Narrowing the Digital Infrastructure Divide among Cities and Rural Areas

Korea possesses a high-speed network infrastructure that excels those of other advanced countries, as a result of a series of network advancement projects; however, although small farming and fishing villages in remote places can access the Internet, the data rate remains low. As a result, various convergence services cannot be used in these areas, unlike in metropolitan cities and small and medium sized cities, and the digital divide between cities and rural areas will emerge as a social issue. In this paper, we discuss the BcN establishment project to provide high-speed network combination services such as IPTV and VoIP to rural areas in mountainous areas, and estimate the expected impacts.