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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.'"
We all know the importance of quickly downloaded porn and illegal games :)
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
I live in a pretty high-cost area of the country and my 3 Mbit/sec service is less than $50/month from Comcast, maybe he left the US too long ago.
I am so jealous. Cheap and ubiquitous.
-- sed s/liberty/profit/g US.Constitution
All I can see from here is the port scanning that continuously comes from their networks. And the lack of response when I try to report it to their ISPs.
So. Korea being the size of about New Jersey
might be the reason broadband has deeper penetraton than in the US.
You can play Starcraft perfectly well on a 56k line.
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
You can get 100Mbps for $50(US) in Japan and ditto in Sweden for $40.
That includes VoIP service.
Anything less is stoneage.
Hedley
Korea is insanely net-centric, almost to the point of absurdity (as anyone who's ever been to Seoul can attest), but it also has the benefits of being considerably smaller than the US, which makes it easier to run broadband. In the US we're seeing the commoditization of dialup where the prices for dialup service have dropped over time, and eventually once the market penetration gets to a certain point broadband prices will likely drop as well (especially if Wi-Max takes off.
However, when you're dealing with a country that's several thousand miles across rather than several hundred, it's harder to lay enough fiber/cable to make things work.
USA land area: 9,161,923 km^2
I suppose you could broadband wire all of new york city + the nearby cities for $11 billion also.
TANSTAAFL.
Another one bites the dust
- SBC (primarily it's PacBell portion)
- Verizon
- BellSouth
We would've long ago had a much higher penetration level, except they want to control the lines and the access.OCO is Loco
I pay $80 a month for 600kbp up/down DSL and then another $120 to the phone company for the line. This is currently the fastest/cheapest we have seen and it is recent.
The phone company is slightly scamming in that they have listed on their page that the 256kbps line that I had been paying for through them could handle 1.5mbps downloads but the 256kbps was for the uploads.
But when I complained to them that I was getting nowhere near 600kbps downloads, they told me that I needed to upgrade my line with them (meaning in payment).
So I did that and now I am paying more, but still not getting the speed.
The ISP swears that they turned off the limits on my account, so I *should* be getting even 1.5mbps through them, but I am getting about 250kbps at best.
Lately when I try calling my home phone number, I can't get through and instead just get a blast of static and then a dead line.
I am assuming that is probably related to why my DSL speed sucks, but in order to get them to come look at it, for some reason I have to actually be here (none of the phone line is inside the house except for the short line that comes in through the wall to where I have my phone) - and I can't just leave me job and lounge around the house all day (were I an exec I could work from home, but I am the IT bitch at work, so that means I need to be there in person).
Just thinking about all of this wants me to smack someone.
But I live in Bermuda, and when I mention that to anyone, they assume that I spend my days lounging on the beach and don't have much sympathy for me. Of course, I am a nerd and don't care about the beach or sunburns, and right now it is COLD outside.
I envy the broadband of South Korea.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I have odds that when he declares war on Korea, he forgets which pole he's attacking, or just omit the geographic element all together.
Bye!
If population density makes it so easy to provide fast & cheap broadband, why doesn't it exist in New York or San Francisco?
Obvious counter-example: Sweden.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
If you include length of lines, then sparser areas would fair better. A larger country might have to bury more fiber to provide the broadband connections.
It seems to me that you would want to do something like comparing metro areas to metro areas, rural areas to rural areas. Even that doesn't work, as some countries have densely populated rural areas. The population distribution will be the single largest factor in determine broadband connections per person than any other factor.
nearly $11 billion program ... I pay $30 myself ... twice the speed of my $50-a-month service back home in the United States.'"
Let's see here; he's crowing about how it "costs less" at $30 per month yet ignores the taxes collected to create the $11B system. Sorry people, it ain't cheaper; the costs are just hidden in the Koreans' taxes.
I've never understood how endless pictures of folks flashing the peace sign could be so popular - but our Korean students manage to max out our bandwidth on sites just like Cyworld.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
If there was an 11 billion dollar government program to increase broadband penetration, then it doesn't cost each person in SK 30 bucks a month. It costs them 30 bucks a month plus that portion of their taxes which is going to subsidize broadband.
In the US we could pay nothing in broadband and have it be completely subsidized by the government. But we'd still be paying for it through taxes.
What worse about subsidization, even if you don't use broadband you have to pay for it, depending on how their taxation scheme works.
I am all for increasing US's broadband connections but it's not all bad here, there is far more internet penetration and PC's among the populace here than in SK.
Density helps some, but there are a lot of costs that you just can't cough at. I hear this comment too often to just leave as a fact.
Costs to run a CLEC
1. Administration / Laws / Taxes
I am assuming in this example that the pervayors of SK have similar restrictions and tax structures that the US does.
2. Inter-country fiber
Once again, one can make the assumption that SK has similar agreements with all 3rd parties for peering one another.
3. Inter-city fiber
This is where SK will save a lot of dimes in up front costs, and maybe a little bit over time. For fiber, I bet there aren't many ongoing costs unless they're renting the lines/land from someone else.
3. Intra-city fiber
The number doesn't change between KM and the US unless ther population density within cities are greater than that of the US. From reading stats on each country's overall density, it can be said that SK's cities are more dense, hence less cost per capita to deploy broadband (though incremental).
4. Subscriber concentrators
For DSL, this will need to be a few KM from each subscriber's home. The units themselves are relational to the number of customers plugging in and have relatively linear price scaling, so a concentrator in a small town of 500 subscribers would be around 1/4 the price of a town with 2000 subscribers.
5. Marketing
I could be wrong, but it seems that N.A. carriers spend a hell of a lot marketting their products to consumers. That money could have been better served deploying broadband to more people, or lowering their prices (yeah right). So, the economics of the two countries may make aquiring subscribers in SK cheaper.
Bye!
While there are a number of posts saying, "I've got x for $30 a month" there are still many areas in the U.S. where the broadband provider has a local monopoly. Case in point, my town, which only has Time Warner Cable (no DSL) charges $50/month for broadband alone. When I was getting expanded cable t.v. and broadband, my monthly bill crept up to over $120/month. My parents, who live 50 miles north of me get broadband and expanded cable t.v for $45/month. Why? They have competition. I work with people who get Time Warner broadband and they get it cheaper than I did simply by living in another location.
It seems we love monopolies here in America since it's taboo to meddle with business too much.
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
In Paris here I've been very pleasantly surprised by a company called Free (free.fr) that offers a free DSL modem/TV/telephone box (USB and ethernet, phone jack, and SCART) and then 20mbit unlimited download (with 3mbit up) for 29.99euros. TV via ADSL too and then free nlimited calling withinn France and 2cents a minute to just about anywhere else in the world. Pretty sweet frikken deal.
Check out this post from a guy who lives in Korea. You won't believe the trouble he went through with his Internet service and getting a cellphone.
'E-Korea' - Myth versus Reality
Here is a brief excerpt:
Buying a Cell Phone
"Hi, I'd like to buy a cell phone."
"B . . . b . . . but you're a foreigner."
"Yeah, thanks, I'm aware of that. Now, can I buy the phone?"
"Well no, we don't sell to foreigners."
"Really? I printed this out from your website. It says you do."
"I don't care what our website says. We don't sell to foreigners."
He then goes on to describe his problems with broadband internet access. Check it out!
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo
First off the broadband initiative in Korea is a government thing, and the entire wiring system was revamped for it, so everyone does have broadband. But compare to Japan, where 100mbps uncapped and unlimited connection can be purchased for just $20US a month in some areas. You can give everyone 1.5mb DSL "cheap", and adding a government initiative to that really helps saturation. But if you want to really look at a country doing things correctly you need to look at Japan.
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.
Well, I am actually a South Korean studying in US for 5 years. Although the broadband infrastructure there is surely impressive, I am well aware of the limitations and problems associated with the net-frenzyness in South Korea.
..., well, that's only for some manias; it's really hard to grab a decent place for such things. The result is that more and more people are just relaxing at on-line rather than outdoors. Well, not very good for health. :(
..., most of them are just consuming digital merchandise having nothing to do with real life. For instance, I can hardly see handful of Koreans in any major open source project.
... posterior ... to see major South Korean webpage with non-WinIE browser. I really wonder if Korean web develoopers have ever heard of W3C. A handful of my friends and myself continue to protest and struggle, but things are never improving.
(1) Why so crazy for net?
First, as most of you already know, South Korea is about 20 times as densely populated as in the US. Even worse, more than half of the whole population live around Seoul, in a region that only counts one tenth of the country. I'm not mentioning the economy matters. Rather, I am pointing out that chances for sound outdoor activities are really scarce! For scuva diving, bike hiking, yacht and wind-surfing,
(2) So what do they do with net?
Next, because of that, most of the netizen activities of South Koreans are not very productive. Downloading pirated movies and musics, playing online games, creating and enjoying weird online communities,
(3) What's wrong with the digital consumerism? Why don't I like it?
These "digital consumerism" originated from the Asian economy crisis that hit South Korea at the end of 1997. To revive the economy, South Korean government encouraged IT industries and infrastructures, and lots of online contents providers are founded. One of the biggest investors were Micro$oft, and they provided support for developing M$-specific webpages; a screenful of images and ActiveX shits. That awful culture continues growing and growing, and now it's really a pain in the
In summary, I would say that although South Korean broadband infrastructure is decent, it's far from heaven in terms of what to do with that.
So, instead of giving false facts, here's what the CIA world factbook says about SOUTH Korea:
Net Migration Rate: 0 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2004 est.) read: no net emigration
Sex Ratio At Birth: 1.09 male(s)/female
Population Growth Rate: 0.62% (2004 est.)
Life Expectancy: total population: 75.58 years male: 71.96 years female: 79.54 years (2004 est.)
Literacy: total population: 97.9% male: 99.2% female: 96.6% (2002)
So, how does that stack up to the US?
Net Migration Rate: 3.41 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Sex Ratio At Birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
Population Growth Rate: 0.92% (2004 est.)
Life Expectancy: total population: 77.43 years male: 74.63 years female: 80.36 years (2004 est.)
Literacy: total population: 97% male: 97% female: 97% (1999 est.)
So, basically - you're full of shit, and we have been trolled. However, I thought your bullshit should be shown for what it is - Bullshit. There is no such country called "Korea." They got pissed at each other and split up into North and South with SOUTH korea resembing the US and NORTH korea resembling a poverty stricken dicatorship. HAND.
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.Now, could you imagine what would happen if the US had a president that bet 100 billion on the internet?
Yeah, he would would have been lobbied out of office by the MPAA.
blog
So far every Korean I've ran into here in S. Korea has a Cellphone and Broadband. Nearly every shop I walk into there is a computer hooked up for surfing during the day's quiet hours.
:-)
Here in Korea, when you get cellphone services, they talk to a representative via MSN Messenger or suitable application to activate your line in real-time without having to pickup a phone.
Osan AB has broadband through out all the dormitories, though SSRT (Samsung Rental) has a monopoly on that so they get away with charging insane costs. Something like $45 just for DSL... and really horrible TOS threatening $1000 fine for running anything resembling a "server." But 300kbps downstream is rather nice coming from the States where I'd be lucky to hit 90kbps.
S. Korea is paradise
-Drache Kubisuro
(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
As long as there is no real competition between providers in the United States there will be higher broadband costs to us.
I can get dsl from my isp for $50 or $80, he gets no break from bell south which will give me the same speeds for $35 and $55.
My city gave exclusive cable rights to the cable company. And they don't share. I can get a faster rate for a bit more money than from my baby bell.
But the baby bells were forced to share thier bandwidth with anyone that wanted a stake. For years they didn't even consider the internet worth the investment so they gave out better rates for the mom n pop isps.
Until the cable companies are forced to do the same, or the telephone companies put in cable, the rates just won't be coming down.
It's all about the money and the cable guys all seem to have the upper hand right now. There are solutions? I wish I knew.
"Where did this apple come from?"
--Alan Turing
When I moved to Japan I had a choice of 50 Megabytes or 80 Megabytes. I took the 50 Megabytes because the Voice Over Internet Phone was integrated. You can also watch movies. Not only that Japan is rolling out 10 gigabyte to the house by 2010. If your feeling a little left out over there in generica, it is because you are! I can only imagine that the gulf will continue to worsen and more uses for the truly highspeed will happen every day here, and in generica you will still be gloating over your killer 1.5 megabytes. LOL