El Reg reports
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has issued its annual "Measuring the Information Society" report and found that Denmark is the world's most technologically-developed nation.
South Korea scored the win in the last version of the report, but is now in second. Results for other big Reg-reading nations include:
- The UK climbing from seventh to fifth;
- The USA remaining steady in twelfth spot;
- Australia retaining its fourteenth rank;
- Canada climbing two spots to rank twenty-third;
- India staying in 129th place;
- Germany climbing one spot to seventeenth;
- China jumping two spots to 89th, while Hong Kong sits in fourth and Macao sits in twenty-fifth place.
[more after the break]
The ITU calculates those rankings by measuring the following eleven factors:
1. Fixed-telephone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants
2. Mobile-cellular telephone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants
3. International Internet bandwidth (bit/s) per Internet user
4. Percentage of households with a computer
5. Percentage of households with Internet access
6. Percentage of individuals using the Internet
7. Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants
8. Wireless-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants
9. Adult literacy rate
10. Secondary [school] gross [enrollment] ratio
11. Tertiary [education] gross [enrollment] ratio[...]The 270-page report(PDF) is full of interesting nuggets, perhaps none more so than [El Reg's graph] depicting the number of teachers trained to teach with IT, and to teach computing.
Uruguay's position on that chart is a vindication of its embrace of OLPC, which began in 2007 and reached full deployment in October 2009.
The placement of Azerbaijan and Oman there is new information to me; I will have to investigate that further.
With their increasing adoption of FOSS, I did expect Venezuela's position to be a bit better.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday November 26 2014, @01:44PM
Looks like the Democratic Republic of the Congo was once again cheated out of its rightful place at the top by racist White men and their White privilige.
Yup, just Whitey keepin the brothas down again. Ferguson forever!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @01:52PM
Demark is less rotten than it used to be, bitch.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @02:35PM
Measures which country makes heaviest per capita use of the services of the telco carriers who form the membership of the ITU.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday November 26 2014, @03:03PM
Exactly. It doesn't have anything to do with "tech savvy"
1. Fixed-telephone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants
I haven't had a copper landline in maybe a decade? I'm even thinking of shutting off my VOIP/Asterisk connection. So my wife uses the landline phone like 30 minutes per month at a cost of $15 or whatever it is exactly, thats like 50 cents per minute... Its been huge fun running my own voip PBX and doing all kinds of call routing based on incoming number and voicemail/email/web integration but its all obsolete.
My employer is going 100% softphone.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @04:21PM
Perhaps the proper measurement of tech-savyness is to flip this list around. Those that don't use phone lines anymore should be considered more tech-savvy while those that use them still stuck in the stone age are not.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @05:26PM
What? You mean, just because I like to get a bandwidth which is simply not available over mobile networks, I'm less tech-savvy? Because I don't think it makes sense to pay more for having less bandwidth, I suck in the stone age?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 27 2014, @02:29PM
Of course my suggestion was an oversimplification but my point was that this oversimplification is arguably no more valid than the original list as originally sorted.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday November 26 2014, @09:48PM
But if you do ignore copper telephone lines, and you instead look at broadband (either), then the US is apparently in the 20's, not 12th!
http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=4091&cid=98723
So much data, so many different conclusions. (Well, there's one consistent conclusion - ignore all such reports, as they're mostly meaningless.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Konomi on Wednesday November 26 2014, @02:45PM
Australia still sucking I see, no surprises there with our national broadband getting cancelled by the current quite conservative government. I think they replaced it with tin cans, strings and a few Kangaroos.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday November 26 2014, @04:20PM
Last man to leave the island turns the light off? :P
Seriously, let's hope some driven person with resources steamrolls the high speed internet expansion.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday November 27 2014, @12:16AM
When you look at what goes into the rankings, no country with a significant indigenous (aboriginal) population, or with a modern population segment that does not care to participate in the social media driven internet, can score high in these rankings.
Fixed phone subscriptions are dropping precipitously in most countries that have strong cellular industries. Had the category been Fixed or Mobile, the measure would be more rational.
The whole thing measures penetration of the internet, and could be summed up using only category 6 (Percentage of individuals using the Internet), yet they go out of their way to measure means rather than ends.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday November 26 2014, @04:12PM
For those who want to download the 270 page report, the primary table is on page 42. For the rest of us (I'm usually to lazy to RTFA), here are the top twenty:
1. Denmark
2. Korea
3. Sweden
4. Iceland
5. United
6. Norway
7. Netherlands
8. Finland
9. Hong Kong
10. Luxembourg
11. Japan
12. Australia
13. Switzerland
14. United States
15. Monaco
16. Singapore
17. Germany
18. France
19. New Zealand
20. Andorra
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @05:30PM
5. United what?
United Kingdom?
United Arab Emirates?
United Nations?
United Airlines?
United Parcel Service?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @05:37PM
Airlines you dumbass.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Wednesday November 26 2014, @04:29PM
Like another person commented. It's really a good measure of users of telecommunication corporation sales. Perhaps they should place more emphasis on having a good clue on computing and information. And I don't count formally trained. Because many people learn to repeat what they have been told without any deep thinking about what they learned.
Some parameters are useful however:
*. Telecommunication access per 100 inhabitants
3. International Internet bandwidth (bit/s) per Internet user
6. Percentage of individuals using the Internet
11. Tertiary [education] gross [enrollment] ratio