A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject - Winston Churchill
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Britain lags behind Belgium in broadband
FIGURES PUT OUT BY Oxford University show that Britain is continuing to lag behind the rest of the world on broadband quality.
Cisco said that the UK is ranked 18th and is behind Belgium, a country whose only claims to fame include inventing the potato chip and the fact that it was used as a highway by Germans to invade France.
The third annual study from Saïd Business School at Oxford University looked at broadband quality in 72 countries and 239 cities
Only one in five countries are prepared for the Internet "applications of tomorrow", but that is an improvement compared to only one country the whole world in a study in 2008, the report said.
More than half of the countries surveyed have conquered the digital quality divide with less evident differences between the broadband quality inside and outside their main cities. This is an improvement of 58 per cent in just one year.
Many emerging economies are 'leapfrogging' by focusing on bringing the best broadband to their cities, acknowledging the impact on the economy, the report said.
Mobile broadband quality has improved significantly, with 10 per cent of mobile broadband users already enjoying similar quality experiences as those with fixed-line broadband.
An average household now needs more than 2Mbps and is consuming about 20GB of data per month. A smart and well connected home needs more than 20Mbps of bandwidth and consumes up to 500GB of online content per month.
The top ten are:
1. South Korea
2. Hong Kong
3. Japan
4. Iceland
5. Switzerland. Luxemburg, Singapore
6. Malta
7. Netherlands,
8. United Arab Emirates, Qatar
9. Sweden
10. Denmark
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Don't just repeat stewart on belgium as if he's some high intellect and standard of things please.
Belgians also came up with AES, the defacto encryption standard on the planet, used by everybody including the US government and its spooks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard
I'd say that's a better claim to fame than freaking fries and waffles and chocolates.
And incidentally, why does nobody ever mention their beer? What's up with that? Or their guns, you'd think at the very least the americans would appreciate those.
Oh and they are also the hub of the diamond cutting, quote:
"Diamond cutting, as well as overall processing, is concentrated in a few cities around the world: while 80% of rough diamonds are handled in Antwerp, Belgium, more than 50% of processed diamonds also pass through there."
Notice that no comment was made of the fact that the USA, Cisco's base, is way behind even the UK with broadband speed. In the USA my top speed wi-fi reaches only 54Mbps vs. 144Mbps when I am in the UK. I hope Cisco is better informed in its research than in its gratuitous, sniffed commentary.
It's not very surprising that Belgium, a country with a higher GDP per capita, and a much higher population density than the UK would have better broadband. It's also the country with the highest percentage of people with cable TV (nearly 100%) so that helps as well.
It's also the area in which Western Europe was born. The land of Clovis, Charles Martel, Charlemagne, Godfrey de Bouillon. Many of the greatest artists and musicians of the medieval and renaissance periods. Dufay, Van Eyck, Lassus. That sort of thing. Great artists and scientists of the modern world. Yup.
I think Belgium also is the first world champion of football according to fifa history, in 1920. That's another claim to fame.
I think in 1913 FIFA established that countries winning the football olympics should be considered world champions, at least until they have a tournament of their own, which started in 1930 in Uruguay.