Korea

Description

Ninety two 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.

There are 20,000 PC baangs, or Internet cafes, where you can rent a superfast machine for $1 an hour. Online gaming has become a way of life, with nearly 3,000 South Korean videogame companies boasting combined revenues of up to $4 billion. As a result, South Korea has become the world's best laboratory for broadband services - and a place to look to for answers on how the Internet business may evolve. Smart bet on broadband.

Fast-forward 11 years: Korea is now the most connected and Net-addicted country on Earth.

Enablers

Korean Government: 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. Additionally the South Korean government invests huge amounts of money in nanotechnology.

For ubiquitous communications, the government introduced what it refers to as its IT839 strategy, which covers eight services, three types of infrastructure and nine products.

For RFID-based services, the government has developed several pilot projects including a baggage tracking service among six domestic airports, a national logistics pilot for imports and exports and an inventory management system for the defense Ministry. The government's three key infrastructures are a broadband convergence network supporting computers, communications and broadcasting services; an IPv6 service using the next generation Internet protocol; and infrastructure and ubiquitous sensor network based on RFID.

Finally the competition with the really advanced neighbor country of Japan will drive korea to invest even more amounts of money in technology and thus to shorten the coming age of Ubiquitous computing

Inhibitors

• A possible war conflict with North Korea.

Web Resources

Korea's Vision in Ubicomp

Why the future is in South Korea Smart investments in broadband there have paid off in the form of a hyperconnected society --and now we can start reaping the benefits of the Korean experiment. By Chris Taylor, Business 2.0 Magazine senior editor