Gizmodo reports that Sony has just “partnered with Korean internet provider KT Corp. to offer internet service for the PSP via the company’s 14,000 hotspots.” This news is both thrilling and saddening for me, because 1) Koreans get all the good shit, and 2) they’ve got a wireless hotspot for every 5 sq. km. (14,000 spots over a land area of 98,000 sq. km.), which is probably one of the highest ratios in the world.
In the Philippines, by contrast, we have, oh, 1 hotspot per 600 sq. km. (a little less than 500 spots* over a land area of about 295,000 sq. km.). Not that that’s a big deal, considering that less than 10% of the population (4 million out of 85 million, as of 2002) are regular internet users, and half of that reside in the Metro Manila area. So actually, if you consider that Metro Manila only has a land area of about 600 sq. km., and you assume that about 80% of the country’s hotspots are probably in that area, it’s not a bad ratio.
*A rough and probably baseless estimate; the leading wireless internet provider in the country has about 90 operational hotspots, so 500 seems to be a decent ballpark figure.