In the last year, the average upload speed in the United States “barely changed,” the report said, and download speed only grew a little, from 4.2 megabits per second in 2008 to 5.1 megabits per second in 2009.
In South Korea, average download speed is much faster — 20.4 megabits per second. The United States also lags Japan (15.8 mbps), Sweden (12.8 mbps), the Netherlands (11 mbps) and 24 other countries.
At average U.S. speed it takes about 35 minutes to download 100 family vacation photos, and four hours to upload them.
Via Todd's Posterous Blog. Not really related, but worth sharing that during my 29-hour trip back to Pittsburgh a couple days ago I noticed there are kiosks with free internet in the airside terminals at Incheon International Airport and Tokyo's Narita International Airport. In Chicago's O'Hare? Five dollars for the first fifteen minutes, $0.33 for each additional minute. Way to keep sucking, guys.
18 comments:
Even here in Atlanta, which is a supposed IT hotbed, the internet speed and uptime is just sucktastic, compared to Korea.
I definitely find myself missing Korean internet. The internet here is just as fast as it was two years ago, and that's really pretty pathetic in today's tech world.
weird. i dont find internet here in korea to be that fast at all. it's possible that ive just had bad luck with my providers. but ive also lived in the netherlands and didnt find its internet to be any better than at home in the states. also, and i dont normally defend the place or anything, but it doesnt seem quite fair to compare the internet of a place as dense and homogenous as korea to that of america?
Take your pick for the reasons - monopolistic tendencies, a disincentive to upgrade service lines, a captive audience for places such as the airport, and certain lack of interest in making things better if it doesn't increase their revenue Right Now. That Korea views the internet as a necessity, much like, say, AC on a hot summer day, indicates its proper priority in many people's lives.
You can’t really compare the two countries. In the US there are large areas with very few people. Who is going to drop high speed connections there? As far as I know many parts of the US still use dial-up. Korea as a country is pretty much population dense everywhere. If you compare the US’s population dense areas with Korea the story will be very different.
And, agreeing with Chris in Korea, what good is broadband penetration when pricing and security are unresolved issues. How much of that broadband is actually used efficiently? How is it distributed among users? How do South Korean pipes work with the rest of the world? It seems these kinds of stats are good news for hackers and providers, but not necessarily for end users.
I do agree though, free internet in the airport, WONDERFUL!!! I refuse to pay money for internet on an airport. It should be free and wireless like Korea's.
I've in both Seoul and NYC. There's your population density comp right there. But even NYC's internet speed doesn't compare with that of Seoul's. Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon or whoever the f#$% else should get there ass movin' ASAP.
Greetings:
There was a Spanish politician who said, more or less: "Tell me who paid for the statistics and I will tell you the results." This is, I guess, one of thoses cases.
"Connection speed" is a vague concept. Is it taking about Wi-Fi connection? 3G connection? Cable or ADSL connection? Avalaibility?
Sometimes we should read the fine print.
Korea's Internet is fast as hell. I really enjoy not waiting for things to load/upload/download. Probably they just want fast Internet to download porn though.
On top of the differences in geography and population density, there's also the cultural differences. For whatever reason, Korean culture just seems much, much faster to embrace technology than the US or Canada. And when I say "embrace", I don't just mean as an amusement or a tool, but as a basic necessity (like AC, as Chris in South Korea already wrote). Another cultural issue is the regional diversity of North America. While the net might already be seen as a basic necessity in major metropolitan centers like New York, it's probably much further down the list of necessities to most people in more rural, less affluent areas. While there are many North Americans who spend the better part of their day online, there are still many other North Americans who barely ever use the net at all. Until that changes, service providers probably won't feel it's worth their while to address these issues.
@nb
"Probably they just want fast Internet to download porn though."
To be fair, that's hardly just a Korean thing.
The geography differences are a legitimate answer to Korea apparently being ahead in across-the-country high-speed, but even if you compare, say, Seoul the city to Los Angeles the city (or the county), you still see a huge difference.
My parents' part of upscale residential Orange County had only dial-up until just a few years ago.
It's not that bad. It's slower but I found it acceptable, and I lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
When it comes to speed, the issue is throttling. Canadian ISPs throttle the Internet, which means the major ISPs, such as Bell and Rogers, filter out P2P traffic (bit Torrent/ Limewire) with something called DPI (Deep Packet Inspection). I wonder if Korea throttles its Internet. I doubt that Korea has more fiber optic cable laid than the States, so the issue has to do with regulation, not technology.
I don't know about total miles of fiber optic cable laid, but Japan and Korea lead in fiber optic penetration.
Granted, both of them have higher population densities and smaller areas, but they are both mountainous countries, and it's not as if the US is so much less urban-concentrated. According to the CIA World Factbook, South Korea is 81% urban, Japan 66%, and the US 82%.
In California, the most populous state in the country, for example, one-fourth of the people live in one county, much like Seoul with one-fourth of the population of the entire country, yet Los Angeles County isn't up to speed (下下下 no pun intended) as Seoul.
The difference is not really in geography but in political economy. Japan and South Korea both have state-directed private companies doing things the government has deemed important, like "informatizing" the entire country (back in the 1990s I helped out with a company that did that initiative).
By contrast, the US leaves most things strictly to the market. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just that it leads to different results. Maybe the lower level of speed is all that's desired in most parts of the US, or maybe the lack of speed is holding back a lot of commercial initiatives. A case could be made for either one.
Here in Honolulu, living in a university dormitory, I have speeds close to what I have in Seoul. But that may be a survival thing: the faster we can get online, the faster we can hear about that typhoon or tsunami coming to get us.
Great stuff about the South Korea's Internet Speed ..My father is in south korea he is accessing the High speed Broadband in South Korea so he happy to use the Broadband Service i test the speed in the site internet-speed-testresults are great.
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