A Note on Broadband Availability in the U.S. (Guam)

I just returned from a pleasant three night vacation trip to Guam.  The weather was pleasant and the palm-lined beach and warm Pacific waters were beautiful.  However, I cannot offer the same compliments about the broadband internet service.
The night before our departure to Guam, we stayed in a small motel in Gangnam in order to be ready for a morning departure from Incheon International airport.  As is common in Korea these days, the motel offered an extensive array of cable television channels and had a computer installed on the desk with an LCD monitor and fast internet access, all included with the modest price of the room.
On arrival at the hotel in Guam (one of the major hotels on Tumon Bay), we plugged the internet cable into our notebook computer, only to be greeted with a page informing us that internet access would cost $10 per day via the cable or $5 per day if we chose to use one of the available wireless channels.  Clearly, we had left Korea and were in the U.S.

Euromonitor on Global Digital Divide: From Korea to Kenya

The Euromonitor blog has a new report on the global digital divide with the accompanying graphic. (click to see full size version).  The measure represented in this graphic is the proportion of households in each country that possess broadband internet-enabled computers.  Nearly all South Korean households do, compared with only about two-thirds of those in the United States.  The report also notes the following main points.

• Access to and use of broadband internet has significant social, economic and political implications.
• While developed economies continue to have a higher rate of broadband internet penetration than developing ones, growth rates are significantly higher in developing regions.

Notably, the report does not deal with the current explosive growth of mobile broadband services via so-called "smart phones."  However, addition of this important factor would only seem to underscore the main points noted above.

Korea Tops new Government Broadband Index Rankings

The Economist Intelligence Unit has developed a new Government Broadband Index, which shows that Korea ranks number one among the sixteen nations studied.  Not surprisingly, the index is getting attention in the trade press. Using a methodology developed in-house, the index scores countries that have clearly stated objectives on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best.  The methodology considers each plan's target speed, universal speed, rollout timeframe, cost and regulatory provisions in order to produce the final score.  Topping the rankings are the countries that have the most ambitious speed, coverage and rollout targets, the most appropriate regulations for realizing targets and fostering a competitive broadband market, and where public funding commitments are putting the least amount of pressure on public-sector finances.  Click on the accompanying graphic to see a full size listing of the country rankings in this study.
Australia was ranked ninth on the list, in part because it plans to spend 7.6% of annual government budgets on the rollout.  Korea, by contrast, plans to spend less than 1% of its budget on the rollout and will instead encourage private sector investment.

Yet another Broadband Index: Korea Ranks near the Top on "e-Intensity"

The Boston Consulting Group was recently commissioned to do a study of the internet economy in the U.K.  In order to measure the reach and depth of the internet in the United Kingdom, and to make comparisons with other countries, the BCG created an international "e-intensity index."  Fifty percent of the index is accounted for by enablement, which measures how internet access and how well built the infrastructure is.  The other two elements in the index are expenditure, how much money consumers and businesses are spending online on e-commerce and online advertising, and engagement, which measures how actively businesses, governments and consumers are embracing the internet.
The top ranked countries in the world on the BCG's e-intensity index are shown in the accompanying graphic (click on it to see a full size version).  South Korea, not surprisingly, ranks as the number two country in the world, behind Denmark.  I say "not surprisingly," given the weight given to infrastructure.  It is now well known aroud the world that South Korea has the most extensive and modern digital networks in the world.

"What's Broadband?" Billions in Stimulus Funds are at Stake

The headline I chose as the title for this post appeared in today's online issue of U.S.A. Today. It offers further proof that, when it comes to broadband internet policy, the United States seems to be on a different planet than people here in South Korea, in the EU and elsewhere. Congress has earmarked $7.2 billion in stimulus aid to deploy broadband in underserved parts of the USA. But what does that mean, really? The Federal Communications Commission is trying to come up with answers. At the request of lawmakers, the agency is in the process of defining "broadband," "underserved" and other terms. The FCC is advising the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which will make the final call on how stimulus money gets doled out. Opinions about what constitutes "broadband" vary wildly. Big incumbents such as AT&T favor a tiered approach to the speed of data delivery, starting at a minimum of 200 kilobits per second. Tech giants such as Intel say 100 megabits is more reasonable, given the explosion of bandwidth-hogging applications such as video streaming. While this was the news from U.S.A. Today, Forbes carried an article with some advice for President Obama from the President of KADO, The Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion. nearly 80% of the general public uses the Internet regularly--KADO has focused on helping people with disabilities, senior citizens, rural dwellers and low-income families get online. These groups have a much lower Internet adoption rate, around 40% combined. To reach people in remote areas, it partners with local governments and civic associations and even holds classes in private homes. Volunteers do most of the teaching. Son says KADO's education efforts have taught 10 million Koreans how to e-mail, search the Web and download files. Beyond its domestic programs, KADO also functions as the Korean government's global IT ambassador. Its international efforts include establishing IT training labs in places like Kenya and Laos, organizing a corps of Korean volunteers to teach IT education abroad and hosting an annual forum for IT experts from developing countries. All these programs, naturally, cost money. KADO has a staff of 142 and an annual budget of approximately $45 million, which is fully funded by various branches of the Korean government. KADO was originally established as Korea's Information Telecommunication Training Center in 1982 and has evolved into its current form over the past decade.

The U.S., Korea and Broadband

Almost on the eve of President Obama's inauguration Business Week has published an interesting article, entitled "Bring U.S. Broadband Up to Speed," and its recommendations are right on target.  As the sub-head notes, "For long term economic growth Obama's stimulus package should include a $10 billion to $15 billion investment in high speed communications infrastructure.  Quoting from the article:
"The U.S. desperately needs to catch up with global leaders in two areas of high-speed broadband communications. The first is extending the current world-class wired broadband service now used by big business, smaller companies, and consumers across America. The second is increasing the transmission speed and reach of wireless service to nearly everywhere in the nation. Achieving these two goals would bridge the digital divide between city and country and provide a powerful productivity tool to all sectors of society: private enterprise, nonprofit organizations and institutions, and every level of government."
The article goes on to note how companies in other countries are leveraging broadband and the internet to operate more efficiently and create game-changing advantages.  Australia, with territory nearly as large as the continental U.S. and a very similar population distribution, has wireless network speeds of 21 Mbps to cell phones, laptops, and other wireless devices on a mobile Internet that reaches 99% of the population.  Plans are to double Australia's network speeds to 42 Mbps in 2009, "enough bandwidth to download a two-hour movie to a laptop on a beach in four minutes."
Business Week could have just as well have elaborated on South Korea.  This country built its first digitally switched network in the 1980s.  The Public Switched Telephone Network was completed in 1987, just before the Seoul Olympics.  Improvements to that network continued until, in the early 1990s leaders here saw the need for building "information superhighways."  The Korea Information Infrastructure project from 1995-2005 laid down the most extensive fiber optic, atm-switched communications network in the world, allowing those who live here to enjoy fast internet service.  However, things did not stop there.  In South Korea, development and investment have been consistent and continuous since 1981!  Policymakers here and most people have come to appreciate the productivity advantages and possibilities brought by the information revolution.  Soon WiBro (Mobile WiMax) will be available throughout Korea, but that will not be the last stage of this revolution.  Ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence will be prominent in the next phase of development.
It seems clear that the U.S. could benefit from Korea's example and that a strong government-industry partnership between the telecoms sectors of the two nations would be beneficial to both as Obama takes office.

Broadband Convergence Update

The Joongang Daily reports that IPTV operators are "baiting subscribers with cash." With local high-speed Internet service providers using cash gifts as a marketing ploy again, experts warn that the industry faces cutthroat competition which is likely to harm subscribers. Since IPTV and Internet telephony are provided on broadband networks, Internet subscriber numbers are crucial to success. Currently, nationwide sales agencies of the country’s three major high-speed Internet service providers - KT, SK Broadband and LG Powercomm - all provide up to 200,000 won ($147) in cash or other high-value gifts such as the Nintendo Wii game console depending on the number of services people take and their subscription length. For example, SK Broadband offers 190,000 won in cash to subscribers who sign up for its triple-play service - Internet, IPTV and Internet telephony - for three years.

95 Percent of Korean Households Have Broadband Internet

The Korea Communications Commission has announced that, as of the end of July, fully ninety-five percent of the households in South Korea subscribed to broadband internet. This amounted to 15.09 million households, an increase of 620,000 from the previous year. The breakdown of broadband market share among service providers was as follows:

• Korea Telecom        44.7%
  
• Hanaro Telecom       22.4%
• LG Powercom          13.2%
• Cable TV Operators 19.7%

Although the household internet penetration is nearly at saturation levels, an official at the Commission said that the number is likely to increase when Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services are launched in the country next year.

Slow Light to Speed up the Internet?

I hadn't planned another post on the importance of speed for the internet, but ran across a fascinating article from the BBC (click here to read the full article).  Researchers in Britain and the United States say that a huge increase in the speed of the internet could be produced by slowing parts of it down.  The major limiting factor on the internet's speed comes about not from transporting information, but in routing it to its various destinations. Metamaterials could replace the bulky and slow electronics that do the routing, paving the way for lightning fast web speeds. As noted by Dr. Chris Stevens from the department of engineering sciences at the University of Oxford,  the current system ". . . limits the speed of the whole process to the speed of your electronics.  The light and the fibres can quite cheerfully sustain a couple of terahertz, but your electronics can't do more than a few gigahertz."  Using metamaterials to build a completely optical internet may help to get around this problem.  

Speed Matters: The U.S. Lags in Internet Download Speed

It is not only in Olympic swimming events or track that speed is important.  The new 2008 report, "Speed Matters," a project of the Communication Workers of America, quantifies just how much the United States lags behind other nations in the speed of its broadband internet infrastructure.  The full report is available for download at the organization's website, http://www.speedmatters.org/ This second annual survey of internet speeds in each of the fifty states shows, not surprisingly, that the United States continues to lag behind other countries in the world.  The median download speed for the nation was 2.3 megabits per second (mbps). In Japan, the median download speed is 63 mbps, or 30 times faster than the U.S. The U.S. also trails South Korea at 49 mbps, Finland at 21 mbps, France at 17 mbps, and Canada at 7.6 mbps.

The median upload speed from the speedmatters.org test was just 435 kilobits per second (kbps), far too slow for patient monitoring or to transmit large files such as medical records.  The report also notes that about 15 percent of Americans still connect to the internet via a dial-up connection, something that has been virtually nonexistent for years now in South Korea.   It is worth noting that the debate over the importance of high speed, broadband internet was concluded years ago in South Korea.  People here are already enjoying many of the benefits that high speed internet connections bring and, if anything, the Korean populace seems to look forward to even higher speeds in the near future.

Speed in Mobile Broadband Solutions

I've commented on the importance of speed in internet connections in several prior posts. Now Jeff Orr, a leading industry analyst of mobile broadband, has created an elegant chart that visually portrays the relative speed of different mobile broadband solutions. (Click on the chart to see the full-size image.) In comments introducing the chart, Orr notes that "As more mobile broadband networks are launched and accessible to a greater potential market of users, a common question I receive is how these protocols compare in speed. This first chart shows multiple contemporary protocols and their maximum claimed data rates." Both his comments and the chart are right on target.

The Internet Comes to North Korea!

According to the Chosun Ilbo and other media sources, North Korea will finally join the world wide web and provide internet service from next year.  Kim Sang-myung, the chief of the North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, a group of former North Korean professionals, at a symposium in the National Assembly on Wednesday said, "According to the Internet Access Roadmap it launched in 2002, North Korea will begin providing Internet service for special agencies and authorized individuals as early as next year."   According to The Daily NK website, "Kim Sang Myung is an IT expert from North Korea who escaped from the country in 2004, while he was a Computer Science professor in the Engineering department of Kongsang University. He now works as a professor at Kyonggi University in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea."

The Chosun Ilbo article continues, "Implementation of the roadmap, which major agencies such as the Workers' Party, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, the Ministry of Electronic Industry, and the North Korea Academy of Sciences have pushed for under the instructions of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il since 2002, is now at its final stage, he said. First of all, North Korea will establish infrastructure for a super-speed Internet service network by laying optical cables between Pyongyang and Hamhung and extending them to Chongjin and Shinuiju this year. North Korea has recently succeeded in consolidating security solutions for the prevention of online leaks of data to foreign countries and of online intrusions, and in enhancing service stability. "  Kim Sang Myung is quoted as saying the following about North Korea's decision to proceed with development of the internet. "North Korea is strongly determined to be part of the global community through the Internet. After watching China and Vietnam control the Internet effectively although these countries have opened up Internet wireless networks since the early days of their opening, the North has concluded that it can now introduce the Internet service."

World Leadership in Broadband Penetration to Continue

According to a widely-reported new study by Gartner, South Korea is likely to lead the world in broadband internet penetration for at least another five years.  The nation currently has a broadband internet penetration rate of 93 percent (that means 93 percent of households here have a broadband connection to the internet), making it number one in the world.  The Gartner study projects that Korea's broadband penetration will reach 97 percent by 2012.  According to PC World's account of the Gartner study, the United States will have reached a broadband penetration rate of 77 percent by 2012, while  the rate for The Netherlands is projected at 82 percent, Hong Kong at 81 percent and Canada at 79 percent.   One of the advantages that the top three ranking countries share is that of dense populations contained in small areas.  Worldwide, 17 countries will have broadband penetration rates of 60% or more by 2012, up from five countries in 2007

North Korea the Internet's Biggest Black Hole

The depth of the digital divide separating North and South Korea is difficult to overstate. The organization "Reporters Without Borders" reports that North Korea is the biggest black hole in the internet. The accompanying graphic was commissioned by that organization to visually represent the countries that are the world's biggest enemies of the internet and the free flow of information through it. Another graphic appeared in the local press today, presenting data compiled by the Ministry of Unification, on the number of North Koreans defecting to South Korean annually over the past decade. I think it provides some interesting additional context for the digital divide on the Korean peninsula.

Measuring the Information Society: Korea's Broadband Network Ranks Number 1

A headline in the People's Daily Online caught my attention today. It read "South Korea's Broadband Network Most Developed." As with media coverage elsewhere in the world, this headline derived from a report issued by the International Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, an IT think-tank established in the United States in 2006. The mission of this think tank is to ". . . formulate and promote public policies to advance technological innovation and productivity internationally, in Washington, and in the states. Recognizing the vital role of technology in ensuring American prosperity, ITIF focuses on innovation, productivity, and digital economy issues."

In its report "Explaining International Broadband Leadership," ITIF released rankings that are based on three measures: broadband penetration, speed and price. This ranking places Korea solidly in first place, with Japan coming in second, and the United States ranking 12th. More interesting than the rankings per se is the analysis in the longer report of why countries rank as they do. For example, the report notes that because " . . . over 50 percent of South Koreans live in large, multitenant apartment buildings makes it significantly cheaper on a per-subscriber basis to roll out fast broadband there compared to the United States, where many people live in single-family suburban homes." With reference to Korea and the other leading broadband nations, the report notes that leadership, incentives, competition and demand-side policies are all important.

U.S. Digital Deficiency Jeopardizes "Super Power" Status

The title of this post is taken from the article just published by Shelley Palmer, and it pretty much says it all. He notes that children born in America this year will be the first true Digital Natives of the Information Age. They will grow up in a time when all of their telecommunications tools: video, voice and data are based completely upon digital technology. He then appropriately questions whether U.S. public policy contemplates a future constrained by the agendas of big business as opposed to positioning America to truly prosper in the global information economy. His article notes that " An average broadband connection in the United States is 1.5 Mbps down and 768 Kbps up -- about enough speed to watch a fairly low resolution streaming video or do some casual web surfing. Cable modems are faster and you can certainly purchase more connectivity, if you can afford it. But, on average, consumers are offered asymmetrical (faster download/slower upload) broadband connections and no one seems that unhappy about it. They should be. A child born in Korea or Singapore this year will be a digital native of their respective countries. They will grow up in a time when all of their telecommunications tools: video, voice and data are based completely upon digital technology. And they are very likely to start their journey through the Internet with 100 Mpbs symmetrical broadband connection." On my recent trip to the U.S., I experienced just how slow an 11 Mbps wireless connection to the internet from a motel room seems after being accustomed to fast connections here in Korea. Speed is vital to fully use and experience the modern internet. A lack of speed slows down convergence. The Broadcasting and Communications Commission (BCC) reported yesterday that Korean telecom firms (KT, LG-Dacom and Hannaro) are to invest around 1.57 trillion won ($15.8 billion) on Internet-protocol TV (IPTV) services this year. A large portion of that investment will reportedly be used in expanding and improving Internet networks in order to provide the speed necessary to guarantee high quality for real-time TV broadcasting on existing networks. Clearly, in this era of convergence and ubiquitous networks, South Korea seeks to maintain its status as an IT power. What is the U.S. stance?