The U.S. regained some lost ground in the annual e-readiness rankings conducted by the prestigious British publication The Economist, and now stands not sixth as it did in 2004, but second, behind only Denmark.

The annual rankings, which have been published since 2000, are a measure of a country's e-business environment, and take into account such things as broadband and wireless penetration, the number of public wireless access points, the digital, the country's IT infrastructure security, and how innovative its businesses and governments are.

"The past year was perhaps the first since the technology bubble burst that the global economy has felt comfortable in a digital skin," said the report's authors.

Denmark retained its number one spot from 2004, but the United States climbed from a dismal sixth last year to second for the 2005 ranking. One big reason for the U.S. rise in the chart was a pumped up broadband adoption rate, driven by lower prices due to competition between cable and DSL providers.

Sweden took third, as it did last year, but Switzerland climbed from tenth to fourth, while the U.K. fell from second to fifth in 2005.

Rounding out the top ten were Hong Kong, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Australia.

Some of the countries most in the IT news -- China, India, and Brazil -- continued to do poorly for a variety of factors. All three slipped in the rankings this year. China, for instance, fell from 52 to 54, while India slid to 49 from 46.

For instance, even though China has replaced Japan as the country with the second-most fast Internet connections -- some 22 million as of the third quarter, 2004 -- its e-readiness rating remains low because that translates into a penetration of only 2 percent.