January 23rd, 2009
Seattle tops 'America's most wired cities' list
(Image: flickr/slightlynorth)
America’s most wired city this year isn’t San Francisco, New York, Boston or even last year’s winner Atlanta, but the home of Microsoft and Amazon: Seattle.
Seattle’s increased use of broadband helped it to top the competition on Forbes‘ annual list of the 30 most broadband-connected cities in the U.S. High marks in two other categories — broadband access and wi-fi hot spots — helped Seattle nab the top spot.
Forbes has measured cities’ wired quotient for the last couple of years by computing the percentage of Internet users with high-speed connections and the number of companies providing high-speed Internet. Since many urban residents access the Internet by wi-fi, Forbes also measures the number of public wireless Internet hot spots in a particular city.
This year, Seattle topped the list, with rankings as follows: #1 overall, #10 in broadband adoption, #2 in access options and #1 in Wi-Fi hotspots.
Rounding out the Top 11 are as follows:
- Atlanta, Ga.;
- Washington, D.C.;
- Orlando, Fl.;
- Boston, Mass.;
- Miami, Fl.;
- Minneapolis, Minn.;
- Denver, Colo.;
- New York, N.Y.;
- Baltimore, Md.;
- and San Francisco, Calif.
[Forbes]
Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet.
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