one location for the 'sky is falling' rhetoric is the doctrine of universal access that arose out of the telephone era, which is also the origin of questions surrounding 'adoption rates', 'universality' and such. the goal then was to get everyone in the u.s. access to a telephone in their home, of which, as i recall from something i read last year the u.s. is amongst the lowest in the developed world for universal telephone service, which is explained by two factors, geographic barriers and dispersed population, which end up being one factor, economic cost. On May 3, 2005, at 6:53 AM, Paul Chenoweth wrote:
There is an element of geography that seems to have been removed from this equation. The measurement of broadband coverage in Korea and Japan is being compared on the same basis as the amount of physical (geographical) coverage in the US. Vast areas of open plains, deserts, national forests, etc. are included in the broadband measure...to countries where the population distribution is more compact and the land area is significanly smaller. The statistics make great headlines and wonderful 'sky is falling' rhetoric, but there is far less substance than the rankings imply.
IMHO, Paul Chenoweth, Web Developer Belmont University 615-460-6867
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