[Sigia-l] The New Nielsen?

[Jay Linden]

Listera wrote:
> 
> "gMeta" wrote:
> 
> > Try "having fun" over a dialup line that you
> > pay for per minute...like most of Europe...
> 
> In 2001 these were the broadband penetration rates as % of households:
> 
> South Korea 50%
> Hong Kong 40%
> Canada 40%
> Netherlands 10%
> Sweden 10%
> Denmark 10%
> Finland 10%
> Norway 9%
> Spain 9%
> Taiwan 8%
> Singapore 7%
> US 7%
> Germany 5%
> Japan 5%
> France 4%
> 
> <http://www.entrepreneur.com/Your_Business/YB_SegArticle/0,4621,290069,00.ht
> ml>
> 
> Notice, for example, there are 11 countries ahead of the US. Four of them
> Asian. Six of the 11are European.

The point where this becomes an impact is not in the percentage of
people who have broadband access but in the experience of those who
don't.

Here in Canada and the US, those who don't have broadband access can
still pretty much get a one price, all-you-can-eat Internet connection
that's affordable.

In much of Europe, aside from the cost of Internet access, which may
well be affordable by itself, is the additional per-minute charge for
use of the phone line (also suffered for voice calls).  This makes any
prolonged use of the Internet cost-prohibitive to those who suffer
through dialup.

It is true that Norway's 9% is higher than the US' 7%.  But the 91% of
Norwegian households who'd have to use dialup, if Norway is one of the
countries that charges per-minute for phone, have it much tougher than
the 93% of Americans who have dialup.

All of which, of course, notwithstands that IMO, the grief caused by
much of Flash use has less to do with the issue of page weight than of
page "wait" (as in "where the !@#$%^*& is that 'skip intro' button
anyway").  A hardship that is bandwith-neutral.


-- 
Jay Linden                                               Toronto, Canada
e-business Advisor, IBM Global Services                 jeigh at rogers.com
These onions are MINE and not those of my EMPLOYER.
Wait, that should be OPINIONS. I have no idea whose onions these are.