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Atlanta--Most Wired US City...Things that make you go, hunh?
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Thanks to Om for pointing out the Forbes feature on the most wired cities in the US. Atlanta tops the list, ahead of San Diego, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. San Jose wasn't even in the running, which begs the question, "What were they smoking thinking?"
You have to give props to Atlanta, where users had the greatest choice in internet providers and over 80% of the internet-using population got online using a broadband connection. Plus, their downtown district is seriously wired and in early '07, the city minders are planning to wrap Atlanta in a citywide blanket of Wi-Fi goodness, so residents will be able to use free or not-too-outrageous wireless connections to surf the web and make voip internet phone calls.
However...they spent a hefty portion of the article trying to explain away their judging rationale, with good reason. They started out by taking a look at the top market regions with the highest broadband adoption, according to Nielsen research. Seems like a good place to start, but then they go horribly off track and drop any city from those areas that didn't make the US Census Bureau's top 100 list. And compound the problem by only considering the "namesake city in each Nielsen market area--which eliminated some large cities, such as San Jose, Calif..." At that point, somebody should have thrown up a red flag and perhaps taken another stab at developing an evaluation system. I'm just saying...
Anyway, since Om dug up some unwired stats, I figure it's only fair to lay out this crunchy little data nugget on the top 5 wired nations. Singapore nabbed the top slot and while the US did manage to make the cut, its last place position serves as a matching bookend to Singapore's #1 ranking. Maybe next year's showing will be better; with the highly anticipated voip explosion in full swing, our broadband penetration will have to grow, too.
