Worldwide State of Broadband - S Korea, Japan Lead 354
Geek of the Week writes "No surprise here, a report by the International Telecommunications Union shows the US lagging in broadband adoption. S Korea and Japan lead with between 60 and 70% of S Korean households wired for speed, with Japan catching up quickly. The U.S. ranks 11th. Story here and the full press release can be found on the ITU website. Having traveled through Asia for business I can't say I'm surprised, but it is disappointing that the availability and price are in such sorry states here in the U.S."
Houses close together (Score:3, Interesting)
I spent a year just outside of Soul, Korea and I can say that they don't worry too much about cableing. Huge junktion boxes of shody wireing jobs for electic and phone going into each building. I don't think it would be hard to wire up many of them quickly.
Most would make the back of a stereo or computer wireing job look like it was organized.
That was 10 years ago so it could be wired better now but they are still extreamely close together.
Re:In Japan (Score:1, Interesting)
You must be talking about Yahoo! BB. They're operating at a loss right now. big gamble that Yahoo! is doing over there. Wired has a recent article on it [wired.com]. I am getting my Yahoo! DSL Broadband this week, btw (even tho I'm in Illinois, US). Pretty excited!
Re:Population density?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:When you read the article... (Score:2, Interesting)
Take a walk down Osaka, say, and you'll inevitably see Yahoo! BB ADSL sales reps vigourously peddling their broadband service exactly because adoption has been so slow. For the most part, the average Japanese person connects to the internet either in the workplace or through their cell phones.
Anecdotal evidence, sure, but closer to reality than just assuming availability = adoption.
It's more than just area and cost (Score:5, Interesting)
Another reason for the lack of mass broadband acceptance in America is frankly, a lack of a market. There's a lot of average-joe-computer-users who don't see an every-day benefit of broadband. They don't do anything on the web other than IM, Email, check a few websites. These are the people for whom the concept of uploading a digital photo to a web site is mind blowing. Forget about Warcraft III or video on demand. I don't see any of these people interested in broadband, and frankly, I can't blame them. Why spend money on something you *think* you won't use?
People in this boat might be technophobes, maybe they got burned on Yahoo! stock and are pissed off, maybe they're afraid of viruses, maybe they are just cheap bastards. But ultimately it all comes down to a classic chicken and egg problem. People aren't going to sign up in droves until there's the content, and because of the .com implosion there aren't any companies doing wild and crazy stuff on the web that's attracting people. It's probably going to take a massive investment by the tech / telecom companies to decide this is worth it, to subsidize the cost of broadband for a while and bring it down to the 10-25 bucks a month making it competitive or cheaper than dial up. And unfortunately in today's shitty tech economy, it's going to be a few years before this happens...
Hi adoption AND hi speed (Score:4, Interesting)
And I thought T1 was fast...
Re:It's not entirely population density (Score:3, Interesting)
IT's not like canada is one big city coast to cast along the US border you know.
We are talking about the population density of the populized areas.. NOT calculated over teh entire landmass of Canada...
This argument doens't hold up, sorry.. the population density of canada just in teh strip north of hte US is still much lower than the US, or the UK, or most other places.
Re:Compared to other countries.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I do pay $50 monthly for 2.5mbit/384k
QoS max upstream bandwidth = 384000 bps
QoS max downstream bandwidth = 2504000 bps
I could pay $30 monthly for roughly 1/2 that speed, but I enjoy getting 5ip addresses.
If you are talking comcast or earthlink DSL though, their speeds are pretty much 1.8mbit/258k 1.5mbit/384 respectivly depending on region [earthlink dsl in some areas is limited to 128k upstreem, comcast in come areas offers 3mbit downstreem]. Base price is $50.00, but based on talking with both earthlink and comcast, you can get service for $30 monthly so long as they are doing that promo, or so long as some *other guy* offers their service for less. [memo to these users, talk with your ISP about lowering your rate IF they are charging you full rate]
US is a veritable broadband paradise? If you can get it! I still know of people who just can't get dsl or cable service, many of who are within 10 miles distance of me.
Re:Obvious (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Broadband in Japan (Score:4, Interesting)
Well this is NOT the case with many other providers around the world. A big one is a service with the initals BBB (don't know the full name) in Sweden (and other countries). they'll sell you huge connections (like 10MB) for cheap. Well I was at work trying to transfer files to someone on it one day, transfer was slow, like 20 kbytes/second. He started whining that I had a slow connection. Well I work for Network Operations for a large university, we have several OC-3c lines to different providers. I check network usage stats and they were low, did a quick transfer to another server at 4 mbytes/sec. Problem was NOT on my end.
A little digging turns out that that BBB has great speeds, provided you are going to other BBB customers or people they peer with. You want to go to the US, you get a low rate. It is kinda like a large 100mbit lan with a DSL line going out to the net. You get awesome transfers to all the LAN people but not so much to the world.
Well this is certianly cheaper. Bandwidth starts to get real expensive when you are talking big links to big backbones. If you cut down on that, you can afford to offer much cheaper service. This isn't necessarly a bad way of doing it, but it does need to be kept in mind. I pay about $100USD for a 1.5/786 DSL connection which sounds expensive, but I get that 24/7 to anywhere (well, anywhere that has sufficient bandwidth, 8 static IPs, the ability to host servers, etc. That all counts for something.
Re:Lazy Cheapskates (Score:4, Interesting)
So what you are saying, is that you are a son-of-a-bitch telemarketer.
I'd say the main reasons you get the answers you get, is because people hate to be annoyed by you, and usually give any excuse to shut a telemarketer up.
Also, it could very well just be that they have been screwed-over by lying telemarketers before, and just don't believe a word that comes out of your mouth.
Frankly, that's a VERY good arguement. If people aren't tying up their dial-up line for very long, why should they care that something faster is available? Not like they are going to notice the difference in how fast their e-mail is downloaded. Saying that they should just for the sake of progress or other such crap is moronic.
(I have a broadband connection BTW, so I'm not playing the part of the defensive dial-up user)
Re:It's not entirely population density (Score:3, Interesting)