US lags in broadband adoption and download speeds, still has the best rappers

U, S, A! We're number nine! Wait, nine? At least according to a recent broadband survey by the FCC, yes. The good ol' US of A ranked ninth (out of the 29 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) in fixed broadband penetration on a per capita basis, and 12th in terms of pure percentage -- behind the UK, South Korea, Iceland, the Netherlands, and plenty of others. Though, granted, these nations lack the sprawling amber waves of grain that America must traverse with cables. The US also trailed in wireless broadband adoption, ranking ninth yet again, behind the likes of Ireland, Australia and Sweden. Worse still, even those with broadband reported slower connections than folks in other countries. Olympia, Washington had the highest average download speeds of any US city with 21Mbps (New York and Seattle tied for second with 11.7Mbps), but was easily topped by Helsinki, Paris, Berlin, and Seoul (35.8Mbps). Well, at least we beat Slovenia... if only just barely.

Reuters

FCC

Study finds Netflix is the largest source of internet traffic in North America

In your daily Netflix news, the latest report on Global Internet Phenomena for spring 2011 from Sandvine has called out the movie service as the largest single consumer of bandwidth on the internet in North America. The last report in October suggested it made up around twenty percent of internet traffic during prime time, but this time around the stats say it accounts for 30% of traffic during prime time, and 22.2% of daily internet traffic. Sandvine gets the data from ISPs using its broadband technology and now foresees "Real-Time Entertainment" (which includes Netflix) shooting up over 55% of peak internet traffic by the end of this year. It also reports on net traffic from other regions, noting social networking outpaces YouTube traffic in Latin America, while European subscribers use twice as much data as North Americans. We'll have to wait and see if these stats are waved in our faces to justify the next round of bandwidth caps or throttling, in the meantime you can click through for more stats or hear about it from Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo discuss them in a video embedded after the break.

Sandvine, YouTube