Japanese Broadband World's Fastest
Japan, France, Korea, Sweden, and New Zealand led all countries surveyed in advertised broadband download speeds (see Figure 1). Japan led all countries with an advertised 93,693 Mbits per second speed, followed by France at 44,157 Mb/s, Korea at 43,301 Mb/s, Sweden 21,423 Mb/s, and New Zealand at 13,595 Mb/s broadband speed. The UK came in 12th at 10,624 Mb/s while the US came in at 14th at 8,860 Mb/sec.
Japan has the fastest broadband speeds and the lowest cost per megabit per second of all countries surveyed, according to recent data from the OECD (see Figures 1-3). Japan enjoys costs per megabit over four times lower than that of the US. Iceland fell three places from third to sixth in global broadband penetration from Q4 2006 to Q2 2007, while the US remained at 15th place (see Figure 4). Ireland led all countries in net growth of broadband penetration per 100 inhabitants (see Figure 5). Meanwhile, in the US broadband penetration grew to 85.91% among active Internet users, up 0.6 percentage points over September 2007.

