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American View On Korean Broadband Leadership
prostoalex writes "South Korea remains the world's undisputed broadband leader (in terms of penetration) with 25 broadband lines for every 100 people as of year-end 2004. But how did it come to that? Joel Strauch moved there to teach English and in his letter to PC World he portrays the everyday life in broadband heaven as well as names the reasons for Korean broadband dominance: 'An ambitious, nearly $11 billion program, it appears to be working. Studies have shown that over a quarter of Koreans have broadband and that anyone who wants it can sign up--with some ISPs charging as little as $19 a month for DSL. I pay $30 myself, for a 1.5-megabits-per-second (mbps) connection--twice the speed of my $50-a-month service back home in the United States.'"
You can get 100Mbps for $50(US) in Japan and ditto in Sweden for $40.
That includes VoIP service.
Anything less is stoneage.
Hedley
USA land area: 9,161,923 km^2
I pay about $30 US for 5 Mbit/sec service up here in Toronto. Although I did have to purchase the $100 (about $80 US) modem for the service. Of course in reality, I get about 4.5Mbits max.
Videotron cable :
5.1 mbps (~ 125k up / 600k down)
20gb down/ 10gb up limit
34$CAN / month
Canada has the population of California, a bigger land mass, and better broadband penetration than the US (source). Even considering that most Canadians live within a few hundred kilometers of the US/Canada border you're still lagging behind.
It's been a while since I carefully looked at my cable bill but IIRC the total bill is $100 CDN$33 USD for reasonably fast internet doesn't looks pretty good to me.
I'm sure when he says 1.5 megabits per second cable, that means both down AND up. I personally know a few people in Korea with similar connections, for similar amounts of money.
So PLEASE stop posting your 3 mb down/ 256 kb up Comcast connections and screaming that you have it better than them.
Indeed. $11 billion over the past two years? Distributed among the (rough guess) 13 million households? That's over $400/household/year they've been paying to get there.
"I pay $30 myself, for a 1.5-megabits-per-second (mbps) connection" -- original post
I'm on Road Runner in Milwaukee, pay $25/month, and get T1 speed downloads. Upload is slower, but not to the point that I've ever noticed a difference. I have friends in Dallas, Chicago, Miami, and St. Paul who are paying about the same for similar connections. So, I'm neither lying nor misinformed. I'm just basing it on the facts given in the original post.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Ok is he listing real USD, or is he doing some kind of comparison of what it would be if it compared to the average American salary?
If he's gonna use USD he needs to specify what the average korean makes in USD. According to about.com the average korean makes between 20,000,000 and 50,000,000 WON, which converts to about $20,000 to $50,000 USD (although xe.com has a more accurate conversion, but that's pretty close.
Here's a teacher's salary, about $2,200 a month. That site also claims taxes are only 5 to 10% which is much lower than what I'm currently paying in the US, I'm paying about 15% right now.
Considering that's probably what the average american salary is I'd have to say $19/mo DSL isn't a bad deal, but Yahoo/SBC offers "Up to 1.5 Mbps" DSL for $26.95/mo with a one year commitment so I don't see why his "I pay $30 myself, for a 1.5-megabits-per-second (mbps) connection" is so great, he's paying more for DSL than it is here!
Is this a great example of "move along folks, nothing to see here"?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Maybe you and the moderators will learn about population density when you take geography in 8th grade.
There is one factor you haven't taken into consideration. The 95% of landmass that has communities not along the border still have broadband access for less than what Americans pay. You can be living on an island eight hours away from the mainland with only a few thousand people and get broadband access.
The technology for deploying broadband is widely and cheaply available given the proper infrastructure. In addition, such technologies such as DSL rely on proximity to service providers to deliver their services. It's easy to see how this has happened and how comparitively it is more difficult for the US to match South Korea's deployment of broadband.
Start with land mass and population density. This is really the crux of the problem, and what truly stands in the way of wide spread deployment of broadband in the US. South Korea is roughly the size of Indiana but with 48 Million people. Quick math indicates that would be 487 people per sq km. There are 22 Million installed phone lines, or roughly one phone line for every two people.
Throw in 4% of the population living below the poverty line, and 3.14% recorded unemployment - the South Korean people can afford services like broadband.
Compartively the US has 9,161,923 sq km of land, with approximately 293 million people. That comes to 31 people per sq km on average. Given that most broadband services are distance sensitive, the cost of deploying broadband to the 31% of people living in low population desity areas, and keeping it relatively affordable becomes problematic. Add in to that number 12% of the US population who are below the poverty line. There are roughly 43% of the US population who either can't afford broadband or may not have service in their area.
It's pretty clear why South Korea can easily out pace the US on deploying broadband services to the people of their country. The US has greater obstacles to face - given time, these will be overcome.
Shin Cho, an electronics lecturer at WonKwang University, has a 100-mbps network at his home on the outskirts of Seoul that costs about $20 a month for the broadband.
For those of you who are not impressed by the writer's 1.5mb/s SDSL connection, Iksan, South Korea is a farming town.Um, I had 3Mbps DSL (not ADSL) in New Bruswick (i.e. the "Drive-Through Province", east of Maine). For Around C$40/month. Uncapped. In 1997. In 2000, (in Moncton, NB) I got to test something called VibeVision, which was Digital Cable over DSL. The bundle was less than what was paying for Cable + broadband seperately. And when I wasn't watching TV I could unplug the set-top box and get double the bandwidth! Ah, those were the days.... The local telco (then NBTel) was still independent and a world leader. Now it's known as Aliant. And I hear it's crap.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
In Sweden, if you live in a mid-sized University city, 10mbit bidirectional broadband connections have been available almost free of charge for many years now, the cost is added to the rent of the apartment, usually approximately $10 extra per month.
100mbit/second bidirectional connections in ordinary working class or student apartments are becoming more common now aswell, again, comes with the apartment rent.
If you're a student and living in a student area you're pretty much guaranteed a 10mbit/s bidirectional connection.
The downside is that these cheap, fast connections usually has a low daily and monthly bandwidth limit, wich when exceeded throttles the your bandwidth down to very slow speeds.
Btw high quality University education is free in Sweden, infact when you take a student loan they give you half of it.
(From the CIA factbook - http://http//www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factboo
But quite few people live here (9 million - compare that to 7 million people living in london)
The reason for the good connectivity in Sweden is that it has been a priority - seen as a infrastructure investment - from the goverments point of view. /. has been stopping communual WiFi blanket projects for some US states (cities?)http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/ 19/0126204&tid=193&tid=1. You could simply say that here the goverment steps in sometimes (seldom) to ensure that the infrastructure is done (and right) and that it is provided in a well mannered way.
Swedes generally believe that some things are better handeled communualy instead of privately, as I've been reading on
(for 3g access that manifests itself as requiring a minimum accessability - areawise and sevicewise - for the privately run operator to fulfill)
Comparing privatism vs. communally doing things is actually quite intresting - there is not always higher efficiency of doing it privately.
My example is the swedish post system (wich was privatized quite recently):
Before there was one post (thus one postman doing his rounds). Today, there are 2 players (at least in rural areas), the original old post and a new uppstart primarily doing rural areas.
This has the following effect on society: First, someone has to pay someone TWICE (total cost for soceity) for delivering to the same adresses in rural areas. Since its privatised it has to be profitable, something we customers have to pay in increased tariffs (porto). Also, since the original post has to compete in the lucurative rural areas and loose buisness to the competition, nobody wants to deliver post to the geograpcal areas sparsely populated (since that delivery is done at a loss), thus crippling the total service overall.
this is only one of many examples I could put fourth (look at the US mobilephone companies for example)
sorry for the spelling misstakes - my swenglish sometimes shows through!
"If it can be thought up, there exists at least one person trying to make it happen for real" - Phil