Charges for a basket of national leased lines of 2 megabits/second

Business investment in e-commerce infrastructure is important if individual business are to gain from e-commerce driven supply chain efficiencies. For many businesses leased lines are a key B2B e-commerce infrastructure. Apart from the initial cost of line installation, the ongoing telecommunication costs associated with the day-to-day use of such infrastructure can be a significant operating expense. Against the indicator "Charges for a basket of national leased lines 1 of 2 megabits per second", Australia was ranked 10th out of the 11 countries benchmarked in this report with $US132.0, while South Korea was the most expensive $US224.0. Sweden recorded the lowest charge, $US 26.0.

"Leased lines (private lines in North America) provide the infrastructure for business-to-business electronic commerce. They give users that need to transport high volumes of traffic lower prices than the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and control over their telecommunication facilities and traffic. The basket of national leased lines includes total charges (excluding taxes) for leased lines that can carry two megabits of information per second", p. 82, STI Scoreboard 2001, OECD.