The OECD this week released an update to its much-watched set of broadband metrics. The data set now extends through December 2009, and the US continues to look anemic on most OECD measures.

How about price? The US comes in 19th when measured on "cost per Mbps." The OECD numbers use Purchasing Power Parity to ensure that the dollar amounts are comparable between countries, and US broadband turns out to cost $8 for each advertised Mbps of service. In Korea, it's $1.76. The UK, not known for fast speeds, but having decent competition thanks to line-sharing rules, is $1.98. Japan is $2.33

Average price per Mbps, in US dollars, PPP (Source: OECD)

Measuring broadband penetration remains tricky (and controversial). The OECD measures the total number of wireline broadband connections per each 100 residents of a country. By that metric, the US remains stuck at 15th position.

This metric doesn't take into effect the larger size of each US household, nor does it say anything about the effects of population density. In addition, the US as a single huge country gets compared to much smaller countries like Japan and the UK, while companies like Verizon argue that the better metric is to compare the entire US to the entire EU. When this is done, the US doesn't look so bad.

Broadband penetration per 100 people (Source: OECD)

To address some of the population density questions, the OECD also produces a chart of broadband penetration overlaid with a population density line. The chart confirms the low density of the US, though five countries with even lower densities still remain ahead of us.

Broadband penetration overlaid with population density (Source: OECD)

However, when it comes to monthly bit caps, the US comes out on top; most ISPs still don't implement hard caps. Pity the poor Internet surfers in New Zealand, Canada, and Australia, almost all of whom suffer under strict data caps. While New Zealand and Australia have geographic reasons for these limits—the interest in international, English-language content and the need for expensive undersea cable to access that data—the reason for Canada's "cap madness" remains unclear when US ISPs continue to make money with more liberal regimes.