A leading United Nations’ agency, the International Telecommunications Union, which deals with ICT issues, has recently conducted a study on 154 countries. The aim of the study was to rank the countries on the basis of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) usage, and the results show that Britain comes far behind its European competitors in this critical field.

Britain received the 10^th rank, and the ITU feels that the main reason behind the lower rank is the higher cost of telecommunication services in the country. Countries that have topped the list are mostly Scandinavian, with Sweden at the first position and Denmark at second. Netherlands and Norway come at the following two positions. More info here on the best mobile broadband.

The ITU explained that it uses two criteria for ranking the countries in terms of ICT. First, it looks into the ICT Development Index of the countries, which includes factors like households with computers, access to technology, skills to operate it, literacy levels etc. Second, it takes into account the ICT Price Basket that looks into the prices that consumers have to pay for using the same services in different countries.

The ITU also acknowledged the rise of mobile broadband, commenting that as 3G networks have already spread across the world, there is a huge potential for mobile broadband to revolutionize connectivity, especially in the developing countries.