Canadians more connected to Internet than Americans

[Tony The Bot]

Canadians more connected to Internet than Americans
Posted via Canadian Content

Canadians more connected than Americans

In a recent poll released for data collected throughout 2010, around 20% of Canadians, mostly the poorest, don't have a regular broadband connection to the Internet. The survey was conducted by Statistics Canada and polled 30,000 households.

Compare that to a February 2010 poll of Americans by the US Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration which found that almost 1/3 of all Americans "do not use the [broadband] Internet anywhere," including from home, the office or on the go from a wireless device.

Other numbers aggregated by various other organizations which include obsolete dial-up access put Canadians beside Americans as almost identical patterns of Internet usage, with Canadians only above their southern neighbours by 0.


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[SLM]

Interesting. I'd possibly infer from this that, generally speaking, we place a higher personal value on maintaining a connection with others than do our neighbours to the south. So much so that we are willing to pay these outrageous prices in order to maintain that connection. I also remembering reading at some point that Canadians tend to have one of the highest profiles in the use of social media as well.

I wonder if that's because our population is so spread out? Or maybe because we tend to be less isolationists, in principal?

 

[karrie]

I think it has to do with both the fact that our population is so spread out, and that we are more apt to stay indoors all winter than our southern neighbours.

 

[petros]

It's that Canada was the first country to go with fibre optics. We are light years ahead of the USA in telecomm. At least 20 years ahead in some areas.

 

[EagleSmack]

It's that Canada was the first country to go with fibre optics. We are light years ahead of the USA in telecomm. At least 20 years ahead in some areas.

Come now.



"After a period of research starting from 1975, the first commercial fiber-optic communications system was developed, which operated at a wavelength around 0.8 µm and used GaAs semiconductor lasers. This first-generation system operated at a bit rate of 45 Mbps with repeater spacing of up to 10 km. Soon on 22 April 1977, General Telephone and Electronics sent the first live telephone traffic through fiber optics at a 6 Mbit/s throughput in Long Beach, California."

 

[wulfie68]

I think this article makes some statements that are fairly inaccurate and pure nationalist propaganda, even in the title. When you read more into the article it admits there is only a 0.4% difference in the total popuation's access... which is an insignificant difference and may reflect regional bias (such as the difference in connection rates between BC and NB).

 

[CurioToo]

The topic for me blasts from the past when I first started reading forums both Canadian and USA.

The comparative jargon which was spread thickly around made me wonder what the "point" was - I have come to believe correctly or not, it remains in the mind of the writer who seeks superiority - which when we get down to the business of survival in our modern world
means little if we continue to compare negatively as our basis for putting down other nations.

All nations have their positives and to continually dig out "my shoes are shinier than yours" junk demeans the writer and the audience.

 

[karrie]

"The CRTC has stated that their goal is to have all Canadians connected to high-speed broadband by 2012, but made several backwards steps earlier this year when they endorsed and then unfairly forced usage-based-billing on subscribers of small last mile providers, effectively making the subscription of a high-speed Internet service for some useless.

Without going into the fact that wireless data rates in Canada are ridiculously among the highest in the world, Canadians are also likely to pay a much higher price for traditional broadband access, almost double, than Americans and much more than most European countries."

Oh yeah, it reads like a lot of chest thumping alright. lol.