Get your jealousy ready, world: South Korea, already the undisputed global leader when it comes to broadband speeds, is set to unveil 10Gbps (gigabits per second) Internet service at a conference in Busan on Monday.
SK Broadband announced last week that it was going to introduce 10Gbps broadband service at the 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-14) on Oct. 20. To put this into perspective, a 10Gbps broadband connection would be able to transfer 1GB of data in 0.8 seconds, which is about two blinks of an eye.
The company will set up a booth at the conference to give attendees a chance to experience what 10Gbps feels like. The booth will also allow visitors to compare 10Gbps with slower speeds, such as 100Mbps (megabits per second) or 1Gbps, according to BusinessKorea.
Of course, just because 10Gbps speeds are showcased at a conference doesn’t mean it will hit homes and offices anytime soon. But the imminent announcement from SK Broadband is impressive nonetheless. Earlier this year, Google CFO Patrick Pichette shared the company’s plans to achieve 10Gbps data transfer rates, which would be 10 times Google Fiber’s 1Gbps rate.
According to Akamai’s Q2 2014 The State of the Internet report, South Korea has an average Internet connection speed of 24.6Mbps, placing it well ahead of No. 2 Hong Kong with 15.7 Mbps. The U.S. ranked No. 14 with an average Internet connection speed of 11.4Mbps.
SK Broadband’s 10Gbps broadband connection would be nearly 407 times faster than the country’s average 24.6Mbps Internet speed.
In July, Bell Labs announced that it had achieved 10Gbps using traditional copper telephone lines.
