South Korean Broadband Adoption Slows, But Technology Improves

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South Korean Broadband Adoption Slows, But Technology Improves

3:30 pm on July 10, 2006 | Category: Telecom Services, Internet

South Korea has lost its title as the world’s leader in broadband penetration, recently overtaken by the Netherlands, Denmark, and Iceland, according to new research by Point Topic.

The Asian country was an early adopter of high-speed internet technology, but growth has dropped in recent years, with only a 3% increase in broadband penetration between the first quarter of 2005 and the same period this year.

For comparison, the U.S. experienced a 27% increase over the same period, while China and India have seen 45.5% and 328% growth, respectively.

Korea’s high-speed data market finally seems close to total saturation, but internet technology itself is still developing impressively in the small Asian country. FTTx fiber optic technology, capable of delivering 1 Gbps/second of bandwidth, is becoming more and more common in major South Korean cities.

This means that users should have no trouble carrying on digital phone conversations, downloading files, and surfing the internet at the same time, and new bandwidth-intensive technologies like immersive virtual reality and telepresence are looking more and more realistic on the horizon.

In short, the vast majority of Korean households have already subscribed to some kind of high-speed internet service, meaning that ISPs in the country are now able to shift much of their away from marketing and onto cutting edge technological innovation.