Holy Moses! Those lucky internet users in South Korea just got a little luckier. The South Korean Government has announced that all homes by 2012 will be connected to an ultra-fast 1 gigabit per second network.
It’s hard to even imagine how quick those speeds are – considering most Australians are lucky to see speeds over 20Mbps (if that). South Korea is currently the world leader in high speed internet connections, but most of that comes from VDSL and ADSL copper wire technologies, so fibre cables will need to built in their place as the rollout continues. It’s yet another solid reason why the planned NBN, using fibre to the node is such a good idea in this country too.
The beauty of a fibre built network like the NBN and the Korean model (which should provide another whack on the hands to those wireless supporters who shall not be named), is that you can always upgrade the network in the future without touching the cables already in the ground.
Then again, it’s hard to think of practical reasons (outside of video delivery and cloud computing) for needing a 1Gbps connection in the first place. 100Mbps will do me just fine.
If you had 1Gbps at your disposal, what would you use it for? [via NYT]