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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (9424)	4/14/2005 4:19:26 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 46821

Found it. This is the white paper I referenced above, with a preface by its uuthor, Taylor Reynolds, who aired these views on Cook discusion list: ---snip: We recently finished a case study on Korea here at the ITU (link below) and one of the questions I asked over and over what how much of a role subsidies played in getting Korea to where it is today. The answers I got back were surprising. Koreans attribute much of their broadband success to the government's role as anchor tenant on fiber lines throughout the country and highlight that the dollar amount of subsidies was actually small. In Korea, even the smallest neighborhoods and towns will have a post office and a neighborhood office of the government. The post office serves as the local bank where people can send deposit/withdraw/send money. The neighborhood government office keeps birth, death and address records on all the people living in the area. Korean policy makers quickly realized the importance of Internet infrastructure and calculated that private firms (e.g. Dacom and KT) would be willing to build out infrastructure across the country if they had a strong anchor tenant in the area. The government contacted several network providers and said it would lease connections for all post offices and neighborhood offices. This strategic partnership paid off greatly for Korea when broadband technologies became available to consumers. The fiber network already had a deep reach into neighborhoods around the country. While the government as an anchor tenant was one factor, there are other factors at play in Korea that contribute to broadband success: 1. Open access Not only is the local loop unbundled, so is the cable network. That means Hanaro can offer services on several technologies in a given area, even if they don't have a physical presence. 2. Apartment buildings Korean apartment buildings are usually 15 stories and close together. This makes them much easier to wire. This also helps explain why Koreans are some of the only people in the world who truly benefit from facilities-based competition. Hanaro COULD use the local loop to reach apartment buildings but instead chooses to run its own fiber to large complexes. Then, since the apartment buildings own their own internal infrastructure, users can choose VDSL from either KT or Hanaro, on completely different networks. 3. Broadband for "education" When we talk about why Koreans have broadband, I don't think we can discount the perceived need for education. Korean parents will spend all they have to ensure their children do well in school. Most parents feel that if their children don't have access to broadband, they won't score as well on entrance exams. (This also explains why game rooms (cybercafes) are still almost everywhere in a country with 70-80 percent penetration.) Kids don't want their parents to see them playing games. Finally, I think it's also important to realize that Korea has produced this "miracle" in the past ten years. I was a foreign exchange student in Korea in 1994 at a big university. The university had only a few computers for the entire student body so we would go on frantic searches to find a computer to type reports. I remember doing a group paper in a preschool because someone's sister had a friend who worked there and they had a computer. Ten years later you can use a broadband payphone in the CoEX mall. You simply watch a 30 second commercial and then you get three minutes of surf time on a touch screen. Amazing. Tad Case Study Link: SHAPING THE FUTURE MOBILE INFORMATION SOCIETY: THE CASE OF THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA itu.int; ------end Here's another eyeopener, this time a biweekly newsletter of the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications, Japan, which was published in 2003. It allows one a good inkling as to how broadband planning is performed in the region: soumu.go.jp ------ FAC frank@fttx.org