Freud would have a field day with the chairman of the US telco Verizon.
Faced with figures which show the US was lagging behind in broadband, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg insisted that the nation was the number one in the world. It was not to do with speed, he claimed, it was all to do with penetration.
What? The fact that Hong Kong residents can now get 1Gbps symmetric fibre for US$26, while New York City residents top out at 100Mbps and cost $100? Capping 3Mbps - no the US is still number one.
Seinberg insists that it is nothing to do with ridiculous things like speed. Instead we should be looking at broadband penetration. In that, says Seidenberg, the US is beating the pants off everyone else.
Ah right. This is a normal US thing they do. They can't play a game, like rugby or football, so they re-write the rules so no one else can play and then they say they are the world's best.
This would mean that in the days of dial-up the world was a better place we guess. The fact that the people of Korea or France, seem to be doing more with their faster Internet connections has nothing to do with it.
Seidenberg said that the US service is better than Japan because while they have faster speeds there are more Americans using the Internet.
While everybody says the European system is better, the average American uses their phone four times more.
Isn't that because Europeans often have more than one phone? Seindenberg claims that people have more than one phone because global roaming charges are so high, so that solves that question.
He also adds that Europeans are envious of the advancements of smartphone technology in the US.
However it looks like Seindenberg is not only a bit dubious about the logic of his facts, he er, appears to have made them up.
Ars Technica dug through the OECD's most recent broadband dataset, from the second quarter of 2009, and looked at penetration rates in Europe.
The US was getting beaten by most European countries, and in Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark it is getting its bottom kicked.
In terms of raw numbers, the US has the most broadband subscribers due to its size, but when it comes to penetration rate, it was even beaten by Canada
Gartner also released figures about broadband penetration last year and it ranked the US at 14th place a long way behind South Korea, the Netherlands, Denmark, and other European countries.
Verizon likes to point out it has laid a lot of fibre in comparison to the all of Western Europe. However most Americans can't actually get it.
In short it is a classic case of US banging on about how brilliant it is without much evidence. It is probably an insecurity based on the fact that it does not have a royal family, history, was founded by terrorists and the dross kicked out of every country that had all of these things.
WTF. Since when does *one guy* represent the US. Or is your article just another classic case of the UK having no journalistic integrity?
I have had cable since it's inception as Road runner a decade ago, curently Comcast. Here in the NE U.S. the infrastructure has not been improved since then. I am capped at 250GB and average 1 Mbs on downloads, am forced to pay for 10 mbs in the package. My arguement can be fought but in ten years nothing has happened to cable but charge more for less. I believe more could have been done but shortsightedness reigns , apparently.
Come on over to the FBCoV, and we'll watch some Netball on the telly, swap sandwiches, and chuck tha Maori on the barbie. atah