U.S. networking: We're number four!

The United States often gets a bad rap in international studies of how wired our citizens are, but the latest news isn't nearly as grim as prior reports make it out to be. According to the most recent issue of the Global Information Technology Report, the U.S. now ranks as number four on its ranked list of countries, ordered by "network readiness."

The Networked Readiness Index (NRI) looks at the general business climate and governmental infrastructure for computer networks, how prepared individuals, businesses, and governments are to leverage networks, and how widely such networks are actually being used. In other words, it's a very broad look at how effective networks are in each country and how prepared the country is to take advantage of them in the future.

The U.S. ranked behind Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland and ahead of such well-known tech titans as Singapore, Korea, and Finland. Japan, which often tops similar lists, didn't crack the top ten. Since last year, the U.S. improved three spots, from number seven.

The figures are surprising since, globally, the U.S. doesn't rank highly among comparisons of broadband penetration (#15) and overall broadband speed (#14). (The latter study, it should be noted, has come under fire because it measures only advertised broadband speed, not actual speed.) But perhaps the U.S. has a comparatively positive regulatory environment that mitigates any shortcomings in penetration and throughput? And considering the wealth of U.S. startups innovating in the web and telecom space, maybe the U.S. is showing its competitiveness in other ways. It ain't easy to wire up a country this big, after all.

I won't overthink it. It's nice enough just to hear some good news about our tech infrastructure for once. Now bring me my FiOS!