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.

Comments

Re:Number of Transformers

[__aanonl8035]

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.

irony alert

[anotherone]

Anyone else find it kind of ironic that the site's been slashdotted?

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Small area

[DaSyonic]

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.