Two interesting write ups on Business 2.0 and O’ Reilly about the future of Broadband is South Korea.
Business 2.0 writes in: (emphasis mine)
Ninety percent of the country has blazingly fast, 3-megabits-per-second broadband at home, and similarly high-speed wireless connections on the road. The telecom market is fiercely competitive, and broadband service costs the consumer less than $20 a month.
How did this come about? In 1995, the South Korean government made what must rank as one of the most shrewd and far-sighted investments in business history. It spent big on a nationwide high-capacity broadband network that any telecom operator could offer service on, and offered subsidies so that 45 million Koreans could buy cheap PC’s. Cost: a mere $1.5 billion
O’ Reilly is basically a continuation of the Business 2.0 write up:
South Korea has 80% of its population in Seoul and five other cities, so deploy optical fiber rings into each city, And trunk them together to provide high speed digital transport for the chaebol. Once that is done, the rings can sprout new optical fiber tentacles: 1) for cellular telephony, 2)for CATV, and for 3)high speed data communications via xDSL and CATV modems (no World Wide Web in 1990).(source)
One of the most popular homegrown portal is Cyworld. The last time I tried to access it, it was in Korean. Here is a brief introduction to Cyworld and it’s ever popular minihompy from none other than Wikipedia
Members cultivate on- and off-line relationships by forming Ilchon- buddy relationships with each other through a service called “minihompy,” which encompasses a photo gallery, message board, guestbook, and personal bulletin board. A user can link his/her minihompy to another user’s minihompy to form a buddy relationship. It is quite similar with facebook and MySpace in USA. It has been reported that as much as 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 25 percent of the total population of South Korea are registered users of Cyworld, and as of September 2005, daily unique visitors are about 20 million.
Why the map of South Korea?
It’s a small country that is one of the most wired nations, moves the automobile and electronics industry of the world (Hyundai and Samsung comes to mind) and has one of the world’s largest concenteration of gamers.
We are stuck in 256k mode, with BSNL pimping the networks and we have nothing in this whole frigging nation worthy of something equivalent to Cyworld.
Just a humbling thought.
This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Related posts:
- India- happy hunting ground for expoitation I came across this link via ZD Net. Surprisingly, Financial Express (from where this article is sourced from), hit the...
- US and India similarities. I came across this story via Salon You might have to wait for an advertisement to load up before you...
- Broadband in India- As essential as electricity? Link via Emergic: There has been a lot of press devoted to making Broadband as an “essential commodity” as electricity....
- Tortoise wins the race? The hare and tortoise is the classic adage that taught the virtues of going slow. Had the hare not rested,...
- Skype’s Netgear Wifi Phone .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size:...
- Debate and BSNL sucks Business Standard finally wakes up to some reality and commisions a debate between ISP association of India and BSNL. I...
- What have I been doing with my Broadband? Over the past few weeks, my life has been kind of topsy turvy. I have always been the proverbial night...
- Update By this time, it is apparent. The Tata’s seemed to have “read this blog” and decided to exit from it’s...
- Broadband Revolution elesewhere This one obviously doesnt relate to India. I was wondering as to how the roll out in other countries is...
- Affordable Telecom in India Affordable Telecom in India The most important aspect of affordable telecom is a cost effective mobile handset. Surprisingly I did...
Dear blogger,
It needs very less efforts and resources to connect a tiny nation, and I am sure not much people are still informed in India something about internet. Let alone anykinda speed.
The poins you have written are really amazing, and I appriciate them, but be practical and don't compare India with something as tiny as 'SK'.
The only example to be compared with can be Chinda, Brazil, USA, Russia (in order of pref.). Yes we can definitely dream of something better always. But for someone as ordinary as me, it seems quite timely for India to gain this kinda access atleast, now when Home UL900 plans are at offer in most of big towns in India (thanks to BSNL), I still surprise when will so called private sector maomth called Reliance or Airtel or TATAs will start building their capcities and finally offer some really accessable Broadband product?
Atleast in the larger cities if some below 7K PC can be made available to customers in isntallments with fixed price unlimited internet connection (may begin with 128kbps for 400) the required investment can be recovered in few years. Like the Relaince has already done in Mobile sector, it did not have any presence in many circles and now one of the biggest player.
Atleast they must think of it in Mumbai, Delhi, Banglore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and then in few months span in all state capitals and equally big cities in states.
Anyways, you do have a great bold, which gives me something everytime I visit, that too relavant and short.
Regards,
Rahul M
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Like