Rarely do I know of a fellow Pinoy (living here in the Philippines, of course) who does NOT complain about our slow (and expensive) DSL/Broadband connections. When I was in Korea, DSL was uber-fast! I downloaded an 800MB file in about 7 minutes – something that would require almost overnight back in my house.

Check out the comparative chart above on DSL speeds per country. As expected, Japan and Korea led the pack. Broadband there is fast and cheap! And yes, they do not need CDs to distribute online games like we do. Wanna know how cheap the rates are? Click below…

First, the top 10 DSL countries (sorry, my fellow Filipinos, we’re not here huhuhuhu)… btw, the US is not even here too

1. Japan
2. Korea
3. Finland
4. Sweden
5. France
6. Netherlands
7. Portugal
8. Canada
9. Poland
10. Norway

Ok, according to this blog, DSL rates in Hong Kong start out at 200 Mbps for $88.20 and 100 Mbps for $48.50. Compare that to even business packages from PLDT or Globe and it’s still cheap (considering the speed you’re getting). If you want to download like a maniac, you can shell out around $200 and get a Gigabit (a BILLION bits per second) connection.

My mind can’t figure that out. If I have that speed here at home, I wouldn’t know what to do. The options are unlimited.

How about you? What would you do with those speeds?

I hope that our telcos get their act together and start a fiber-optic project that will reduce rates and give us the SPEED that we deserve.

Source: Chart by ITIF

Further Reading

• Fiber Optic in Japan and Korea

• More infotech news here