Home Internet May Get Even Faster in South Korea

South Korea already claims the world’s fastest Internet connections — the fastest globally by far — but that is hardly good enough for the government.

By the end of 2012, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second. That would be a tenfold increase from the already blazing national standard and more than 200 times as fast as the average household setup in the United States. A pilot gigabit project initiated by the government is under way, with 5,000 households in five South Korean cities wired. Each customer pays about 30,000 won a month, or less than $27. While Americans are clip-clopping along, trailing the Latvians and the Romanians in terms of Internet speed, the South Koreans are at a full gallop. Their average Internet connections are far faster than even No. 2 Hong Kong and No. 3 Japan, according to the Internet analyst Akamai Technologies. Overseeing South Korea’s audacious expansion plan is Choi Gwang-gi, 28, a soft-spoken engineer. He hardly looks the part of a visionary or a revolutionary as he pads around his government-gray office in vinyl slippers. But Choi has glimpsed the future — the way the Internet needs to behave for the next decade or so — and he is trying to help Korea get there.