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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."
How can the U.S. and other countries learn from it?
They must learn the technique of Zerg rush, and then everything else will fall in line.
"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." Broadband penetration is good stuff...but me, I'm a fan of broadband girl-on-girl.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
But then again, he's also trying to get us to the moon and Mars.
I think that Americans could benefit from a committee established to promote the complete adoption of a nationwide FTTP network or other such network to connect us at faster rates.
Having broadband and a video cam, for instance, is no good for me, because my girlfriend has dial-up, thus limiting chat options. I blame lots of this on American capitalism, but perhaps if we get a Democratic congress again, this can be quelled.
I recently saw a 1.5 Mbps line referred to as "shitty" by a Japanese blogger. In America, that's supposedly pretty fast for a consumer. We need to look to countries like S. Korea for inspiration, stop trying to milk money out of customers by capping uploads and such, and just modernize our damn nation.
Help a college student
A 100Mbps fiber optic pipe, to be precise, and at my home in shitty Moses Lake, WA, no less. Our county is laying it all over the place. Wouldn't it be nice if everybody did this?
..government involvement was bad?! I am confused!
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
Many US executives and policy makers are quick to dismiss the disparity, noting correctly that South Korea's densely populated areas have made it easier for telecommunications companies to offer extremely fast service to large numbers of people. But even with such geographic and demographic differences, the United States can learn some valuable lessons from South Korea's experience in jump-starting a broadband powerhouse.
It would be a truly daunting and very expensive task to retro-fit the US with South Korean-like broadbrand. Especially with all the bureaucracy in telecommunications. The point is we should look to them and try to learn from their experiences and mistakes.
I dont think its really fair to stereotype all Koreans as obsessive Starcraft players. Plenty of them obsess over other online games such as Warcraft and Diablo2 as well.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
With such high broadband penetration, could it be that South Korea will be the home of the first million player MMORPG? Online gaming is very popular there, perhaps in part because of the high speeds available. Whereas just across the water in Japan, these games are not as popular and broadband is far less available. In the US right now we're stuck with all of this great infrastructure, but fall short in that last mile. Plus the US government isn't making a real commitment to make broadband a part of everyday life.
:-)
It's too bad that we are lagging here in the US because just imagine what a richly information empowered citizenry could do...not to mention the games!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I think that the fact that South Korea is smaller in size than the US gives it an advantage of reaching that goal of theirs... On top of that, they might not have a bunch of communications giants (Cox Communications, Charter Communications, AOL-Time Warner, Sprint (DSL), Verizon (DSL) and Aldelphia, to name a few) fighting for customers left and right. When you have a fairly large country in size with a ton of providers offering different types of services at different prices it's harder to achieve a goal like "Broadband for Everyone".
That's impressive. However, it seems like a country needs to have a reasonable amount of money and stability to make something like this work. For example, this probably wouldn't have been an option for North Korea.
Due to its large output of spam and its place as a relay station for cracker attacks, Korea is finding that it is in an intranet of its own. Non-responsiveness from (or non-existance of) admins and abuse desks in Korea is legendary. Thank you for korea.blackholes.us.
Yoghurt
Not odd for South Korea to succeed on a goal it aims. But it's more than that. Some times a "goal" of south korean can be translated to obsession.
It is no more than a year than discovery channel (or was it n.g chan? anyways) has done that show about the industrial revolution of south korea. It was discussing the obsession that country had to keep up with Japan and eventually it succeeded. The odd thing that obsession had come to that extreme that some workers were willing to give their lives for their country's economic wealth.
They had that south korean director of contruction for a ship building company that said "That day the ship was going to deport, I had with me a sword. It was in case something went wrong. I'd perform harakiri".
Well maybe not in the US as a whole, but it is occuring in certain municipalities like Provo and Spokane.
Wal-Mart would turn the broadband industry upside down. They'd do it cheaper than the others, and more "common" people in America would flock to the Wal-Mart name because of brand recognition. This alone would force the broadband companies to innovate.
This could also be applied to the cell phone industry.
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.
The younger generation in both countries get alongg just fine with each other (witness the World Cup soccer series, co hosted by both countries together, and the support each country gave to each other (particularly after the Japan team fell out of the elimination series).
The older generation is a different story... but that will fade away over time as the younger generations in both countries take over..
everything will be fine...
japanese people: honourable and polite
korean people: shovenistic, dirty, arrogant, and rude.
Americans are different from Koreans how? (In Japanese eyes) I mean we're talking about a culture that folds their dirty clothes! Ultimately money is the middle ground that can make friends out of polar opposites. Do you think American - Chinese relationships would be so good if they were just another USSR and had little to trade with us? The poor relationship between Japanese and Korean people are just an example that western civilization has no monopoly on racism.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
that if a government decides to focus very hard on a particular goal there's a real possibility of their becoming dominant in that area. See also: US's determination to build the A-bomb in WWII, JFK's determination to win the space race, etc. and the effects that these had on related science/technology industries in the US at the time. The South Koreans decided that modernizing their telecommunications infrastructure was necessary to revitalize their economy, pursued the goal, and can now watch television over their internet connections.
http://urban.blogs.com/seoul/ Always found this blog interesting, seems the right time to pass it on. :0]
Thats because they don't have Comcast/Cablevision/TimeWarner controlling it, trying to cap bandwidth and milk every penny it can out of its users. I STFA (scanned..TFA), did it mention what this exceptional service costs over there? They talked about what the government put out to make this infastructure happen.. but what does Joe Blow have to pay to get it? LOL Their "so-so" connection in APARTMENTS are 8 times faster than the best we have...
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
I'm all for broadband, but I don't see the wisdom in doing it through government any more than I see wisdom in having the government provide food, shelter, charity, religion, education, employment, health care, etc. It might sound like a nice eutopia, but it's not sustainable without the competition introduced by a free and open market. The best example is our food. Food is THE necessity, even more than health care, etc. If the government provided it there would be little selection, less supply, and less quality.
You might look to the government to (at the threat of inprisonment) take money from everyone else to pay for what you want or need, but I'd rather people have the option to pay for what they want and help others in the way they see most fit. Most sane/intelligent people see the former as theft, but it's obvious that some view it as a way of life.
Companies would deliver anything that they could call "broadband", take the money and run. Read about the scandals over the "Gore Tax" money to wire schools? It would be that, times a thousand.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
That's what government can do to improve broadband adoption. Stop trying to regulate businesses, and don't have any "initiatives". Let the free market take us where we want to go. I don't think that long run any of our problems will be solved by government, especially broadband adoption. Sure the government can make us pay more for broadband while we think we're paying less, since 30% income tax, tax on food,clothes,medicine,cars,travel are all acceptable, but $75/month for broadband is outrageous. Please, give me 5-10% flat tax and I'll be happy to pay more for market delivered goods, oh and give to charity and the needy.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
The Seoul government's clearly articulated vision for modernising the country's infrastructure stands in stark contrast to the regulatory morass that has stunted development in US telecommunications for several decades. South Korea's policy -- the cornerstone of a national technology initiative to help revive a devastated economy -- has created true broadband competition, which in turn has helped prices fall and speeds rise.
Competition, Competition, Competition. In the 90's, dialup competition was fierce and now its easy to find $10 dialup services just about everywhere.
Now, broadband is primarily in the hands of baby bells and the cable company who charge between $30 to $45 for broadband.
I think you can give some of the success to the ease of installing the infrastructure, but if there was no competition, this would not nearly be the success it would be.
The only way I see competition being restored in the near future in the US is by entrepeneurs setting up wireless internet access points which cover great distances. This will free us of wires which are controlled by state sponsored monopolies.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
1. Everyone in korea speaks korean.
2. Noone else speaks korean.
3. Koreans are mainly interested in korean websites.
Ergo, when they pay $5 USD a month for 4mb internet accesss, the ISP is betting on the fact that they wont hardly have to pay for any international traffic.
Official GOD FAQ.
Result: Research money will be channeled to those countries that have some infrastructure. It is already happening. I guess I am already off-topic. I lived in China for some time and realized that hacking and copying foreign superior goods is *cough* government *cough* funded!
The other thing is that like the Japanese, Koreans are really loyal to their country and its industries. Even those in countries like Canada buy Korean goods. This channels cash back to the mother companies enabling them to do more research. At a college where I was, the Koreans and Japanese were importing food/water and stuff from their mother countries or buying FROM stores friendly to their countries. Americans cannot be that loyal...NEVER!
Just look at the problem that have have from malware.
One mydoom varient (or was it blaster, anyway) nearly knocked the whole country off the internet.
technology without knowledge/education is a bad thing (tm)
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
South Korea's commitment to broadband might explain why I keep seeing addresses there when I do a WHOIS on the servers sending me SPAM. I've suggested to my ISP that they block ALL mail coming from South Korea.
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
It would be a truly daunting and very expensive task to retro-fit the US with South Korean-like broadbrand. Especially with all the bureaucracy in telecommunications. The point is we should look to them and try to learn from their experiences and mistakes.
I think the biggest problems with trying to get broadband to the entire USA are:
1. You have competing interests with the telco's and the cable companies.
2. The sheer geography of the USA mitigates against wired broadband in rural areas.
#2 is especially daunting, given the good number of US citizens that still live in rural areas.
Here in the USA, universal broadband will probably arrive with WiMax and its related mobile version that can operate on a moving vehicle up to 155 mph (250 km/h). Essentially an extension of Wi-Fi, WiMax can support thousands of users per antenna, and the transfer speeds can be up to 54 megabits/second! (Though I think for capacity reasons, they'll probably cap it in real world use at around 10 mbps). The biggest advantage for WiMax is that it's vastly cheaper to put up antennas than to put up wired connections to every household and business, essentially eliminating the so-called last mile connection problem for broadband Internet access even in rural and mountainous areas.
It's very likely that WiMax antennas will use the same towers now used for cellphone antennas, so infrastructure costs may not be as steep as some people think.
Government should own the wires and heavily regulate who gets to maintain them (the actual installation and maintenance should be done by a private company). Then, the wires should be "rented" on a monthly basis, to the highest bidder, by those who want to offer services and the revenue used to continue maintenance and increase the level of coverage. There is a role for government, it is not a all-or-nothing approach. Companies, by themselves, without a legal infrastructure are amoral beasts.
Why? Because putting in wires requires "right of way", that is, the right to put wires on my property (or on government property). Currently, governments give this "right" to a single company, forming a monopoly because they don't want to administer it; and then regulating the monopoly since monopolies do what they do -- raise prices in the absence of competition. Worse yet, the government usually raises bonds to "pay" these companies to build their monopoly, having the public shoulder all of the risk without opportunity for a return on investment (better wires, or reduced taxes). This is a cop-out. The government should own the "monopoly" and make everything else subject to competition.
If this is what passes for critical thinking these days, then I HOPE Bush gets us to the Moon, because that's where I want to live. And I'm not sure a quarter million miles of vacuum is enough to insulate such exotoxic bumblethink.
So tell your bitch to step up to the plate and buy some broadband access. Why should my taxes support you and your bint's video masturbation sessions?
I recently saw a 1.5 Mbps line referred to as "shitty" by a Japanese blogger.
I once read a blog where a grown man admitted to liking Britney Spears' music. You can find many strange and grotesque things in blogs.
So what was the context? Was he comparing it to his connection at work? Was he exaggerating the difference between 1.5Mbps and 3.0Mbps? You can't just toss out an isolated quips without context. Who are you? Michael Moore?
In America, that's supposedly pretty fast for a consumer. We need to look to countries like S. Korea for inspiration, stop trying to milk money out of customers by capping uploads and such, and just modernize our damn nation.
Yeah, the birthplace of the Internet is really existing in such a primitive state, isn't it, just because it's failing to meet some arbitrary metic you have a persoanl boner for? Why I was telling the local serfs the other day as we were out collecting filth for the solstice festival (with human sacrifice) just how backward our sad but proud nation was compared to the glory of the all them Other Lands. Then some Visigoths showed up and the conversation moved to other topics.
The real problem, if it *is* a problem, is that many people don't give a tinker's cuss about broadband into their home. I know many professional people, quite a few in the high tech fields, who don't really care about multi-megabit home access. Most went for the lowest tier of cable and DSL primarily to free up the phone line.
I know the ideo-filtration in your brain can never accept this, but it's capitalism that allows you to live your comfortable little life of video-conferenced skanks and happy Slashdot access.
--- Ban humanity.
I don't know what the situation is in South Korea, but in Europe cable/dsl is much more attractive than dial-up, because dial-up is almost always paid by the second. In many parts of Europe, broadband is the only way to get flat-rate internet. In the US flat-rate is the norm for dial-up, so broadband is not such a big upgrade as it is in Europe.
please note the significant difference between north and south korea:
north = communist dictatorship, no individual rights
south = technology hotspot, liberal, famous for their game players(at least in the gaming community)
...(Score: 5, kekekekekekekekeke)
:-)
SIZE OF COUNTRY, From the CIA World Fact Book: South Korea Land Size: 98,190 sq km Area - comparative: slightly larger than Indiana United States of America Land Size: 9,161,923 sq km Area - comparative: about half the size of Russia; about three-tenths the size of Africa; about half the size of South America (or slightly larger than Brazil); slightly larger than China; about two and a half times the size of Western Europe Difference in sizes: 9,063,733 sq KM Hmmm..... I think for 67 million dollars we could wire the entire state of Indiana with high speed.... It's not a simple as in United States is lagging because lack of will. I think it's a simple 93x the land space we have to do and it takes a little more time. You know, the whole time and money thing.
So.. Broadband.. really, does it NEED to be in every home such that governments have to encourage it with tax breaks, grants, implement it directly? Do we who have it mainly use it to download mp3s, mpegs, softwarz, play online games? Isn't it just a luxury for most of us? An overhyped luxury? A damaging luxury (the more we shop at online mega merchants likes of amaz*n, doesn't that make it harder for the local store in our home town to stay in business - result - empty storespace.. unemployed folks.. disenfranchised folk... desperate crims loitering around to steal that ipod off you so they can sell it to a fence...
the parent poster is a 'libertarian' nut who hasn't recognized that companies almost never do high-risk investments -- building a huge phone network is very very high risk, so high that only governments typically do it. In the US, because we are so afraid of government ownership, we have government pay for it (bonds, raise taxes, etc.) and then give the asset away to a company to monopolize it. Of course, when the monopoly we create starts to behave badly, we then must regulate it.
The real solution is to recognize when government ownership is appropriate; hint: when it is a pure monopoly, usually distribution channels, but not content or manufacturing. And then open the channels up for fierce competition without regulation; the best will rise to the top. The problem with corporate ownership of infrastructure is that they have a vested interest _not_ to allow a competitive marketplace for services (if they can dictate content, they will).
All you libertarians should seriously ask yourself when a government _is_ needed and when it isn't. Quit taking the position that government is never needed. In this case, since the cost/risk is so high and since lots of property rights must be negotiated, it is best done by government.
Unfortunately the question is not "what have you done for me?" but "what have you done for me lately?"
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Both are still trying to re-write history. Just this past weekend Koizumi met with Roh to discuss Japanese textbooks. The Japanese try to gloss over their colonization of Korea, and many Koreans try to convince the younger generation that the Japanese never learned their lesson and are still evil and would colonize Korea again if given the chance.
Why is it the fault of "American Capitalism" that your neighbour has a no road to thier farm? Because somebody hasn't given her tarmac for free? I consider myself liberal, but really, isn't it going a bit far to expect your government to build you your damn roads?
Because state investment in infrastructure benefits everyone, sometime even in simple dollar terms. Even when large companies cannot make a profit from it.
I think it's interesting to note here that technology hasn't just restored S. Korea's economy, it's essentially created a new one. S. Korea was an impoverished nation that has pulled itself up with an enthusiasm for the latest in everything tech-related. Hopefully other third world nations with the same structure of dense population can follow this model to gain some success in the global economy.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
-Thomas Paine
You get to buy what you want... as long as those providing it feel it's worthwhile to sell it to you. Otherwise, you're S-O-L.
As for not having to pay for things you don't need... recall the huge cable/satellite tv fuss that comes up every so often. You know, having to subscribe to all kinds of channels you don't need just to get one you want...
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
What the government needs to do is to set up broadband deployment like they did with the interstate highway system.
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
... air travel,none whatsoever any more, so why should I want an FAA?
Oh wait, it helps me from all the stuff that gets shipped and by having planes not fall out of the sky on my head daily.
Sometimes you can't "see" the benfits to you directly but it still helps. In koreas case, it helped the over all economy by helping business which is producers/consumers/service in the totality.
I live rural, broadband would help me in a few ways if I could get it. I can get by with dialup, but it limits what I can do effectively from my location.
The public roads are a good analogy, imagine what all the food would cost if every single road was a private toll road and the owners could charge whatever they wanted to charge? And if those toll roads were literally just a double rut trail? How much would your shipped in food cost you then if you lived in town? How much would construction lumber cost?
Now I don't know if laying fiber or thicker copper everywhere would pay off in the long run, or if a better wireless scheme would be better. Most likely wireless for now, but in the long run fiber would be better I think.
* hollow laughter *
With OFCOM and BT in charge of it, I'm amazed we've even got ADSL.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I'm staying at an apartment here in Seoul. Applied for broadband Tuesday afternoon after I arrived - the apartment wasn't wired for cable.
Guy rocks up with some cable, a cablemodem and a drill Wednesday morning.
Installation: Ran a cable from the roof of the apartment down to the window. Cable just flops onto the floor (he used the drill for some cable clamps in the wall).
Setup: Plug the cable modem into my laptop. DHCP on. Thats it. No login software, no caps. no smtp server, no home page. Just 2.5mbps download and 1.5mbps upload (in a test to the states that I did, during evening time).
Price: We chose no contract because we're only here a month, so we had to pay installation. 44,000W for installation, 27000W for one month.
Thats like $60USD for one month of broadband bliss (remember, including connection & installation).
While I'm at it - their TV stations here (KBS, MBC) offer live streaming of their TV channels PLUS video on demand of just about all programs they air. Who needs a TIVO here! (you've got to have at least 100kbps connection to enjoy it).
Alas you dont get very far if you dont speak Korean.
Holy shit how did this get moderated as offtopic??? My post is about South Korea's success and how it is good for the United States. The story's topic is Broadband Is The Secret To South Korea's Success. Then I even threw in a stupid joke about how Korean players type in battlenet, which is broadband related.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Aaah, but we don't have 'a bunch of providers,' or at least not a bunch of providers in competition. We pretty much have a bunch of providers who have Balkanized the country into non-competitive fiefdoms. There is some competition between cable and DSL, in some areas, but that's about it. I guess CLECs haven't been completely driven out of business, but just give the FCC and ILECs a few more years.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I spent a week in Korea last year visiting a friend. One of the best uses of broadband were the online music services. Every bar we went to had a computer hooked up to the sound system that gave you access to a massive amount of music. Plus, it was free (to the bar customer, I'm sure the service itself costs something). The cherry on top was that my friend was chummy with most of the barkeeps so we got to control the tunes. Very important for a music snob like myself. Beats the pants off juke boxes jammed with total prog rock crap.
I always thought it was because the Japanese army used Korean women as sex slaves during WWII.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
But I'm glad you landed sqaure on one of laissez faire capitalism's many flaws
The (immediate) benefit of many roads in rural Montana didn't justify their costs. Telephone service was unjustified by the economics of the rural community. Airports should never be built anywhere near them.
While an objectivist would sit around waiting for the Market Fairy to wave her wand and create a utopia, money would go where the money already is. Capital will flee to New York City or Los Angeles or Denver or Atlanta, where it will build another few toll bridges or skyscrapers or tract housing developments. Poor and rural communities will stagnate and wither, while wealthy and urban communities will grow.
This is a perfect metaphor for the general process of laissez faire, with its beaten-wife's-embrace of capitalism's tendency to reward those who need it the least, and abandon those who need it most. Or to put it another way, to sink into the prisoner's dillemma of modern pracitcal economics, and find the many expedient, deadly local maxima we know so well.
Fortunately laissez faire capitalists have never had much power in this country, but unfortunately a few whiners have been along for the ride as we've extracted them from the 3rd world. Because government's not perfect, they would rather pay less taxes and live in the 3rd world. You first. The border is that way. You can spend your time at the plantation ruminating on your philosophy's reputation in all the wealthier nations of the world.
When you build a road, we realized, people start driving on it. New opportunities, new profits. Not for an individual investor, and not this week, maybe not even this year. Heaven forfend. Now, what happens when you build a broadband line?
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Don't worry, Japan won't be alone. The US is trying to remove all unflattering facts from our history books as well. Most history books seem to make our founding fathers look like gods. They were brilliant men, but they also had flaws. I often thought that if people only knew what a womanizer Benjamin Franklin was, then they would have been much more lenient with Clinton. Instead, people acted like this was the first time any leader of this nation had ever had an affair, and that made him unfit to lead.
Combine that with a general ignorance of history, and it is dangerous.
In the word's of Owell: "Who controls the past, controls the future, who controls the present controls the past"
Huh? South Korea is south of North Korea is it not? If you are going to insult me, at least be clear.
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
So why the hell are people buying the argument by the telco's that municipal broadband be outlawed.
,no action . Don't believe it.
Comeon . Wakeup people. The government always provides the most efficiencies for big projects. Highways,dams,and military are examples.
As for Bush pushing broadband , it's pure lip-service , all talk
What separates South Korea from the rest is a clear agenda and execution process by the government.
I hear that North Korea also has an agenda that includes execution.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Broadband for dinner, that's good stuff
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
So, a great deal of tax financed broadband investment made broadband penetration great. Not surprising.
But this does hardly prove the case for strong government intervention. Is it really true that the investment paid off in economic terms, not only in terms of broadband penetration? Are Korean companies ahead of American ones in terms of using IT profitably?
No doubt many Korean citizens have enjoyed subsidized broadband services but how does that compare to the pleasure they would have gotten from spending the money freely?
Tor
So, how well are we covered for broadband? DSL is available in over two hundred communities. (sasktel.com -> Internet services -> High Speed Internet -> click on "communities" in the "High Speed Basic Internet" section. Direct linking to the list doesn't work.)
The "density" argument still doesn't wash.
Hey, can you tell me where in the constitution the federal government is permitted to get involved in K-12 education? Or for that matter, permitted to get involved in providing broadband for people out of a profitable area, just because 10 Mb/s gives geeks hard-ons?
On the other hand, I'm damn sure international affairs, military or diplomatic, are one of the powers given to the federal government.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The US broadband situation has been improving rapidly over the past couple years, though. Now that DSL has matured some, cable and DSL providers are finally directly competing. At the moment, it's generally on bandwidth (1.5mb down for $40 a month is a HUGE improvement over the past few years), but it'll have to move to price sooner or later.
If Verizon manages to pull off this FTTP thing (and there's a ton of demand for it in a lot of places, especially at $60 a month), you can probably expect competition to move us to a South Korean broadband situation pretty quickly. Without government subsidies, I doubt we'll ever see prices as low as in South Korea, but that's not really the biggest deal in the world.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
The local municipality for me, Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant, started laying a bunch of fiber to businesses and the home, just like yours did and offer the fiber at a much better price than say Comcast cable or Verizon DSL, the two other service providers in the area. Unfortunately, companies such as the aforementioned Comcast and Verizon didn't like this competition from local municipal owned/run ISP's and succesfully lobbied our state (MA, I still can't spell it) to ban this practice. A grandfather clause was included so TMLP is still expanding their fiber, but because of these anti-competitive laws no other cities can do this themselves.
So the lesson is, even if you can increase bandwidth and make jobs in your town while offering better service and prices, it doesn't matter because the companies have the legislation by the balls.
So, is this how they bacame one of the biggest spammers in the world? Great achievement.
Hey I can do bullshit too:
:)
The Secret to South Korea's success is
1) Hard work. Not strange to have working hours from 8am to 9pm. In 1987, average working hours per week was about 54.
2) National pride/patriotism - they buy Korean stuff. Makes it easier to develop local industries.
3) The recent success is just a matter of "market correction". The economic crash was half justified, the other half was most likely overreaction from foreign investors - see below.
The South Koreans invested a LOT in many capital intensive areas. They pumped lots of money in (much borrowed) and grew really fast.
Say you buy a lot of houses, and you can actually afford to pay the loans on most of them, if the bank panics and calls in ALL the loans, you're pretty much screwed - you really don't have enough money to pay for EVERYTHING at once. That's why the crash. I believe they borrowed a lot in USD. So when the foreign investors panicked, the Korean money dropped in value, making the situation even worse[1].
Now that greed has got back higher than fear, the money is flowing back in. Which is why they're doing better now.
Note a side effect of the crash (a cynic might say an intentional effect of the crash) is that lots of stuff become cheap (companies go bankrupt etc), and foreign investors can buy up lots more stuff and thus extend their control over Korea. So while many foreign investors got screwed short term, overall they end up owning more of Korea.
As for broadband:
1) Korea is densely populated - easier to wire everything up.
2) Koreans don't speak much English or other foreign languages. So the demand for international content may not be as high, thus international bandwidth costs may be lower. Thus even if you wire everyone up, they're not complaining so much about international connections being sucky.
Enough bullshit. Don't believe everything you read.
[1] That's why I believe my country (Malaysia) did the right thing (for Malaysia that is) but very unpopular thing of instituting capital controls and preventing money outflow. The IMF and most people said lots of unfriendly things when that happened, but later on they grudgingly accepted it wasn't such a bad idea after all. For years silly economists/finance ppl were saying Korea's recovery (and the other affected nations) was greater than Malaysia, but that's because Malaysia didn't go down as low. Thanks, but I'd rather not have recovery like that...
Blah, blah, blah, Cleetus. I could list the dirty laundry of whatever system that makes you cream in your jeans. It's pointless, and the activity of empty-headed ideologues with no substance.
As for the internet, thank God that TCP/IP is basically public domain and not "owned" by something like M$ or SCO or some other evil capitalist organization.
*sigh* Another prissy fool who has no concept of what real evil is. Is it any wonder I want to move to the Moon. This is most of humanity, folks. If not now then in a very few years. Little singularities of monochromatic politics with worldviews composed entirely of lies and mythology. Go see I, Robot and replace the robots with people. That's the future.
And your depiction of Korea as a "primitive place?" ROTFL.
Uh, no. I never called Korea a primitve place, you illiterate dumbass from the Fifth Circle Of Hell. If you're going to blast a load of ideological diarrhea over what I said, at least make it something I really said, toots. I impled that the original poster was calling the USA primitve because we needed to "modernize our nation", and then I had some fun with it. DO try to keep up with the key changes, Pogo.
I've lived in Korea (and Japan, etc.)and also had the misfortune to visit the USA. At least in those "primitive states", I didn't have to worry about some idiot pulling out a gun, with or without provocation, training, etc.
*snore* So stay away. We already have our fair share of stupid, ignorant ideological mental pygmies without you adding to their inane blather. But I guess that's the beauty of the internet, eh? You can take your mentally vacuous shit into the public discourse from anywhere in the world. I hope you remembered to wipe.
Of course crime rates in South Korea and Japan have been rising for years, but, hey, who cares about facts in the mythological tapestry you call your perception of reality?
And people wonder why Americans are considered arrogant, ignorant, etc. Americans would do well to keep their mouths closed, their ears and eyes open, and travel more, rather than blustering about in their usual arrogant, gun-at-the-hip, ego-mode-engaged blunderings.
And here comes the bigotry and stereotyping. Typical. Sad. OK, here's another stereotype. Maybe we don't travel much because all we find out there is a lot of hypocritical, holier-than-thou uber-assholes living in homes of shattered glass who can't recognize prime bullshit when it's dropped in a steaming pile directly on their heads.
I leave you with the words of a great American, Mark Twain:
"Sir, you are a complte and utter dumbass of the lowest order. If you cared one whit about the destiny of the free nations of the planet Earth, you would do well to immediately log off your electro-computing device, make a quick and efficient trip to your kitchen, grab your sharpest cutting implement, and proceed to slit both wrists so that your life juices may fall to the floor and thus extinguish your useless existence, and save the public at large some small but measureable amount of blithering madness."
Well, I'm paraphrasing heavily ;-) It was from the original author's note to Huck Finn. Wait... maybe it was Piers Anthony in his 207th Xanth novel. Hmmm...
OK, I'm done with you.
--- Ban humanity.
Note that government regulation sometimes helps competition, sometimes hurts. We have been doing a bad job of choosing when and what to regulate.
South Korea had a few other things going for it to make it possible for broadband to florish there. The population density of Korea's major cities contributed to the ease in which broadband was made available. The rate in which new apartment buildings (with high speed internet access) are being built. I think somebody else mentioned it, but the high rate of competition and the customer service levels associated with it. The extreme popularity of network based games, message boards, chatting among the youth of Korea (and even for people in their 20s, 30s and 40s). It is definitely used as a primary communication medium.
South Korea has very well defined cellular phone networks and I'm somewhat surprised that there are not more WiFi networks in Korea (but that may have changed, or be changing).
Just a quick two cents worth...
Andrew
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
So why the hell are people buying the argument by the telco's that municipal broadband be outlawed.
,no action . Don't believe it.
Comeon . Wakeup people. The government always provides the most efficiencies for big projects. Highways,dams,and military are examples.
As for Bush pushing broadband , it's pure lip-service , all talk
i saw some other oversized government projects mentioned in these posts, like Apollo project, Manhattan project, and the (now defunct) Superconducting Collider. these, and the citation of south korea as a paragon of broadband, sounds like an insinuation that if our government steps in, then the project of wiring the whole U.S. for broadband would be entirely possible. i think there are two points here which are very disputable.
firstly, certainly the U.S. is not too shabbily connected for a country of its size and heterogeneity- it's not as if there's a crisis of any sort. so why would anyone want to push broadband penetration up any higher, except for to be able to announce to the rest of the world that we have the highest broadband penetrance? this sounds like a call for national glory, to show off our technological prowess- any time people ask for things like this, it's a suspicious project because it serves little benefit at an extremely high cost. the space shuttle etc has been attacked for these reasons. ask first, would i make the decision for all of us, that all of our lives would be better with faster internet?
the second point i want to mention is to ask why people think that the best way to achieve broadband penetration is to install a DSL line or a cable line into every home? have new technologies not usurped old ones before? when the modem was invented, was there a call for the government to install a modem in every household? or when cable tv bought educational channels to the masses, did congress ask that every home be installed with a cable line? and if that did happen, do you think we'd be the laughingstock of the world? today's technology is tomorrow's old hat. who knows, maybe someone will develop some sort of medium range wifi that will make it super cheap to connect distant rural areas with high speed access, making broadband obsolete. this is a case where i think one might be pushing too hard for what is probably a non-optimal solution.
...*why* do they want to be the broadband capital of the world? What do they do with it that the rest of us don't? Because I haven't seen anything out there that needs to come to me any faster than my modem can handle.
They took a hit because they have a huge number of PCs hooked up to broadband that can then infect other PCs at ridiculous speeds.
I was in Korea 2 years ago and when I read these Korea broadband-cellphone I can't help but think of William Gibson.
_ id =811961
"The future is already here -its just unevenly distributed."
--William Gibson
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story
As an international school that often has a 4-5% S. Korean population, I can attest to this. Last year was the last straw. It's bad enough trying to configure a Korean student's machine to join our domain, but CLEANING it?!
;)
Adaware and Spybot are wonderful tools but they don't do jack for Korean spyware. The problem here is, we use a proxy and some of that garbage sits inbetween the Winsock interface and the network - effectively trying to bypass the proxy server.
For instance, there was a girl complaining that she 'couldn't get on the Internet'. After some examination, I found that she had some sort of Winsock redirector installed. No virus checker, no spyware checker, NOTHING took care of it. After two hours I was able to dig it out, but it had three layers of protection - constantly trying to add itself back into the registry under aliased names... All of them Korean. FRUSTRATING!!!
Sadly, I ended up telling returning international students that we will no longer be able to support their machines (READ: allow them on the network). For a simple 15% population I was spending 45% of my time to keep these machines going.
I hated doing it, but thanks to inceased spyware and God knows what else, it's hard enough attempting to keep English-based machines clean, much less trying to troubleshoot a machine with a strange egg-based icon set and symbols I can't decipher.
And yes, it's true. They think our 3 Mbit connection is WAY slow...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
But broadband in the UK is still far better than a lot of countries, as far as speed and price is concerned.
/.. Otherwise, telecommunications will continue to be controlled by BT and thus second-rate at best.
And far worse than others, e.g. South Korea, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Holland, and the USA. I'm talking 100Mbit for the price that we pay for 2Mbit.
Plus coverage isn't stellar either. My little village has only just had the exchange upgraded for DSL. Of course, I'm only able to get 512/256 due to attenuation (distance)....
I share meringuoid's cynicism not just because of the way things are now but because of the way they were when the net was becoming mainstream in this country. Remember metered access? I do all to well. 1p/min to play Quake against someone in the next village soon added up to ungodly phone bills.
BT were extremely reluctant to allow unmetered internet access because they were obviously making a mint the way things were. I have no idea what forced them into changing since I was living abroad when it happened but I bet they fought it tooth and nail.
The only hope for 'Broadband Britain' that I see is are these pie in the sky wireless airships which are sometimes posted to
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
Second, US broadband penetration, as a fraction of Internet users, passed 50% some time this month. It was at 49.48% last month. That number is climbing steadily at 10-15% per year. Within two years it will pass cable TV penetration, stuck at 66% for years. This number is projected to pass 80% in 2006. We don't need to do anything to encourage broadband; it's already happened.
The US still has a huge population of dialup users. Remember, the US has flat-rate wireline local phone calls; most of the world charges per minute. So dialup is very cost-effective in the US. And 56Kb/s isn't bad for web surfing. 10% of users are still using modems slower than 56Kb/s. Around 4% are still at 14.4Kb/s, a number that's held steady for five years. So there's a small customer base that doesn't feel the need for speed at all. And a big customer base that doesn't want to pay $50 per month for broadband. Dial-up access starts, after all, under $5 per month.
So there is no "broadband penetration problem". It's over.
Where the US is behind is in bandwidth for "broadband" users. A sizable fraction of US broadband users have sub-megabit speeds, and very few have enough bandwidth for HDTV.
And it's starting to happen. As soon as the FCC backed off their mandate that the telcos had to share their shiny new plant with competitors at regulated prices, SBC and Verizon said they'd build Fiber-to-the-Home (or the next thing to it). Now, whether they'll follow through will be interesting, but you get the point. If the telcos do follow through, the cable companies will be under pressure to up the bandwidth they allocate to Internet access. Someone new could come in and start wiring up neighborhoods. There are already lots of mon-and-pop wireless ISPs. Everyone build a network and let the Darwinian competition begin!
o rk-and-call-it-competition garbage! That's not going to get hardware built.
But ENOUGH with the slap-a-different-marketing-layer-on-the-same-netw
S. Korea is a command economy, state capitalism, where corporate economics are coordinated in state agencies. Strategizing to develop technology, by enhancing consumers' access to it and facilitating demand, is a corporate goal that recognizes corporate dependency on the people. There are tradeoffs in their state, some unacceptably fascist, but at least their people are valued as essential to economics. In the US, we're sinking into a bog of state capitalism, corporate welfare, that sacrifices American people to profit and protect the governing corporations. Maybe if S. Korea had an upper echelon of oil companies controlling its economy, they'd also have a depressed economy and global warfare over pipelines.
--
make install -not war
I used to think a well-educated workforce, decent standard of living, reasonably-stable government, and export-oriented companies (including Hyundai, Samsung, and LG) helped much more.
Just get broadband to everyone, and watch your economy grow. Go for it. Are you listening, Nigeria? Forget other infrastructure and government policies.
(This message brought to you by the same people who think computers in schools will make our kids smarter. That has nothing to do with teachers, discipline, parental involvement, etc.)
Now, seriously, what are some of the benefits of having 10+ mbps in every home? "Real" benefits that politicians can get. Because I don't really see where the big benefit comes in, other than making all bandwidth cheaper.
But that's just me. I would love for someone to list the reasons -- not to refute them, just to get an idea of what they are. I just think "more bandwidth" and see more open relays, quicker flash recipes for grandma, better video of the Mets game on ESPN.com, but I don't see any "real" benefit other than quality of life.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Like i said, we can argue all day about how the limitations placed on the feds by the constitution are ignored.
Moreover, enforcing the 14th amendment as it applies to schools is a far cry from the feds running the schools, or having any direct or indirect responsibility for their day to day operation.
Constitutional issues aside, serious federal involvement in local education would require a massive, mostly wasteful beuracracy. Just look at the Dept. of Education. It's such a waste of taxpayer money that even they admit they are useless.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Bleh I actually have two tags. One html code typo in about 100 comments? I think thats a pretty good accuracy.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Fuck, that makes two. :-( Oh the irony.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Maybe the fact that South Korea has the highest IQ of any soverign nation has something to do with their success. It would seem so if the book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" is correct about the correlation between average IQ of a nation and its per capita wealth generation capacity.
Seastead this.
I agree especially with your point 3. I lived in a rural area for seven years in between residing in cities and now I feel uncomfortable returning there due to the monoculture that exists there. I like having a variety of people, ideas and cultures around me.
I can see that my family, who still live in the country, have become somewhat ossified with their perspectives on the world outside their small community. That fear of change can lead to anger and persecution to those who want (or just are) different.
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
and the whole telecom sector went bankrupt because no one was willing to pay for it. Remember the internet bubble burst?
Vote for Pedro
1. I'm curious.
"I live in a small town of 12k (Not my first choice, but it's where I could get work after graduating)."
-- While in school, what kind of work did you hope to get after graduation?
-- What job did you finally take (in that small TX town)?
-- How willing were you to be geographically flexible?
2. "homogenized and philistine...racist...hunting, farming, or NASCAR...farther away you are from medical care"
If you don't mind the abstract CONCEPT of living in a small town, I *know* that there are small US towns which don't match your description. Are you being artifically restricted by family? GF? Parole officer?
1.
-- Didn't think of it too much. I wasn't really going to school to get a job. It was just kind of an extension of high school. I just picked something I thought I'd be interested in.
-- I decline to say, because I'd really rather remain entirely anonymous. I'm sure I've mentioned it before in other posts if you are really that curious. I will say that it is in the field that I studied.
-- My willingness to come here mostly against my wishes is an indication of how geographically flexible I willing to be. I also interviewed as far away as Chicago and Houston. The fact is, people in my field were having a really tough time finding jobs at the time. Ordinarilly around 90% of people graduating from my dept have jobs lined up before graduating. When I graduated, it was more like 50%. I interviewed with around a dozen companies, and went for four onsite interviews. This place is who offered me a job.
2. I am being in a sense "artificially restricted" by two things. First, it's where I could find a job doing something related to my chosen field. Second, I feel duty-bound to spend at least two years here because my job (like the jobs of most professionals) is not something I picked up in two days. The company has invested time and money in me, and I feel like so long as conditions aren't intolerable (they are hardly that) I owe them a little in return. Moreover, the place where I work is small, so when I leave, it won't be a faceless corporation I'm slighting, but people I've gotten to know and like, who have to go through all the pain and trouble of finding someone new, waiting for him to make it to the top of the learning curve, etc.
Anyway, I'm sure practically no towns in the US match my description, including this one. It was an exageration intended to make a point. Some place like Cambridge, Mass is certainly more culturally diverse and "refined" than the town where I live. That's definitely a consideration for someone who is considering moving to a small town.
Well, since I can watch "OnGameNet," channel 31, and see starcraft all day, and every young man that I know (who speaks enough English to get the information) loves it, I believe that StarCraft beats WC CS, and D2 by a two-to-one margin.
Of course that is all in jest, but I did just get broadband today, with 6MB down and 2 MB up for a measely 30K Won per month (?US$28?). Beats my Thailand 56K for about the same price. I'm torrenting FC3Test1 right now.
Put identity in the browser.