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.'"

Doesn't sound so wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Port scanning

[suso]

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.

Size

[Anonymous Coward]

So. Korea being the size of about New Jersey
might be the reason broadband has deeper penetraton than in the US.

Geography Is Key

[WombatControl]

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.

Re:Doesn't sound so wonderful

[bbk]

I'm willing to bet he has a 1.5Mbit/sec bidirectional DSL line, rather than the "3Mbit/sec down, 512Kbit/sec up" line that Comcast is most likely selling you.

For that kind of bidirectional speed, you're looking at $100/month or so here...

- BBK

Translation:

[saintp]

When you pay taxes for something, your out-of-pocket expenditure for it is less. We pay taxes to support massive petroleum subsidies, because cheap gas is important to us. Koreans pay taxes to support massive Internet subsidies. It simply represents a difference in whose pockets we want to line: already-wealthy oil barons, or already-wealthy Internet barons?

TANSTAAFL.

Why can't we get this kind of penetration?

[KiltedKnight]

Three reasons:

1. SBC (primarily it's PacBell portion)
2. Verizon
3. BellSouth

We would've long ago had a much higher penetration level, except they want to control the lines and the access.

Re:Leadership?

[MP3Chuck]

What's the point of 100Mbps though? A lot of servers are lucky to be sitting on their own 100MBps pipe. With the exception of P2P stuff, I'd imagine there's a point where additional MBps on a home line just aren't that significant anymore.

envy

[AssFace]

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.

Re:Size

[Yotsuya]

How typically american. The articles says that in Korea, broadband has better penetration than.. not america.. but rather, *the rest of the world*!
Which does happen to include America, but is not limited to it. Nor is America even a good meter to compare to, broadband-wise.

Re:Size

[A beautiful mind]

There is a saying, when there is a will, there is a way.

Look at Sweden. Huge, cold, northren-european country, with 10/10mbit - 100/100mbit for home users for the price i'm paying for 1.5mbit/160kbit.

Also, if the country is smaller, their incomes are smaller too.

New York City: where's the fiber?

[Wesley Felter]

If population density makes it so easy to provide fast & cheap broadband, why doesn't it exist in New York or San Francisco?

Re:Translation:

[DunbarTheInept]

And that makes perfect sence given the geography differences. We need cheap physical transport more than South Korea does. If it suddenly became twice as expensive to transport a load of cargo 1000 miles as it is today, our economy would choke.

Re:Population density, size of country makes it wo

[A beautiful mind]

Obvious counter-example: Sweden.

Length

[yintercept]

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.

Re:Size

[Arroc]

Same old excuse: infrastructure X sucks in the USA because the country is too big.
Why isn't New Jersey doing so well since it is the size of Korea?

Re:Leadership?

[hedley]

I think the buildout is important. Ultimately in the limit I believe that you will get your entertainment content via the net (minus the pr0n we already receive). The idea is that you would visit webpages for the TV shows you like and support, you get billed directly and DL the show you like for a small fee. You watch it when you want commercial free. Movies also could be delivered this way.
Anyway, thats where I believe the BW will ultimately go. If I am wrong, then you are right 1..4mbs would be all you would need (barring p2p). (that last comment sounds a lot like 640k is all you need :) ).

Hedley

A bit more than $30/mo

[magarity]

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.

Re:I can shed some illumination

[Auckerman]

While this is certainly a major factor, it does raise a simple question. Why doesn't any random metropolis in the States have similar broadband numbers? While having a dense population makes it easier, it's not the reason why. Government policy is a major contributor.

Re:Port scanning

[Anonymous Coward]

All I can see from here is the port scanning that continuously comes from their networks.

No different to any other country, IME.

And the lack of response when I try to report it to their ISPs.

You speak Korean? Or did you get somebody to translate it for you? Please tell me you didn't just send them an email in English and expect them to understand it.

Some economics basics for slashbots.

[Rotten168]

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.

Re:Population density, size of country makes it wo

[ADRA]

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.

Re:Size

[zakezuke]

So. Korea being the size of about New Jersey
might be the reason broadband has deeper penetraton than in the US

New Jersey a population of about 8.6 million, of those about 693,000 [aeanet.org] were subscribed to broadband in 2003 or about 8%. This state is in the top 5 list of subscribers in America.

South Korea is about 38,023 sq. miles in size
New Jersey is about 8,721 sq. miles.

Virginia on the other hand is larger than South Korea, but close at 39,598 sq. miles. It would be less insulting to say that South Korea was the about the same size as on of the sothern states.

N.J. is smaller in terms of size and population than South Korea, yet has less in terms of percent of broadband subscribers.

Re:A bit more than $30/mo

[pe1chl]

But then, it comes down to "what do we spend our tax money on? will we improve broadband connectivity for our citizens or will we interfere with other countries' business and pretend it is for a good cause"?

Re:A bit more than $30/mo

[nfgaida]

I would have to spend sigificantly more as an individual to get that sort of broadband vs my share of the costs if everyone was helping. In fact, if it wasn't for large tax-funded investments in technology like the internet, we wouldn't have the technology we have today.

I'm more than happy to pay taxes to support that (and other such endovers). I'm not happy paying taxes to support a war to help oil barons have easier access to some oil so they can get richer.

Re:Size

[novakyu]

Because the entire country's resources aren't concentrated on ONE of the fifty states, you stupid fuck.

Egh... are you comparing the entire resources of US with that of S. Korea? US has more raw resources and capital to be more efficient---it's just that we are wasting too much of that on politicians and CEO's, whereas Koreans are doing less so.

Now, my question is, who wasted his mod point on this AC?

WRONG AGAIN SLASHDOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

In-depth criticism from a South Korean

[odibil]

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.

(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, ..., 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. :(

(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, ..., 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.

(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 ... 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.

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.

Re:Size

[IntlHarvester]

> 2800 miles from Nova Scotia to Vancouver

Bogus calculation because most of that 2800x100 miles has nothing in it.

The population densities of Canadian cities are generally MUCH higher than american cities.

For example, Metro Toronto has 6,857 people per square mile. Metro Chicago only has 3,641 ppl/sqmi

http://www.demographia.com

Re:Translation:

[gad_zuki!]

>The story your missing is that the Korean subsidies wern't free money to 'rich' telecoms.

This is very common with American thinkers. Here in the US, so much corporate welfare is given out through various lobbying efforts, not generally through well thought out planning. I dont at all believe most of my peers understand how powerful a stratgic "pump primer" subsidy can be to fire up business to provide some really stellar results, like what we are seeing in Korea.

Then again, the American outlook is justified as the cronyism goes very deep here and the assumption that the fair market implementation in the US will take care of itself. Of course this ignores monopoly issues, IP law abuse, etc. In the end, the US does well enough so that people aren't complaning too loudly about broadband pricing or lack of availibility, but seeing a touch of socialism and central planning produce some really excellent results just brings out the worst in the WSJ/right-wing crowd.

Sadly, this thread reads of just all the things "wrong" with the Korean implementation instead of giving them the kudos they've earned for such a huge and risky project.

I think this is the larger issue and the wedge between the US and all other post-industrialized nations, especially Europe and Canada. These countries are actually doing very well with complex programs like universal healthcare and better consumer protections; two things the US elites and populace seem to want nothing to do with and in an act of cognitive dissonance, they last out and just point out whats wrong with these socialized or "primed" programs.

Yes, there are downsides to subsidization, but there are also real upsides and we're seeing it in Koreas amazing broadband revolution and in the social programs of western democracies, except the US. Of course, the US ideology gives a lot more leeway to enterprenaurs and makes for a more nimble market, but that comes at a cost, mainly quality of life issues and companies which get too big and a government unwilling or unable to take on harmful monopolies like slashdot's favorite computer company, Microsoft.

Re:Port scanning

[jc67]

Unfortuantley, yes that is true. I'm a Korean with some overseas experience. Most of Koreans can read and understand simple messages written in English(writing/speaking is not good though). Personally, I reported spamming/scanning/cracking attempts several times to local ISPs(all written in Korean!) and simply ignored. I guess the problem is many ISPs(or their network admins) don't understand what are spamming, cracking, port scanning. Or they can't afford to keep up rapid changes. Rapid changes are not that good sometimes.

Japan Rocksout the Broadband

[dweezeldude]

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

Re:GET A LIFE

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you seriously need to get a life. Stop nitpicking, and find something else to do than whine about an insightful post.