Broadband services and speeds are ranked higher than any other "new" service when it comes to their importance to consumers. New survey results from Pike & Fischer Broadband Advisory Services show that while HDTV and digital phone service were important to some consumers, high-speed data came out ahead of the rest. The report, titled "Communications Industry Survey: Views on the U.S. Economic and Regulatory Climate," is being presented at the company's Broadband Policy Summit IV taking place in Washington, DC this week.

Pike & Fischer asked some 280 executives, engineers, and consultants from the cable, phone, satellite TV, broadcast, and technology equipment industries of their opinions on the appeal of various services to customers. When asked to rank a number of "advanced communications services" on a scale of one to five (five being the highest), almost 40 percent of Pike & Fischer's survey respondents gave high-speed data the highest rating. Comparatively, only about 25 percent ranked HDTV as high, and digital phone service was at the bottom of the list, with under 10 percent ranking it a five.

Of course, "fast" Internet access means something a little different in the US than it does in other countries. A recent report by Akamai pointed out that countries like South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong all have relatively high percentages of broadband connections over 5Mbps (64, 48, and 35 percent, respectively), while only 20 percent of US connections fall into that category. When it comes to just "fast" connectivity (over 2Mbps), the US ranked at number 24 in the list—South Korea once again came out on top, followed by Belgium and Switzerland.

This data came about a year after a survey performed by the Communication Workers of America, which said that the average download speed in the US was a mere 1.9Mbps. These results were "deeply troubling," according to the CWA, even though certain states (such as Kansas, New York, and Rhode Island) had averages that were considerably higher than the national average. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation presented data at the same time, however, that said the average download speed in the US was 4.8Mbps—still lower than Canada, many western European countries, Japan, and Korea—but more than twice as fast as CWA's numbers.

Despite this difference, it's clear that the US has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to broadband speeds. Pike & Fischer points out the fairly obvious (to us geeks, anyway): without high broadband speeds, millions of other features being offered to us by cable companies and telcos will have a harder time getting off the ground. "This suggests to us that, while multichannel video providers may be spending a lot of their ad dollars promoting their high-def channels and their 'triple-play' bundles, they still rely on their broadband speeds to seal the deal with customers," Pike & Fischer Broadband Advisory Services Scott Sleek said in a statement. "Every one wants to claim that they offer the fastest Internet access, and believe that will be more important to customers than how many HD channels they offer."