vishalrao
The Global Village Idiot
http://wifinetnews.com/archives/007175.html
An article seems to indicate that broadband is still mostly in the hands of the better-off in the developing world.
Still, the overall point is that growth and availability has surged in the last few years, partly due to the decrease cost of technology, and partly due to the increase cost of copper. The latter seems paradoxical, but it’s apparently now cost effective to lay fiber optic cable because of copper’s high cost. (This cost is extremely granular: a contractor friend about to work on our basement said that costs could change by a decent amount on materials for some part of the job due to copper price fluctuations.)
One industry exec says that the developing world is starting to feel the same boom that the Europe and North American experienced in 1999—when broadband went from a tiny minority that were early adopters or in the right place at the right time to widescale availability coupled with price drops. Venezuela has installed 500,000 broadband connected over the last 2 1/2 years, but will hit a million by the end of 2007. Argentina leapt from 115,000 to 841,000 lines over three years (as of last year). India has just 1m broadband users, unbelievably, and WiMax is widely seen as a tool to push users onto the Net.
An article seems to indicate that broadband is still mostly in the hands of the better-off in the developing world.
Still, the overall point is that growth and availability has surged in the last few years, partly due to the decrease cost of technology, and partly due to the increase cost of copper. The latter seems paradoxical, but it’s apparently now cost effective to lay fiber optic cable because of copper’s high cost. (This cost is extremely granular: a contractor friend about to work on our basement said that costs could change by a decent amount on materials for some part of the job due to copper price fluctuations.)
One industry exec says that the developing world is starting to feel the same boom that the Europe and North American experienced in 1999—when broadband went from a tiny minority that were early adopters or in the right place at the right time to widescale availability coupled with price drops. Venezuela has installed 500,000 broadband connected over the last 2 1/2 years, but will hit a million by the end of 2007. Argentina leapt from 115,000 to 841,000 lines over three years (as of last year). India has just 1m broadband users, unbelievably, and WiMax is widely seen as a tool to push users onto the Net.