Now this is how you do broadband

Om Malik over at GigaOM has a report on the newest move by Korea’s Communication Commission is planning on a countrywide broadband upgrade. The country already has one of the best broadband penetration and speed in the world and they plan that by 2012 it will be getting a whole lot better. How much better you ask – well try a 10 fold increase in speed.

This means that people living in Korea will see their broadband speeds hit the 1 Gbps range as well as an increased penetration IPTV from the current 87% to 96%. During this time the government is expecting the upgrade will create some 120,000 jobs and will cost around the $24.6 Billion mark.

I’m sorry but as cool as that might be for Korea it pisses me off that here in both Canada and the US we have the broadband providers nitpicking over what even classifies as broadband. Instead of trying to take the two countries to the forefront of the Internet world they want to keep us out in the boonies while they keep hiking the rates for what we do have.

From the JoongAng Daily story about the announcement

“This plan will bring innovation to the public’s digital lives,” KCC said in the release. Digital TV coverage will also rise to 96 percent in 2012 from the current 87 percent, according to the plan. The KCC added that the project will help Korea cement its position as one of the world’s leading IT countries. More than 94 percent of Korean households already have access to high-speed Internet services, and Korea has the highest number of subscribers to broadband services in the world as of last year, according to OECD data.

This makes it obvious how much of a joke our own infrastructure is when North American broadband providers think that 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps is something to brag about. It’s too bad we couldn’t get a serious about our future as other countries seem to be getting.