South Korea is already known to have the fastest internet connection in the world.
One of country's largest broadband providers, SK Broadband, has upgraded its speed by rolling out internet connection running at 2.5 gigabits per second in the country. The company estimates that users would be able to download a 90-minute HD movie in just under three minutes.
The announcement came two months after the South Korean government said that it will pick two consortia to work on projects aimed at accelerating the commercialization of 10 Gb internet. The country also has plans to commercialize 5G network, and run its internet at 5 and 10 Gbps in half of 2018.
SK Broadband, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the country's largest wireless carrier, SK Telecom, uses gigabit passive optical network (or GPON) technology. This technology uses what's known as a "point-to-multipoint architecture," in which a single core optical fiber can support 52.5 Gbps with 128 subscribers.
When multiple devices such as smartphones, tablets, and AI speakers are used, each device can get a maximum internet speed of 1Gbps, with an average speed of 833Mbps. This is about three times faster than the competing 333Mbps, the company said.
This makes internet connection in the country a lot faster, leaving the rest of the world behind.
For comparison, internet in the U.S in 2017 was clocked at 18.7 megabits per second, with average broadband adoption rate of 26.1 megabits, according to Akamai's State of the Internet Report.
While the coverage of this GPON technology is at the time less than a half, SK Broadband is already investing one trillion won (about $933 million) to double it from 40 to 80 percent by 2020.
