Broadband Penetration in the US

I just read this posting in VentureBeat about the FCC's $7.2 billion investment in broadband infrastructure coming from the stimulus package. The investment is focused on developing the rural and underserved areas of the US. What I found most interesting was how far behind the US is in terms of broadband penetration around the world. We are 20th! Here's the excerpt:

To understand the vital nature of these hearings, it’s important to first understand how widespread the lack of broadband access is in the U.S. It might come as a surprise, but the U.S. is at at No. 20 in the world for per-capita broadband penetration. A study by Point Topicsays that only 26.4% of people in the country have regular broadband access. To give you some context, another report issued by the Brookings Institute and MIT determined that for every percent increase in per-capita penetration, 300,000 more jobs are created. This is an opportunity that can’t go overlooked right now.
Incidentally, the U.S. ranks only at 15th in broadband speed. The median download speed here is 2.3 megabytes per second. Compare that to 63 megabytes per second in Japan, 49 in South Korea, 17 in France and 7.6 in Canada. This too, needs to change, but first things first.

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