Korea: Come for the Soju, Stay for the Broadband

The typical real-time Internet connection speed in the United States is a mortifying 2.35 megabits per second, so it’s particularly galling to hear that Korea, which already offers its citizens broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps, is planning to introduce 1Gbps service by 2012. That’s a tenfold increase. Which means that with Comcast (CMCSA) and Verizon (VZ) only now planning for speeds approaching 100 Mbps by 2010, the U.S.–the country that invented the Internet–will continue to be a broadband laggard.