Broadband ranking of regions and its methodological basis

Access networks plays an essential role in some sectors of the economy. Its speed basically defines the utility of the system. In Hungary, in 2009 the average guaranteed download speed was just 1 Mbit/s, and a little more than the tenth part of subscribers had 4 Mbit/s or more data rate. For satisfaction the claims of today and immediate future needs broadband – capacity of at least 50 Mbit/s – infrastructure. To build of such infrastructure in those regions, which less attractive commercially for service providers, state intervention is necessary. The country and EU provide financial sources but is not enough to the necessary developments. Many ICT infrastructure developments has happened on many settlements in Hungary, but not always on the most suitable places. My aim is to rank regions based on the ICT development of them, because it is worthy to focus time and resources, where these will be return as quickly as possible. In my opinion the target of the developments would be worthy to select on the basis of usefulness. Complex regional indicator is necessary to this objective which can be applied on settlements level and on the basis of it these can be ranked. It is important to have regard to such social-economic factors which really correlate with existence of broadband networks. In this article I present the Hungarian regions situation in broadband network respect, and the methodological basis of to construction of a regional network indicator. I sketch scope of possible earmarkable elements – which are accessible statistical indicators in connection with broadband networks – and applicable model for it.