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Korea World Leader in Broadband/Technology at Home
bozoman42 writes "67% of Korean Internet users are connected to broadband, some at 32Mbps! In fact, according to the Guardian Article, Korea is leading in nearly all walks of a modern high tech life. But there may be downsides. (Especially as covered here last week.)"
I live and work in Seoul and while its true that most people seem to have broadband at home it doesn't seem like they use it all that much. Its also incredibly affordable, very fast and extremely reliable.
With that said, Internet Cafes (PC Bangs) are a huge business here. They are literally everywhere. Its very difficult not to walk in a busy area and not see multiple PC bangs. So while all these people have internet at home, they still go out to the Internet Cafe to play games and spend extra money when they could easily do so at home.
I'm sitting in a PC Bang now, it has about 40 stations and half of them are in use. Mostly men in their early to late twenties. Most of them are playing Starcraft: Broodwar or one of numerous Diablo II clones. The handful of women in here are playing cards or using chat software. I will play Warcraft myself shortly.
Anyhow, my point is that all these homes are wired yet people still flock to these cafes unnecessarily. I mean, in the afternoons these places are filled with middle and high-school kids and then with adults all through the night. Most are open 24 hours.
So 67% of Korean homes may be wired, but I'd say an even greater percentage of the population are internet users, I don't know a single korean who doesn't have an e-mail address or an IM id.
What you're saying has been true so far, but probably won't stay that way. There are already nationwide ISPs like Congent willing to offer 100Meg ethernet for about a thousand a month and this isn't DSL, it's real ethernet and it's the same speed up and downstream. It's true the existing players have done just that --played the American consumer for a sucker. But it will change and the most likely candidate for that change is wireless mesh networks. Seeing as how Taiwan is gearing up to push down prices on wireless hardware this should be happening in the next year or two.
Of course until then, this story is a sad testiment to the lies perpetuated by the scandalous telecoms players in the US. It's too bad the American people are too complacent to elect leaders that represent their interests. Here I refer, among other things, to the recent commerce department attempts to force the FCC to limit all 802.11 products to indoor use. That is a scandal that goes right to the Bush administration. Give that guy enough rope and he'll hang us all.
Telia also is privatized and has responsibilities to its shareholders.
The reason it exists cheap broadband in Sweden is that an entrepreneur startad a company called Bredbandsbolaget (The broadband company) and started to connect people with 10Mbit/s broadband.
Others followed suit...
This message was brought to you by a broadband user in Väasterås, Sweden.
Just saying it like it are.