US Ranks 15th, South Korea No. 1 in Cisco Broadband Rankings

South Korea extended its worldwide fixed-line broadband Internet leadership and the U.S. held onto joint 15th place as the technology's speed and availability expanded, according to a poll carried out by Cisco.

The broadband-quality rankings measure the proportion of households and businesses with access to broadband, combined with Internet-connection speeds. South Korea, which has 100 percent broadband penetration, topped Cisco's list for the third year in a row. Fixed-line customers' broadband access in the U.S., which shared its ranking with four nations, rose to 75 percent this year from 69 percent in 2009, Cisco said. Internet-download speeds in South Korea increased by 55 percent from a year earlier, said Cisco, the largest maker of routers and switches that direct Web traffic over networks. While the U.S. improved its broadband quality, it won't be fully prepared for technologies such as high-definition Internet television being developed by Apple Inc. and Google Inc. until next year, Fernando Gil de Bernabe, senior director at Cisco, said.