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Via Business Week’s excellent innovation blog, by Bruce Nussbaum, we came across the World Economic Forum’s latest “Networked Readiness” report, the aim of which is to rank nations by “measuring economies’capacity to fully leverage ICT for increased competitiveness and development”.

Australia ranks a healthy 14th, ahead of Austria, Germany, Japan, France and New Zealand, but behind the likes of Denmark, Sweden (ranked 1 and 2), Korea, Iceland, the UK and others.

I’m not sure that feels entirely right to me (though my criteria would doubtless be different to those used by the WEF – which I’d summarize here if they weren’t published in essentially uncopyable PDF).

I feel there’s little time for us to pat ourselves on the back – domestic access to decent broadband infrastructure is poor by world standards (expensive and slow), mobile data is hideously expensive, with a couple of notable exceptions (we’ll see whether the arrival of the iPhone will change that), and publicly available wireless networks are patchy, (there are major domestic airport terminals I visit with no access, at any price) and ludicrously expensive by world standards (compare Tokyo Narita 3 years ago – $5 a day, with Sydney, $12+ an hour.)

What are your thoughts?