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Fiber to the Home in Japan
Ranma sent in this story about a 100Mbps (!) consumer internet service being offered in Japan. Cost: US $40.00/month. Hmmm. I pay more than that for 384K DSL. See also Germany, which is apparently actually offering the much-promised but little-seen internet access over power lines.
Many fears where made about the quality of the backbone. Of course no backbone could handle tons of users each connected with 100 MBit who would leech the biggest downloads out of the web. But this is the common mistake, these services are not intended for this.
The main idea is to have a webpage loaded very fast with all images, and then you read the webpage, and stop transmitting data. So, you might use the 100 MBit, but you use it only for one or two seconds, and for the next minute dozens of other users can use this bandwidth.
If you look at the prices, you can clearly see, that this service can not be made for downloading tons of gigabytes. No company could afford such data volumes for such a low price. Of course this services will attract such people, too, but the companies either hope that the other customers will compensate this or they just set a maximum transfer limit into the contracts (eg. 1 GB per Month, which should be reasonably enough for "normal" users).
So these services actually can work - if the companies offering it have a clue and know how to keep the bandwidth grabbers away.
Well yeah, population/sq meter is small in any country, even Japan. However sweden has about twice the population of my home State (Minnesota), and about the same area. (Not very close, but close enough to get an idea of how things are) So it will be easier to wire your country then my state. There are many states in the US that can claim about the same amount of land as Sweden, but 1/10th the population.
15k/sec? Holy shit. You ever just consider getting a 56k/s modem for uploads? How the heck do you get 1.5Mb/s down with only 15kb/sec up? The TCP acknowledgements alone would flood your uplink channel.
I pay more than that for 56k dialup modem.
Stop whinging.
I wonder if they offer any kind of SLA for this? Imagine the ammount of bandwidth that a couple of users could consume downloading divx movies, or something like that. I imagine that this service won't be around for too long. They'll just run out of money.
Joseph W. Breu
By that logic, you could argue that a place as sparsely populated as Antarctica would almost *never* get a nice internet connection.
But, you can't generalize the average population per square mile.
It just so happens that probably every single person in Antarctica has an internet connection. It also happens that the vast majority of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. This makes things relatively *easier* for any type of internet deployment in Canada.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Here in Milan, Italy, we're getting something similar. It's only 10 Mbps actually, and it costs about 50 Euro/month, and it includes phone (VoIP, including free calls to other subscribers and a few hours of "bonus" calls/month) and Pay Per View (available, but not yet used).
They're laying the cables down near my place right now. I can't wait...
Anyone have some info as to wether or not that is possible here in Canada / the US? What would prevent the Hydro companies from becoming ISPs?
In the United States there is usually one transformer on every street block (4-7 houses).
As I understand it the main objection to running signals over power lines is the noise on such lines caused by the hardware (TVs, radio'sm lightswitches, dimmers) connected to it.. Having less houses per transformer (or, segment) would mean less interference on that segment!
I fail to see the difference between having a transformer every 4-7 houses or a nice linux box every 4-7 computers -- a linux box NATting my LAN, hooked up to my cable modem. The thing that makes it work is the fact that all the UTP and coaxial cable is shielded from interference, while AC lines aren't..
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SCO employee? Check out the bounty
It's been announced in Germany over and over again, for years now, by different companies. It never worked out. So, I'll remain sceptical until I see it in widespread use.
If you understand German, read the related Heise newsticker announcement.
Back when I worked at a power company that also ran an ISP over dial up lines, we investigated Internet over powerlines.
It works in europe well because they run a hundred houses off of one transformer.
In the United States there is usually one transformer on every street block (4-7 houses).
The transmission of data gets mangled at the Transformer and so the costs go up in equipment.
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CitizenC
A friend of mine here in Sweden is getting 100 MBit fiber through his district heating company. He'll have to pay about 1600$ (16000 SEK) to have it installed and then about 40$/month.
... pretty soon you're talking real space. --paraphrased
Remember the unit discrepancy; hard drive "gigs" are measured in "billion bytes" formatted capacity, not the usual powers-of-two "gigs" that we talk about in memory or bus speeds. Lastly, the effective "baud" vs the actual data that gets through. Hard to do the math after so many definitions of "bits."
If you took '10 gigs' and '8 gigs' as the numbers on the outside of the hard drive packaging, you have 18 BB (billion bytes), or 144 Bb (billion bits) of actual stuff you could serve. (144 Gb is actually 144*1024^3, or 154,618,822,656 bits.)
The effective baud is harder; it depends on the protocols and the transport. RS232 has 'stop bits' and such; this makes it about 10 bits of time per effective byte transferred. Ethernet has less per byte, but big packets get wrapped in smaller datagrams with sequencing data. Tunneling takes more data wrapping, and so on.
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Ok, I think this would be somewhat easy to do in the US. /. users have said, the limitations of the internet itself. Plus, to attempt to bring every home user to a true 100mbps connection would require vast resources and investments in backbone technology.
Anywhere you can have a 2way cable modem it means there is "Fiber to the Curb", perhaps not literally the curb, but it is close to your home. Now we know that DSL limits (now) are 7mbps down, 1mbps up. But did you know that cable theoretical limits are 50Gbps, full duplex?
Now why dont they have that kind of access? Noone needs it.. Really. Noone needs a 100mbps home connection. Especially with what the other
I'm more then happy with my 2mb DSL, and in fact doubt I truly even need it anyway, so even if I was offered a 100mbps solution I doubt I'd take it.
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Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
We have a very limited amount of choices in terms of broadband providers. For xDSL only two telcos offer it for businesses. Among the two only one of them so far offers it to residentials. For cable there are only three players in the whole country. All of these are only available within the capital, Metro Manila.
One tech insider in my country even speculated that the whole Philippines relied upon 100-200Mbps of Internet backbone to connect overseas.
Residential ADSL connections use dynamic IPs. 128kbps ADSL connection costs around PhP2,000 (US$40) while a 256kbps ADSL connection costs PhP2,500 (US$50). Business 512kbps connections with static IPs costs a whopping PhP18,000 (US$360)
Almost all the cable connections here costs PhP2,000-PhP2750 (US$40-55) with speed caps between 128kbps-512kbps. But sometimes they barely crawl by 5KB/s.
As you can see it's pretty expensive to gain access to the Internet here and with the Philippine Peso exchange rate with the US Dollar so bad (PhP50 = US$1) it could lead to a lot of bizarre things happening.
If you want more details concerning the Internet bandwidth issues within the Philippines you can check out the Talk about Bandwidth/Broadband/ISP speed here forum thread.
FYI the Philippines will be celebrating the 7th Birthday of the Internet this March 29th.
I can't find an article about it but NY's WWWAC List has discussed 100Mbps connections in Manhattan. At least one company is offereing to wire up buildings with 100Mbps connections if enough people in the building sign up. It isn't big yet, just a few buildings I think, but it does exist.
It's one of those things that's quite feasible if everybody signs up, but if one house in 20 signs up, you have to put in way too much infrastructure per house.
Its not just density, if that was true, then New York City would have fiber to indivuiduals. (It wouldn't be that hard I don't think, apartments would have to be wired like dorm rooms are now). Running fiber has alot of problems associated with it, and running to the home is very expensive, right now, it will take alot of time to recoupe the costs associated with it.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Anyone else find it kind of ironic that the site's been slashdotted?
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39.95 a month. i've been able to squeeze 1.550 Mbps download and 350 Kbps upload out of it. Add file compression and whoa!!! I actually like the staggered upload and download values. That means I can be serving 350 Kbps in files and leeching with the reaming bandwidth. Gotta love it. Besides, the phone company didn't seem to want my business with DSL. So I said screw them.
let's see...
8 gigs here...
10 gigs there...
at 100 Mbps...
that's, 18 gigs...
or 144 gigabits...
144 gigabits divided by 100 megabits per second...
hmm...
24 minutes...
I think I need some bigger drives!
I would kill to have a fiber conection at my house. I have a cable connection, but it suffers when usage is high in my neighborhood. So much so that it isn't even worth using it. I do recall seeing the "net over powerlines" story on the evening news. That was probably over a year or two ago. Sounds like vaporware to me. Even if it was available people in California would still be sucking wind!
California's now offering internet service over powerlines, too.
Unfortunately, it's only about 16 bits per month.
Off... Off... Back on... Off. Back on again. Off... Off... Back on again...
Umm, no, sorry, not really. I've lived in Japan now for over seven years, and this sort of thing is common. Companies and the government will anounce brilliant new services they simply have no intention of ever offering. I mean the plan isn't even on paper. Remember, you're dealing with a culture where appearance is everything. Following through... well, that's not really so important a concept here. (Keep your flames. My wife is Japanese. I speak Japanese. I've lived here for a huge chunk of my life.) Everyone should just remember to treat press releases with skepticism. This of course applies to companies in any country. jeko
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Why do the poor Japanese have to pay in American dollars?
-- dR.fuZZo
Usen offers 100Mbps connection for consumers
Chieko Tashiro
Friday, March 23, 2001 at 18:00 JST
TOKYO -- Usen corporation, a Tokyo based cable radio company, started the world's fastest Internet connection service from March 1. At a top speed of 100Mbps Usen is targeting the average consumer via its fiber-optic cables.
Atsushi Fujimoto, broadband business planning director of Usen, demonstrated the 100Mbps connection for Japan Today and explained, "At 100Mbps connection, when you are downloading a game file that is 121MB it takes only 20-30 seconds instead of waiting the 10-12 hours it takes on the 64Kbps ISDN connection common to many Japanese households.
The monthly service charge is Y4,900 a month, plus another Y900 per month for Usen's special modem. Installing charges run to Y30,000.
It may sound irresistible, but not all agree.
"It is wrong to take a look at a 100M bps connection and consider it the best service," says Takashi Hosoya of Jupiter Communications, a market research company.
The Internet needs to be considered in total, says Hosoya -- the backbone, upstream, and downstream conditions. Even if downstream is 100M bps the backbone may not good enough, slowing everything down.
He also points that Usen's broadband service may be aimed only at pushing Usen's cost contents.
To install the service, Usen will add a fibre optic line alongside your phone line. That line will then be connected to Usen's fiber optic utility pole which then hooks through to the Usen's Shibuya office, and the Internet.
Users can then access Usen's portal site where you can download games and Karaoke songs. Usen is working to provide more content for users.
Currently, Usen services the Shibuya and Setagaya areas of Tokyo. In April, Tokyo's Suginami, Meguro, Ota areas will be added.
Then, in October, Tokyo's 23 wards will be able to access the service. From April 2003, Usen will provide the service to all major cities in Japan.
Andrew Shuttleworth, president of the Tokyo PC Users Group said, "Y4,900 is a very low monthly charge. Users will appreciate the service."
Daiwa Institute of Research's analyst Shinji Moriyuki thinks the key for Usen is to spray the service area wide as soon as possible. He says, "Usen may serve many users' needs. If users have faster connections, there are many more things they can do and create online. If anyone, any one company wants a high speed connection with inexpensive fees, Usen's service will help."
Another thing that is also good about this service is the service subscribers can connect to a high speed Internet 24x7.
Many Japanese Internet users connect to the Internet and download emails and then disconnect. Well trained as they are, by years of NTT charging 10 yen for every three minutes spent on line.
Shuttleworth says, "At the moment many Japanese users connect to download their mail and then disconnect as soon as possible, even if they have a flat rate connection like Flets ISDN. As these services spread the mindset will change so that people think of the Internet as an 'always on' service."
Daiwa's Moriyuki thinks the Usen service will increase competition. "The service will motivate the industry to grow. However, it all depends on the user's need for the Internet."
Gartner Group's broadband analyst, Yuko Adachi, thinks any change to Japan's Internet scene will take at least a year. "Until Usen can provide the service nationwide there won't be much difference. Plus, the service is consumer targeted, and many applications for consumer don't need speeds of 100Mbps."
In fact, NTT East's PR department said, "We are currently providing a 10Mbps test service, and hopefully this spring we will also provide a 100Mbps service." However, the date for the service's start has not been announced.
Shuttleworth also agrees there will be more competition. "Of course NTT and other companies will work to provide the same kind of service."
For personal users, Moriyuki says, "Some might not know what to do with 100Mbps, many only need 10Mbps."
Shuttleworth's opinion differs. "In Japan, many advanced device are being developed, such as TVs which can connect to the Internet and PCs with TV tuners. With those, users will be downloading videos and then when they realise they need a faster connection, they will look for it. Also, once they realise there are faster connections, users will soon start finding out the new things they can do through the 'net."
Usen is aiming for 15,000 subscribers in the first year. By August 2003, they hope to have 1 million subscribers and 2 million subscribers by August 2005.
Asked how customers have responded to the first two weeks of service Usen's Fujimoto says, "Users are impressed with the speed and the vivid graphics that make using the Internet almost like watching TV."
Also, I believe fiber connections like this are being proposed in NYC...
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SIG: HUP
How do you protect sensitive communtications equipment from surges if it is RIGHT ON THE POWER LINE? I mean, you can't condition the power can you? You'd lose the data...
I can't be karma whoring - I've already hit 50!
SIG: HUP
> But, here in Canada? We've got a population density of 3.3 people per frigging kilometre! How do you affordably link the 3.3 people in each of those square kilometres with fibre, especially given that many of them are separated by waterways?
Most of us are concentrated along the US border, and just like any other western industrial country the vast majority of us live in big metropolitan areas (which already has the cheapest 1Mbit DSL in the world, $40 CDN). Even in Saskatchewan, half of everyone is in the two main cities.
>I don't see how those in Canada's north will soon join the digital revolution.
Same way we got electricity and telephones to the farms.
Here's a question: I know that the DSL used in Canada has a range of 5km from the telco, that could cover a lot of farms right there. (Of course first you need a bit of bandwidth going to the small towns.) Has anyone heard anything about the actual technical or economic issues involved with trying DSL to farms? (Pretend there aren't any party lines still in use..)
Only if the backbone is big enough, and the server at the other end has enough capacity, and your access router has enough processing capacity.. Otherwise the increased demand on the backbone will reduce service quality for everyone else.
Remember that you're asking for a certain number of bits, not bits per second, if you're downloading something. If the backbone, not your connection, is the bottleneck, you could easily overwhelm the router used to connect you to it - unless traffic shaping is used to limit your bandwidth, in which case you won't get your full 100Mbps.
sulli
RTFJ.
As many /.'ers have already pointed out, most sites don't have nearly the bandwidth to handle 100mbit xfer. Where this is good is that it suddenly makes p2p protocols *faster* than going to centralised sites.
This means the downward view-this-content trend on the internet since the growth of the web should be halted.
Either that, or lots of MP3 trading will be going on. Actually, probably that one.
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Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
"640 kilobytes ought to be enough for anybody."
This is much easier to do in someplace like japan where there isnt as much space in a city. To run fibre to your home in Japan isnt much fibre at all. To do this someplace like Houston would require running miles upon miles of fibre, raising the price considerably. Being dense does have its advantages.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
In he article they point out that the backbone may not be enough to support this kinda speed.
BUT! I have a question! If people are downloading games (120MB) in 20-30 seconds, isn't that going to help the backbone a bit?
See when people are downloading the same game from a dial-up connection doesn't that actually kinda, in a way, f' up the backbone for the rest of us?
I know it's way more complicated than that - because of different routes and the such.
What I'd like to see now is a distributed computing program that would use this fast connection and help move data around on the net. I would use my unused cycles and unused time to help my neighbors get games and all that.
Like- uh - I'm on this Road Runner and I wouldn't mind hosting like a distro while I sleep. On this cable system it would be "hella" fast cause we are on the same LAN.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Japan, our original example has a population density of approximately 335 people/sq km.
The United States has a bit of a harder time, with a population density of approximately of approximately 28 people/sq km.
But, here in Canada? We've got a population density of 3.3 people per frigging kilometre! How do you affordably link the 3.3 people in each of those square kilometres with fibre, especially given that many of them are separated by waterways?
Unless satellite access makes great strides, I don't see how those in Canada's north will soon join the digital revolution.
(these statistics were taken from Britannica.com)
They can offer high speed for low cost because the maximum cable length is going to be what, 3 miles?
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324006
Data communications over power lines is nothing new. In the UK Norweb were trialling this back in about '98. A lot of urban legends were started back then about being able to snarf people's traffic from hanging around street lighting. It looked very promising at the time, and a lot of people got very excited.
Norweb got into bed with Nortel, seeked and received EU approval to trial the system and they started offering access to schools around Manchester as well as some homes. It was called DPL (Direct Power Line) and provided 1 megabit of data symmetrically. The project was cancelled after "unsatisfactory results" but I can find no reference on-line as what the precise nature was. I seem to recall seeing an article in New Scientist that suggested the amount of noise on the power lines caused huge problems when trying to get the signal across distances any greater than one side of a lab to another. In addition, back in 1999 BT had announced ADSL and was then talking about speeds of 10Mb/sec (which haven't materialised) and many suspected that was a major cause of the project being scrapped.
This line intentionally left here to annoy you.
1) it will not happen in the us for a long long long LONG time. This is part of the "last mile" problem that telcos isps, pretty much everyone and their dog has been wondering about for the last umm ever. there was a compnay in houston that was planning on pushing fiber to the door... but not serving as an ISP - only the physical connect to the telco. 2) to build an infastructure like that is very expensive and time consuming, not to mention that when you drive dowtown - that orange paint on the road with those little arrows means that fiber is going in, and you won't be able to drive anywhere anymore. 3) ISP powerline stuff is a great idea, the network is pretty much built, but running fiber from pole to pole is not a good idea, that's why a vast majority of it is burried in the ground. with the way the economy is now, the fact that telcos, IXC's etc... are now pretty much being punished by the same people that financed them a little while back - no one is going to build anything super great like this... not for a long long time. there are other issues (legal) surrounding last mile as well.... from a business stance on USEN, they should have rolled out with a 10mbs and a 100mbs service, offering the allusion of choice to the customer, and they still could have charged the US$40 for 10mbs.
-deuxdrop