Travellers on the Seoul Metro looking at their phones. Pic by Marc Smith, used under licence

Imagine if the UK's average connection speed was quadrupled to 17.5Mbps; superfast broadband penetration was cranked up nearly two-and-half-times to 83%; and the DAB network upgraded to send live TV to our mobiles. How far in the future would you have to go to see what that might be like?

Sadly the TARDIS outside Television Centre is in for a service. But if you do want to find out, take a look at South Korea. I was in Seoul earlier this month at the Korean Communications Conference to find out more about how Korea's impressive communications infrastructure is challenging some of our assumptions about broadcasting.

DMB allows high-quality TV reception on-the-move. Introduced by Korea in 2004, it's now very widely used on mobile phones, personal media players, tablet computers and is routinely fitted in cars. And whilst the auction for 4G spectrum is yet to take place in the UK, 4G LTE started in Korea midway through 2011.

These developments have meant that bigger mobile phone screens - between a tablet and a smartphone - have become extremely popular, squeezing the market for devices such as the iPad.

A second assumption challenged by South Korea's experience is that consumers by instinct prefer linear broadcasting to on-demand. In the UK, catch-up viewing of the BBC's TV services makes up about 1% of total viewing. On some measures, in Korea around half of total viewing is now via catch-up.

As the home of the world's best and fastest communications infrastructure, Korea also lays claim to some of the most innovative companies shaping consumer technology's future. They are leading the way in how we may interact with our TVs, already producing models that provide voice and motion control as well as face recognition. Significantly more advanced systems are in development however, including 'brain wave TV' which, via headgear, can identify broad categories of viewers' thoughts.

A potentially nearer-term consumer technology is holographic TV. At the moment, holographic technology is occasionally used for exhibition or advertising displays and can use a lot of data to transmit, but many pundits - such as the Korean Communication Commission's Dr Sang-il Park, a former CTO of Samsung - believe it will be far more significant and popular than current 'basic' 3D. It's certainly clear from Korean manufacturers that there is a lot more 'smartness' to come in TV manufacture, including artificial intelligence.

My sense after visiting South Korea is that in the UK we shouldn't be complacent about the continued success of the traditional broadcasting model.

The UK sector may evolve very rapidly indeed as the speed, availability and convenience of digital and IP functionalities reaches a tipping point into the fully mainstream.

John Tate is Director, BBC Policy & Strategy and Chairman, BBC Studios & Post-Production

The BBC strongly believes that the open internet needs to be safeguarded to ensure consumers can access all the internet content and services of their choice. We're not opposed to premium internet services if consumers want to pay extra, but it's critical that no matter how many fast lanes there are, the 'best efforts' open internet should itself provide a very good, and consistently and fairly delivered, service.

Plum's report [PDF] challenges these arguments and says that, in practice, great content from providers such as the BBC drives demand for broadband connectivity, which in turn has driven fixed and mobile broadband revenues of approximately €155 billion in Europe in 2010.

The report responds to the Secretary of State's challenge at the Open Internet roundtable in March for industry to develop some 'rules of the road' to build on the existing transparency work by ISPs. It does not call for additional regulation at this stage but this clearly remains an option if a self-regulatory approach fails.

We support Plum's analysis and recommendations, and think it makes a useful contribution to the debate.

John Tate is Director, BBC Policy & Strategy and Chairman, BBC Studios & Post-Production