America's Broadband Dream Is Alive-- In Korea

An anonymous reader writes "America's Broadband Dream Is Alive in Korea thanks to government encouragement, according to the NY times (free reg, etc...). But profits are elusive." The U.S. is a lot more spread out than Korea, though -- some American cities are pretty well connected.

Comments

interesting

[twiggy]

I think this would be much harder to implement here in the US.. too much space, geographically, and an economy that's already in the dumps... it would be cool to see, but maybe wireless would be a more viable option (if it ever becomes legitimately secure, which it sort of inherently isn't, I guess)...

"But profits are elusive."

[Dutchmaan]

..and is anyone wondering why despite America's huge landmass and population spread over it.. that this broadband dream hasn't happened here yet? :)

Sigh...

[armyofone]

Maybe I would have broadband available where I live if the US government were an 'encouraging' entity instead of bogged down in bureaucracy. Whatever happened to leadership? Looks to me as though it's moving overseas...

Re:Sigh...

[geekee]

So you want the US to subsidize failing telcos? That's your idea of an encouraging entity? That's what I'd consider a socialist beuracracy. Let free market decide. The technology is here. It's not like the US has to encourage developing the technology. If people want it, let them pay for it, but don't make taxpayers pay for bandwidth they have already chosen to opt without, and stick with cheaper dial-up access instead.

Much Easier in Korea

[fastdecade]

Not only is USA more spread out, but Korea is full of high-density housing. I mean, Seoul looks like something out of a profitable Sim City, with entire clusters of high-density houses. And then theres the net cafes for LAN games for when the kiddies want to leave their broadband home connections and go outside.

Koreas definitely at the forefront - subway has cell phone access, mainstream TV shows feature live gaming ... like in Japan, but with less bullshit bureaucracy. If anything, Id say Korea is fast becoming Japans technophile dream.

I'm not surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to our lame free enterprise system, where one company (regardless of how many smaller units the FTC breaks it up into) owns all of the cable or phone line, broadband is just not affordable.

We've gone from ~$30/mo for 6Mb in the @Home days to nearly $50/mo for 1.5Mb thanks to ATT and now Comcast. In another 5 years, BB will be $100/mo for 768Kb. Gee, more money for less speed, I can't imagine why it's not taking off!

The only problem..

[AndroidCat]

.. is that the entire nation was dumped on the Internet at the same time. An entire nation of newbies. All the schools in South Korea got the same distro of Linux with open proxies running, and I'm not sure if there's a single working abuse emailbox in the whole country.

The key difference

[release7]

In the US, the Internet is considered to be a consumer product. So if there's not way to make immediate cash, there's not going to be any technological progress. In other more forward looking countries, the Internet is a collective investment, that everyone benefits from, not just corporations. It's this mindset that has allowed Canada and Korea to pull far ahead.

Particularly discouraging is that the US doesn't even have a policy to get broadband into every home on the horizon while practically all other modern, democratized nations do. We're still waiting for the Free Market Fairy to come along and wave her magic wand.

Not a dream, but a nightmare (spam)

[dananderson]

People forget that there's some responsibility using the Internet--this includes not soaking the rest of the world in spam and (for ISPs) not ignoring abuse complaints. I've blocked South Korea completely by routing all Korea IP blocks to a blackhole (non-existant IP address). If you'd like to do the same for this (and perhaps other countries and select ISPs), see http://www.blackholes.us/ Click on (South) Korea.

Once this and other rogue nations and ISPs behave in a responsible manner, perhaps they can rejoin the club. Now back to our regular programming :-) . . .

Re:keep in mind

[Xerithane]

North Korea: 120,540 sq km
South Korea: 98,480 sq km

New Jersey: 11,936 sq km

Will you people, who don't know what you are talking about, kindly shut the hell up.

Re:Sick of the NY Time links

[ikewillis]

It's not that simple. Compare the original URL:
http://nytimes.com/2003/05/05/business/worldbusine ss/05BROA.html?pagewanted=all&position=

with this valid link from Google:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/05/business/worldbu siness/05BROA.html?ex=1052712000&en=5906ece0642a35 44&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

What you suggest, which looks something like this, simply does not work:
http://nytimes.com/2003/05/05/business/worldbusine ss/05BROA.html?pagewanted=all&position=&partner=GO OGLE

Notice all the fancy numbers in the real Google link. Those are what authorize you to view the page, not just the &partner=GOOGLE part.

But yes, I agree that people should go to news.google.com and find a valid Google referer when linking NY Times stories.

Yeah right.

[enkidu]

I guess since this is a capitalist society, it also isn't the government's responsibility to provide for roads, sewage or electricity. Or regulate our food, drugs, oil or water. The free market solved all of those problems so incredibly well that we don't have any government involvement in any of those areas. Do you think that all roads should be privately owned toll roads? Should the interstate system be privatized?

The neo-cons may mistakenly believe the pseudo-libertarian notion that everything should be a market, but any student of history and economics knows that a society is best served when public utilities are managed in the interest of the public as a whole. In case you didn't notice, sewage, gas, electricity, water, and roads are considered public utilities. What's so different about telecommunications?