Why Internet Connections are Fastest in South Korea

[Chombo]

Having a low ping is a must for the most efficient Starcraft games, duh.

 

[tronmaster]

Hmmm... competition and low cost? Let's see...

For my apartment here in Sweden I can pick between one cable operator and a bunch of telecom operators offering 5-50 Mbps at ~ $25-50/month.

Or I can do it the way I do: Just plug an Ethernet cable into the wall socket and get >50 Mbps Internet connection for free! (The cooperative building-society provides the service as part of a general value increase for the apartments.)

Cheers
Olle

I read an article similar to your set-up... I can't remember what country it was in but basically their was either a town or some small community that was looking at high speed internet, for themselves. What they found out was the cost was expensive by letting the cable or telephone or some other big company go in to provide broadband.

So everyone decided to purchase their own t1 line or whatever line that gets you in the internet. They had these like corner boxes that provided the connection to the houses or apartments. From my understanding it was way cheaper to go this route in terms of monthly fees and the infrastructure paid for itself in a short time.

I am probably missing alot of the details but they got high speed internet with low monthly fees by not going to big business.

 

[Menelmarar]

Funny that the first reason listed is competition.

I thought the United States was supposed to be the leader in free-market capitalism? Doesn't a market kind of need competition? Or maybe American capitalism just likes a few super big companies?

We don't have a free-market, capitalism based economy. What we have is a interventionism/mixed economy where the government has regulations and controls which distort the economy. Causing favoritism, distortion of value, pseudo-monopolies, etc.

 

[FYMbyIce]

Why talk so much about population density yet ignore population size aka customer base?
USA has a much larger market which means much larger revenue, which should translate into a much larger investment in infrastructure.

 

[Menelmarar]

Why talk so much about population density yet ignore population size aka customer base?
USA has a much larger market which means much larger revenue, which should translate into a much larger investment in infrastructure.

Because population density means it's farther between each of those people. Meaning more cost per person, and an exponentially larger initial investment.

 

[wiznillyp]

Why talk so much about population density yet ignore population size aka customer base?
USA has a much larger market which means much larger revenue, which should translate into a much larger investment in infrastructure.

Increasing area of coverage = increased cost. Low population density = less people to pay = less return on investment

Profit = revenue - expenses; Decrease revenue and increase expense...

 

[LightningCrash]

There may be diseconomies of scale at play here in the US, that's for sure. I'd like to see a thoughtful comparison of the US with other nations of similar size.

I've been happy with broadband in the places I've been, though. I haven't been everywhere yet. I've only been to fifty.....fifty seven states. I think one left to go. My staff could not justify Alaska and Hawaii.