British Telecom: Who needs HDTV?

I have othen wondered what all the fuzz on HDTV is about: with DSL2 scheduled to bring tens of Mbits/sec to the home, HDTV can be accomplished with a regular media player and content encoded for high definition. My take is that DSL2 will be common long before all the goverments, industry players etc. have fianlly agreed on HDTV standards.

"It also sees delivering TV over broadband as a way of getting high-definition (HD) content to people sooner than they will be able to get it through conventional, regular broadcasts."

6:44:29 PM    

The future is South Korea - Tech firms try out latest in world's most wired society

Another wake-up call on how other countries are getting ahead of the US in terms of broadband penetration and usage (wired and wireless), South Korea being the most shining example. It seems to me the US  is mired in the ideological conviction that government should have limited or no role in creating the infrastructure, and let free markets take care of it. Other countries, SK being one of them, are showing that a combination of competition and state investments can make for a very powerful mix:

"The South Korean government ensured competition by ending state-owned Korea Telecom's monopoly. The government spent billions of dollars building a fiber grid, reaching schools and government buildings, and offered another billion in financial incentives to phone companies that strung broadband links to homes. Tough competition drove prices down, demand surged and the country was on a roll. "

"President Bush has said all Americans should have access to broadband by 2007. To reach that goal, he has promised to remove bureaucratic obstacles. But, unlike the Korean government, his administration is not pumping money into the market."

"The South Korean government ensured competition by ending state-owned Korea Telecom's monopoly. The government spent billions of dollars building a fiber grid, reaching schools and government buildings, and offered another billion in financial incentives to phone companies that strung broadband links to homes. Tough competition drove prices down, demand surged and the country was on a roll. "

"In Korea, competition has been a driving force. In the U.S., you often only have one cable company, and the company is not forced to upgrade its speed," he said. "I have had DSL for three years and I have never been approached about an upgrade. In Korea, you can even watch television on DSL. "

 

5:30:46 PM