100mb down and 20mb up for 26 euros (approx) in S. Korea

Yes. You heard that right. Yat Siu of Outblaze in China is comparing internet access in Asia compared to France (France averages 2mb up and down for 14 euros).

We are so totally freaking lame in the US. That's half the price I pay (approx $35 dollars for 100mb down/20 mb up in Asia verses my DSL from SBC for $60 a month for 768k down/ 384 up in Berkeley). And of course, we, the US, aren't even on chart up on the conference wall. And why should we be. As far as broadband access goes, we're a third world country paying ghetto rates (you know the deal.. where the supermarket charges less than ghetto corner markets cause the folks in the ghetto can't afford to drive out to get reasonably priced food).

Update: there has been a big discussion by some who attended the conference, who also blogged this information and were later challenged on it. Subsequently, Yat Sui, whose talk addressed a comparison between broadband service in Hong Kong to that of Paris, sent this article on 100mb DSL service for Korea. An English article mentions the goal to make this service available all over in Korea.

Last year, the Korean government forked out more than $2 billion of the $10 billion needed to build the world's fastest integrated network. This "broadband convergence network" (BcN) will provide connection speeds of between 50 to 100 megabits per second by the end of next year. The fastest connection speed in the U.S. is just 3 megabits right now. "BcN will be a core platform for the creation of an advanced communications market," says Minister Chin.

And lastly, Yat sends this:

I know of quite a number of people who have 100Mbps service, whether they GET a full 100Mbps is a different question alltogether I suppose. Korean Broadband providers are not thinking they will compete on price and size alone so they are leading the charge in value added content services (like digital TV). Most don't compete like HKBN, they call it "Super High Speed Mega Ultra whatever" and place the xDSL or vDSL "speeds". In many cases the bandwidth increases are being treated almost as "unlimited" for the pro super speeds which are geared towards online gamers. Super high speed is also a requirement for the Cyber Cafe's which are the social center of many of these online communities. Fiber is also widely connected across Seoul and even "smaller" operators like Dreamline are claiming network capacity in the 800Gpbs service range with 1.6Tbps coming soon.

Posted by Mary Hodder at April 25, 2005 08:58 AM | TrackBack