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As ordinary Canadians continue to fight back against Internet Overcharging schemes, the topic remains part of the country’s social consciousness. That means providers and the regulators that appease them are ripe for satire, as this music video from ForgetTheBox illustrates. (1 minute)
Although the English needs a little work, Korean broadband delivers a reality most Americans can only imagine.
South Korea has launched a nationwide broadband upgrade to rid themselves of 100Mbps service for $38 a month, claiming those speeds and prices are no longer sufficient for Korea’s new digital economy.
By the end of 2012, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second and slash the monthly price to just $27 a month.
That’s more than 200 times faster than speeds enjoyed by most Americans, who pay an average of $46 a month — nearly double Korea’s planned price. Even more galling for Canadians — those speeds and prices are for completely unlimited access.
Stop the Cap! reader John in Victoria, B.C., thinks South Korea’s broadband improvements call out just how ludicrous Canada’s Internet Overcharging schemes really are.
“If the Canadian Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission ultimately allows $2 per gigabyte in overlimit fees, we would have to pay $5,184,000 per month for the same thing,” John says. “If this comparison doesn’t make people want to chuck the CRTC, what will?”
For the government of South Korea, which is spearheading the Internet expansion effort, broadband has become a national priority for the fast-growing Korean economy.
[flv width=”640″ height=”447″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Hello CJ TV.flv[/flv]
Korea’s CJ HelloVision cable system delivers TV programming, broadband, and phone service at speeds and prices that make North American providers look ridiculous. Bonus: That sure looks like Sarah Palin making a cameo appearance in this animated video. (1 minute)
South Korea historically trailed Japan’s economic post-World War II revival for decades, but no more. The country, which used to be poorer than the Communist People’s Republic of Korea to the north, has grown to the world’s 13th largest economic power, and has designs on being a world leader in the transition to the digital/information economy. They are already ahead of North America, with an advanced broadband platform that can sustain concepts like cloud computing that are just getting off the ground in Canada and the USA.
The KCC is spearheading Korea's broadband advancements
Only the most rural parts of Korea still rely on copper phone wires delivering DSL service, now considered archaic. Most of the country is now wired for fiber optics, making a transition from 100Mbps-1Gbps relatively simple. With new laser technology, existing fiber cables can transmit faster speeds, and when fiber is laid in the country, extra strands are buried for future use. The costs of burying 10 or 100 or 1,000 strands come mostly from labor, not the wiring.
Private electronics companies are strong proponents of the infrastructure upgrades, and service providers are on board to deliver the service. That is in marked contrast with providers in the United States and Canada who consider expensive upgrades an unnecessary proposition.
“Providers in the USA and Canada defend their existing networks as ‘good enough for average residential use,’ something that would be laughed away here in Korea or in Japan,” Dr. Park Sung-Jin, a Korean broadband researcher who travels between Seoul and Los Angeles tells Stop the Cap! “Large providers like AT&T cannot afford to lose their propaganda arguments of broadband sufficiency because if they did, they would lose face and be forced to transform broadband in the USA at the expense of their enormous profits.”
“In Asia, we would never allow our providers to dictate the national broadband policies of the country, and our discussions are long past arguing over what speeds are correct,” Park says. “Now we’re arguing about how to bring the cost down.”
Japan delivers 1Gbps broadband service for $70 a month, a price scoffed at by Choi Gwang-gi, the 28-year old Korean now in charge of the Korea’s expansive broadband plans.
“I can’t imagine anyone in Korea paying that much,” Choi told the New York Times. “No, no, that’s unthinkable.”
A pilot gigabit project initiated by the government is underway with 5,000 households in five South Korean cities. Each customer pays about 30,000 won a month, or less than $27.
“A lot of Koreans are early adopters,” Mr. Choi said, “and we thought we needed to be prepared for things like 3-D TV, Internet protocol TV, high-definition multimedia, gaming and videoconferencing, ultra-high-definition TV, cloud computing.”
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Hello Broadband delivers a silly advertisement for its soon to be obsolete 200Mbps broadband service. (1 minute)
Meanwhile, according to Dr. Park, North American providers like Bell, Rogers, and Comcast are spending millions trying to convince lawmakers in both countries that such speeds are wholly unnecessary.
“The United States and Canada are the worst, with providers spending countless millions themselves and through their lackey trade associations and illicit ‘consumer groups’ working for them trying to convince lawmakers American broadband isn’t so bad after all, but it is,” Park says. “They routinely claim any country that is ahead of the U.S. or Canada is a ‘special case’ because of urban density or government subsidies, but that can’t explain away all of the disparity in speeds and accessibility, only money and monopoly profits can.”
Both Romania and Latvia now beat Canada and the USA in broadband speeds and pricing, and North America’s dominance in a digital economy could be at risk.
Closer to home Don Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group in Fremont, Calif., told the Times Korea is on the right track.
“The gigabit Internet is essential for the future, absolutely essential, and all the technologists will tell you this,” said Norman. “We’re all going to be doing cloud computing, for example, and that won’t work if you’re not always connected. Games. Videoconferencing. Video on demand. All this will require huge bandwidth, huge speed.”
In Canada, such predictions have given companies like Bell an excuse to engage in a national Internet Overcharging scheme they claim will help pay for building these kinds of future networks. But other countries around the world now deliver speeds Canada only promises their citizens, without overcharging them to pay for it.
“Charging for broadband traffic would be like you or I charging for the wind — it has no real value except in the eyes of the people who stand to profit from it,” Park said.
Will people notice a difference between 100Mbps and 1Gbps? Koreans say they will, according to the New York Times.
One of the customers already connected to Mr. Choi’s pilot program is Moon Ki-soo, 42, an Internet consultant. He got a gigabit hookup about a year ago through CJ Hellovision, although because of the internal wiring of his apartment building his actual connection speed clocks in at 278 megabits a second.
But even that speed — about a quarter-gigabit — has him dazzled.
“It is so much more convenient to watch movies and drama shows now,” he told the newspaper.
[flv width=”368″ height=”228″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Giga Internet.flv[/flv]
This Korean language promotional video for Giga Internet, the marketing brand for 1Gbps broadband, still dazzles the imagination for those who lack the ability to follow the words. As you watch, consider how America’s typical DSL service provider leaves millions of Americans with a ‘covered wagon’ 3Mbps broadband solution. (6 minutes)
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A stylish ad for SK Broadband, declaring new high speeds will let users “See the Unseen.” (1 minute)
Mossberg
Walt Mossberg, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, delivered some stinging remarks about how large telecom and media companies deliver broadband services and programming to North Americans.
“We really suck at broadband,” Mossberg complained during opening remarks at Beet.TV’s first executive summit held at the Embassy of Finland in Washington. “We have terrible, terrible broadband.”
“The typical consumer either has been lured into broadband by a DSL service that in Finland would not count as broadband — 768kbps is not broadband,” Mossberg said. “If [the government] adopted a regulation not allowing Verizon to call that crap broadband, it would help.”
Mossberg added that cable modem service in the US and Canada is so slow, it is the object of pity and pathos in countries like Japan and Korea, and we’re overcharged for it.
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Mossberg’s comments come as part of a discussion about the online video revolution, which he says is being hampered by copyright controls, outdated advertising models, and broadband providers delivering sub-standard service. (8 minutes)
Gov. Scott Walker’s administration in Wisconsin is under fire today for being allegedly caught blocking access to a website popular with protesters fighting the governor’s position on public unions.
Democratic party officials said that the website, www.defendwisconsin.org, run by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Teacher Assistants, was accessible after its launch last week until at least Friday.
But by Monday, the website organizers discovered the site was blocked for those using the state’s free Wi-Fi network available inside the Capitol building. The website is used to coordinate protest actions and keep volunteers informed about the pushback campaign against the Walker Administration.
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate says that the site was put on a blacklist typically used to filter out pornography sites so that protesters inside the Capitol could not access the site.
Former Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Charles Hoornstra said that, if Walker is blocking the website, it could be a violation of state and federal laws concerning free speech laws.
This isn’t the first time the state government has been accused of cutting off Internet access. The Teaching Assistants Association earlier accused state authorities of cutting off Wi-Fi access to a room they had taken over as a headquarters inside of the Capitol.
Some of the activists in Madison used the occasion to draw comparisons with Internet shutdowns in Egypt and Libya. CNN picked up the story, taking it nationwide, and Sachin Chheda, a Democratic activist and former IT employee at the Capitol, said someone inside the government would have to consciously add the website to a blacklist for the software to block access.
The Walker Administration offered its own explanation of the blocked website, claiming the state’s software initially allows access to all websites until it is updated, then blocks sites until they are manually reviewed.
Department of Administration spokeswoman Carla Vigue said, “DOA’s security software automatically blocked the site, as it does all new websites.”
“No one here at DOA decided to block it or took action to do so,” he said. “The website is handled like any other website.”
Activists at the state Capitol tested Vigue’s explanation today, visiting newly registered domains with new websites, and had no trouble accessing any of them.
“The state got caught censoring and now they are making up stories to distract and deflect,” Paul Jeson tells Stop the Cap! “Since when does net nanny software require the manual review of every website in the world to unblock access — the whole point of the software is to arrive with a blacklist filter pre-installed and programming that checks content in real-time looking for triggers.”
Jeson says unless a protester exposed themselves in a photo republished on the site, there is no reason it should have been blocked.
“I doubt Gov. Walker himself ordered the block, but some of his associates treat the 1st Amendment as something worthy of defending only when it protects their point of view,” Jeson opines. “Imagine what would happen if the Capitol Wi-Fi blocked Fox News or one of several anti-union, pro-Walker websites that popped up at the same time defendwisconsin.org was launched; I am not surprised none of those sites favorable to the governor’s position have complained about similar blocks.”
The governor’s office late in the day tried to change the subject.
“The Democratic Party should spend less time lying about Gov. Walker, and more time trying to get their AWOL State Senators back to Wisconsin,” said a statement released by the governor’s office.
CNN covered this statement from the Wisconsin Democratic Party on a poor telephone line. (1 minute)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.
Shocked onlookers moments after the earthquake struck downtown Christchurch
A major magnitude 6.3 earthquake has devastated the Canterbury region of southeast New Zealand, particularly the central business district of the city of Christchurch, knocking out power, water, sewer, and several telecommunications networks across the region. The wireless networks that remain have been so overburdened, government officials have declared use of those networks limited to emergency use only.
Two aftershocks — one magnitude 5.6 and another 5.5 — shook Christchurch within hours of the initial 6.3 earthquake, causing damaged buildings to crumble, including parts of the 130-year-old Christchurch Cathedral. Its spire toppled into the city square, falling onto throngs of tourists who ran from the building in terror as the temblor struck.
Dozens are dead, with scores more injured, particularly in the Christchurch city center, where the quake struck just after lunch. Shocking raw video has appeared on national television showing bloody bodies strewn amongst the rubble, and hearts are broken over stories such as the death of nine month old toddler who survived the quake, but not the large flat panel television that toppled down on him during an aftershock.
Telecommunications services were reduced to a state of virtual unusability following the quake because of cable cuts and congestion, as Prime Minister John Key informed Parliament the government was forced to initially rely on a sketchy satellite link to speak with civil defense officials in the city of 376,000.
The city’s local television station — CTV, was reduced to rubble as the seven-story building pancaked, tossing some employees working on the fifth floor into the middle of Madras Street below. They were the lucky ones, surviving as astonished onlookers ran up to help.
National media has described the Canterbury earthquake as “New Zealand’s darkest day,” and most radio and television stations still on the air have ceased regular programming to relay the country’s National service from Radio/TV New Zealand, or the country’s national news-talk network Newstalk ZB.
New Zealand’s Internet services are functioning, but sporadic in many locations. The national public broadcaster, Radio/TV New Zealand, is relying on its international shortwave radio service Radio New Zealand International to get its signal out to the rest of the world as its live Internet streams initially failed. Many other broadcasters in Christchurch have lost their links to transmitters, or temporarily lacked power to stay on the air.
The region’s landline telephone network remains functional where cable cuts have not interrupted service, but since many New Zealanders rely on cell phones, the country’s wireless networks quickly were overwhelmed with worried callers. Large parts of New Zealand’s cell phone network in the south is now completely reliant on battery backup power, due to widespread power disruptions. Keeping those sites operational is critical, as scores of office workers in Christchurch are texting messages indicating they are still alive, but trapped in damaged or collapsed buildings.
Emergency generators are being pressed into service as providers recognize their wireless networks are often the only reliable link residents now have with the rest of the country. Some cell sites operated by Telecom New Zealand (TNZ), Vodafone and 2Degrees equipped with solar or battery backup systems began to fail last night.
“We’re asking our customers in Christchurch to have patience if they lose service. Although we can’t identify which sites will lose battery power or when, we know that they are generally in good shape so can be placed back in service once power becomes available,” says 2degrees CEO Eric Hertz.
TNZ and their biggest competitor Vodafone have set aside their rivalry and are coordinating efforts to keep the country’s networks up and running. Staff of both companies have been largely ordered to remain home, as technicians on duty at the time of the quake pull overtime duty. Emergency 111 service, today answered by operators in Wellington 190 miles away, is now prioritized and customers have been told by government officials that cell phone use in the affected region should be limited for emergency calls only.
All public payphones in Christchurch discontinued paid service as of this morning — all calls are now free.
Vodafone reports SMS text messaging service between networks is not functioning at this time. That means Vodafone customers cannot send or receive text messages to anyone outside of Vodafone’s own network for the time being.
All three carriers are recommending wireless customers across the entire country use text messaging rather than calling to keep congestion to a minimum. Text messages rarely overload wireless networks. Most providers are also waiving contract cancellation penalties for customers whose homes or businesses were heavily damaged or destroyed, and will forward calls to functioning phone numbers at no charge.
Cable modem service in Christchurch is disrupted wherever cable cuts exist. DSL from TNZ is also sporadic for the same reasons.
While power is expected to return across Canterbury as daybreak now arrives, officials warn outages in essential services will persist for days, if not weeks, in some particularly hard-hit areas.
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TV New Zealand presented coverage moments after the quake occurred. Some of these reports and raw video contain extremely graphic and disturbing imagery. (30 minutes)
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