Slashdot Mirror
Broadband Is The Secret To South Korea's Success
An anonymous reader writes "What makes South Korea so special in the world of high-speed Internet access? How can the U.S. and other countries learn from it? What separates South Korea from the rest is a clear agenda and execution process by the government. They wanted to be THE broadband capital of the world so bad, they never swayed from that goal. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, South Korea was desperate for a savior. The government realized technology was going to restore the country's economic health so the entire country unified to push broadband penetration rates to the extreme."
in infected/rooted/wormed client pcs with lots of bandwidth.
great.
ostiguy saw some 3000+ intrusion detection system alerts from skorea over the past 36 hours
Why is it the fault of "American Capitalism" that your girlfriend has a dialup line? Because somebody hasn't given her broadband for free? I consider myself liberal, but really, isn't it going a bit far to expect your government to buy you your damn broadband connection?
1. that nearly one-fourth of the RoK population lives in one metropolitan area?
... Don't have time to finish this post... think about Korea Telecom... government runned telco...
;)
2. that all telco equipment was most likely installed well after 1953, whereas the US infrastructure is surely much older?
DSL rules in the RoK. No doubt about it. Although as I was leaving in March 2003, wireless was catching on.
I for one miss my 6Mb/1Mb connection for about $35/month (no contract so it was more pricey).
Also, it was interesting explaining to the techs that I needed to swap my internal (pci) ADSL modem for an external one so I could use linux. The techs had never seen linux, so I invited one over to show them. Maybe they were just blown away by a caucasian speaking their language fluently....
The high penetration rate of broadband into south korean homes is definitely a economic advantage and productivity enhancer. But I disagree with the argument that government must do more to help the penetration of broadband into homes. Government must do less - they need to get out of the way and regulate less so the market forces can be unleashed. The american broadband penetration is considerable less mainly because there is so much government involvement and regulation at every level from national to local. The south korean government did the companies that wanted to build and enable broadband a favor by streamlining their regulations and reducing the hurdles.
That's an interesting point.
FWIW, I have seen it. I grew up on a farm (15 miles to the nearest small town, 60 to the nearest place you might consider a city), and since moving away, I've lived in a small city of 200k (where I went to college), another moderately sized city of 600k (where I did an internship 2 summers), and now I live in a small town of 12k (Not my first choice, but it's where I could get work after graduating).
I can agree with you a little, because part of the reason I live in an apartment in town is broadband. I had the oppurtunity to move to the outskirts of town (just out of city limits) but didn't only because I didn't want to do the dialup thing.
Anyway, from my point of view (as a young single person), there's a heck of a lot more keeping small towns down than just the lack of broadband. If you haven't lived out in the middle of nowhere as I have and (to a lesser extent) currently do, these are things you might not have considered:
1. You can only buy the absolute necessities, usually. Even in my town which I assume is large compared to a "rural community", I can't buy fish unless its breaded and needs to be deep fried. There are no bookstores, coffee shops, or movie theaters. The only place to buy software for 50 miles is Walmart.
2. There is a small hospital here (because the entire county is sparsely populated, there frankly isn't a better place for one). But the more rural the community, the farther away you are from medical care. My grandpa died of a heart attack 12 or so years ago and perhaps could have been saved if it hadn't taken a small eternity to get him to a doctor. Soon afterward, his widow moved into town after living on a farm her entire life.
3. The culture is homogenized and philistine, not to mention frequently racist. What I wouldn't give to have regular face-to-face discussions with someone about something besides hunting, farming, or NASCAR.
And Etc. Certainly there are benefits to living in small communities, or even miles from the nearest neighbor. Peace and quiet, big yard, friendly people (as long as you don't stand out too much). (After you've done it for a while, though, the quaintness starts to wear off... it isn't attractive to start with unless you are already world-weary. Your kids will probably hate you for it. They leave the small towns, remember?) But the thing is, broadband is just one more thing that people who choose to live like that have to choose to give up. That small towns and the rural lifestyle are drying up is unfortunate in a way, and govt subsidized broadband would help that situation out incrementally, but it's just scratching the surface. We can't offer everything to these people simply because we can't afford to.
I would go so far as to say that even if we could, they wouldn't want it. Broadband, sure. But in the town near where I grew up, a large dairy and a pig processing plant almost went up (on separate occasions). The economic development commission wooed them, offered them huge low interest loans, but they ultimately decided not to build there, in part citing a lack of support from the community. People were up in arms. They wrote letters to the paper. It's been speculated that racism played no small part in all of this. What sort (or should I say, ethnicity) of people do you think would work in a pig processing plant in a small Texas town, after all?