South Korea Has World’s Fastest Internet

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 1, 8:45AM EDT

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People who want to have the world’s fastest broadband connections should stay away from parts of the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. They also should move to South Korea. Perhaps this is one reason why the U.S. federal government continues to press for higher speed at lower costs, not just in large cities, but across the country.

According to a new study from the Open Technology Institute, Seoul has download and upload speeds of 1,000 Mbps for the highest tier of service available. It is among the fastest in any major city in the world, and some minor ones. Speed is comparable in Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as, oddly, Chattanooga, Tenn.; Kansas City, Kans.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Lafayette, La. So, if Americans can’t move to South Korea, they can move to several small American cities.

Where is there high-speed Internet in large U.S. cities? There isn’t any. Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., have upload and download speeds of 500 Mbps. In San Francisco, the tech capital of the world, the upload and download speeds are 200 Mbps.

The cost of broadband in the United States is, for the most part, unusually high. Based on monthly price of the fastest Internet service, the figure in Seoul is $30.30, in Tokyo $39.15 and in Hong Kong $37.41. In New York, Los Angeles and Washington, the comparable number is $299.99.

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The report comments on the obvious:

Overall, the data that we have collected in the past three years demonstrates that the majority of U.S. cities surveyed lag behind their international peers, paying more money for slower Internet access.

Why should any part of the report matter? Likely because there is some correlation between Internet speed and what is readily available to users in terms of information, content, news and in particular video. If any of this is true, much of the United States is at a significant disadvantage.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.