Awaiting a return to life in the fast lane

Broad opinions on broadband Readers offer their views on the pros and cons of slower dialup vs. high-speed Internet connections. Broadband: There when you need it? A week ago Saturday night, I thought I'd browse the Web awhile before bed. Only I discovered my connection to the Internet had vanished. Awaiting a return to life in the fast lane Count me on both sides of our readers' debate about connecting to the Internet: I agree that $45 a month is a lot to pay for a cable modem hookup. But I've decided to plunk down the money anyway and pay for cable's faster path to the Web after grinding my teeth through a few weeks with an agonizingly slow dialup phone modem.

Count me on both sides of our readers' debate about connecting to the Internet: I agree that $45 a month is a lot to pay for a cable modem hookup. But I've decided to plunk down the money anyway and pay for cable's faster path to the Web after grinding my teeth through a few weeks with an agonizingly slow dialup phone modem.

Magnifying my impatience is the fact that I've just returned to the United States after three years in South Korea, arguably the broadband capital of the world.

Over there, a broadband connection, such as a cable modem or DSL, is virtually synonymous with the Internet. It's not some high-price luxury meant for just the techhead and home-office crowds. Rather, it's taken for granted as much as making a phone call without operator assistance.

Roughly the same proportion of South Koreans have Internet access at home as Americans do, somewhat more than half the population. Broadband usage is where they leave us in the dust. A whopping nine out of 10 Internet-connected Korean households access the Web via DSL or cable connections, representing by far the highest broadband penetration rate anywhere. In the United States, the source of most of the technologies and innovations driving the Net, nearly the same portion of online households are stuck using pokey phone-modem connections.

What's driven this eye-popping growth in South Korea? Heavy government investment in broadband technology and infrastructure, for one thing. Then there's the large number of Koreans who live in apartment buildings in densely populated urban areas where the installation of fiber-optic cables can broaden high-speed access to large numbers of people very quickly. Finally, cut-throat competition among broadband service providers has driven down subscription rates to an average of about $25 a month.

Internet pundits love to blather on about how exciting the online future will be once Web surfers are freed from the shackles of dialup connections. In South Korea, you get a glimpse of what all the fuss is about.

Stuck in the office on the day of a big ballgame? Watch it on the Web in streaming video.

Worried about your kids' sliding grades at school? Sign them up for a Web-based tutoring program featuring real-time chat with a live teacher. Seen all the movies at the local cinema? Get out the microwave popcorn and catch an Internet-only indie flick.

With broadband everywhere, South Koreans have been quick to embrace multimedia content. And "multimedia" there doesn't just mean a movie trailer. It means the entire movie. Multimedia portal sites -- an entire category of Web site that is only beginning to emerge in the United States -- offer a plethora of online content that slow-modem Americans can only dream of: domestic and foreign films, the latest pop music releases, graphics-heavy online adventure games, comic books with razor-sharp clarity, even interactive educational programs and age-restricted adult content.

Your very perception of a home computer begins to change when you have access to all this stuff. It's no longer just a means to accomplish traditional Internet-related tasks, most of them text-based, such as e-mailing, reading up on breaking news or checking out the day's postings on your favorite hobby-oriented message board.

Instead, your computer becomes an entertainment appliance, like a stereo or TV set.

Perhaps because of the sheer accessibility of it all, there's a somewhat surprising aspect to the average Korean Web surfer's perception of all the multimedia bells and whistles you get with broadband.

It's not Hot! Exciting! or even The Next New Thing!

That attitude is so 1997. Now it's routine. It's ordinary. It's just a tool (an increasingly versatile one) that you turn to several times a day to do whatever strikes your fancy -- buy or sell stocks, play an online adventure game with an opponent on the other side of the planet, or watch your favorite music video over and over again.

When will this become routine here in the United States? Cheaper monthly subscriptions would certainly help. But assuming that they won't be coming down soon to the $20 to $25 a month people are accustomed to paying for Internet access, there's a chicken-and-egg dilemma. Web surfers won't be willing to pony up the extra cash for a high-speed connection unless there are goodies, such as lots of snazzy multimedia content, to entice them. And Web sites won't be rushing to acquire or create such content until they see a sizable audience out there hankering for it.

As for me, I'm looking forward to dropping my trial subscription to America Online and getting back to broadband to rejoin the 21st century.

- Louis Hau can be reached at hau@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3404.

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