According to the official communiqué, the Luxembourg authorities are planning to fund the development of the country’s connectivity to the Internet, as well as build new data centers for Internet hosting.

This is surprising in that it is a well-known fact, in Luxembourg at least, that we have plenty of unused fiber connecting the country to the major internet exchanges. On the other hand, it may be the authorities are looking at diversifying the connectivity to avoid risks of disruptions and force more competition between operators.

What would also benefit the country are more extensive and diversified peering agreements between the ISPs. Trying traceroutes on various ISPs connections yeld surprising results. It is not unusual to see your connection transiting through Amsterdam, Paris or London for an intra-country connection. A good example: the following traceroute is from a host on the academic network to the Europa web site. Physically, the two machines are less than a kilometer apart, but your packets will travel 1000 kilometers.

You’ll notice the packets are transiting through 3 networks, through Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Brussels.

At a more global scale, Internet connections to Asia and Oceania often transit through the US East and West coasts. The authorities could really help by renting bandwidth on fibers between Europe and the Far-East.

http://www.internetnz.net.nz/media/2006-05-29-research-report

InternetNZ vient de rendre public un rapport comparatif sur l’Internet rapide dans les pays de l’OCDE. Le Luxembourg s’y voit gratifié d’une 23e place (sur 26). Cela est dû principalement à la lenteur des connexions ADSL et l’absence de débit supérieur à 3 Mbit/s.

Concernant les tarifs, le Luxembourg se situe dans la moyenne. Les tarifs ont été pondérés en appliquant l’indice “Big Mac”, le prix du Big Mac variant d’un pays à l’autre en fonction du revenu moyen par habitant. Vous trouverez ci-dessous le résumé en anglais.

Le moins que l’on puisse dire, c’est que l’ISOC a encore du travail au Luxembourg.
Extrait:

Luxembourg fared poorly in this study, ranking 23rd in terms of overall value, and one place behind New Zealand. Ranking in 15th place in terms of broadband uptake, it was not included in the e-readiness study. Luxembourg broadband is primarily DSL, with around 18% cable and a subset of satellite services. It ranks below New Zealand in terms of download speed, averaging 2.4Mbps and it has very few plans of 5Mbps or over. Luxembourg is one of only two countries, along with Portugal, where the average upload speed is less than 200Kbps. The lowest plans on offer had a 64Kbps upload and the most widely available upload speed was 192Kbps (55% of products surveyed). No synchronous products were recorded. Luxembourg ranks slightly better on Comparison of OECD Broadband Markets cost – 15th overall, 9th for business products and 13th for residential. It also has the eighth cheapest connection fees.