Dude Anonymous
ECON 251
11/4/2014

CURRENT EVENT

Recently in South Korea, a company named SK Broadband will be introducing 10 gigabit fiber optic internet speeds. This is a huge deal in the world of technology because while they have gigabit internet, looking to move up to 10.. The US still has an argument between verizon and AT&T whether we should bump our minimum up to 10 megabits.
There are a few Asian countries that have already broke through the internet speed barrier years ago, but for how technologically advance the US is, it lacks severely in the field of internet service across the country. When Korea introduces this 10gigabit internet, even if at home you think you have fast speeds at 5-10 megabits per second, that is still over 1000 times slower than what is going to be the standard in most Asian countries.
In our defense the requirements to achieve are much steeper in the US than in those countries simply because of the fact that we are much much larger than they are. Korea is about the size of Texas, so it is easier for them to install the fiber optic technology then it would be for us to do it across the entire US. Google has started a service called Google Fibers. They provide just internet no cable or phone, and speeds are up to a gigabyte per second. This is a huge step forward for speed advancements in America. The issue comes back to the size of the US though, Fibers so far has only been in around two states because it is still under