Korea’s proof the bandwidth hog boogeyman is an Amercian Duopoloy invention

While our American cable guys and the AT&T death star move forward with more aggressive measures to limit bandwidth consumption, the Koreans have created a competitive market in which average available bandwidth is routinely measured and reported on by the government. No mention of bandwidth hogs there, only steady improvement at lower prices.

Korean broadband providers typically offer speeds of 100Mbps. However, the government-sponsored Korean Communications Commission (KCC) found that no service provider consistently provides this level of service.

The fastest ‘100Mbps’ service was delivered by LG Powercomm with an average speed of 91Mbps, the KCC found.

The average speed of all 100Mbps service providers is just 46Mbps, but this compares to typical average broadband speeds of well below 10Mbps in most other countries.

Seven service providers offer high-speed broadband services in Korea to more than 15 million subscribers.

Korea Telecom controls 44.2 per cent of the market, followed by Hanarotelecom with 24 per cent and LG Powercomm with 12.2 per cent.

“By giving quality information to internet users, we expect customers to have more information when they choose products,” said KCC representative Lee Eun-hee, according to the Joongang Daily.

“This encourages service providers to compete against one another to improve the overall quality of such products.” (VNUnet)

We need to get to the real root cause of the move to manage bandwidth by our duopoly. All of the major broadband providers are also close system pay content providers (pay TV, pay per view) As the open net continues to create serious competition for the pay TV business, the duopoly becomes predatory and tries to squelch its competitors by restricting free access to viewers. If our law makers will not open the market to broadband  competition, then they must not allow access providers to be in the content business. Far better to open access to competition now through the restoration of local loop unbundling.