Why Is South Korea a Global Broadband Leader?

How did South Korea become a global broadband leader? Electronic Frontier Foundation did a deep dive into this question and has produced the following report. The key takeaway: government policies that focus on expanding access to telecommunications infrastructure were essential to success. 

Universal fiber network access, where nearly every citizen had access to high-speed broadband, has existed in South Korea for years now. In comparison, the United States is between 20 percent to 30 percent fiber to the home infrastructure.  Such an infrastructure, per EFF’s analysis, is capable of being upgraded at low costs to substantially higher speeds for decades to come. This infrastructure has also allowed South Korea to leapfrog ahead of the United States on 5G: in just a handful of months, South Korea’s telecom sector signed up 4 million 5G subscribers and counting. What led to this rapid deployment of their 5G wireless network? New infrastructure sharing policies explicitly designed to reduce the cost of deployment and ensure that wireless competitors operated on an equal playing field. 

There are no good reasons why major cities in the United States are not as connected as Seoul.