> the scheme will provide over seven million subscribers with unlimited downloads at just 400 kbps after their data allowances expire.
Does this mean it’s not a universal entitlement as such, because you presumably first have to pay for a plan with an allowance? (Not to mention having to pay for a device).
In most countries you can either sign up for contracts with regular data allowance, or buy pay-as-you go phones which require topups.
It sounds like if you bought a pay-as-you-go sim card in Korea that it would immediately give you the slower unlimited connection without needing to pay for allowance first.
I think despite needing money, it can still be considered a right, IDs cost money but you have the right to have them, and I'm pretty sure it means it could extend to government paying for it eventually (depending on your social class I guess).
Ah, so it's like the right to own jewelry (historically, there have been places where only nobility could legal own and wear it): you have the right to buy them, no one would stop you or take them away from you, but you still need enough money to buy it.
I imagine the same applies to the rights to live, to have access to water, and to receive medicine help (which is IIRC is why the Soviets claimed they refused to sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: they argued for their version of the declaration that would actually bind the stated to make sure those goods/rights are actually universally provided; incidentally — and it's one of the examples they've actually used — that would mean that e.g. printing political leaflets for distribution, falling under free speech and political distribution, would also have to be paid for by someone. As you may imagine, most of the other countries weren't particularly fond of the idea that they'd end up themselves financing the printing and distribution of Communist propaganda).
yeah 400 kbps is almost the easy part. you still need a line, a handset, and apps that still run on the cheapest phone around. hard to call that universal in practice.
The USA has affordable broadband schemes (I think current setup the gov pays $9.25/mo towards your connection) and IIRC pretty much every broadband provider has a plan at exactly this cost to provide the minimum legal definition of "broadband".
"The Affordable Connectivity Program stopped accepting new consumer applications and enrollments on February 7, 2024....On January 11, 2024, due to a lack of additional funding from Congress" [1]
I think SK did the right thing. Access to information is important even at 400kbps which is pretty darn fast considering some people grew up running 56kbps and never complained.
That was before websites were 40MB or more of garbage though so keep that in perspective. Also broadband here is supposedly 100mbps and giving more people access should drive cheaper Internet but also being America we have ISP monopoly by choice per city so I'm not sure any of the economics pans out.
Imagine how wonderful it’d be if the US had fiber to the home that would trickle at 1-10mb/s even with no subscription- but you could subscribe with any provider for more.
they gave you a slow lane on their network, whether you can get onto their network is your issue. Phones aren't particularly expensive, I bought mine used for $60 and I've found plenty of working smartphones literally on the curbs. Should they buy you a car and a house too?
Crazy, I've never heard of such a plan anywhere.
But given how essential the internet is to everything we do on a daily basis, that makes a lot of sense. However, I would like to see the existing situation that lead to this decision. Were there many people who couldn't do things anymore due to lacking internet access? Was there public pressure to do this or did they just think it a good idea?
My assumption so far was that there are those who use the internet, they're usually fine, and those that don't - they won't benefit much. But no idea about South Korea.
Anyway, cheaper and unlimited access is always a good idea!
At the height of the pandemic, the UK mandated zero-rating data for mobile connection to .gov.uk and .NHS.uk domains, along with several other charitable sites.
(I was part of the team working on that proposal.)
The UK does have net neutrality, and it's quite strictly regulated by Ofcom, which produces an annual report showing compliance and highlighting any issues it has investigated:
Things like restrictions on tethering and using a SIM in a router are forbidden.
Unlike most countries, net neutrality has never been a political football in the UK.
Ofcom groups zero rating schemes into three types:
Type one - government and NGO services (always allowed).
Type two - where categories of service (e.g. video or music streaming apps) are zero rated, but any service fitting into the category can apply to be zero rated by the network.
Type three - any other kind of zero rating.
Things like the VOXI Unlimited Social Media packages fit into Type Two, so are expressly permitted.
For the rest, Ofcom assessed the impact on consumers, which is generally low.
Even in the US which is well behind SK in the digital curve, I’ve heard anecdotally that a huge problem with reintegrating some populations like the homeless, poor or elderly is that job applications are virtually all online now.
Maybe not general data cap exemption but for as long as I remember a lot of carriers in Europe whitelist certain apps that people think of as "essential" that work even when you've reached your data limit - such as WhatsApp and Messenger. Perhaps there are certain applications specific to South Korea that people think as essential/universal and expect them to work without a data plan (even maybe related to the digital ID thing they have there).
Here in Spain a few years ago some ISP's just put a data cap about 2.7KBPS (2-3G?) and call it a day. Enough for text sites, messages and the like. But if you were smart (mosh, NNTP)... you could connect to some public Unix servers and fire up Lynx/Links at crazy speeds under a Tmux window and be able to read sites/blog posts and the like. And with edbrowse, even comment on some simple JS sites.
With some cachés set for my audio player I could even listen to some odd Avant Gardé radio streams -think Frank Zappa like- at http://dir.xiph.org with 16 KBPS quality in OPUS format. Not totally robotic, it sounded better than old MP3's at 32KBPS.
But to really reach the poor people, you would also need to deploy phones, not only data/traffic/WiFi:
For sure for lot of people 10-20 USD monthly bill is already too high, but buying a phone that is somehow not outdated and capable of running all the apps needed, this is a much higher barrier (of lets say 200-300 USD for a somehow solid phone that will last some time9
> of lets say 200-300 USD for a somehow solid phone
More like 30-50 USD, judging by the research I did in 5 minutes (or 20-30 USD if you agree to a used phone).
No, I understand that Americans love to pay several times more for their houses, healthcare, education, coffee and everything else simply on principle, pretending that there are no other options, but you can literally google the largest phone manufacturers in the world and look at the prices of their current starter models.
And yes, we are talking about full-fledged smartphones that are quite pleasant to use, with up-to-date hardware and the latest versions of the operating system. Not some outdated torture devices with zero reliability.
> google the largest phone manufacturers in the world and look at the prices of their current starter models.
for most people at the very low end of low income and low education group, this is a huge barrier.
Look: I haven been neighbours with people who had to search their whole appartment for a working simple pen to take a note - when asking for it they looked at me like an Alien: Really poor and uneducated people have high barriers in even the simpelst things.
Well, I guess this means that they have successfully solved their smartphone availability problem. Otherwise, note taking tasks with a pen would be more important for them.
A weird part about the modern world is that a cell phone is incredibly cheap compared to shelter, food, or just about anything else. You’d be surprised how many homeless folks have phones.
Phones can be had for a lot less than that - you can find decent enough used phones that will last a year or two for under $100, which is cheap enough that almost everyone can scrounge together the money for it.
I’m guessing you’ve never been poor. For people living in poverty, finding $100 for a one time purchase is extremely difficult - much more than say finding $10 per month. Finance options are notoriously predatory and expensive. Plus if it only lasts a year then the amortized cost is about the same as the hypothetical cheap service.
Thanks!
Exactly, this is what I was trying to tell: Its the barrier of accumulating the "once a time payment" in that volume, because methods for savings are not applied (for several reasons, unregular income, too low income, debt, drugs etc.)
Canada requires mobile service providers to have a 35$ a month data plan, and the low-income support payments will add 35$ a month to the base rate if you provide a cell phone bill.
There are many such schemes for low income households in the united states to subsidize internet access for students. There were some federal and other programs.
Probably LTE is cheaper to deploy then actually wiring a house up anyway.
I work with a US non-profit that has provided both free and very low cost Internet access over the last 4 years (fixed home wifi, no phone). We have primarily used 4G/5G, including private networks built and owned by the non-profit, public/private partnerships with cities that own a 4G network, and now primarily very low cost wifi hotspots serviced by a major carrier.
> Were there many people who couldn't do things anymore due to lacking internet access?
Almost anythijg now requires internet access. Banking, schools, parking, transport tickets, almost any form of communication with almost any organization (besides phone, but some companies don't even have phone numbers anymore) etc.
That's like saying that using tax dollars to pay for roads assumes that everyone has a car.
MOST people do use things like government/taxpayer funded roads, public transportation, water, healthcare, etc that are considered as basic necessities.
As far as everyone needing a smartphone, or e-mail address, that ship has already sailed. Here in the US, try using "Parkmobile" without a mobile phone.
Parkmobile lets you call their customer service number to pay for parking, so (assuming that process actually works) you would indeed need a mobile phone, but not a smartphone.
Communication access is a universal need and does not necessarily require smartphone usage. The US has had universal access programs since at least the mid 80s
> unlimited downloads at just 400 kbps after their data allowances expire
This is not new. Many Korean mobile plans actually offer even higher unlimited throttled speeds (up to 10 Mbps!)
- You can filter plans by the unlimited throttled speed on this site. The plans are usually titled by `{data amount} + {throttled speed}`: https://www.moyoplan.com/plans
- Even if not throttled, I think data overage charges were capped at about $13 (20K KRW)
So perhaps unlimited 400 kbps will become standard: i.e. no plans will ever charge data overage fees?
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The linked statement didn't seem to specifically mention the 400 kbps thing at all.
I'd perfectly live with a forever free connection with about 16/32 KBPS. It can do lots of stuff in text mode. Not for video or big files, but enough to fill some pages.
That would mean accesible web pages, and forget about JS based captchas and the like.
Does this mean it’s not a universal entitlement as such, because you presumably first have to pay for a plan with an allowance? (Not to mention having to pay for a device).
It sounds like if you bought a pay-as-you-go sim card in Korea that it would immediately give you the slower unlimited connection without needing to pay for allowance first.
I imagine the same applies to the rights to live, to have access to water, and to receive medicine help (which is IIRC is why the Soviets claimed they refused to sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: they argued for their version of the declaration that would actually bind the stated to make sure those goods/rights are actually universally provided; incidentally — and it's one of the examples they've actually used — that would mean that e.g. printing political leaflets for distribution, falling under free speech and political distribution, would also have to be paid for by someone. As you may imagine, most of the other countries weren't particularly fond of the idea that they'd end up themselves financing the printing and distribution of Communist propaganda).
"The Affordable Connectivity Program stopped accepting new consumer applications and enrollments on February 7, 2024....On January 11, 2024, due to a lack of additional funding from Congress" [1]
I think SK did the right thing. Access to information is important even at 400kbps which is pretty darn fast considering some people grew up running 56kbps and never complained.
1. https://www.fcc.gov/affordable-connectivity-program
Ah, the dream.
My assumption so far was that there are those who use the internet, they're usually fine, and those that don't - they won't benefit much. But no idea about South Korea. Anyway, cheaper and unlimited access is always a good idea!
(I was part of the team working on that proposal.)
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/internet-based-services/network-neu...
Things like restrictions on tethering and using a SIM in a router are forbidden.
Unlike most countries, net neutrality has never been a political football in the UK.
Ofcom groups zero rating schemes into three types:
Type one - government and NGO services (always allowed).
Type two - where categories of service (e.g. video or music streaming apps) are zero rated, but any service fitting into the category can apply to be zero rated by the network.
Type three - any other kind of zero rating.
Things like the VOXI Unlimited Social Media packages fit into Type Two, so are expressly permitted.
For the rest, Ofcom assessed the impact on consumers, which is generally low.
With some cachés set for my audio player I could even listen to some odd Avant Gardé radio streams -think Frank Zappa like- at http://dir.xiph.org with 16 KBPS quality in OPUS format. Not totally robotic, it sounded better than old MP3's at 32KBPS.
More like 30-50 USD, judging by the research I did in 5 minutes (or 20-30 USD if you agree to a used phone).
No, I understand that Americans love to pay several times more for their houses, healthcare, education, coffee and everything else simply on principle, pretending that there are no other options, but you can literally google the largest phone manufacturers in the world and look at the prices of their current starter models.
And yes, we are talking about full-fledged smartphones that are quite pleasant to use, with up-to-date hardware and the latest versions of the operating system. Not some outdated torture devices with zero reliability.
for most people at the very low end of low income and low education group, this is a huge barrier.
Look: I haven been neighbours with people who had to search their whole appartment for a working simple pen to take a note - when asking for it they looked at me like an Alien: Really poor and uneducated people have high barriers in even the simpelst things.
Well, I guess this means that they have successfully solved their smartphone availability problem. Otherwise, note taking tasks with a pen would be more important for them.
Probably LTE is cheaper to deploy then actually wiring a house up anyway.
Almost anythijg now requires internet access. Banking, schools, parking, transport tickets, almost any form of communication with almost any organization (besides phone, but some companies don't even have phone numbers anymore) etc.
MOST people do use things like government/taxpayer funded roads, public transportation, water, healthcare, etc that are considered as basic necessities.
As far as everyone needing a smartphone, or e-mail address, that ship has already sailed. Here in the US, try using "Parkmobile" without a mobile phone.
This is not new. Many Korean mobile plans actually offer even higher unlimited throttled speeds (up to 10 Mbps!)
- You can filter plans by the unlimited throttled speed on this site. The plans are usually titled by `{data amount} + {throttled speed}`: https://www.moyoplan.com/plans
- Even if not throttled, I think data overage charges were capped at about $13 (20K KRW)
So perhaps unlimited 400 kbps will become standard: i.e. no plans will ever charge data overage fees?
---
The linked statement didn't seem to specifically mention the 400 kbps thing at all.
That would mean accesible web pages, and forget about JS based captchas and the like.