The Times: Tech column - South Korea's advantage
When it comes to living in the Internet fast lane, South Korea leads the way, says David Rowan
There is a certain football event coming to South Korea this summer that you may have heard about. British football fans can only envy the South Korean Government's determination to show the world what it is capable of.
It recently said it was building large-capacity telecom and broadcasting networks at six stadiums hosting the World Cup, where broadband Internet connections will be as fast as 45mbps (megabits per second). That's more than 800 times faster than a standard 56kbps modem connection. In this contest, the Koreans have truly emerged as a world-class team. Unlike Britain, which has been slow to discover the benefits of broadband, South Korea has been living in the fast lane for years. The popularity and smooth rolling-out of its broadband infrastructure shows what is possible when a government takes the lead. South Korea, with the world's highest penetration of fast Net connections, can justifiably claim to be the first truly "broadband society".
Last June the country already had 14 per cent of its population wired up to broadband, compared with 6 per cent for Canada, 5 per cent for Sweden and 3 per cent for the US, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). For the UK, the figure was an embarrassing 0.28 per cent. Today, broadband is available to more than 95 per cent of South Koreans compared with two-thirds of the UK.
No wonder Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and Industry Secretary, has suggested that Britain should follow Seoul's lead. But Ms Hewitt knows her Government is unlikely to provide the same level of financial commitment as the South Korean administration.
Under a ten-year-plan, President Kim Dae-Jung's Government committed itself to spending around £20 billion on rebuilding the country's IT infrastructure by 2005. More importantly, it liberalised the communications market so that state-run Korea Telecom competes with private companies such as Hanaro Telecom and Thrunet on terms so fair they would terrify BT's management.
The competing companies also realised that the technology would not take off unless people who understood it were available to assist the public. So Korea Telecom, for instance, built up a team of 2,500 highly-trained technicians to install the service for consumers around the country.
The Seoul Government has set itself ambitious targets. The Ministry of Information and Communication's publication, A Basic Plan For Upgrading the Ultra High Speed Information Network, aims to have 84 per cent of the country accessing the Net at a remarkably fast 20mbps by 2005.
The Government has started rating new apartment buildings according to the speed and quality of their network connections, allowing developers to charge more for those meeting the highest standards. It has even invested more than £300 million to produce content.
Shin Yun-Sik, president of Hanaro Telecom, gives a number of reasons why South Korea led the broadband world just three years into its investment programme.
First, he cites the low subscription fees, now below £16 a month for the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) service. The country's huge network of Internet cafes has also served as a great sampling opportunity.
"Young people were able to get their first taste of the speed of the broadband Internet through a wide range of multimedia games," he says. As well as online games, video chats and video-on-demand have proved popular. A national mania for online stock trading and shopping was a further reason for households to subscribe.
South Korea's concentrated distribution of homes - with more than two-thirds of the population living in the seven biggest cities - made it commercially attractive for phone companies to build the networks, especially when they could connect entire densely packed apartment complexes at the same time.
So what can we expect when, and if, broadband penetration in Britain ever approaches that of the Koreans?
The killer applications, it seems, include online gaming, TV and multimedia messaging. Korean teenagers are obsessed with sending picture messages to each other, often dressing up online doll-like icons known as "abata" to express their current state of mind. Women, in particular, are proving keen online shoppers, with almost 2,000 online shopping malls competing for millions of pounds each day.
(The Times, April 12 2002)
There is a certain football event coming to South Korea this summer that you may have heard about. British football fans can only envy the South Korean Government's determination to show the world what it is capable of.
It recently said it was building large-capacity telecom and broadcasting networks at six stadiums hosting the World Cup, where broadband Internet connections will be as fast as 45mbps (megabits per second). That's more than 800 times faster than a standard 56kbps modem connection. In this contest, the Koreans have truly emerged as a world-class team. Unlike Britain, which has been slow to discover the benefits of broadband, South Korea has been living in the fast lane for years. The popularity and smooth rolling-out of its broadband infrastructure shows what is possible when a government takes the lead. South Korea, with the world's highest penetration of fast Net connections, can justifiably claim to be the first truly "broadband society".
Last June the country already had 14 per cent of its population wired up to broadband, compared with 6 per cent for Canada, 5 per cent for Sweden and 3 per cent for the US, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). For the UK, the figure was an embarrassing 0.28 per cent. Today, broadband is available to more than 95 per cent of South Koreans compared with two-thirds of the UK.
No wonder Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and Industry Secretary, has suggested that Britain should follow Seoul's lead. But Ms Hewitt knows her Government is unlikely to provide the same level of financial commitment as the South Korean administration.
Under a ten-year-plan, President Kim Dae-Jung's Government committed itself to spending around £20 billion on rebuilding the country's IT infrastructure by 2005. More importantly, it liberalised the communications market so that state-run Korea Telecom competes with private companies such as Hanaro Telecom and Thrunet on terms so fair they would terrify BT's management.
The competing companies also realised that the technology would not take off unless people who understood it were available to assist the public. So Korea Telecom, for instance, built up a team of 2,500 highly-trained technicians to install the service for consumers around the country.
The Seoul Government has set itself ambitious targets. The Ministry of Information and Communication's publication, A Basic Plan For Upgrading the Ultra High Speed Information Network, aims to have 84 per cent of the country accessing the Net at a remarkably fast 20mbps by 2005.
The Government has started rating new apartment buildings according to the speed and quality of their network connections, allowing developers to charge more for those meeting the highest standards. It has even invested more than £300 million to produce content.
Shin Yun-Sik, president of Hanaro Telecom, gives a number of reasons why South Korea led the broadband world just three years into its investment programme.
First, he cites the low subscription fees, now below £16 a month for the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) service. The country's huge network of Internet cafes has also served as a great sampling opportunity.
"Young people were able to get their first taste of the speed of the broadband Internet through a wide range of multimedia games," he says. As well as online games, video chats and video-on-demand have proved popular. A national mania for online stock trading and shopping was a further reason for households to subscribe.
South Korea's concentrated distribution of homes - with more than two-thirds of the population living in the seven biggest cities - made it commercially attractive for phone companies to build the networks, especially when they could connect entire densely packed apartment complexes at the same time.
So what can we expect when, and if, broadband penetration in Britain ever approaches that of the Koreans?
The killer applications, it seems, include online gaming, TV and multimedia messaging. Korean teenagers are obsessed with sending picture messages to each other, often dressing up online doll-like icons known as "abata" to express their current state of mind. Women, in particular, are proving keen online shoppers, with almost 2,000 online shopping malls competing for millions of pounds each day.
(The Times, April 12 2002)
posted by David Rowan at Friday, April 12, 2002
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