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Korea World Leader in Broadband/Technology at Home

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the beating-the-world dept.

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.)"

11 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Multiplayer games are HUGE in Korea. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Multiplayer games are absolutely huge in Korea, people have played themselves to death. And there are examples in real life beatings because of stuff that happens in multiplayer games.

    SIG: Don't support Redhat until they support basic democracy in the dictatorship China vs democratic Taiwan issue. It's an evil company.

  2. Theres a huge demand for broadband in the UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Unfortunatley BT refuses to upgrade rural exchanges for ADSL, and people are very angry at this. The town of todmorden recently made the headlines for being the first town to reach the threshhold of being upgraded. I live in an 'unupgraded' town, but I dont really care about BT, because Im happy with my cable modem from telewest. The cable companies are more determined than BT to supply broadband, but they can only cover where their cable network goes.

    Satilite broadband is becoming popular too, but its expensive, one way and low latency.

    1. Re:Theres a huge demand for broadband in the UK by cruachan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Satellite's now two way. I'm in the Scottish Highlands with a satellite connection courtesy of Bridge Broadband (a reseller of course, Hughes Satellite Systems underneath).

      Bandwidth is 512kbs UNCONTENDED down and 2Mbs burst contended. Only 150kbs up, but that should improve soon. It's expensive to put in, but with a pipe that size share the connection with a few neighbours and it's no more expensive than BT's ADSL offering.

      Latency is only a problem if you want to play games. Notice that because the line is uncontended I've actually got considerably more bandwidth than you get in practise from ADSL.

    2. Re:Theres a huge demand for broadband in the UK by digithed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You are correct when you say that there is a huge demand for broadband in the UK, but the really sad thing is that what is being offered to fill the demand is already out of date. In this day and age ADSL can hardly be described as 'broadband' as it is in most cases only 512Kb/sec. The UK government is dreaming if they really believe that everyone having an ADSL connection will make the UK the most competative place in Europe for e-business. By the time they have managed to roll out ADSL to the majority of the population, most of the rest of Europe will already have installed fiber networks and consumers will have 10Mb/sec connections. Sadly, at the moment, the UK governement either doesn't have a clue or doesn't have the inclination to even start talking about fiber networks.

      I am from UK, but I live in Sweden in a town of approximately 120,000 people (small by UK standards) and I have a 10Mb/sec ethernet connection in my appartment for which I pay 300kr per month (about £25 or $30). ADSL costs the same as this in UK and in most cases is 20 times slower. Why can't UK get its act together? And before people start talking about BTs monoply causing problems please considered that Telia in Sweden also have about the same kind of monopoly position as BT in UK but this does not seem to have hindered the roll out of high speed consumer broadband in Sweden!

      --
      Steve Brammer
      (From UK but currently living in Västerås, Sweden)

  3. Re:But there may be downsides... by User+956 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How did you know they were talking about South Korea? I noticed this during the world cup. Since when did South Korea become Korea?

    Probably around the same time Taiwan became officially recognized as "China", by the US Government

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  4. I don't doubt that they watch VOD more by keyed · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Having got broadband internet, Koreans use it much more. Dr Heejin Lee, a lecturer at Brunel University, says Koreans rack up an average of 1,340 minutes per month, which compares with the UK average of 382 minutes. The high usage stems partly from it being fast enough for video on demand: people can use it to time-shift TV programmes, or catch up with episodes of soaps they have missed. Also, 54% of Koreans play online games.
    Their TV stations do VOD the right way. You can watch any show up to that they've aired for up to a week and without commercials. My mother, who lives in San Antonio, TX, and knows nothing about computers, watches these after she gets home from work. The quality of the video streaming isn't that good at times, but that probably has more to do with the fact that it's being streamed from Korea. It doesn't bother my mom too much as she watches the news and old style music shows that she liked when she left Korea 20+ years ago.
  5. Fast and impressive, but is it free? by twitter · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Are these networks free or gimped like US? Can the average Korean set up web, email, ftp, cvs services at the end of that fat pipe? If so, they will surely kick the world's ass in software development. If not, entertianment is nice but their net will be disipative.

    Here in the US, broadband "internet" is becoming more and more like cable TV. Unilaterally changeable service contracts ban useful services, ports are blocked and upload rates are artificailly reduced. It's mostly because of bad laws which alowed the regional bells to stomp fledgling DSL competition and other bad laws which essentially give cable operators exclusive franchises in huge areas. Rather than embracing the communications possibilities of wires in our homes and networks we have built, we plod along with pay per minute, voice only, long distance telephony.

    Has Korea learned from our mistakes or will they repeat them?

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  6. Jack Schofield??? Nooooooooo not him! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why you listen to anything that this guys says.

    If he isn't being paid by M$ he should be. Read his other articles...

    A hard sell for cuddly new XP

    The mother of all operating systems

    Sun sues Microsoft from inside a glass house

    To name a few ... I don't think you'll find a bad word said about Microsoft. Nice to know.

  7. Gosu ^^ by jedie · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Think about the fact that Korean gamer's can become official "sportsmen" with corporate sponsorship etc.

    Game finals are even brought live on TV there.

    Gaming IS a sport there, look at "starcraft" the prizes you can win in the rounaments are insane.

    But that trend is starting to rise in the west too: think of CPL for instance, it's a worldwide event with international clans fighting for the first place (internationally!) in FPS games. And some clans even have dedicated fans nowadays, some players even have groupies (I kid you not: pretty girls, who take pictures with their webcams ofthemselves in their bra's holding a paper with the name of their favourite CS player for instance).



    In a way I think that's a logical evolution in the world of sports: why would sport have something to do with only the physical? Look at chess, and snooker etc.



    I mean, dedicated gamers even behave like real life jocks: they have the whole "yeah we're so 1337" thing going and act real tough (online that is ;))

    --
    "The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
    http://slashdot.jp
  8. Re:Weird world of Korea by ergo98 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For a historical example, just take a peek at East and West Germany, or virtually all of the Eastern Bloc countries, and the reunification thereof. While there was much doom and gloom about the trouble that would result, it looks like they did a pretty good job, and much of Eastern Germany got pulled up by its bootstraps to a similar level that West Germany had enjoyed.

  9. Shows effects of US intervention too.... by Brian_Ellenberger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And if it weren't for the *EVIL* United States, there would be a single Korea and it would be one massive hellhole instead of half hellhole and half really nice place to live.

    Right now the US has tens of thousands of troops right now helping the South Koreans hold of a million man North Korean army. With the news that North Korea has broken the treaty that gave them economic aid in exchange for giving up nukes, it should be increasingly obvious that the current US foreign policy that is heavy in, ahem, consequences, is not so naive after all. What is naive is the idea that you can solve all your problems with mean people by just talking nice to them.

    I wonder how if South Vietnam would be doing as well as South Korea of the US had succeeded in defending it.

    Brian Ellenberger