OECD Broadband Statistics

The OECD has released its latest comparisons of broadband uptake, and New Zealand continues near the bottom at 22nd out of 30.

Australia has reversed its decline and in one year gone from 21st to 17th.

New Zealand in 2001 was in 19th place and for three years now has been stuck at 22nd. We now have a 8.1% penetration rate. How-ever to make the top half it would need to be over 14% (almost double) and to make the goal of the top quarter, it would have to be over 21%.

Now the Government has set a goal of being in the top quarter by 2010 and an interim goal of the top half by end of 2007. Is there any chance at all this can be achieved with no change to the current framework?

Well a simple linear trend line projection based on the last three years tells us that to make the top half of the OECD by the end of 2007, NZ will need to go from 8.1% today to 24.2% in just two years. In terms of number of subscribers this would be a 650,000 or so increase from 330,000 to 980,000.

Now in terms of the main goal of the top quarter by 2010, the trend line projection is New Zealand would need to have just under 50% penetration. So in five years NZ would need to have just over two million subscribers, up from the current 330,000.

Now if one applies the linear trend line to NZ’s current growth, then the 2010 projection is 27.1% penetration or 1.1 million broadband subscribers. So in the absence of a *major* change to the competitive environment, it looks like NZ will be around 900,000 subscribers short of the Government’s target.

Also worth reading stories on this in the NZ Herald, and Computer World.

UPDATE: InternetNZ has a media release out on this issue.