South Korea’s mobile industry is many years ahead of the US, largely due to the government’s active role in ensuring competitive forces don’t interfere with technical progress. Here’s an example:

The Korean government is pushing the mobile telcos in the country to open their networks with the intention of creating a wireless network as efficient and popular as the World Wide Web…

But of course there is a cost to government control:

There’s talk of punishment for carriers which don’t respond to the governments imprecations

Via MocoNews.