If someone asks me what kind of words can intrigue you a lot I won’t hesitate to say the word “Convergence”. It has long been a hot topic in various industries such as Media, IT, and Telecom and has always been around us.

A month ago I took a lecture on digital convergence in a college and I was surprised that most students had a quite good understanding of converged services saying IPTV, VoIP, and DMB(Mobile TV). What they knew is not about terms like media convergence, IT convergence, etc. What they understood is the changes driven by convergence. They know that they can watch territorial TV programs on their cell phones and TVs through broadband, which didn’t exist when they were in junior high. So what I did in the class is to show them how the changes have occurred and new changes will occur.

Below is a snapshot of the convergence history and trend in Korea that we are experiencing nowadays.

In Korea, convergence between different industries has become essential for companies to create new markets and to increase their profit margin as most markets have matured. So there are new types of businesses coming to market.

Source: Digital Convergence Research

Below is the ppt that I used in a class. If you want to know more about digital convergence business in Korea you can take a look at it.

Digital Convergence Business in Korea 2010

South Korea was ranked second in the 2008 broadband leadership, conducted by the Saïd Business School at Oxford and the University of Oviedo in Spain, and sponsored by Cisco Systems, the telecommunications equipment maker. This year, however, South Korea retakes the top spot in an annual ranking of broadband quality, achieving a broadband penetration rate of 97 percent and quality score of 66 points, followed by Japan with 64 percent and 64 points, respectively.

The study takes into account the download and upload speeds of Internet connections, rather than simply comparing market penetration rates since the quality of connections has grown more important as online services such as IPTV(Internet Protocol television) are expected to become popular in the near future.

The reason why South Korea was ranked second in the 2008 broadband leadership is that the broadband quality wasn’t good compared with its highest broadband penetration rate in the world. However, with the government’s continuous efforts such as the ultra broadband convergence network(UBcN) plan the broadband quality has been significantly improved as you can see below.

The Korea Communications Commission has recently announced that it plans to invest 34 trillion won(roughly 24.6 billion dollars) including investment of about 32.8 trillion won from private sectors in the country’s IT infrastructure. The proposed plan by the KCC aims to meet the expected demand from the future broadcasting and communications services by building the ultra broadband convergence network(UBcN) and replacing the circuit-switched telephone network with an IP telephony network, which will bring the following changes.

The government expects the IT infrastructure investment will create more jobs and boost the country’s economy. Also, it is assumed that a virtuous cycle can be created with investment from private sectors.

According to the KCC, the plan tends to suggest a new vision for the future of IT Korea. It is promised that the government will not take any action to force private sector operators to invest, but it believes that the operators will play big roles in accomplishing the plan being drawn by reflecting their opinions.