Byline, from Timetric

You’re probably reading this on a broadband connection: I’m certainly writing it on one. This data, from the OECD, shows how many broadband connections there are per 100 people in each of the developed countries.

Adoption’s now beginning to slow, and settling at a lower level in the UK and the US than it’s reached in Denmark. There are two effects to explain here — why adoption’s slowing, and why there are more broadband connections in Denmark.

Let’s look at the second first. The average American household is 2.59 people; in Britain it’s slightly smaller at 2.35 (as of 2007), and in Denmark it’s only 2.2 people, again as of 2007. It’s safe enough to assume that most households — at least, before people started getting smartphones! — have at most one broadband connection, so that means around 67 out of every 100 people in both the UK and the US have broadband at home; in Denmark it’s somewhat higher at 82 per 100.

This suggests why adoption’s slowing too: simply put, market saturation. The relative rate of new connections is lower in Denmark than in the UK or US, but most people who want — or can afford — access to broadband now have it.

And, interestingly, even when you compare very different countries with very different economic circumstances, such as the famously wired Korea and the rapidly-developing post-communist Czech Republic, you see similar patterns of broadband adoption, just shifted by a few years:

Good news for people like us and for services like ours!