America's Broadband Dream Is Alive-- In Korea

An anonymous reader writes "America's Broadband Dream Is Alive in Korea thanks to government encouragement, according to the NY times (free reg, etc...). But profits are elusive." The U.S. is a lot more spread out than Korea, though -- some American cities are pretty well connected.

interesting

[twiggy]

I think this would be much harder to implement here in the US.. too much space, geographically, and an economy that's already in the dumps... it would be cool to see, but maybe wireless would be a more viable option (if it ever becomes legitimately secure, which it sort of inherently isn't, I guess)...

Re:Who cares?

[Doom Ihl' Varia]

That's North Korea. This article talks about South Korea. There is extreme economic disparity between the two.

keep in mind

[kamskii]

..that Korea is about the size of new jersey. I assuming that south korea is half that.

"But profits are elusive."

[Dutchmaan]

..and is anyone wondering why despite America's huge landmass and population spread over it.. that this broadband dream hasn't happened here yet? :)

Sigh...

[armyofone]

Maybe I would have broadband available where I live if the US government were an 'encouraging' entity instead of bogged down in bureaucracy. Whatever happened to leadership? Looks to me as though it's moving overseas...

Much Easier in Korea

[fastdecade]

Not only is USA more spread out, but Korea is full of high-density housing. I mean, Seoul looks like something out of a profitable Sim City, with entire clusters of high-density houses. And then theres the net cafes for LAN games for when the kiddies want to leave their broadband home connections and go outside.

Koreas definitely at the forefront - subway has cell phone access, mainstream TV shows feature live gaming ... like in Japan, but with less bullshit bureaucracy. If anything, Id say Korea is fast becoming Japans technophile dream.

I'm not surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to our lame free enterprise system, where one company (regardless of how many smaller units the FTC breaks it up into) owns all of the cable or phone line, broadband is just not affordable.

We've gone from ~$30/mo for 6Mb in the @Home days to nearly $50/mo for 1.5Mb thanks to ATT and now Comcast. In another 5 years, BB will be $100/mo for 768Kb. Gee, more money for less speed, I can't imagine why it's not taking off!

Re:Fragile broadband lead

[Fulcrum of Evil]

One well-placed North Korean nuke and South Korea's broadband capacity won't look quite as attractive to business.

More to the point, North Korea has artillery in position right now that could level Seoul in 5 minutes, and It's been like that for years. Talk about a mind-fuck.

RTFA Timothy

[psycho]

Connectivity is not the primary issue. The article says broadband in S. Korea is a vastly different thing from so-called "broadband" in the US. In-fact, end-mile access speeds of more than 4 Mbps are changing the way the S. Koreans use the internet.

Re:Fragile broadband lead

[ADRA]

The word is Deterance, and North Korea is building nuclear weapons to defend their soverenty against Bush and his fanatically aggressive millitary campaigns.. and you wonder why you have no friends... *sigh*

PS: Although that is one way to look at things, it is also possible that North Korea has always wanted nukes and has used the Iraqi war as an excuse to build them. Either way, America has made North Korea a lot more justified in building up their weapons programs.

Teacher: Peace begets peace and war begets war.
Bush: But they are crazy!
Teacher: Hmm.. so, what have we learned children?
Bush: Kill them before the kill us!

At who's expense?

[geekee]

When you see $32 for great bandwidth, but also see a lot of govt. subsidizing, you need to ask yourself who's really paying the price. Is it fair for taxpayers to provide cheap bandwidth for others even if they don't use the internet? In the US, this has been left to free market, and the internet bubble burst is quite a bit of proof that the average American would rather pay less for a slow connection than pay more for a fast one. Why force the tax burden on the majority to benefit a minority that actually uses it?

The only problem..

[AndroidCat]

.. is that the entire nation was dumped on the Internet at the same time. An entire nation of newbies. All the schools in South Korea got the same distro of Linux with open proxies running, and I'm not sure if there's a single working abuse emailbox in the whole country.

The key difference

[release7]

In the US, the Internet is considered to be a consumer product. So if there's not way to make immediate cash, there's not going to be any technological progress. In other more forward looking countries, the Internet is a collective investment, that everyone benefits from, not just corporations. It's this mindset that has allowed Canada and Korea to pull far ahead.

Particularly discouraging is that the US doesn't even have a policy to get broadband into every home on the horizon while practically all other modern, democratized nations do. We're still waiting for the Free Market Fairy to come along and wave her magic wand.

Not a dream, but a nightmare (spam)

[dananderson]

People forget that there's some responsibility using the Internet--this includes not soaking the rest of the world in spam and (for ISPs) not ignoring abuse complaints. I've blocked South Korea completely by routing all Korea IP blocks to a blackhole (non-existant IP address). If you'd like to do the same for this (and perhaps other countries and select ISPs), see http://www.blackholes.us/ [blackholes.us] Click on (South) Korea.

Once this and other rogue nations and ISPs behave in a responsible manner, perhaps they can rejoin the club. Now back to our regular programming :-) . . .

Re:Cheap in Asia

[Malfourmed]

In nearly all countries in Asia, broadband is very cheap. Here in Taiwan, it only costs $10/Month for cable modem service via an annual fee.

But what's that $10 compared to the cost of living?

Re:keep in mind

[Xerithane]

North Korea: 120,540 sq km [photius.com]
South Korea: 98,480 sq km [photius.com]

New Jersey: 11,936 sq km [fedstats.gov]

Will you people, who don't know what you are talking about, kindly shut the hell up.

Re:Sigh...

[geekee]

So you want the US to subsidize failing telcos? That's your idea of an encouraging entity? That's what I'd consider a socialist beuracracy. Let free market decide. The technology is here. It's not like the US has to encourage developing the technology. If people want it, let them pay for it, but don't make taxpayers pay for bandwidth they have already chosen to opt without, and stick with cheaper dial-up access instead.

Korea?

[DaytonCIM]

Did I miss something? Did the two Koreas repair their relationship and become one? Or have we used US Tax $dollars to wire up North Korea?

Re:Fragile broadband lead

[jhunsake]

After the US didn't do shit to help them.

The US fully complied with the agreement.

They won't. The only guarantee they have to safety is their nuclear arsenal. Why sell the thing that keeps you safe? You may think, "Oh, but they can sell them secretely and still claim they have it." The world intelligence is pretty good, and that ruse wouldn't last long.

Most of the process of getting nukes is gaining the technical expertise to build them. They can sell this without losing it. Also, they can keep some plutonium and sell some. How many nuclear weapons does one terrorist or rogue nation need to cause trouble? Exactly, one.

Re:At who's expense?

[chunkwhite86]

When you see $32 for great bandwidth, but also see a lot of govt. subsidizing, you need to ask yourself who's really paying the price. Is it fair for taxpayers to provide cheap bandwidth for others even if they don't use the internet? In the US, this has been left to free market, and the internet bubble burst is quite a bit of proof that the average American would rather pay less for a slow connection than pay more for a fast one. Why force the tax burden on the majority to benefit a minority that actually uses it?

Kind of like Welfare and Social Security, eh?

Re:Sick of the NY Time links

[ikewillis]

It's not that simple. Compare the original URL:
http://nytimes.com/2003/05/05/business/worldbusine ss/05BROA.html?pagewanted=all&position= [nytimes.com]

with this valid link from Google:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/05/business/worldbu siness/05BROA.html?ex=1052712000&en=5906ece0642a35 44&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE [nytimes.com]

What you suggest, which looks something like this, simply does not work:
http://nytimes.com/2003/05/05/business/worldbusine ss/05BROA.html?pagewanted=all&position=&partner=GO OGLE [nytimes.com]

Notice all the fancy numbers in the real Google link. Those are what authorize you to view the page, not just the &partner=GOOGLE part.

But yes, I agree that people should go to news.google.com [google.com] and find a valid Google referer when linking NY Times stories.

Re:Fragile broadband lead

[WhiteWolf666]

You have no idea what you are talking about.

The US, South Korea, and Japan have been providing large amounts of food aid to North Korea for years now.

They signed the so-called 'Sunshine' agreement (The official name was the 'agreeded' protocal, or something like that), guaranteeing oil, and light water reactors in exchange for shelving their nuclear weapons program.

Then North Korea says, oh, by the way, we've been building nukes all along.

And using nukes as a deterrent? Bullshit. They are using nukes for extortion! "Give us more aid, don't stop trading with us, or we will use our nukes."

They haven't said if you attack us, we will use them. They said if you stopped subsidizing our failing, stalinist economy, we will consider that a decleration of war. When India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices, they got sanctioned. Why? Because we have worldwide treaties to prevent nuclearization of signatories to the NPT. The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is a signatory to the NPT.

But if we sanction them, they will destroy Seoul, and half of South Korea.

They are using their military might to prop up a failing, and disgusting stalinist regime. Even if you are a good little Marxist, you should be appalled at the structure of the DPRK. They don't deserve a guarantee of safety.

Why do I say this? Because if they had just stuck with the sunshine agreement, they wouldn't need one. They would be well on track to integration with South Korea, and liberalization.

Instead, they choose to prop up a stalinist hell with nuclear THREAT.

And why should we trust them again? We fund them with food aid, and they go ahead a nuclearize anyway. That's crazy, and it is in exactly this scenario that appeasment doesn't work.

Tit-for-tat is the only workable strategy with a belligerent.

American policy makers DO understand that. Basically, what I forsee is forestalling the North Koreans, givening them half-concessions indefintely, in order to prevent a war, until their decript regime either collapse around them, or China decides its time for a change.

We have NO reason to invade North Korea, except so much as we perceive them to be a threat to South Korea. Nuclearization makes them more of a threat, not less---They are attempting blackmail.

And at this point in time, China probably is more interested in good relations with South Korea (for economic trade relations), then North Korea.

Screw them. Let those bastards starve. They threaten to kill 6 million South Koreans to prop up their disgusting regime?

I hate those bastards.

Yeah right.

[enkidu]

I guess since this is a capitalist society, it also isn't the government's responsibility to provide for roads, sewage or electricity. Or regulate our food, drugs, oil or water. The free market solved all of those problems so incredibly well that we don't have any government involvement in any of those areas. Do you think that all roads should be privately owned toll roads? Should the interstate system be privatized?

The neo-cons may mistakenly believe the pseudo-libertarian notion that everything should be a market, but any student of history and economics knows that a society is best served when public utilities are managed in the interest of the public as a whole. In case you didn't notice, sewage, gas, electricity, water, and roads are considered public utilities. What's so different about telecommunications?

Re:Fragile broadband lead

[Xerithane]

There's a ton of absurd rhetoric coming from leaders in all nations, not just from Bush. You don't see everyone else running out to get nukes, do you? North Korea's leaders are irrational, thus their actions cannot be explained, let alone justified.

The difference is Bush just destroyed an existing government and invaded another country without UNSEC approval. That would make anybody nervous who is listed on Bush's Axis of Evil list.

Re:Fragile broadband lead

[labratuk]

More significantly, the U.S. have nuclear weapons in position right now that could level the whole planet in 5 minutes, and it's been like that for years. Talk about a mind-fuck.

Re:interesting

[letxa2000]

We're getting spanked by Canada. Now there's a densely populated country for you.

Actually, it is densely populated. Sure, if you divide their population over the frozen wastelands of the north, yeah, their density goes down. But since no-one lives there (per se) you don't need to wire it.

I can't remember the percentage, but something like 90% of the Canadian population lives within 50 miles of the U.S. border.