ON JAPAN'S BROADBAND LEAD

SAME OLD STORY

I've long-talked about how the U.S. is increasingly falling behind other countries like Japan in wired and wireless broadband.  The Washington Post has a good article, with interesting tables, outlining on the types of mainstream Internet applications made possible by this lead in Japan. 

Here's how it starts out:

"TOKYO -- Americans invented the Internet, but the Japanese are running away with it.
Broadband service here is eight to 30 times as fast as in the United States -- and considerably cheaper. Japan has the world's fastest Internet connections, delivering more data at a lower cost than anywhere else, recent studies show.

Accelerating broadband speed in this country -- as well as in South Korea and much of Europe -- is pushing open doors to Internet innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States.

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.

Ultra-high-speed applications are being rolled out for low-cost, high-definition teleconferencing, for telemedicine -- which allows urban doctors to diagnose diseases from a distance -- and for advanced telecommuting to help Japan meet its goal of doubling the number of people who work from home by 2010."

It ends with a discussion on the next battle being fought between incumbent carriers and their competitors on the broadband front:

"The growing addiction to speed, ironically, is returning near-monopoly power in fiber to NTT, which owns and controls most new fiber lines to homes. Growth of new fiber connections exceeded DSL growth two years ago. Fiber is how all of Japan will soon be connected -- for phones, television and nearly all other services.

"NTT is becoming dominant again in the fiber broadband kingdom," Sato said.

That infuriates its competitors. Yahoo BB and others are demanding that the government once again compel NTT to unlock the lines.

In Japan, the regulatory wars over broadband are far from over."

The more things change, the more they remain the same.  True, that.

Comments

[Alex Tolley]

Graphic on global rates:

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/fig/
2720070502002.png

It is also important to understand what is the real speed subscribers are getting. The internet has been reporting many stories about ISPs not delivering on their "guaranteed speeds", blocking streams such as bitTorrents (net neutrality issue), and general blocking of users (Comcast and its invisible line on data upload/download).

It is certainly arguable that US subscribers do not get the service speeds advertized. Verizon advertises (upto) 768Kbs for basic DSL, but I rarely get more than 56 Kbps when I check. Currently Verizon seems to be blocking bitTorrents as well by deliberately bouncing the connection which requires constant manual modem resets on my network to restore my internet connection.

IMO, calling my service broadband is somewhat of a joke. Now that you have FiOS, what is your experience of Verizon's service - do they deliver on their speed promises and access?

While familiar with the situation in the US, I would like to know the experiences of subscribers in various s.e. asian countries in this regard. Does NTT restrict the service, do subscribers get the speeds that NTT offers?

[T1 Internet]

T1 internet access is much faster in other countries than in the U.S., up to 50 to 100 times faster.