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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
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.
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.