Our recent rankings of the "Best Broadband Community" among 28 cities in Asia Pacific certainly garnered some attention. That's not surprising: rankings of anything, whether it's music, restaurants, the seven wonders of the world or most annoying celebrities, always seem to get people talking. Broadband is no different, as the OECD's country rankings have recently shown and which our survey of cities has now backed up.

And yes, a little bit of controversy and difference of opinion is always a good thing.  I tracked stories and feedback on the rankings in most places in the region, including in the Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, Australia and India, while we also got quite a few private comments. For example in Manila, they were surprised that they were ahead of places like Bangalore and New Delhi, while others questioned if Bangkok really deserved its place ahead of the Philippines capital.

Over in New Zealand they applauded the fact that Auckland made it into the top 10 but then questioned if Wellington didn't have better infrastructure, while in Australia there were a few eyebrows raised that Melbourne was one spot above Sydney. For those who want to know a bit more of the background into our findings, myself and Grahame Lynch discuss the issues with Guy Daniels of TelecomTV and the video link is here: http://tinyurl.com/ytq9st

However, for those of you in cities further down the table that don't have a decent broadband connection, I'll give you a quick rundown of the survey.

Without going into the specifics of each city, in most cases the data was fairly clear-cut, and we could access a bank of reliable statistics for things such as the number of Wi-Fi access points, the number of 3.5G operators, the number of DSL lines and so on. Of course, the criteria that we chose to use was necessarily subjective, but it's also fairly broad. For a refresher on how we judged things, you can get the info here: www.commsday.com/node/130. But as an example, we gave extra points for things such as sustainability -- something often overlooked in broadband debates but something that we thought was important -- and competition not just between operators, but also between various technologies.

One of the problems, I think, is that many people are influenced by their own broadband connection. So anyone who is out of range of DSL or is in a problem reception area might assume that the rest of the city is like that. Or perhaps when travelling they might have had good/bad experiences with broadband in a particular city and assumed everywhere in town had that good/bad service. I, too, have my own subjective view -- and the reason that Bangkok didn't end up in last position is because we based the results on known data rather than my experiences. [Hold on, I'll be write back once I've finished with the TOT call centre staff]

Now, where were we? Ah yes, another common question was about improving broadband access and how cities could move up from the bottom half of the table. One of the striking things is how much those at the top of the table had in common and how much those at the bottom also had in common. At the top of the table, all of the cities benefitted from an enlightened regulator, one that incidentally made our job easier by providing up-to-date and accurate data on their web site.

The top cities also tended to have creative and technical industries that fed off the broadband infrastructure. For example, Hong Kong is creating a creative multimedia hub at its Cyberport, Singapore is a regional leader in grid computing initiatives, while Taipei is benefitting from plans to create an ecosystem for wireless broadband technologies such as mesh and WiMax.

At the other end of the table, a lot has to do with economics. Cities such as Vientiane and Phnom Penh are obviously hindered because the number of customers that would be able to afford broadband is relatively small. That said, a bigger hurdle is the regulatory roadblocks, although at least in Phnom Penh there are some signs of progress and a willingness to look at creative solutions to spreading broadband.

Other cities in the lower half of the table have fewer excuses, and again a lot of it comes down to a regulatory/governmental willingness to move forward. Cities in Malaysia are progressing, but things such as censorship and the near-monopoly in the fixed network by Telekom Malaysia is holding its cities back. Indian cities could also do a lot better given the international investment coming into the country and the number of local ICT companies that rely on good communications infrastructure. For all its talk of making 2007 the year of Indian broadband, the authorities have been slow to move, particularly on wireless broadband.

In conclusion, there is a big -- and growing -- gap between cities in Asia Pacific when it comes to broadband. That said, there are some fantastic examples in the region of how enlightened regulatory policies and a genuine willingness to embrace open access and competition can improve infrastructure. Hopefully by the time we do our follow-up survey next year we'll have some further examples of cities that have done this. – Geoff Long