiber-to-the-home and fiber-to- the-building connections continue to rise, comprising 8 percent of broadband connections in the OECD. Reynolds co- authored a report on broadband growth and policies in member countries published this week ahead of the organization’s June 17-18 ministerial meeting in Seoul, South Korea. The report found many positive market and policy developments, including subscriber growth, faster and cheaper connections and more availability of wireless and mobile Internet connections. The study found substantial divides in broadband access and use among OECD countries and between urban and rural areas, insufficient governmental use of broadband for e-health and e-government services and more broadband-related security threats. It urged governments to remove barriers to deploying broadband services and content; to do a better job of coordinating security, privacy and consumer protection activities; and to find an appropriate balance between content protection and distribution. The Technology Policy Institute called the OECD rankings “a flawed and misleading basis for policymaking.” The institute said the rankings don’t separate business from residential connections and don’t take into account that larger average households in the U.S. lead to lower per- capita penetration findings since the rankings are based on connections rather than users. “No evidence suggests a general policy failure” in the U.S. market, the institute said. Media reform organization Free Press, however, said the rankings show the U.S. lacks a coherent broadband strategy.