When it comes to broadband, speed isn’t everything

[Commentary] Huffington Post contributor Bruce Kushnick asserted in no uncertain terms that, here in the US, “we suck” when it comes to broadband. His assertion rests on download and upload rankings from Akamai and Ookla, which place the US far behind nations such as Sweden, Lithuania, Monaco, Japan, and others. But is this claim true? The short answer is no, and an examination of the data at hand can tell us why.

If we are to believe that download and upload speeds are all that matter, then it should be clear that the leading countries on these measures enjoy some benefits beyond just bragging rights. It stands to reason that Romania, Monaco, Lithuania and Macau would really be bigger and better economies thanks to their faster download speeds. Furthermore, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea should have broadband-enabled innovations that we can name. So, where is that remarkable GDP growth? Where are those breakthrough applications? The answer is: they simply aren’t there. Broadband speed alone does not an economy make.

[Roslyn Layton studies Internet economics at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies (CMI) at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark]