Korea Ranks Number One in Fourth Annual "Speed Matters" Survey

The Communications Workers of America has released its fourth annual "Speed Matters" survey of broadband internet speed in the United States.  As shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see a full size version) their report benchmarks several other countries around the world, including South Korea.  The new report argues that speed matters because 1) speed makes the promise of the internet a reality, 2) U.S. economic growth depends on high speed internet, 3) millions of Americans don't have high speed internet, and 4) the U.S. trails far behind other countries.  According to this latest report, the United States ranks fifteenth among the countries of the world in average broadband internet speed.

Speed on the Internet: Its Dimensions and Significance

We talk rather frequently these days about the "speed" of our internet connections. Those in the know understand that speed also equals "bandwidth." Therefore, "broadband internet" is better than the narrower bandwidths that preceded it. Speed has several meanings and connotations when applied to the internet.

• One important meaning is the length of time from when you touch a keyboard button on a PC, mobile phone or PDA, until the device displays your input. For users of the internet, this meaning of speed is very important, and it helps to explain why, once someone has gotten accustomed to fast, broadband internet connections, they're unwilling to go back to slower interaction with the web.

• Another meaning of speed has to do with bandwidth and how much data can be transmitted per second or other unit of time via different networks. In other words, I can say that I'm connected to the web at 54 Mbps or 100 Mbps. The vast majority of non-technically-inclined people in today's world probably tune out such explanations as irrelevant to their own, day-to-day concerns.

• In practical, human terms, yet another meaning of speed is how quickly a video segment will load and play on your computer, mobile phone, pda or other device. As with the response to keyboard input, the goal here is instantaneous response.

• In today's world, another way of thinking about speed is in relation to politics. Universal access to speedy networks equals the possibility for democratic politics and the chance for an information society in which everyone prospers. I'm not suggesting that content and other factors are irrelevant, but equal access to information and equal capability to disseminate information seem to demand speed on the internet and through the world's networks.

• Speed and virtual reality (aka Cyberspace). It is also the speed, or bandwidth of internet connections that makes possible Cyworld in Korea, Second Life in the U.S. and other world's of virtual reality. Do these worlds have a history, like the real world? If so, how is the history different from and related to the history of the real world we inhabit? Most importantly, how fast is the history evolving? Is it accelerating?

In the final analysis, there can be no doubt that speed is important. The reason I emphasize this point is that some people in the United States, Britain and other countries are still questioning strategy for building-out broadband internet networks that will allow all citizens to access information with blazing speed. Speed matters. It matters a lot. P.S. I'm enjoying the speed access to the internet that living in South Korea affords me! More on this topic in future posts.

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 matters: July 2018 update

OpenSignal just published an article/post entitled "Explaining the huge gap between fastest and slowest 4G upload speeds in the US."  As readers of this blog will know, I've posted frequently over the years (check these out) on the importance of speed (a.k.a. bandwidth) on the Internet.
The OpenSignal article noted that average 4G upload speed in the U.S. during the period from March 1 to May 29, 2018 ranged from 2.5 Mbps to 7.5 Mbps.  (click on the graphic for a full size version)

This made me curious about the upload and download speeds from my office here in the Incheon Global Campus.  So I did a speed test (click on the graphic for a full size version of the screen capture).
Draw your own conclusions, but I would submit to you once again that "speed matters"!

Speed matters: check it with Ookla's open data!

As discussed and expressed in many posts on this blog over the years (see a selection here), speed matters.  Over the past decade or so, I've had more than a few encounters with visitors from the U.S. or Europe who expressed surprise when told that South Korea had the fastest broadband networks of any comparable country in the world.  Some of them thought that Japan had faster networks.  Just within the past year, such a view was even offered in a peer review of a scholarly publication I had co-authored!
Now, thanks to the folks at Ookla, any debate about which country or city, for that matter, has the fastest internet connections can be quickly answered by using their NetIndex Explorer.  It provides visualizations based on a large number of speed tests worldwide and is probably the best available empirical measure of broadband speeds around the globe.  If you don't trust me, take a look at the recent study by MIT researchers.   As shown on the accompanying screen capture (click to see a full-size version), taken a few minutes ago, South Korea has an average download speed of 54.0 Mbps, based on which it is only fourth fastest in the world, according to Ookla.  By comparison, when I did the screen capture, Japan showed an average download speed of 23.5 Mbps and China 22.9 Mbps.
So what three countries have faster average download speeds than South Korea?  Interestingly, two of them are cities, Singapore and Hong Kong, and the third is Romania.  Obviously, inclusion of cities and city-states like Singapore raises the question of whether this is an apples and oranges comparison.  However, Romania, which has a population less than half as large as South Korea, is a fairer comparison.

Ookla's NetIndex Explorer tool allows you compare countries and to drill down to the city level within nations, as shown in the second screen capture (again, click for a full-size version) where I created a line graph to compare Singapore, Romania and Korea over time.
Although other organizations, including M-lab, Google and Akamai and others, also measure internet speeds, Ookla deserves special recognition for making its data available publicly and downloadable for further analysis under a Creative Commons copyright.  This is an example of open data that is extremely valuable for the internet community worldwide!

Speed Matters and Korea Leads

Readers of this blog will know that the speed of internet connections has been a recurrent theme of this blog over the years (for example, check out these posts).  Intuitively, most internet users understand that the speed of an internet connection is important and from the consumer standpoint, the faster the connection the better.  Google has done research with its search pages that empirically demonstrates this preference for faster loading pages.  In 2013 a survey of European internet users showed that 45% of them would be willing to upgrade or change their supplier for higher speed.
South Korea leads the world in internet connection speeds and is showing no signs of slowing down.  As shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see a full size version) published by Netmanias, KT declared its Gigatopia vision in 2014, and has already implemented both fixed and mobile services to achieve that vision.

Korean consumers, as shown in the second graphic, are adopting the newer, faster services at a rapid rate.  Speed matters, and this is something well understood in Korea by policymakers, corporate leaders and consumers.

PyeongChang 2018 -- 5G networks and speed matters

The PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics about to formally commence with the Opening Ceremony this evening, will give the world a glimpse into what next generation networks will make possible.  This post was prompted in part by the "2018 Adobe Consumer Content Survey," which was taken in the U.S. but doubtless reflects global trends.  (click on the graphic for a full size view) 
As regular readers of this blog already know, South Korea possesses the most advanced and fastest digital network infrastructure in the world.  Furthermore, the speed (aka bandwidth) of broadband Internet connections matters a great deal. (see my numerous posts over the years on the importance of speed)  Consequently, it is no accident that the nation has built a super-fast and dense network infrastructure in and around the sports venues and will utilize the 2018 Winter Olympics to showcase to the world the possibilities for next generation (currently 5G) networks.  Ironically, these world-leading network infrastructures have been built in the largely rural and mountainous Gangwon province.
This evening, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the domestic Korea telecasts of the PyeongChang Olympics Opening Ceremony, fully recognizing that this is the latest (Since London) in a series of "bring your own device" Summer and Winter Olympic Games.   The Winter Olympics, as one of the world's largest media events, will retain that status, but with a global audience that is tuning in via multiple screens and according to their individual preferences, as facilitated by mobile apps and social media.

Perspectives on speed and LTE in Korea

As regular, even semi-regular, readers of this blog know, I've long been interested in the world-leading status and steadily increasing speed of South Korea's digital networks. Koreans themselves seldom question the need for ever faster networks, the significance of which seems to be second nature to most citizens in this country, who are justifiably proud of their nation's status as an "IT powerhouse."
Technically, the speed of digital networks relates to such matters as the processing speed of semiconductors in the routers that connect the network and the bandwidth of both mobile and fixed networks.  There are a number of ways too look at and measure internet speed.   For a number of years now, Akamai's regular "State of the Internet" reports have shown that South Korea has the highest average internet download speed in the world.  In the latest such report, for the fourth quarter of 2012, South Korea continued its lead, with an average download speec of 14.0 Mbps, ahead of Japan with an average of 10.8 Mbps, and Hong Kong, which ranged third at 9.3 Mbps.

Another indication of speed is the extremely rapid adoption of LTE in South Korea, as shown in the accompanying graphic by Telegeography (click on the graphic to see a full-size version.  Korea's three mobile service providers have all built nationwide LTE networks and have introduced service at a rate faster than any other country in the world.  This has even led to some criticism that the adoption of LTE in Korea has been too fast, possibly cutting into profits that could have been earned from 3G services.
Various measures can be used to represent trends in the adoption and use of new mobile communication technologies, including the number of subscribers, the number of users per 100 population and so forth.   For this post, I've assembled a graphic from the latest report on mobile data traffic trends published by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (Korean language).  This graphic illustrates the dramatic increase in actual use of data (content) by Korean consumers (click on the graphic to see a full-size version).  As such, it shows that the generation of Korean language content and services seems to be keeping pace with which consumers are acquiring new LTE smartphones.
Note several features of this graph.  First, adoption of Korea's homegrown WiBro (mobile WiMax) 4G technology has remained relatively stable since January of 2012.  Second, levels of 2G usage are so small that the data does not even appear in this graphic.  For all practical purposes, 2G has been discontinued in South Korea.  Third, there is a slow but steady decline in use of 3G mobile devices for data transmission.   Finally, of
course, the dramatic growth of LTE is shown in the green shaded portion of the graphic.

Korea's continuing lead in speed

I received a message this past week calling my attention to the infographic at the left  (click on the infographic to see a full size version, or go directly to it at this link)  Note that the comparisons of South Korea with the U.S. are on the top quarter or so of the graphic, followed by U.S.-specific information.
This information prompted me to check Akamai's latest State of the Internet quarterly report, for the third quarter of 2012.   It shows that Korea continues to lead the world in its average measured connection speed to the internet, at 14.7 Mbps, followed by Japan and Hong Kong at 10.5 and 9.0 Mbps respectively.  South Korea is also the world leader in what Akamai calls "High Broadband"  with 52% of all connections at a speed greater than 10 Mbps, compared with only 18% of such connections in the United States.
When it comes to internet connections, whether fixed or mobile, speed matters.  However, high speed broadband networks do not simply appear overnight.  Indeed, the building of these new networks is a large, long-term construction project that requires massive funding, planning and leadership.  The larger lesson from this infographic, along with considerable recent research and discussion in policy circles, is that the liberal, U.S. approach to broadband, "let the market and private sector handle it" doesn't seem to work well, when compared with the government-led, long-term ICT policy planning in South Korea.
I've been working over the past several weeks on revision of a conference paper with a Korean colleague that examines the role of government leadership in the ICT sector, so this infographic was a timely reminder that policies and plans, or the lack thereof, ultimately affect the marketplace and consumers.   It also reminded me to appreciate the gigabit network at KAIST and the high download speeds we enjoy here in the Daedok Innopolis.   While Kansas City, Austin Texas and Provo Utah will soon get similar speeds courtesy of Google, over here in South Korea the entire nation will very soon be enjoying a gigabit network.

Speed matters, as Korea demonstrates again

As reported in The Korea Joongang Daily, commercial internet speeds are about to jump 100-fold next year.  As illustrated in the accompanying diagram, (click to see a full size version) this increase in speed will come with the introduction of a newly developed network called the Wavelength Division Multiplexed Passive Optical Network (WDM-PON).  Not surprisingly, this technical advance was announced by the state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).
The director of ETRI's optical access research team noted that this new network would offer the highest internet speed available anywhere in the world. “Such technology can send 10 gigabytes of data per second,” he noted. Current Internet networks can only send 100 megabytes per second, meaning they are 100 times slower. One byte is equal to eight bytes.
Readers of this blog will know my view on the importance of speed in next generation broadband networks.  See for example my post in February of this year.

Speed Matters--I

After reading today's report in Reuters, I think I'm going to have several more posts on the topic of broadband internet speed, so just consider this the first in a forthcoming series.  Not surprisingly, some telecoms companies in the United States want no set internet speeds or targets in that portion of the economic stimulus devoted to broadband internet.   From the public discussion of broadband internet here in Korea and in the United States, it almost seems that the two countries are on two different planets.

• In February the Korean government announced that it would build an internet infrastructure capable of providing most of the population with 1 gigabyte per second speeds.
• The ITU, the OECD and other international organizations have long ago concluded that broadband internet is a critical infrastructure for development and for advanced economies.
• Telecom companies vying for $7.2 billion in broadband funds included in President Obama's economic stimulus plan urged regulators not to mandate a super-fast Internet speed as a criterion for winning the money.

In the United States, some of the telecoms companies are still arguing that internet speeds should be set by the market.  This despite the fact that the market appears to have failed over the past 15 years in the U.S., at least when it comes to providing widespread access to broadband internet.  On a visit to Minneapolis-St. Paul in January of this year, I was surprised to see that one company is still actively promoting its dial-up internet access on a cost-basis, at only $9.95 per month.

Broadband internet service today is what plain old telephone service was a few decades back.  If the U.S. government does not establish goals for the provision of internet service at modern, competitive speeds, who will?   From the sound of today's discussions in the U.S., it will certainly not be the telecommunications companies.

Korea's Mobile Market Malaise

I've just returned to Korea from a one-week visit to Barcelona as noted in my earlier post.  As I catch up on some reading of tech articles, I cannot help but mention several developments that go a long way toward explaining the malaise in South Korea's mobile communications market.
A headline in The Korea Times a couple of days ago asks "Can Smartphones, Netbooks Save WiBro?"  The answer to this question is pretty obvious to those following the massive shift in the mobile market worldwide, away from phones per se and toward internet-enabled devices like the Apple iPhone, Android and other would-be competitors.  At least one company in China seems to understand what is going on as China Unicom, the country's second largest mobile operator, announced with Apple that it will launch the iPhone in China.  It is more than a little interesting that this comes before any Korean mobile operator announces a similar deal.  For details, check out The Financial Times article.
The answer to the Korea Times headline question is that phones like the iPhone, Android phones and the like can do a great deal to boost interest in WiBro.  Why?  Because they allow access to the entire internet at reasonable monthly rates.  Also because WiBro-equipped devices offer greater speed than 3-G connections to the internet.  Internet users around the world have proven many times over that they value the speed of their interconnection.   Simply put, when it comes to broadband, speed matters.
People in Korea should not be wondering so much why WiBro has not yet taken off here. The experience of the iPhone for over two years now in many other countries shows that (1) people want internet access, not a small, pre-packaged segment of the internet only in Korean or only in any other single language (2) they prefer faster rather than slow access via their mobile device and (3) that people find different applications very useful, including many types of geospatial and social networking applications.
Failure to realize the importance of the Google-backed Android and the iPhone have put the Korean market well behind (2+years) significant global trends.  The whole mobile communications market in South Korea will only emerge from the current malaise when one or two companies start offering internet services via the iPhone, Android phones and possibly other competitors.  Although the iPhone was first out of the starting block back in 2007, I think Android will give it a run for the money worldwide,including the South Korean market.  Comments welcome.

Why the iPhone is Faster: Resistive versus Capacitive Touch Screens

Thanks to an informative article in the 전자신문 (etnews.co.kr) I now understand one major reason why I like my iPhone 3GS.   It is faster than my old Motorola Razr and even faster than other touch screen phones, like Samsung's T-Omnia.   There are two main types of touch screens used in today's mobile phones.  Resistive touch screens, used in most of Samsung's and LG's phones, depend upon the pressure of a finger, or a small stylus.   The capacitive touch screen used by the iPhone, on the other hand, uses the electro static field created by the human finger, allowing faster recognition than a resistive touch screen.  Capacitive touch screens also allow multi-touch functionality, such as using two fingers to enlarge the screen for better viewing of a map, picture or other document.
In a small computer or internet device like the iPhone, customers value speed. Speed matters, as I've touched on in earlier posts.  Now I know a bit about the technology underpinning this speed.   I'd only add that the capacitive touch screen also has a natural feel to it, in contrast to the more mechanical approach of the resistive touch screen, even with haptic effects added.

SK Telecom to jointly study 5G networks with Ericsson

One theme that emerges from prior posts on this blog (do a search for "speed") is that "speed matters" when it comes to broadband networks, both fixed and mobile.  Consequently, the recent announcement that Ericsson (click on the press release graphic to see a full size version) had achieved speeds of 5 Gbps throughput in a lab test made big news, especially here in Korea which prides itself on having the world's fastest and arguably most advanced broadband networks.  5G networks are expected to be about 1,000 times faster than existing LTE networks.

Today, as reported in The Korea Joongang Daily, SK Telecom announced that it had signed an agreement with Ericsson to jointly study future 5G networks.  As noted in the article, "The companies will study the next generation Small Cell, ultra-wideband technology, ultra-low latency transmission technology, which lowers data transmission delay times to 1 millisecond, and FDD (Frequency-division duplexing) and TDD (Time-division duplexing) convergence technologies, which are essential for the evolution of 5G. In LTE and LTE-A services, the data transmission delay time is around 10 milliseconds."  What the article did not stress is that Japan's NTT Docomo is also cooperating with Ericsson and that the laboratory demonstration was of "pre-standard 5G technology."   For these next generation mobile networks, agreement on international standards will be a critical matter.