South Korea still world's most connected country

With highest penetration, fastest speeds and lowest costs, South Korea is world's most connected economy.

South Korea remains the world's most advanced Internet and telecommunications economy, with high levels of access, usage and skills. South Korea is followed by northern European nations Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland. The U.S. remained in 17th place overall, but dropped three places when it came to access, according to a report released today by the UN International Communications Union (ITU).  

"This is mainly due to penetration rates for mobile cellular subscriptions and households with computer and Internet, where the U.S. has lower figures compared to the countries ranked above the U.S.," the Geneva-based ITU said.

The ITU report found that worldwide mobile broadband subscriptions surged last year, reaching 872 million last year, up from 531 million in 2009. Approximately one in eight people worldwide can now connect to the Internet.

Mobile subscriptions also grew 20 per cent over the past year to more than 5 billion, with penetration of over 100 per cent, or more than one mobile device per person, in developed countries and 70 per cent in developing countries at the end of 2010.

The survey of 152 countries found a growing divide between countries with super-fast broadband—like Sweden, South Korea and Japan—and those where high-speed access is lagging, particularly in Africa. The Internet was used by just 21 percent of the population in the developing world, compared with almost 70 percent in developed countries, the ITU said. Fixed-line broadband prices dropped by 52 percent globally between 2008 and 2010, but in Africa still cost on average almost three times monthly income. In developed countries, ICT services cost under 1.5 percent of monthly income.

Besides enjoying the highest levels of penetration, South Korea also has the world's fastest Internet connection speeds. By the end of 2012, the country intends every home to be connected with one gigabit per second speed, more than 200 times as fast as the average US household has.

And South Korea's Internet is also cheaper. While US residents typically pay about $46 a month for their comparatively slow service, South Koreans currently pay only $38 a month for above-average connection speeds of 100 megabits per second  A pilot project for the gigabit connection is now underway in South Korea: households pay just $27 a month for the super-fast connectivity.