Random Ramblings

"In theory, you could push fiber (-optic networks) up to 150 trillion bits per second - a rate that would deliver the text of all the books in the U.S. Library of Congress in about a second." -- unfortunately, the U.S. greatly lags behind the entire rest of the world in fast network access:

Broadband lines per person in 2004: South Korea - 25; U.S. - 12

Annualized rate of broadband growth, 1Q2005: Turkey - 263%; U.S. - 34%

Cheapest sign-up DSL monthly rate (March 2005): Taiwan - $11.32; U.S. - $26.95 ... The Taiwan service is at 512Kbps; the U.S. service is at 384Kbps

DSL's share of broadband (end of 2000): World - 57%; U.S. - 34%

DSL's share of broadband (1Q2005): World - 65%; U.S. - 41%

I got the quote and data from the October 2005 IEEE Spectrum magazine ... they got some of it from http://www.point-topic.com and http://www.cabledatacomnews.com