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Comment by franhield | Hacker News Reader

South Korea is one of the leaders in technology and other fields. Also, they are one of the fastest internet providers in the whole world. The problem is that the country can truly unleash its untapped potential if the North and the South decided to unify under the leadership of the South.

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Being a fast internet provider is all relative. If you only had to maintain the landmass equivalent to the state of Indiana, you can quickly upgrade everyone's infrastructure. The government also initially started the telecommunications projects, now they're all transitioned to the private sector.

North and South Korea are complementary in economic capability. Some even go as far at to conclude that the reunification efforts between North and South Korea may be hindered because of this fact.

I don't think the land size argument really holds water. You can provide good internet in the top 10 major economic metros, and in aggregate that is a small landmass. And the USA has a very good bandwidth capacity at the data center level, so that is not a bottleneck either. It's purely political in the USA.

What' the average internet speed in Indiana?

pretty poor, as a percentage of land mass.

not too bad, as a percentage of population.

Most of Indiana by land is (very) rural, and in probably half of counties the fastest internet available will be sub 10Mbps.

In the major metro areas, Verizon/Frontier, Comcast, and AT&T "compete" and provide 1Gbps, with Frontier at least offering FTTH. I pay $60/month for 400/400 fiber.

source: i worked for a (rural) ISP in Indiana.

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