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Is the USA Really the Broadband Leader?

The US is not exactly the leader when it comes to Broadband or even Mobility – in fact we’re way behind several Asian and European countries.

But is that really true?  Professor Leonard Waverman of the London Business School disagrees.  He published a study on the World’s Connectivity Scorecard.  His key thesis is that penetration and connection speed is not enough to measure true connectedness: we have to consider to what extent the Consumer, Businesss and Government sectors put broadband to productive use.

The compound index reveals a few surprises: the USA is actually #1, closely followed by Sweden and Denmark, and in fourth position (surprise!?!) is Malaysia, leaving countries like Japan, Korea, Norway in the dust.

I am not entirely convinced about the US position, especially if we take a look at the Consumer vs Business segmentation … and don’t get me started on Government.

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Update:  Vinnie Mirchandani points out the serious flaws in the Study Methodology.

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Earthquake in Japan. Twitter Reports First – Again

A few days ago a 7.2 magnitude Earthquake in China was first reported by several Twitter users, and only got picked up by the news agencies 20 or so minutes later.   Today it’s happening again:

地震!Earthquake in Tokyo! http://urltea.com/2zug

27 minutes ago from Zooomr Icon_star_empty

Reported by Kristopher Tate on Twitter.  No news agencies reported it yet. Google blog search reveals one post:

March 24
(3-24-08) EARTHQUAKE IN TOKYO, JAPAN!
I am sitting her at home in Shimoakatsuka, Itabashi-ku , Tokyo and I just felt an earthquake at about 12:41pm! Did anyone else feel the earthquake?

So it’s twitter and a single blog post.

The USGS site has the precise information: magnitude 5.3 Monday, March 24, 2008 at 03:40:13 UTC Honshu, Japan.

Still nothing on news wires.

Update:  Still nothing on the majors, but the Times of India and the Trend News Agency, Azerbaijan report it now.  Perhaps we need to redefine what a major news agency is smile_sad