Hi Nik, Take a look at the International Telecommunication Union's Internet Reports The Internet Story: ITU Internet Reports 1997-2003, http://www.itu.int/pub/S-POL-IR.ISTORY-2005/en International Telecommunication Union. (2005). The internet of things. Geneva: ITU. International Telecommunication Union. (2004). The portable internet. Geneva: ITU. International Telecommunication Union. (2003). Birth of broadband. Geneva: ITU. Also look at the Promoting Broadband website. The various country case studies provide background information on general internet adoption, not just broadband. http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/ni/promotebroadband/ You may find some OECD publications useful too, e.g OECD communications outlook. Paris: OECD., published every other year (2005, 2003, etc.) For Canada, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Road Map provides a detailed account of ICT initiatives in Canada. http://www3.fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp/cracin/policy/e-policy_map.html CA*Net Institute. (2001). A nation goes online. Ottawa: CANARIE. http://www.canarie.ca/press/publications/ango.pdf I've got a searchable bibliography of references on internet (especially broadband) adoption at http://www.broadbandresearch.ca/endnote/endnote.php. The interface isn't perfect, but you might find something useful by searching "anywhere" on isp or adoption or picking a specific country name. Good luck with this research. catherine middleton

Message: 2 Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 15:41:57 +0200 From: Nik John <nikjohn@mscc.huji.ac.il> Subject: [Air-l] comparative cross-national diffusion of the internet To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Message-ID: <0J0J000IVKM9PJ10@mxout4.netvision.net.il> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Plenty of histories of the Internet in the US have been written. Much has been said on the variables that it is claimed predict rates of Internet adoption in other countries around the world. However, I'm interested in when different countries first hooked up and especially when the first commercial ISPs started operating in different countries. Can anyone give me that information for the country they live in? Or direct me to historical reviews of the network in various countries?