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Having lived in various parts of urban Asia now for more than a year, from a geek perspective, perhaps the most annoying thing that my friends still talk about is broadband penetration.

Or rather, a couple of them gripe about the relatively low penetration rates of the US versus Japan or Korea.

But let’s put this in perspective. Ignoring the various harebrained schemes the federal government has implemented over the past two decades (I discuss them here and here), an important factor that just about everyone overlooks is geography.

Japan’s main island – Honshu – which 80% of the population lives on, is the size of Minnesota. The continuous urban conglomeration that stretches from Tokyo in the east to Hiroshima in the west is one of the most dense concentrations of urban development in the world. It is the definition of megaopolis.

South Korea is the size of Indiana. Nearly 70% of the population lives in 5 cities. Roughly half of the entire country lives within the greater Seoul area. For a quick illustration of how large this continuous urban development is, right now I live in Suwon a suburban city 30 km south of Seoul. The bus ride into downtown Seoul involves passing town after town filled with nothing but high-rise apartments. It’s like that in all directions.

For some perspective: the population of Minnesota is a little more than 5 million. The population of Indiana is just over 4 million.

In contrast: the population of Honshu is almost 100 million. The population of South Korea is nearly 50 million.

So, my challenge to those that cry about national penetration rates: consult a density almanac.

Country to country is apples to oranges

While both Seoul and the Tokyo areas have 60% or higher broadband penetration rates. So to do heavily urbanized parts of America.

For instance, according to a recent study (pdf) the Bay Area is now at 62%. This is not too shabby considering how spread out it is (depending which areas you count it is roughly twice the size of the Seoul metro).

Which brings us to the assignment I usually give my friends is this: measure apples to apples.

To do this, do not look at penetration in the Midwest or Great Plains which neither Asian country has. Rather, geeks should look at comparably large urban conglomerations.

So for this exercise, the North East corridor is the comparable geographical region. The Boston to Washington DC megaopolis is home to roughly 75 million people. The distance from one end to the other is 400 miles.

This distance is a little longer than that of the road connecting Busan-Daejeon-Daegu-Seoul (the four largest cities in Korea) which is around 400 km. It is also a little longer than that of Osaka to Tokyo (the Kyoto-Kobe-Osaka area is home to 14 million people and the 2nd largest metro after 32 million residents of greater Tokyo) which is about 430 km.

According to the aforementioned study the penetration of a few US cities: Boston is 61%, Washington DC is 58%, Baltimore and New York are 55%, and Philadelphia is at 52%.

In fact, according to the OECD, the US is the largest broadband market with roughly 70 million broadband subscribers which is more than any other country. This also represents around 30% of all broadband connections of the group (which both Japan and South Korea are part of).

Could it be better? Absolutely yes. Should the US government direct any more activity? Absolutely not.

Both the National Infrastructure Initiative and Universal Service Fund have been little more than criminal money laundering endeavors (see here). And both the telecom lobbyists and congressmen that approved them should be charged with fraud. In fact, entrusting politicians to craft yet another system should be curtailed for perpetuity.

To end I’d like to quote Ambrose Bierce who said that “war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” Both Korea and Japan are each still home to more than 25,000 US troops. So what is your excuse for not knowing your geography?

Further reading:
* Does the US need another Chief Technology Officer?
* Against a National Broadband Policy
* The Spectrum Swindle
* The Spectrum Should Be Private Property
* Who Owns the Internet?
* Asian Tiger or Asian Kitten?
* The Evaporation of the FCC

Note: here is a recent broadband test I took. For comparison, the chief geek at HowToGeek.com (a friend of mine) lives in Washington D.C. and always has more throughput.