Here are some broadband highlights for the fourth quarter of 2012 from Akamai’s official press release

• Quarter-over-quarter, the global average connection speed rose 5 percent to 2.9 Mbps
• On a year-over-year basis, average connection speeds grew by 25 percent. South Korea had an average speed of 14 Mbps while Japan came in second with 10.8 Mbps and the U.S. came in the eighth spot with 7.4 Mbps.
• Year-over-year, global average peak connection speeds once again demonstrated significant improvement, rising 35 percent. Hong Kong came in first with peak speed of 57.5 Mbps while South Korea came in at 49.3 Mbps. The United States came in 13th at 31.5 Mbps.
• Global broadband adoption rates are closer to 42 percent while high broadband (higher than 10 Mbps) adoption rates are at 11 percent. In South Korea, nearly 49 percent of connections qualify as high-broadband, followed by Japan with 39 percent and the U.S. at 19 percent. South Korea has 86 percent broadband penetration, while the U.S. stands at 64 percent.
• The average connection speeds on surveyed mobile networks ranged from just over 8.0 Mbps to 345 kbps.
• Ericsson, which partners with Akamai, said that mobile data traffic doubled from the fourth quarter of 2011 to the fourth quarter of 2012. It was up a whopping 28 percent between the third and fourth quarter of 2012.
• In Europe, Romania lead the charts with a fourth quarter average peak connection speed of 42.6 Mbps, followed by Switzerland with 34.2 Mbps and Belgium at 33.4 Mbps. In comparison, Hong Kong average peak connection clocked in at 57.5 Mbps.
• About 23 percent of Swiss connections are 10 Mbps or higher, followed by Netherlands which has 21 percent high-broadband adoption rate, just ahead of Sweden with 19 percent.

Here is a look at the U.S. broadband scenario.

• Vermont is the fastest state with average connection speed of 10.8 Mbps, followed by Delaware with 10.6 Mbps.
• Akamai said that the average peak connection speed increased by 1.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 to 43.1 Mbps, with Vermont again topping the charts with 41.4 Mbps.
• When it comes to high-broadband, nearly 34 percent of broadband connections in New Hampshire are above 10 Mbps, followed by Washington D.C. with 33 percent and New Jersey, also at 33 percent. Thanks to the presence of Verizon FiOS, New Jersey saw a 12 percent quarter over quarter growth in high-broadband connections.
• In terms of broadband adoption, Delaware is tops with 87 percent of its connections faster than 4 Mbps, followed by New Hampshire (87 percent) and Rhode Island (83 percent.)

As you might have noticed: if you are a small country (or a smaller state), you can have really high broadband adoption because it is easier to build out your broadband infrastructure. Of course, it also helps if there are people willing to spend money on this stuff.

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“We are looking for highly motivated individuals with the right mix of technical, organizational and communication skills to provide localization for the Netflix experience in the following languages: Turkish, Dutch, Hindi, French, and Korean.”

The company is also looking for an engineer to be the internationalization and localization evangelist at the company, further highlighting how important international markets are for Netflix.

Netflix has occasionally looked to hire employees to help with its internationalization efforts in the past, and job postings frequently contain countries that the company may not consider at all, just to make things less transparent for competitors. For example, in late 2011, a job offer listed “Turkish, Dutch, Russian, French, Hindi, German, Italian, Danish, Korean, Finnish, Japanese, and Spanish” as languages of interest.

Needless to say, Netflix hasn’t launched in Russia just yet. However, nine months after that job posting, the company announced plans to open shop in Northern Europe – including Finland and Denmark.

It’s very likely that South Korea, India and European countries such as the Netherlands, France and Belgium are at least under consideration as potential targets for further international expansion. Turkey seems less likely, but it’s certainly possible – the country has a thriving TV and movie industry, and it has seen an economic boom even as other parts of Europe have struggled.

Netflix is currently operating in over 40 countries, including the U.K. and Ireland, the Nordics, Latin America and Canada. It might take some time until we find out where Netflix will go next: executives said earlier this year that the company won’t embark on any further international expansions until late 2013 or early 2014. However, CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells also made it clear that they definitely want to expand further, writing in their letter to shareholders:

“Our launch in the Nordics was very successful, confirming our belief in the large international opportunity for our service.”

Map courtesy of Flickr user kcp4911.

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Seoul, South Korea

Sept. 27, 2012: Last year Schmidt took a trip to much less controversial South Korea, where he met with Samsung execs, promoted Nexus 7 and showed a sillier side by dancing along with Psy and his viral “Gangnam Style.”

Pyongyang, North Korea

A March cyber attack on South Korean computer networks has been traced to an IP address in China, despite many experts suspecting the attacks to originate in North Korea.  (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Jan. 7, 2013: Google’s executive chairman took what many saw as a strange and controversial trip to North Korea, where he advocated for a free and open internet in what he calls “the last really closed country in the world.”

Beijing, China

During a April 2006 trip to Beijing, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt spells Chinese characters “Gu Ge”  at the inauguration of the company new Chinese brand name. (Photo by Guang Niu/Getty Images)

Feb. 20, 2013: Attending a TED-like event known as Geek Park, Schmidt made his first public appearance in China in three years. In his hour-long talk, he discussed Google’s Android operating system and encouraged developers to write apps for it.

New Delhi, India

New Delhi (Thinkstock)

March 21, 2013: While on a trip to the Big Tent Activate Summit in New Delhi, Schmidt warned about heavyhanded control over the internet in China, where he had visited the month before, and advocated for better IT infrastructure in India.

Yangon, Myanmar

Old colonial palace in Yangon, Myanmar. (Thinkstock)

March 22, 2013: Schmidt became the first top  U.S. executive to visit Myanmar after its decades-long military dictatorship. There he promoted a free and open internet in a country ripe for IT expansion.

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Last week, Yahoo announced it will close its Korean business, explaining: “Despite the hard work of the team, the Korean operation has faced growing challenges over the past few years that now make scaling our business very difficult.”

Contrast that with App Annie data showing a 6x increase in Google Play revenue in the country since January…

What accounts for the difference?

Well, much of that growth in Android app revenue is likely because Google has this year improved payment options in its app store, including introducing subscriptions and in-app payments. After all, iTunes Store, which already had such functionality, has seen flat app revenue.

And other App Annie data shows the national picture is far from all about growth – app downloads across iOS and Android haven’t grown all year…

The difference appears to be that Google has a mobile apps ecosystem while Yahoo has only an advertising business.

Advertising firm JC Decaux reckons advertising spend in South Korea will slow from 2011′s 8.8 percent to 4.4 percent in 2013. But ZenithOptimedia reckons the market will grow by $1.6 billion by 2014.

AP reports:

“Yahoo’s South Korean market share has become negligible in recent years as users flocked to Naver, Daum and other portals operated by South Korean internet firms.

“Yahoo Korea was also hurt by the rapid adoption of smartphones and the mobile Internet, which made it more difficult to attract advertisers to web portals designed for desktop computers. Overture Korea added to problems by failing to renew key advertising deals.”

KoreanClick gives Yahoo just a 1.5 percent share of search (via WSJ).

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South Korea’s rising startups at the BeLaunch conference

South Korea’s future as a startup hub is still a work in progress but I see a lot of reasons to be optimistic about companies emerging from this country of 50 million people. I spent two days this past week at the BeLaunch conference in Korea, a new startup event that attracted 1,500 attendees and served as a showcase for dozens of new startups.

Many of the companies are still raw and need some seasoning. And as is the case in a lot of countries, there are a lot of me-too startups, building upon an existing idea while targeting the Korean market. But I also saw some real technology on display and some innovative ideas at work. Time will tell if any of them can make a dent in their home market before setting their sights abroad, but here are four that stood out to me.

Easy Works won Qualcomm Ventures’ $100,000 QPrize for South Korea at the BeLaunch conference, impressing judges with its Yeati application, a kind of mobile and visual version of LinkedIn. With Yeati, users are able to build a profile that includes a portfolio of their work, kind of like Behance. But it’s not just for designers and visual artists. The free app allows people to add work history, skills and keywords to their profile to make them easier to recruit and makes it simple for people to exchange information. The company was launched by Seri Sheen, who spent 13 years as an executive recruiter.

Yeati is not trying to take on LinkedIn head on but it’s targeted at a younger, more casual audience. As James Kwon, senior manager of Qualcomm Ventures in Korea put it, Yeati works for many users who perhaps haven’t had as much traditional work experience to put on their resume or LinkedIn profile. I liked that it was built with mobile in mind. The company plans to make money through granting access to recruiters and also through a design tool for users. It will wrap up its beta testing by the end of August with a full launch of the app to come soon after.

KnowRe provides an adaptive learning system for students, personalizing their education based on their progress. The system, which is starting with math, runs children through a series of questions. When a student encounters problems, KnowRe drills down and finds out what exactly the student struggled with. As they progress, KnowRe’s algorithm adapts to the student and helps them to understand the lessons. There’s also gamification and social elements to help motivate them.

KnowRe is launching first in the U.S. before moving to Korea and Japan. It is starting with algebra and geometry but hopes to expand to other subjects including the SAT. The idea is that teachers could use KnowRe to help move kids along on their studies. The teachers would be able to monitor their students’ progress and see where each one needs more help. KnowRe is trying to take on the big and complicated education technology market, a ripe opportunity that others like Khan Academy are tapping. It’s a tough business requiring obtaining the approval of school boards to get into classrooms, but I think KnowRe can work also as a tool for individual students. The basic service is free with a $29-a-month premium service.

Playnery is creating a cross-platform game engine for hardcore 3-D social games that look like Infinity Blade. The cool part of Playnery is that it will allow developers to create one game that can be synced and played between iOS and online. So some users could be playing from Facebook along with friends on an iPhone or iPad. The company is working on its first game called Mother of Myth, which will showcase its game engine. The online game can be played without a big download, allowing users to begin right away with progressive background downloading of game resources.

Playnery was launched in October last year by Henry Park, the former CEO of NFLAVOR, Aeonsoft and Gala Lab. Along with the launch of Mother of Myth next year, the company hopes to have other developers use its game engine, pitting it against companies such as Unity Technologies and Epic Games. It’s in talks with some big name social game makers, who may be able to use Playnery to create more hardcore social games.

SR-Mobile, a Korean company that also has offices in Plano, Texas, is looking to help cellular carriers make seamless handoffs with Wi-Fi networks, enabling them to easily offload traffic from their cellular networks. The company, which is demonstrating its technology later this month at the Mobile Asia Expo, allows a carrier to switch a call or data traffic seamlessly between Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G. It does this with the help of a virtual radio agent mobile application on a mobile device that automatically switches between cellular and Wi-Fi modems. The VRA app works with a smart radio mobile controller that can access the network server and transfers the network traffic to the network core.

The benefit of this approach is that it allows a Wi-Fi hotspot to act as a virtual base station, which can be easily added and managed by an operator. If there’s capacity on the Wi-Fi network, it can seamlessly handle calls and data but if it gets overcrowded, it can switch back to the cellular network. SR’s approach also means that a carrier can expand their network capacity without a lot of investment, by relying on their existing Wi-Fi network or their user’s private Wi-Fi network. SR, which was founded by James Lee, a former senior staffer at Samsung Telecom America, is working on a trial with Korean operator KT, which will test SR’s technology on select LG phones.

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One of the newest signs is the emergence of a startup conference called beLaunch, a two-day event in Seoul which will kick off next week. The inaugural conference is being touted as the first entrepreneurial event created by and made for other startups. Despite its grassroots origins, the gathering has attracted some big name sponsors including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Samsung. I’ll be there moderating a panel on fundraising with Maverick Capital’s Eric Kim and David Lee of XG Ventures and also looking for cool startups.

James Jung, the organizer of beLaunch and the CEO and founder of local tech blog beSuccess, said the vision for the conference is to help catalyze the startup community, providing tools and lessons that can help local companies go global. He said Koreans have traditionally shied away from startups, but thanks to more government prodding, corporate support and local success stories such as daily deals provider TicketMonster, which sold to LivingSocial last year, entrepreneurs are getting a taste for startup life. Facebook, through the movie The Social Network and its recent IPO, has also helped convince more people to give it a go.

“From last year to this year, people are really starting to get into startups,” Jung said. “People feel like this is a great ecosystem to make money.  There were startups before but there is an atmosphere now that is shaped by the media and successful stories.”

Startups like e-commerce site Coupang, which is now on a $600 million annual run rate, and Kakao Talk, a mobile communications app with more than 40 million users, are part of this new breed of startups in South Korea. They are showing that local companies can combine some of the best of East and West in creating successful ventures.

Jung said more private investors are also emerging to help support entrepreneurs, taking the place of the government, which has also been doling out money to startups. Big companies like local telecom operator KT have also started launching their own incubator programs to help encourage more innovation.

There’s still a chance that Korea’s newfound interest in startups is more of a passing fad. And it remains to be seen if more break-out hits can emerge on their own instead of being swallowed up by the big corporations. But Jung believes the first step is to get the community on the same page and to encourage local entrepreneurs to think big. And he’s hoping that events like beLaunch can bring about more of the other tools needed to make a start-up community successful.

“Money is important but that’s not everything,” said Jung. “We need more mentors and advanced entrepreneurs to give us lessons.  We need media and universities, the whole ecosystem.”

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The latest report, scheduled to be released later this week says that South Korean high-broadband penetration was 83 percent at the end of 2011. Akamai defines any connections that connect to its platform at speeds in excess of 5 Mbps as high-broadband connections.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, 27 percent of all connections to the Akamai’s network were made at high broadband speeds exceeding 5 Mbps. According to the data collected by Akamai, Europe dominates the list of top ten countries. Within the list of top 10 countries for high broadband adoption, seven are in Europe. The Netherlands has 67 percent high broadband adoption and follows South Korea. The United States ranks twelfth with 44 percent of its connections exceeding the 5 Mbps mark.

100 Fastest Cities Worldwide

• Of the top 50 fastest cities, two were in Sweden. The rest were in South Korea and Japan with Hong Kong being the other lone entrant. The average speeds of the top 50 cities/regions were between 21.8 Mbps and 8.5 Mbps, with South Korea’a Teagu taking the top spot during the fourth quarter of 2011.
• Using peak connections as a measure, South Korean cities of Taejon and Taegu logged speeds of 59.2 Mbps and 56.7 Mbps respectively.
• Of the 100 fastest cities worldwide, 69 cities including 61 in Japan, six in South Korea, one in Australia, as well as Hong Kong, rounded out the top 100.
• 22 US cities ranked among the top 100.
• Boston Metro has Q4 2011 average speeds of 8.4 Mbps, making it the fastest in the US, tied with Bergen Country, New Jersey.
• North Bergen, New Jersey is the 24th ranked city by peak connection speed of 40.7 Mbps
• Seven cities in Europe were included in the top 100.

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Employees at three major plants in Finland, Hungary and Mexico had been waiting anxiously for the announcement, which becomes the latest in a series of massive cuts to the company’s staff as it tries to find around $1 billion in savings to bolster the bottom line. Over the last year as Nokia tries to reorganize around its Windows Mobile strategy, the struggling mobile giant has slashed jobs, outsourced its Symbian development and closed a factory in Romania.

The company said that it reviewed its smartphone manufacturing operations and come to the conclusion that it made sense to move its manufacturing centers closer to the component suppliers, who are largely located in China. Instead, the remaining staff at the three locations would focus on receiving phones made in Asia and customizing them for the European or American market.

In a statement, executive vice president of Markets, Niklas Savander, said it would allow Nokia to act faster and be more responsive — two weaknesses that have been severely criticized as the business struggles to cope with the rise of rivals like Apple and Google’s Android.

“Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market. By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive.”

Nokia hasn’t actually said how much money it hopes to save through the changes, but it is clearly hoping to squeeze more out of its relationships with suppliers and get products out without the extensive delays they seem to have been subjected to.

In many ways, the move has been a very long time coming — the vast majority of the electronics industry has already moved manufacturing to China, either in-house or outsourced to companies like Foxconn, and Nokia’s decision will add an extra layer to the ongoing question of whether Western factories can compete at all with the Asian market.

That was one of the subjects explored in a recent New York Times series focusing on Apple’s manufacturing operations, which have shifted from American factories to China over the years.

Of course, the job losses will sting — and cuts in Finland will hardly boost its standing at home. But the reality is that the company had few options: inside a generation, China has become not only one of the cheapest electronic manufacturing markets in the world, but also the one that sports the greatest amount of expertise.

Could Nokia have done anything else?

Photograph of Nokia plant in Salo, Finland, used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user uncle-leo

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Comcast and Charter delivered average download speeds of 17.19 Megabits per second, followed by Cablevision at 16.40 Mbps, Cox at 15.76 Mbps, TWC at 14.41 Mbps and Insight at 14.22 Mbps. Verizon Communications fared better than its telco peers with an average download speed of 12.94 Mbps, thanks to FiOS Internet, its fiber-to-the-home service that provides up to 150 Mbps downstream. And overall, Verizon had the highest upstream speeds with an average of 7.41 Mbps. Still, the company’s legacy DSL services dragged down overall speeds.

AT&T delivered an overall average download speed of 4.40 Mbps, according to Net Index data for SBC and Bell South, which are the regional bell operating companies that now comprise AT&T. Qwest Communications, which last year merged with CenturyLink, delivered an average of 6.34 Mbps in 2011, the Net Index data shows.

Research firm Sanford Bernstein predicts that by 2020, cable operators will control about 70 percent of the U.S. broadband market. The research from Sanford Bernstein predicts that by 2020, AT&T’s U-verse will have 10.1 percent of the market, while Verizon’s FiOS will own about 7.9 percent. Given that Verizon has gotten in bed with cable companies, it doesn’t surprise me that they are not going to be a bigger portion of the broadband pie. Sanford Bernstein data also shows that there is not much competition in the U.Ss when it comes to broadband.

As an observation, these top speeds from cable companies are much slower than the top speeds in other countries such as South Korea, Japan, the Baltic nations and parts of Eastern Europe. Comcast and its cable brethren have to offer their higher bandwidth tiers — 50 Mbps or higher — at more affordable prices in order for those to become widely adopted.

When it comes to broadband, I am one of the fortunate “1 percent” — my average speed on any given day is between 60 Mbps to 95 Mbps (download) and about 75 Mbps (upload), thanks to a fiber-only ISP, WebPass.

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The English version of the paper is divided into four sections — “Supreme Leaders’ Activities,” “In DPRK,” “Inter-Korean” and “International.” The “Inter-Korean” section consists exclusively of articles criticizing South Korea; 56 of these, with headlines like “Lee Myung Bak Shrieks before Fatal End” and “Foolish Outbursts of Military Warmongers,” have been published since Wednesday.

South Korea’s Korea Times reported on Rodong Singmun‘s English version launch. South Koreans’ access to the website is blocked because the two countries are technically at war, the Korea Times reports, though they were able to access it for a brief time on Tuesday when its IP address changed.

Reading Rodong Singmun‘s articles is a somewhat surreal experience as they are a strange combination of incredibly boring, funny and scary. Following Kim Jong Il’s death, the paper reports (there are some bylines, but not on every article), even animals mourned: A bird “went stiff in death” a few meters from the place where Kim Jong Il once stood; flocks of magpies circled a statue of Kim Il Sung “crying with sorrow” and bears emerged from hibernation:

At that time three bears, a mother and two cubs, appeared on the road and cried in a mournful manner.

Bears live in deep forest and sleeps in a burrow in winter. That day, however, the bears appeared on the road in the daytime, on which Kim Jong Il took his way, and roared for a long time. It was really mysterious.

via CJR

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