Recent OECD reports

In advance of the Seoul Ministerial Meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy, two useful reports were released:

• This report on convergence is a nice summary of the implications of NGNs, with ideas for regulators to consider.
  
• This statistical profile to support discussions at the meeting.
  

In addition, this report was released as an outcome of the ministerial meeting, as well as the Seoul Declaration.

Broadband in Australia

You might find this item of interest ... there will be a cabinet level Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. One of the goals of this Minister is to implement the AU$4.7 Billion fiber to the node plan that was one of the promises of the recent election in Australia. So, following up on the point I was arguing here, how would one account for this in the OECD's price of service report? In other words, is it right to compare Verizon's retail price for FiOS (which did not receive a subsidy that I know about) with future services from Telstra and other Australian ISPs (which benefitted from this subsidy)?

OECD broadband statistics

he OECD recently published some updated broadband statistics. This was picked up and visualized by the San Jose Mercury News (as reported here -- the figure is pretty cool, by the way).

In looking at these new data, I asked myself the following questions:

• What is really relevant here? Are users in "lagging" countries (like the US) getting their needs met? If yes, what is the problem?
  
• In considering the reported data, they are advertised bit rates and retail prices. Is this really a fair if the prices are subsidized, either by tax subsidies, universal service funds, etc.? There is no doubt that there are serious methodological problems in counting and attributing subsidies, and using retail prices simplifies that.
  

US Broadband rankings

It is not hard to find references on the Internet to the comparative broadband statistics published by the OECD and the ITU. Thus, it is interesting when an alternative methodology or analysis is posted, such as this one (the direct URL to the report, bypassing CNET is here). Quoting the paper:

To provide policymakers a tool to compare broadband subscription rates between countries, this PAPER develops and presents the Broadband Performance Index (BPI). This index quantifies the relationship between a country’s broadband subscriptions per capita and that country’s economic and demographic endowments. This approach is policy-relevant because it strips away many factors over which telecom policymakers have very little influence or control. As a result, we believe that the BPI provides telecom policymakers with a method of comparing broadband subscription rates among countries that is superior to existing measurements, all of which depend upon raw data that do not take these factors into account.

We compute the Broadband Performance Index for each OECD country by first estimating the relationship between these endowments and broadband subscriptions, and we use that information to compare how that country performs relative to expectations. The index for each country indicates whether a country’s broadband subscription rate meets, exceeds, or falls below what would be reasonably expected for that country, given its demographic and economic endowments.

Some of our findings will be of significant interest to policymakers. For example, we find that the United States generally meets expectations in its conversion of its national endowments into broadband subscriptions. This finding conflicts with claims that the United States is in a “broadband ditch” and is failing to perform up to expectations, at least with respect to subscriptions.

Also, we find that many relatively poor countries, like Turkey and Portugal, which actually rank behind the United States according to the OECD, are doing a better job of converting their national endowments into broadband penetration than many highly ranked countries. Indeed, many countries that rank higher than the United States according to the OECD, like Denmark and Norway, are in fact underperforming the United States when one considers demographic and economic factors.

Update (2007/7/25): You might find this item over at Marginal Revolution interesting and relevant.

Do you think this approach has merit? How much should a nation's policy be guided by how it ranks internationally with other countries?

Recent international meetings of interest

You might enjoy the papers located at this OECD site. OECD's interest is preparation for a ministerial level meeting on this subject that is scheduled for 2008.

In a similar fashion, the ITU recently held a workshop on spectrum management. This workshop addressed the use of market mechanisms as well as spectrum trading. They also held another workshop on "The Future of Voice", which addressed (among other things) voice communications in NGNs.