[IP] more on Why the future is in South Korea

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bart Stuck <bartstuck@worldnet.att.net>
Date: June 10, 2006 4:26:40 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: RE: [IP] Why the future is in South Korea

 In 1990 Korea Telecom initiated a network study, KT 2000, to take  
their
network to world class in the year 2000.  I was engaged as a consultant,
And suggested the following: South Korea has 80% of its population in  
Seoul
and five other cities, so deploy optical fiber rings into each city,
And trunk them together to provide high speed digital transport for the
chaebol.  Once that is done, the rings can sprout new optical fiber
tenacles:
1)for cellular telephony, 2)for CATV, and for 3)high speed data
communications via xDSL and CATV modems (no World Wide Web in 1990).   
Each
of these
Rollouts had pro forma income statements, with a revenue model and an
expense model (including equipment depreciation, operations,  
marketing and
sales)
And each of these rollouts had to PAY FOR THEMSELVES.  The study was
completed in mid 1991, the management of KT said thank you (HQ has  
copies
Of the final study, four inches thick, in Hangol), and the rest was  
history.
The bulk of the investment went into the network in 1992-1995, and at  
the
very end, deploying
PCs was a relatively small amount of total CAPEX.


Bart Stuck


-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 3:31 PM
To: ip@v2.listbox.com
Subject: [IP] Why the future is in South Korea



Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Date: June 10, 2006 10:32:33 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@warpspeed.com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Why the future is in South Korea
Reply-To: dewayne@warpspeed.com

Why the future is in South Korea

Smart investments in broadband there have paid off in the form of a
hyperconnected society --and now we can start reaping the benefits of  
the
Korean experiment.

By Chris Taylor, Business 2.0 Magazine senior editor June 8, 2006:  
3:43 PM
EDT <http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/08/technology/business2_futureboy0608/
index.htm>
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - I, for one, welcome our South  
Korean
overlords.

Ninety percent of the country has blazingly fast, 3-megabits-per- second
broadband at home, and similarly high-speed wireless connections on the
road. The telecom market is fiercely competitive, and broadband service
costs the consumer less than $20 a month.

There are 20,000 PC baangs, or Internet cafes, where you can rent a
superfast machine for $1 an hour. Online gaming has become a way of  
life,
with nearly 3,000 South Korean videogame companies boasting combined
revenues of up to $4 billion.

As a result, South Korea has become the world's best laboratory for
broadband services - and a place to look to for answers on how the  
Internet
business may evolve.

Smart bet on broadband
How did this come about? In 1995, the South Korean government made  
what must
rank as one of the most shrewd and far-sighted investments in business
history. It spent big on a nationwide high-capacity broadband network  
that
any telecom operator could offer service on, and offered subsidies so  
that
45 million Koreans could buy cheap PC's. Cost: a mere $1.5 billion.

Fast-forward 11 years: Korea is now the most connected and Net- addicted
country on Earth. There are a few American companies who have  
benefited from
the South Korean broadband boom: Blizzard, for example, makes a popular
online game called Starcraft which is so widely played in South Korea  
that
two TV channels broadcast Starcraft matches between professional  
players.

But the most popular services are homegrown.

Cyworld, for example, is a social network owned by a subsidiary of SK
Telecom, the country's largest wireless provider. To an American eye,  
the
Cyworld service looks like a mixture of some of the hottest US
properties: it's MySpace meets Flickr and Blogger and AIM and Second  
Life.

Users have avatars that visit and can link to each other's  
"minihompy" - a
miniature homepage that's actually a 3-D room containing a users' blog,
photos, and virtual items for sale.
Cyworld's digital garage sales include music, ringtones, clothes for  
your
avatar and furnishings for your own minihompy.

Cyworld has penetration rates that would make Rupert Murdoch, CEO of  
MySpace
parent News Corp. (Research), green with envy: An astonishing 90  
percent of
South Koreans in their 20s use the service. Celebrities and  
politicians set
up their own minihompies, and the way to get ahead in twentysomething  
Korean
society is to found a popular Cyworld club, or chat room.

Printing money
Most importantly, Cyworld is a license to print money. The service  
itself is
free (and available on cellphones as well as online), but to buy all the
extras - like ringtones and virtual furnishings - will cost you  
"acorns,"
the service's virtual currency. Cyworld sells its users $300,000 in  
acorns
every single day.

[snip]

Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>



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