Slashdot Mirror
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.
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)...
http://www.babysmasher.com
http://www.openingbands.com
That would be "South Korea", not "Korea".
That's North Korea. This article talks about South Korea. There is extreme economic disparity between the two.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/05/business/worldbu siness/05BROA.html?ex=1052712000&en=5906ece0642a35 44&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
-- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.
One well-placed North Korean nuke and South Korea's broadband capacity won't look quite as attractive to business.
..and is anyone wondering why despite America's huge landmass and population spread over it.. that this broadband dream hasn't happened here yet? :)
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...
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
S. Korea has. they have a government driven Capitolist system. the government tells each company what to make.
so the governement told the telco to make broadband available every where and the telco did.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
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.
... like in Japan, but with less bullshit bureaucracy. If anything, Id say Korea is fast becoming Japans technophile dream.
Koreas definitely at the forefront - subway has cell phone access, mainstream TV shows feature live gaming
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 U.S. is a lot more spread out than Korea, though
And what about Canada? They're up there too with ~%50 penetration. You can't really claim that they're much less spread out than the US. I imagine that dense urban areas, where implementing broadband would be easiest, make up a similar percentage of population as well.
On top of that their rates are lower than those in the US (in Candian $'s nonetheless!).
.. 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.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The U.S. is a lot more spread out than Korea, though -- some American cities are pretty well connected.
From what I gather, DSL and Cable is cheaper and more available in Canada than in the US. And we know that Canada is much more "spread out" than the US. So that's not the reason at all.
I don't understand why Americans are so against government intervention in this area. It's not so evil or communist to have the government subsidize, legislate or otherwise help create infrastructure. Nobody calls the US interstate highway system "communist" or "socialist" because the government built it. Besides, who paid for ARPANET in the first place? What ARPANET communist?
Last time I was in S. Korea (December, 2001) someone quoted me a statistic that one out of every two people (that includes everybody- babies, homeless guys, old people) have a hand phone. (cell phone for those US-centric.)
I was being made fun of by old people because my state-of-the-art US cell phone at the time was a "brick".
Obviously, broadband is just as widespread. My 80-year old grandmother doesen't even have a washing machine, but she has DSL, for crying out loud.
From the site :
:)
1- South Korea : 57.4 %
2- Canada : 49.9 %
3- Japon : 25.6 %
4- USA : 22.8 %
Canada ratio is double than that of USA !
I guess that kind of make the argument "The U.S. is a lot more spread out than Korea" a bit overdue at the very least
Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
It is my understanding that, while Canada is a large country, that like 95% of the population lives w/ in like 100 miles of the US/Canada border. It would be more accurate to think of Canada as a very short but wide country, like a sideways Chile.
While this may be interesting, in a capitalist society such as the U.S., it is not the government's responsibility to provide Internet access to individuals. I am perfectly happy with my DSL as is, and i don't want them meddling in it. If I wanted socialism, I'd move to South Korea or Europe. But I don't.
...but I have ONE choice in cable, and last I checked, DSL wasn't being sold in my area by Bell- they don't offer DSL anywhere there's cablemodem access, because(gasp!) they don't want to compete. I think they may have started offering DSL now(they CO has been wired for DSL for many, many years), but the prices are absurd and there's a 96kbit upload cap. Yes, you read right, 96kbit! How am I supposed to upload cute photos to grandma, or "my files" they've always got some business-person-type harking about, for work, at 96kbit?
In lower/mid-westchester 2 years ago, I had 1.5mbit/768 for about $70/mo, and my choice of providers(I went with Speakeasy and paid a little more per month.) I was quite far from NYC, and Westchester doesn't have nearly the technology industry that most of eastern MA has.
Please help metamoderate.
Strange. Ever since I got broadband there has been a lot less high-speed penetration at my home. Oh, wait... that's of
Seriously though, even many small towns in Canada have high speed. I live in a town (note, not even a city) that has not even a movie theatre or a small mall, yet we still have ADSL, Cable, and (crappy reception in many areas but...) cell-phone access. From what I've heard, it's often cheaper here too.
Here, it's the telco and cableco that mostly run the show. My telco does a really decent job of it most times too (Telus), though I dislike the requirement of a landline to run my ADSL. Cable is less so... it can be damn slow at some times/locations. I wonder why not as many telcos in the US aren't abandoning the old-fashioned phone-market for a higher focus on cellular/internet connectivity?
In nearly all countries in Asia, broadband is very cheap. Here in Taiwan, it only costs $10/Month for cable modem service via an annual fee. To push the broadband rush, the government has mandated all dial-up services to be free. In Taiwan, dial-up isnearly free. The only thing you pay for is the by-minute phone charges that occur on every call here.
However, a lot of people used the free dial-up service. So, broadband ISPs had to push to get customers. They have done things like offering extremely cheap service and promising amazing speeds. This is not only limited to Taiwan, similar broadband pushes have occurred in China, Hong Kong, and even South Korea.
To comment on timothy's blurb and the article, although the US is well connected it does not have the push that Asian countries go for. The $32/month internet service is quite expensive in South Korea. Although the US is widespread, laws and regulations have also hindered the spread of broadband. For instance, there is no law in the US forcing cable systems to have competitors when it comes to broadband internet. There may be other examples, but I will leave that to Slashdotters to discuss.
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.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
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 :-) . . .
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.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Yet, that American boy knows how to build a nation of compassion, into which tens of
thousands want to emigrate. Few, if any Americans, want to emigrate to Korea.
Don't kid yourself, most immigrants do so for economic reasons. To get closer to the
captilatist Mecca that the USA is.
Is your "health care" system an aspect of your so called "nation of compassion"?
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Did I miss something? Did the two Koreas repair their relationship and become one? Or have we used US Tax $dollars to wire up North Korea?
From the article, here is a list showing the broadband penetration as a percentage of Internet households:
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
""The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea" Every news source outside of the US refers to it as such"
:)
Yeah, and I suppose you're going to tell me that the abbreviation "DDR" didn't always refer to RAM either.
It's called "North Korea" simply as a conventional short-form of the name, much like how you would refer to "East Germany" and "West Germany" instead of DDR and BRD. "North Korea" simply has fewer syllables than "DPRK" and is similar to saying "America" and "Great Britain." Neither American continent is ruled by just one government and the island of Great Britain is a part of a larger government, but people still know what you mean.
Of course, if you really want to be technical, there is no "South Korea" either. It's the "Republic of Korea." Similarly, there is no Taiwan (even if you ignore the whole "One China Policy" thing). But who'd want to keep on reading sentences like "The United States of America borders on the United Mexican States" or "Some of the big players in Europe include the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Republic of France, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Russian Federation." About the only country I can think of whose "formal" name is the same as the informal one is Canada, and I think that's at least partly due to the fact that adding any more words to it would require two official names (one English, one French).
keep in mind to check the facts:
S. Korea : 98,190 sq km
New Jersey : 20,295 sq km.
so by my math: S.Korea is roughly 5 times bigger than NJ, more like Indiana.
Oops.
I get 2Mbps/512kbps for 29.90 a month with Free in Paris. No sign-up fee, modem provided at no cost.
Interestingly, those guys, who have run on free software for year (hence the name, Free), have developed their own set-top box, AKA Freebox, which is more than just an ADSL modem: it's got 100baseTX, USB1.1, 2x phone RJ-11, one SCART and has an IR remote control.
They plan on providing digital TV and phone service through ADSL soon. Service is unrestricted, unmetered, unfiltered, static IP through DHCP, though still a bit rough around the edge at times.
South Koreans are also avid gamers. They show competitions on TV for crying out loud. And of course to play these games competitively you gotta have broadband or go to one of these cybercafes. One could say these games are a killer app for broadband. Meanwhile, here in the US you've got people who think 56K is fast enough because all they do online is send email. Others can't get broadband because they live in the sticks or just aren't willing to pay for it. Lasty there's the group of holdouts who think the net is a big waste of time ... especially those durn games. What's my point ... well I'll bet TV didn't take off until entire families saw stuff like I Love Lucy that you nearly HAD to see every week in order to feel like you're part of modern society. A show or event that everybody felt obligated to participate in. In Korea it's games. Here in America we just have email. The average joe doesn't see any big benefit to broadband.
Yea, but Saskatchewan has ~1 Million people concentrated in 251,865mi^2 or 652,327km^2. Not very dense.
It has a telephone company^Wmonopoly called SaskTel, which was the firt DSL provider in North America. "It is now available in 158 cities and towns across the province - and will reach 237 communities by the end of 2003"
Check it out here Apparently it was also the first in the world to release 3G mobile networking. It also built the largest fibre optic cabling network in the world. Don't know if that still holds though.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
http://nytimes.com/2003/05/05/business/worldbusin
with this valid link from Google:u siness/05BROA.html?ex=1052712000&en=5906ece0642a35 44&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/05/business/worldb
What you suggest, which looks something like this, simply does not work:e ss/05BROA.html?pagewanted=all&position=&partner=GO OGLE
http://nytimes.com/2003/05/05/business/worldbusin
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.
Capitalism is the most compassionate economic system there is.
Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
--Ronald Reagan
We have uncapped wireless here in the Queen Charlotte Islands for $40 Canadian a month from a private, unsubsidized isp. There's no reason to not have it in the US... only excuses.
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?
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Funny you should mention Canada.
... prior to Baby Powell's mismanagement of the FCC (and the local telco monopolies), and prior to that agency's willful unwillingness to enforce federal laws mandating fair and equitable access of competitors to local monopoly last-mile wire, Spring offered an 8 Mbit download/1 MBit upload ADSL service which, for the two months I had it before SBC drove them out of the marketplace with Baby Powell's blessing, Downtown Chicago actually surpassed rural canada in available bandwidth.
With Timothy's typically unenlightened, American Apologist addendum to the original post, and I quote:
The U.S. is a lot more spread out than Korea, though -- some American cities are pretty well connected.
one would expect Canada, which is even larger than the US, less densly populated even in its populated areas, and much so in its rural areas, to have even less broadband availability than the United States. However, surprising as it is to many of my countrymen, broadband is both more widely availabe and less expensive in Canada, indeed, in rural Canada, than it is in downtown Chicago.
This wasn't always the case
No longer.
Although I live in the heart of the city, a mere 10 minute walk from the dense, commercial portion of the city commonly referred to as the "loop," I am unable to get affordable DSL at anything greater than 1 Mbit. This, in contrast to the very inexepensive, 2 Mbit and better offerings available to rural residents of Alberta.
The dichotomy between the United States and Korea (South) isn't one of geography, it is one far more closely related to the dichotomy between Korea (South) and Korea (North), i.e. the difference between a nation with a well managed telecommunications industry and one with a poorly managed telecommunications industry, and while America (The US) bears little resemblence to the deprivations of North Korea, we probably owe that more to a history of decent management which has only, since about the 1980s, become an ongoing condition of zero and even negative-sum gameplaying by our leaders, in contrast to North Korea's fifty odd year of starkly negative-sum policies.[1]
However, if those of us living here do not get off our butts and insist on good governance, for the good of the many and not just the few, we may find ourselves, in not so many generations at all, bearing a striking resemblence to the third world we so like to disparage. Indeed, arguably, in terms of health care and telecommunications, we already do. Let's hope the greed of the ruling class and their political pawns doesn't extend that to our home or, worse, our food supply.
[1]Negative-sum games are scenerios in which a player's strategy is to win in such a way that the overall wealth is decreased, but their sum total increases. Imagine starting out with three pies, throwing one in the face of your opponent, and then running off with the other two. Only two pies remain, but 2 pies are better for you than merely 1 1/2. Or imagine an intellectual property regime that impoverishes the culture of billions, but makes a few thousand people filthy rich, and a few million able to make ends-meet, if just barely.
Zero sum is where you compete for portions of a pool of wealth which neither grows nor shrinks. Assuming a fair outcome, you both end up with 1.5 pies. Assuming an unfair, but nevertheless non-destructive, zero-sum scenerio, the three pies remain in existence and are divvied up in some fashion favoring one party or the other.
Positive sum scenerios are of course the best, and in terms of physical goods (and limited supply), capitalism generally excels here (except in situations of monopolies, be they 'natural', such as roads and telephone wire, or through economic or political force, such as the East India Tea company in days of yore, or Microsoft today). In this scenerio a strategem is employed that results in the creation of additional pies, which may or may not be shared freel
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I've lived/worked here in South Korea for the last 4 years. It took me two years to get ADSL, and one year later they bumped me to VDSL for free. Saying the penisula is saturated with connectivity is an understatement.
We're being told the country will have 802.11b end-to-end by the end of summer. The airport has had it for the last year. The old and new govts. push for this type of infrastructure. New apt. buildings for the last two years come jacked for broadband. If you have a need for speed, this is the place...
Consider a country like Japan, or Korea, or Taiwan, where the population is dense, and the language is specific to that region or country.
A normal (J/K/T) kid would hardly use English, there's simply no reason to try to get something from a US website. Ie, most of the broadband traffic stays WITHIN the country. That is, you can practically lay lots and lots of cable and treat the whole country as a very large LAN network.
In Australia (where I'm at), most of the web searches ends up at at America. You surf the net and ends up in America, and the data has to be carried over fiber optic cables across the pacific ocean. That costs $$$.
It makes sense now doesn't it. That broadband prices will always be cheaper in certain parts of the world.
I expect it would be a similar case in UK. Or may be Europe.
I also suspect that the model they used is not applicable to the rest of the world, and the kiwis may have sorted out a better solution citylink/wellington
jliu