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."
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?
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".
I think the key point is that, ".. South Korea's densely populated areas have made it easier for telecommunications companies to offer extremely fast service to large numbers of people."
It really is a huge problem to provide high-speed access to people living in rural Montanna or in the mountains of Washington state.
The problem isn't that the bureaucracy is slowing down the development. Rather, the problem is that the revenue that would be earned by installing 8mbit capacity nationwide cannot justify the cost.
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.
It's really quite simple.
Government involvement is good when it does things that I want. It's bad when it does things I don't want.
Government should protect my rights. Government should protect my right to infringe on your rights.
Government should take your money to implement my agenda. Government shouldn't take my money to implement your agenda.
Just follow these simple rules and "the slashdot position on government" is easy to understand.
Why should this be something that the FCC should be doing? I can understand that universal phone service can be justified by access to emergancy services in even the most isolated communities. What comparable requirement does having broadband access serve that can't already be met by dial-up?
Just skimming through the article, the main benefits touted were online gaming and video on demand. Online tutoring was also mentioned (though I don't see why broadband is required for this), but all of the economic boon was from the gaming and video (and the supporting equipment necessary). So their online gaming market is great, but should it really be governemnt policy to get Americans to spend twice as much on online gaming as they do now?
But, just where the hell do you think the money comes from for these subsidies? The government can not give away anything it didn't steal from someone else (i.e., taxpayers), and then only after they filter it through 20 levels of bureaucracy to siphon off 70-90% of it.
And what would be the point of having 98% penetration of broadband, when so many Americans can't deal with the level of internet they already have? Look at the large number of open relays and proxies in Korea... Much of that comes from ignorance of how to deal with BB that rivals our own. How many of us have a sibling, parent, grandparent, or other relative that thinks that everything on internet is real and true, for whom broadband access would just allow them to screw up quicker?