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.'"

Comments

Obligatory "In South Korea" quote

[boingyzain]

In South Korea, broadband is only for old people!

Re:Some economics basics for slashbots.

[Rotten168]

I stated in another message that due to the structure of the Korean tax system, the cost of a broadband subsidy per taxed income is marginal at best given all the other governmental expenses on a 9.5% total tax rate.

I would love for our tax rate to be 9.5%. If you would like to subsidize American broadband then you would either have to increase taxes or decrease services to cover it.

Also, I would consider other facets to penetration besides percentage of population with internet in their homes, like countrywide infrastructure. Internet is ubiquitous in Korea, and in the States it's disproportional, concentrated in homes and offices. An example: the last time I was home, September 2003, I had only three internet options: Starbucks at the bank, Starbucks a mile down the road, and the adjacent Kinko's (and this is in an LA suburb). I would expect this to be worse once outside a major urban area. Now in Korea, I have ten at least ten PC rooms in within a five minute walk from my house.

This might be due to a difference in culture. I don't see any reason why there wouldn't be more internet cafes here, other than the demand really isn't there.

There's nothing wrong with accepting that some things are better outside the ol' US of A, and there's also no need to justify this by arguing double-taxation or hidden costs. We aren't #1 in everything (cellular services immediately come to mind), so we don't need to be defensive by beating Koreans up for one of the few things they did right.

I never said we did everything right, but we do do some things right. The US is bashed everyday on /. , sometimes rightly, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. The US has not done everything wrong and it is far from the technological backwater that it's presented to be on this site.