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Since I don't live in any of the recently upgraded areas, I'm still drumming my fingers on a regular basis while we wait for fibre to the cabinet to be implemented here, but even I know I'm lucky compared to some with my 16Mbps connection. Over in South Korea though, they're looking to introduce a new 10Gbps service, which would see 1GB files downloaded in under a second when at full tilt.
SK Broadband will be showing off the tech at the Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunications Union today, in partnership with the country's Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.
As Stop The Gap points out, there's a growing pride in many Eastern countries, that while the US and other Western nations mmay have led the way when it came to the internet, they were now far outstripping the pioneers when it comes to internet speed and infrastructure.
“In the 1960s the world watched NASA send men to the moon and many of us grew up amazed at the constant advancements of the Americans,” said a spokesperson. “Now the Americans watch us.”
More of this please
Another spoke of how they thought that countries like America had “lost their way,” when it came to making high speed internet available to all. “Internet access is terribly slow and expensive because American politicians have sacrificed Americas’s technology leadership to protect conglomerates and allow them to flourish. Although unfortunate for America, this has given Korea a chance to promote our own industry and enhance the success of companies like Samsung that are well-known in the United States today.”
Even before the introduction of this new 10Gbps broadband, South Korea's average speed is 100Mbps. This new tech would see that bandwidth increase a hundred fold.
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KitGuru Says: This really does make us seem incredibly backwards when it comes to internet connectivity. In country's like the US it's a little more understandable though as that is a lot of land to cover with fibre.
When you live in a country where the 10mb/s line you have doesn’t ever even reach 1mb/s download, reading this makes you want to cry. And cry. And cry.
One day I’ll know what it’s like to have decent speeds. You know, not 600kb/s down and 100kb/s up
I work for ISP in Poland. 500mbps 5€ FTTH tech. You just dont need more
It’s not just South Korea. I have friends living in mainland Europe who enjoy speeds of 100 Mbps and 150 Mbps in The Netherlands and Norway respectively. Britain is so far behind we’re gonna get lapped before long!
I live in London UK, and I’ve been a Virgin Media customer for the past 8 years. I started with 2 mbps download and 0.5 mbps upload. In the mean time I got two free upgrades, one to 10 mbps and 1 mbps upload and one to 30 mbps download and 2 mbps upload. At the start of the year I received a letter from VM saying that I’m going to get another free upgrade to 50 mbps download, without specifying the upload.
First, 2 mbps upload is extremely little. My wife’s uploads to YouTube take several hours because we OBVIOUSLY upload in 1080p. If we record our videos in quality, it only makes sense to share that quality.
Second, in the past year and a half I had two major Area Faults and another that should have been called Area Fault but wasn’t called anything. An Area Fault is something where the ISP acknowledges that the area usage of that network surpasses the area capacity to sustain the contracted speeds. This means that I’ve been traffic managed to a crawling 0.1 mbps download and 0.05 mbps upload several times at night and other peak hours. The disconnects have also been frequent, once or twice every week, lasting no less than one hour, again during peak hours.
Third, Virgin Media always tells me that this sort of fault can take up to three months to fix. While I appreciate their honesty, it goes to show that they are under no obligation to fulfil their contract speeds by the regulator Ofcom any quicker. They sometimes give me a 50% discount, but the speeds they provide are far far below 50% for many of the days, meaning they’re actually turning an extra profit on my appalling speeds. They’re actually turning an extra profit on the whole neighbourhood that’s with them, so it’s not hard to put 1+1+1 of area faults in my area in the past 18 months to realise that they’re in no interest in actually providing the necessary infrastructure to provide the contracted speeds, much less to fulfil the promised carrot of 50 mbps (and undisclosed upload speed).
The UK is suffering from lack of competition, and lack of regulatory enforcement. ISPs do whatever they darn please, and they need to be named, shamed and heavily fined for such behaviour.
ha ha you say that but BT is the real culprit here.
How can that possibly be if I’m in a cabled area by Virgin Media? How is it possible that another company undermines a competitor’s performance? There would be a major lawsuit if that was true.
no no I meant that the reason for which you have problems with virgin is that BT is so bad that virgin doesnt need to do much to be better.
Sadly that might be 100% true.
Speak for yourself mate, I get those speeds mentioned here in the north of England. UK =/= London!!