Information Superhighway (c) 1995 Mark Mackey* of swallowtail.org. Used with permission of the artist.
Daily Wireless profiled the world’s 10 Most Connected Cities. What does it mean to be a connected city? Residents have high-speed internet access anytime and virtually anywhere in the city at reasonable rates. If you want the latest in technology and gadgets, these are the places to look. Wonder if they have a lot of bloggers there?
Here are the Top 10:
1. Seoul: world leader with a staggering 83% broadband penetration rate. You can get a 10Mpbs connection for about $20 a month. That’s 4x the speed and 1/2 the price of the US average. Commercial speeds of 100Mpbs cost $30/mo. How fast is that? You could download a 2 hr. HD movie in 5 minutes! That’s a lot of pc baang for the buck. Next stop, WiFi subways.
2. Taipei: 90% of the 2.6 million population is wired. Monthly rates: $4.50 - $12.
3. Tokyo
4. Hong Kong
5. Singapore
6. Stockholm: playing with WiMAX, with a range of 2 miles (versus 20 feet with WiFi)
7. Municipal WiFi Projects cited in the United States: full list here.
- St. Cloud, FL
- Mountainview, CA : free wireless, courtesy of Google
- Tempe, AZ
- Corpus Christi, TX.
- Other cities include San Francisco, Philadelphia & Boston
8. Paris: May go WiMAX
9. Shoreditch (a town in East London, England): digital crime fighters
10. Silicon Valley. IMB & Cisco helping to bring free WiFi to 42 municipalities.
*Mark took first place in ray-tracing competition with this entry.
Technorati Tags: Internet, broadband, wireless, WiFi, WiMAX, Sellsius
Not many US cities up there. We have a project underway in Boston. I live right in the city and no WiFi yet. It is supposed to be coming. I see signs, but still no signal.