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

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...

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 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.