Widened Information Gaps Between Urban And Rural Areas

`Overflowing in the metropolitan cities but not a bit in local areas…`

Although the wire and wireless communication networks are the backbones of information communications, the area dependencies of the quality networks are getting severe.

While the redundant investments are being made in the metropolitan cities, super-high speed internet service has not yet been shown in the local cities of Eup or Myoun.

Depending on such infrastructures, the `digital divide` among cities will be get deeper.

According to Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) on July 31, the subscription rate for super-high speed internet service was 11.96 percent in Seoul, as of the end of last year. In contrast, it was 4.15 % in Choongnam and 4.62 percent in Jeonnam. More than half of the Eup communities are not equipped with super-high speed internet networks.

In Metropolitan cites, including Seoul, the relevant businessmen are excessively competing with one another, generating side effects; for example, some of them suffered profit losses and had to close the business.

- Two faces of the super-high speed internet

Mr. Choi (32), who lives in Youngduk-Gun, Kyungbuk, has been waiting for super-high speed internet service for a year. Since there is no telephone station close to his house, he was not able to subscribe to the super-high speed internet service of Korea Telecom. Although he thought about the satellite internet service, it is known to be inferior to the wire service so that he uses a telephone modem, whose internet service is as slow as `turtle`.

However, for Seoul Seocho-Gu A-Apartment complex residents, there are more than 5 internet service providers; Korea Telecom, Hanaro Telecom, Durunet etc.

Although the total number of houses are just 3,200, this area is regarded as a key market so that large or small providers are fervently competing with each other.

- Portable phone

Unnecessary redundant investments also appear in portable phone businesses. For example, for national routes in Kangwon, there are no more than 10 users per day. Nevertheless, 3 providers (SK Telecom, KTF, LG Telecom) have installed their base stations in this area.

Since the daily fees of the portable phones are less than 1,000 won, such amount cannot cover the fees of heating/cooling system, electricity and exclusive line-usage at all. In the beach areas of Kangwon, the usage during the three idle seasons is no more than 1/10 of the summer vacation season.

Thus, the experts emphasize a necessity of `partial roaming`, in which each provider can share its base station with others within Myoun communities that have less than 30 percent operation percentage. LG Telecom said, ``Some base stations in the outback areas (less than or equal to Myoun) have 15 percent operation percentage on average. Thus, mutual share must be launched as soon as possible.``

freewill@donga.com