All Korea To Have 1Gbps Broadband By 2012? 386
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that while 60 Mbps may be enough to get us excited in the US, Korea is making plans to set the bar much higher. The entire country is gearing up to have 1 Gbps service by 2012, or at least that is what the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) is claiming. 'Currently, Koreans can get speeds up to 100 Mbps, which is still nearly double the speed of Charter's new 60 Mbps service. The new plan by the KCC will cost 34.1 trillion ($24.6 billion USD) over the next five years. The central government will put up 1.3 trillion won, with the remainder coming from private telecom operators. The project is also expected to create more than 120,000 jobs — a win for the Korean economy.'"
Botnets (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet the botnet operators are furiously masturbating right now. With that kind of bandwidth, they could destroy anything they wanted.
on an unrelated note... (Score:3, Interesting)
Malware and spambot writers everywhere are making plans to move their botnet hub to korea.
Good for them, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
...our ISP's in the UK, USA etc seem to be having real problems dealing with the bandwidth usage of their customers who have paltry 10Mbps connections. Do the Koreans not use bittorrent or usenet? Are these connections going to be capped or throttled? If the connections are bandwidth-managed, then it seems kind of pointless to have them in the first place. But if not bandwidth-managed, then I can't see how the ISPs can make it work. TFA sheds no light, so I guess it's just a rather pointless snippet, unless anyone can shed some light on these questions.
Home buyers' demands (Score:4, Interesting)
My friend says in South Korean, houses and apartments are frequently advertised with an emphasis on Internet broadband speeds and latency (fixed line).
Due to a respectable demand by home buyers to actually base their decisions with broadband as a major criteria. It appears that a respectable portion of the population are avid gamers.
These are for South Korea. For North Korea, elrous0 (869638)'s viewpoint is quite right.
Re:Food for thought (Score:5, Interesting)
I might even buy into the spread out argument if it applied to truly rural areas. I could understand a telco not running $20,000 in fiber to one farmhouse. I can't understand why densely populated cities, especially newer growth cities, are still stuck with slow DSL and cable connections.
economist article on broadband (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13024563 [economist.com]
I do not necessarily agree or disagree with the opinions presented within the article; I just think it is an interesting and timely take on the topic.
Re:Good for them, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
In the USA its more of a problem of greed, over-selling and business model.
While contracts have changed over the years, Mine with timewarner states it as being always on and always available.
For which I will be over charged a vast amount for my 10Mbps connection that will never really run at full 10Mbps.
So out of the box, they already broke their contract, (Yes I'm aware that the wording is more complex and they no longer read anything like the old ones that some of us still have)
Their business model is based on selling more bandwidth than they have because nobody will really use all of what they are paying for would they.
Even the biggest pirate, still only gets his 10mbps down and /512kbps up so if they sold what they really had in the first place, it wouldn't be a problem in the first place.
Personally over the years, my premium package has gotten upgraded over the years, and I believe it is supposed to be 20Mbps or something near that speed tests put it between 3 Mbps & 21 Mbps at any give point in time, yet anytime I download Its a freaking miracle if its faster than 500/800Kbps and on a happy day I see that coveted 1.2Mbps, while I can go to or remote in to work on their full lines and pull down from the same server to my workstation at speeds of around 3-4 Mbps
Not spread, SCALE (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not really so much of a "spread out" problem. It's a problem of SCALE. Any time you scale a project up orders of magnitude, you get problems. It's the same problem with large corporations and bureaucracies. You run out of smart people and aren't able to be part of the hiring process. You also turn into a faceless entity, so the employees have very little stake in the success of the operation anymore and have zero loyalty. Everything has cost overruns and delays because nobody is around and empowered to make smart decisions. It all turns into a giant charlie foxtrot, and that's even assuming you don't have some bad eggs intentionally swindling the operation.
Re:Food for thought (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a fair assessment, but the US east of the Mississippi is a lot like any European country.
So you're saying, for example, Kentucky (101.7 People/sq mi)is about the same as France (297/sq mi)?
"Lots of cities withing short distance of each other."
Look at New York state.. The second largest city (Buffalo) is five hundred or so miles away from the largest city. Now it might be fair to say the US eastern seaboard up to two hundred miles inland is the same as Western Europe but 'east of the Mississippi?
"The argument that the US is too spread out applies only to the western states."
It applies to everything away from the coast (east, west, and gulf) from the Ohio Valley to the Sierra Nevada. Now were the abandoned waste land that might matter but near half the US population lives in that area.
"I think there's a real problem here with broadband. At the very least the east coast would have 100mbps service to be on par with Korea or some European nations."
Im left to ask why? is this *really* a priority given everything else we are going through?
Re:And the *real* useful bandwidth will be? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well forever it's been said the last mile is the problem because of the endless miles of ditch digging it'd take. Is there really a big problem laying a big bundle of cables point-to-point between centrals? Besides if they delivered 20% of what they claim before and 20% of what they claim now the increase is still the same...
So true....Not "all Korea" (Score:3, Interesting)
The above comment is so true. This whole project has the odor of Asian 'group-think' about it. So before you call me a racist (and you will), let me define this concept.
The Koreans seem obsessed with the idea that they are as smart, driven, tough, and visionary as anyone else in the world, without exception. That is fine and well; it's good for them and it's good for everyone else. And for the most part it is true that they are as smart, driven, and tough as anyone.
But they are also a small nation, different and culturally isolated. They have a history of being crushed by their neighbors and suffering disproportionately for it. They have 1.2 billion Chinese to the West, 100 million Japanese to the West, and in theory 300 million Russians to the North (although there is a lot a territory between Korea and where the Russians actually live). They are surrounded by people who aren't concerned about the best interests of the Korean people and have been for thousands of years.
This affects their culture and even the basic way of thinking of the Korean people. Which is, to the rest of the world, paranoid mentally unbalanced, and unlikely to change. They also tend to create a reality distortion field around themselves. This causes them to see certain things as far more important than they actually are. They have a tendency to confuse symbolism with reality.
So they invest huge amounts of money into basically symbolic projects that have marginal long-term benefit.
Like this one. What use is it to have 1 Gig bandwidth to every house in the country? There might be some military advantage, but I can't think of any. The whole project seems like a 'pissing contest', a 'anything you can do, we can do better'- type of project.
Maybe I'm wrong. But here's a country that is split in half and the northern half is in the control of the most brutal and fascist dictatorship on Earth. This is country that has been on the edge of suicide for 50 years. And they don't have much hope of changing the situation in the next 50 years.
Maybe the North will implode when 'Dear Leader' dies. Maybe the North will launch their huge invasion of the South that they have been preparing for during the past 50 years. Everyone used to worry that a new Korean Civil War would suck the neighboring countries into a giant pan-Asia war. But that is unlikely to happen now. Chinese young people love everything Korean. Even the Japanese and Koreans have entered a era of mutual respect and peaceful acceptance. It's possible that the North part of Korea will enter the civilized world without a major bloodbath. But, since Korea has an obsessive, violent, self-absorbed, and fanatical, and quite possibly, mentally unbalanced culture, it is very possible the entire country could fall into a huge suicidal bloodbath while the rest of the world watches helplessly.
But not likely, the South of Korea makes a lot of things that the world needs. People have a lot of money invested there. It's not a place like Palestine, which could experience a final solution to its situation without having any effect on the rest of the world.
So, we should congratulate the Koreans in their latest accomplishment and huge infrastructure project. It's quite possible that we could learn a lot from their experience in wiring the entire country.
Re:Food for thought (Score:2, Interesting)
As opposed to the sense of entitlement displayed when people demand that public investment occur in non-necessary services so they can be further entertained? Or maybe that entitlement is more worthwhile because you agree with it... hard to tell really. Personally I find both repellent but I have an easier time accepting it from people who have actually done something towards earning it.
Re:What's the oversubscription? (Score:1, Interesting)
What about gaming?
You can name a single game that demands 1Gbps under normal use? No? How about just 10Mbps? Still nothing? How about more than 500kbps? Still coming up short?
This isn't an "if you build it they will come" scenario. Unless you design something like a 1920x1200 FPS that sends complete video data to the client (as opposed to having the client render anything on its own), modern games, even the most bandwidth-hungry of them, are still many, many generations from even coming close to saturating a 5Mbps line, let alone coming anywhere near 1Gbps.
Going on your analogy, you're trying to convince the rooftop gardener in your apartment building to buy a tractor for his/her begonias.
P2P for something higher quality than 720p DivX?
You are aware that the General Public(tm) (so, not you and your torrent communities) doesn't sit around on torrents for TV shows 24/7, right? That they find it considerably more convenient to Tivo shows and/or watch them when they're airing on TV, right? Or buy the DVDs when they come out? And, in general, don't even care about 720p quality, let alone anything HIGHER?
Keeping your analogy going, now you're trying to sell a tractor to the guy in your apartment building who just has a zen garden.
Remote desktops?
Even FEWER people use remote desktops than torrent-leeching, and they're not doing anything via remote that would demand anywhere near 1Gbps anyway. Yes, yes, "if you build it they will come", blah blah, but if you have that much bandwidth to your OWN computer, why are you trying to remote desktop to some other one to do massively bandwidth-intensive work THERE?
One more shot at your analogy, you're trying to sell tractors either to people who have a few plants in their apartment or to people who grow their own organic carrots in the windowsill once in a while.
Re:Good for them, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Food for thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, the last sentence of my post you quoted is a reference to the so-called $200 billion broadband scandal [pbs.org]. If you browse through my comment history you'll see that I've been calling the whole "area too large" argument bogus since the beginning, but I too would be thrilled to hear we could get 100Mbps connections in major cities. I would then even understand if they couldn't quite justify rolling out tens of thousands of dollars worth of fiber to every farmhouse in America.
Anyway, I agree with you wholeheartedly. We're supposedly the strongest and wealthiest nation in the world and supposedly the leader in information technology and yet our communications network is just downright embarrassing when you compare it with other nations that have fewer resources and less of a head-start on the technologies involved.
Do you know what this means for gaming? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Food for thought (Score:3, Interesting)
The state of Vermont disagrees with your assessment about dealing with rural poverty.
15 years ago the governor helped get massive funding to bring DSL to rural Vermont enabling thousands to improve their education and develop marketable skills. It didn't solve the problem completely but I am a product of that legislation which ultimately got me DSL in 1997 where my knowledge took off with so much at my fingertips. Telecommuting is also very common in the state.
I would say Internet access should rank high on the list of combating poverty everywhere as it gives people access to tons of information for free which would ordinarily cost them lots of money to get. Of course this can't come at the cost of libraries in such communities but the two are fundamentally linked at least in my mind.
Re:So true....Not "all Korea" (Score:2, Interesting)
Which is, to the rest of the world, paranoid mentally unbalanced, and unlikely to change. They also tend to create a reality distortion field around themselves. This causes them to see certain things as far more important than they actually are. They have a tendency to confuse symbolism with reality.
I fail to see how South Koreans are "paranoid mentally unbalanced, and unlikely to change." If anything the south has embraced a lot of US ideals such as democracy, capitalism, free press, etc. North Korea has been a dictatorship for the last 50 years and reflects the prejudices of it's leadership.
So they invest huge amounts of money into basically symbolic projects that have marginal long-term benefit.
As opposed to the US? How about the space programs to put a man on the moon before the russians.
Like this one. What use is it to have 1 Gig bandwidth to every house in the country? There might be some military advantage, but I can't think of any. The whole project seems like a 'pissing contest', a 'anything you can do, we can do better'- type of project.
In South Korea you can literally stream live TV stations (KBS, MBC, SBS, etc) in HD to your PC. In addition to that things such as VOD, VOIP, mobile devices are popular. Perhaps it's just me but having 1 gig of bandwidth sounds to me like a sound infrastructure investment.
Maybe the North will launch their huge invasion of the South that they have been preparing for during the past 50 years.
They won't because of the military presence of the US and the fact that it would be in Japan's interest to support the US/South Korea. In addition to that I fail to see why China would support any attack on South Korea.
But, since Korea has an obsessive, violent, self-absorbed, and fanatical, and quite possibly, mentally unbalanced culture, it is very possible the entire country could fall into a huge suicidal bloodbath while the rest of the world watches helplessly.
Obsessive, violent, fanatical, mentally unbalanced ? I hope you realize that North Korea is a dictatorship and most dictatorships involve violence, fanatics, etc. South Korea is a thriving modern state just google some facts.
So before you call me a racist (and you will), let me define this concept.
You are?
Perhaps you are right...or not (Score:3, Interesting)
What if it's all clients?
You see, there is no black and white line between a "server" and a "client" on the internet. At the packet level, perhaps there is but at the IP level, all nodes are equal. That isn't by accident. That is by design. The ISPs/telco's - years ago - made the crappy decision to provide asynchronous service. Now, the chickens come home to roost when customers want better upstream performance. No duh. I could have saved them the hassle and told them that 15 years ago when aDSL and the other half-baked technologies were being rolld out. In fact, many of us here at
Your example is exactly what this is all about. You make his point for him - in the US, a synchronous 1.544 Mbps link costs ~$350/month. IOW, too f'ing expensive! Meanwhile, the Koreans have 1 Gbps links...