Who Needs Gigabit Broadband?

South Korea is already forward of the universal technological curvature but it is seeking to imitate even serve forward by boosting broadband speeds opposite the nation.

It is not aiming at 100, 200 or even 500 megabits per second (Mbps). Instead it has devised a national outline for 1,000Mbps connectors to be everyday by 2012.

The supervision is enlivening craving to outlay the 34 trillion Won (£19bn), compulsory to full the scheme. By way of a comparison, that figure is rounded off the same as the nation's annual preparation budget.

In theory, this thought will give many homes in South Korea a connection speed 500 times faster than is on trial in the UK.

In practice, South Korea is already deliberate the nation quickest for broadband. The stream median connection, according to a inform by web definite Akamai, is 12Mbps - the top in the world.

The Kung family are only a of the family groups reaping the benefits of blisteringly swift broadband.

Click visited the family to find out how it used the high-speed link. On a conventional day twenty-something Kevin would be in his room enthralled in multiplayer online gaming, an wake up that South Koreans have adopted as something of a national competition

In the living room, Eunice and her toddler might be enjoying the television. Thanks to the swift connection they can watch and interact.

With a £12-a-month ($19) subscription to an internet TV service, the family has access to dozens of periodic channels, tens of thousands of cinema on demand, interactive services similar to Twitter, and English learning by subtitles and karaoke.

"At home I'm using 100 megabits correct right away and that satisfies me a lot since it's fast," says Eunice Kung.

"But 1,000 megabits in 3 years? That'll astonishment people but we regard it's a really innate close since South Korean people are really impatient, they need all quickly, quickly, quickly. They need more, all the time."

In the UK, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has mentioned that Britain will lead Europe in to the period of super-fast broadband by 2015.

Some companies are already earnest speeds of around 50Mbps and the supervision has on trial a 2Mbps connection for everybody by the finish of the stream parliament.

But what can a 1,000Mbps super-fast connection be used for?

Firstly, it is about speed - Hollywood blockbusters may be downloaded in 12 seconds or the whole James Bond back catalog may be delivered while the kettle boils.

Super HD

And a thing that is apropos increasingly familiar is streaming television. While a Department for Media, Culture and Sport orator in the UK says that "two megabits is sufficient" for streaming services, the next generation of hi-definition calm will widen the bandwidth boundary worldwide.

According to the Blu-ray Disc Association, it takes a 40Mbps connection to stream full HD calm but that is only the tip of the iceberg.

3D images, by their really nature, require a quicker give rate and Super HD, to be introduced over the next decade, goes even further.

It has 16 times as many pixels as today's high-end HD and the dense chronicle needs a minimum bandwidth of 320Mbps. The uncompressed stream requires 24 gigabits a second.

The refreshing gait of prearranged line and wi-fi services seems not to provide is to flourishing direction of mobile users. In South Korea, a network of LTE - modernized mobile information networks - is being introduced.

But Lee Suk-Chae, chairperson of Korea Telecom, says that these networks alone will not be ample to encounter our needs.

"I regard in the future we will really see a information torrent - information will blow up over the network," he says.

"And you cannot hoop that information traffic only by the mobile internet. Although there will be LTE, still you won't be able to hoop all that traffic.

"Fixed line is necessary to encouragement that traffic and in that sense, we regard people wish to watch the calm they wish anywhere, anytime, and to prove their final you must be have a burly network, maybe a gigabit internet."

He says that only 10% of information give is by 3G networks, 70% forthcoming by wi-fi - that is not that startling when you ponder the number of hotspots in South Korea's city areas.

And with a nation full of early-adopters, it seems only a matter of time before Koreans are surfing the net at speeds the rest of us can only mental condition about.