New OECD Broadband Figures Released

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released its latest figures relating to broadband statistics. While not completely rosy for New Zealanders, we have moved up one place (20th from 21st) in the broadband uptake list. The figures for "Average advertised broadband speed" on the surface look really good with New Zealand coming in at 5th
behind Japan, France, Korea and Sweden. Unfortunately that ranking comes with a caveat - which basically says that ranking is based a theoretical maximum for the technology (ADSL 2+) and I am pretty sure we don't get those kinds of speeds here.

The question is should we really worry too much about the OECD figures? If we are to become the knowledge economy that the government wants then the answer is probably yes. It has been well noted that reliable and cheaper broadband is going to be a key factor to competing in the global economy.