Always-on Society - Far East
Broadband Mecca
In terms of broadband Internet access, South Korea and Japan are world leaders. It is nothing unusual for users in these countries to be able to download videos and games, have access to telelearning, conduct online banking by cell phone, or keep an eye on play areas remotely.
For many South Koreans, Internet cafes are just as indispensable as mobile Internet and the broadband connections they have at home
They do their shopping or bank transactions via cell phone and play against one another over ultra-fast broadband networksat PC Bang, as the Internet cafes are called, or at home in high-tech living rooms. Welcome to South Korea, the current mecca of broadband technology. About 75 % of South Koreas 14 million households can surf at high speed. In Japan, it is one out of three, in the U.S. one out of four, and in Germany only one out of seven households. In this respect, South Korea is the world leader. Since 1998, the Korean government has spent 132 bill. to expand access to broadband for its 48 million people. As part of the "e-Korea Vision 2006," nearly 95 % of companies and private households are to have super-fast Internet access by the end of 2005.
At home, most South Koreans use ADSL, which provides them with speeds between 640 kbit/s and 8 Mbit/s. At the Broadband World Forum in May 2004 in Seoul, experts estimated that a fourth of Korean broadband users already have very high data rate digital subscriber lines (VDSL) offering speeds of 13 Mbit/s. One of the main suppliers of VDSL technology for Korea Telecom, Koreas largest broadband provider, is the network outfitter Dasan. Siemens owns a nearly 50-percent stake in Dasan. "That means were involved in this VDSL rollout, and were gaining valuable experience for our own network strategy and product planning," says Bernhard Neef, Senior Vice President of Siemens Com, who is based at the central office for southeast Asia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
In addition to TV series, movies and entertainment, including the games that are so popular in Korea, educational content is also being brought into the living room. "Koreans spend more money on their childrens education than they do on rent and food," Neef says. Quite a few private tutors are already helping students with their studies via broadband networks. Currently, Korea Telecom is promoting a video-on-demand service to provide movies at data speeds of 0.5 to 1 Mbit/s. Initially, home computers will receive the data streams in VHS quality, later in DVD quality. And then they will send them to the TV through a wireless connection. "Right now products are being developed with a wireless interface," says Neef. Given the pace of innovation in Korea, they will soon be ready to market, he adds. "In the final stage, there will be a box supplying all the terminals in the home with broadband access via WLAN; the telephone will be linked up over DECT and the TV through a set-top box."
Currently, Samsung Electronics is equipping apartments in Seoul with broadband connections, networked household appliances and security systems that can in some cases be controlled via a cell phone too (see interview). According to the road map of the Korean Ministry for Information and Communication, about 500,000 homes will be fully digitalized by the end of 2004. At first theyll have video-on-demand and monitoring servicesin which a cell phone is used to see whos at the front door, for instance. By 2007, ten million dwellings should have home networks, according to the "IT-8-3-9 Strategy" (eight favored services based on three broadband networks that will boost nine growth fields). The government intends to spend 175 bill. by 2007 to achieve this goal. However, Kevin Morrow, head of the Digital Solution Center at Samsung, says, "the way things are going now, there will be about 1.4 million of those homes by 2007," far fewer than the government wants, but still an impressive number.
Cyber Apartment Solutions
Kevin Morrow, 39, manages Samsung Electronics Digital Solution Center in Seoul, South Korea. Here, 250 engineers work on solutions for "homevita," the Samsung term for the networked home. Can South Koreans already use a cell phone to fill the bathtub while theyre on the way home?
Morrow: That probably happens mostly in advertising spots. It would likely be more useful if people could control their air-conditioning or security cameras from the office or from a cell phone. Thats just what you can do with a home network, which can be accessed through any Web browser.
Do you yourself live in a digital home?
Morrow: No, but I have VDSL broadband access. Cyber apartments or digital homes are still pretty new, even in Korea. Theyre found mainly in expensive new high-rise buildings with up to 1,000 apartments. So far, most customers havent paid much attention to the added value a home network can offer, like comfort and greater securitythat may take another five years.
What sort of added value does one of these cyber apartments have?
Morrow: Right now the most commonly used features are the control of home equipment with touchscreen or Webpad, community portals on the Internet, and the remote monitoring of the house or of childrens play areas. In the future, WLAN will become increasingly important for distributing data, audio and video inside the apartment. Were currently developing solutions that require only the push of a button when you get home to make everything happen automatically: The light goes on; the air-conditioning starts; the blinds open; and your favorite music plays. In the kitchen, you can go to one of the culinary pages on the Internet and download a video that shows how to prepare a certain meal. And the instructions can be transmitted onward to the stove or the microwave.
Interview by Nikola Wohllaib
At Home with Internet Telephony. Korea is introducing Internet telephony (VoIP)each week about 3,000 users subscribe to this service at Hanaro, Koreas second largest broadband provider. Furthermore, video telephony is in the testing stage. Increasingly, fiber-optic cables are extending all the way to the living roomfiber-to-the-home (FTTH)and replacing copper cables. One reason is that parallel applicationslike downloading a movie and playing games at the same time over the networkrequire bandwidths of 25 Mbits/s and more. At this time, Japan has a big head start when it comes to FTTH. At the Broadband World Forum, Yuji Inoue, Senior Vice President at Japans largest telecommunications company, NTT, said that over a million of the 15 million broadband users in Japan already access the high-speed network via FTTH. Fiber-to-the-home technology allows speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s and currently costs less than 50 per household per month. Inoue expects there to be about five million subscribers by 2005. By 2008, FTTH will have surpassed even ADSL with about 30 million users.
Mobile Telecommunications Booming in China
China boasts spectacular economic growth, but its communications infrastructure cant yet compete with those in Japan and South Korea. In much of the country, fixed-line and cell radio networks are only now being built. Almost 80 million Chinese surf the Internet, two-thirds from home, the rest at Internet cafes. At 6.2 % of the population, Internet penetration is thus still relatively low. However, according to the market researchers of the Gartner Group, the number of broadband connections in China rose by 7.6 million to 11 million in 2003, and the Chinese cell phone market is one of the fastest growing in the world. One out of five Chinese has a cell phone, and every month there are four to five million new customers. According to the Ministry of the Information Industry (MII), there were 272 million cell phone customers and 263 million fixed-network customers at the end of 2003. Experts estimate that there will be 320 million cell phone users by the end of 2004 and 550 million by 2009. But the government will probably not begin awarding licenses for broadband mobile radio networks before 2005. Alongside international standards, separate Chinese standards like TD-SCDMA are being developedalso in collaboration with Siemens. Since 2001, Siemens has been working with Chinese and German universities in the "FuTURE" project (Future Technologies for Universal Radio Environment) as part of the Chinese Research Initiative 863. The goal is to achieve data speeds ten times higher than those possible with UMTS.
Inoue is promising faster connections for cell phone service too, starting in spring 2005. At that point, data will zip into cell phones at up to three Mbit/s. Japan launched its first mobile broadband network back in October 2001 (see Pictures of the Future, Spring 2002, Japan´s Pioneers). Freedom of Mobile AccessFOMA, the Japanese counterpart to UMTSalready had over two million subscribers by early 2004. Japan is currently also the leader in the development of fourth-generation (4G) mobile telecommunications services, which will provide even higher speeds. The Japanese network operator NTT DoCoMo is testing systems with downlink speeds of 100 Mbit/s and uplink speeds of 20 to 40 Mbit/seven in a slowly moving car, according to the magazine Nikkei Electronics Asia.
4G in Korea. "Korea wants to play the leading role in Asia in the development of 4G," says Dr. Werner Mohr, who coordinates strategic research alliances for Siemens Com. The Korean EV-DO network, which was launched two years ago, provides download speeds of up to 2 Mbit/s and has some five million subscribers, it was reported at the Broadband World Forum. "Korea may leapfrog the third generation of mobile radio services and work with the more advanced solution WIBROwireless broadbandan intermediate stage on the way to 4G," says Mohr.
According to Dae-Je Chin, the South Korean Minister for Communication and Information, this new cellular network will be complete by the end of 2005. It will combine the benefits of fixed-line networks, mobile telecommunications and WLAN on the basis of the WiMAX standard (see Mobile Internet). In the first stage, WIBRO should give users within 1 km of a base station a data transfer rate of 3 Mbit/s. Though the definition of the WiMAX standard has not yet been finalized internationally, Korea does not want to wait. The government has already reserved the necessary frequency spectrum. Deviations from the international standard will simply have to be revised later, said many Korean experts at the Broadband World Forum.
Nikola Wohllaib
Digital Families in the Land of the Morning Calm
"Daddy, I want you to bring me home a nice notebook from work today," says the not entirely serious SMS text message that Sang-Il Lee receives on his cell phone from his eight-year-old daughter, Hae-Yin, who already has several e-mail addresses and is now trying to set up her own Web site as well. She often sends her father short messageseven during school recess. When it comes to the use of new communications technologies, Sang-Il Lees family is typical for South Korea. The 43-year-old father of two children works as the political editor at the newspaper JoongAng in Seoul, one of the large dailies.
Korea ranks 12th in the world in terms of economic output, but it is the world leader in IT. More than ten million families in the country have access to broadband Internet connections, usually DSL, which means that some 30 million of the almost 48 million people who live in South Korea can surf the Web at high speed and download music files, among other things. In addition, 35 million people have cell phone services. Korea can safely be called the first "always-on" society. For Sang-Il, the Internet is an important tool for work, just as it is for every other journalist. He searches through online documents for his research and develops contacts through e-mail. Among other things, his PC serves as the file administrator for his valuable sources. Sang-Il frequently takes part in background discussions and attends social events, both of which can net him important tips. "I was recently out at a karaoke bar and ended up sending information back to the editorial office via my laptop and cell phone," he says.
Sang-Ils wife, Mi-Young Kim, also works at the paper and also loves the Internet. "I like online banking," she says, "because it allows me to manage the family account, as most Korean women do." She even manages the account while on the bus, using a cell phone. Hae-Moon, their 14-year-old son, has his own interests when it comes to the Internet. He doesnt like to go to the movies because he finds it more comfortable to download videos from the Web via DSL and watch them on his PC. He recently had problems with his mother after he downloaded a huge number of pictures of stars onto his mobile MP3 player via an expensive service. Hae-Moon has never written a letter by hand. His favorite form of communication is instant messagingchatting with friends who happen to be online at that time. Communication in the family runs along similar lines: Both Sang-Il and Mi-Young say that e-mail, messaging and cell phone conversations give them the feeling that despite the long working day, the members of the family are somehow always together. "We even talk to our parents more often now than we did as kids!" says Sang-Il with a smile.