Want 12Mbits/sec for $21? Move to Japan.

Serious Question by Raul654 · 2003-07-15 08:31 · Score: 5, Interesting

Given that info, I'd be more than willing to sign up for the requisite 15+ months. So why can't they do something like that here in the States? What's holding them back - red tape, technical issues?

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Re:Serious Question by wren337 · 2003-07-15 08:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

Existing infrastructure, profit margins, lack of competition...
Re:Serious Question by s0l0m0n · 2003-07-15 08:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

What's holding them back?

The fact that the lot of them are money grubbing bastards with very little long term thinking ability.
Re:Serious Question by stratjakt · 2003-07-15 08:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Geography.

Look at how densely packed Japan is. Look at the huge expanses of empty land in the states.

Doing it here means wiring to every single family home. Doing it there means getting 1000 customers per apartment complex you hit.

It's oversimplifying, but it's the truth.

--
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Re:Serious Question by Shenkerian · 2003-07-15 08:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Differences in population is probably a big factor, but I bet the dominant one is the US's government-granted monopolies on both telecommunication and coaxial cable infrastructures.

--
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Re:Serious Question by Gherald · 2003-07-15 08:36 · Score: 5, Funny

Ahhh! the benefits of overcrowding.

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The unofficial /. digest
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

Installing such a network in america would be much longer, and a lot more expensive. You saw the size of Japan (you know where it is on the map right?) Installing a network in there takes much less time and much less wire. I don't even think Bill Gates have enough money to install that network in half of the US.

Only hope for them that the servers will hold the bandwith and not crash within seconds.
Re:Serious Question by Flabby+Boohoo · 2003-07-15 08:37 · Score: 4, Interesting

Read Cringley's column, he sums it all up quite nicely.

Bottom line is that the baby bells don't want to spend the money. And they don't want to share.
Re:Serious Question by natefanaro · 2003-07-15 08:42 · Score: 1

Greed and stupidity. People are used to and willing to pay a large amount for bandwidth. Companies will charge a customer as much as they can if they can get away with it. Hopefully things like charging $21 a month will change the way consumers view what they have over here, and service providers will have to change. Unfortunately competition is not an issue since I doubt people are doing to move for that kind of service. But it does look tempting :)
Re:Serious Question by BWJones · 2003-07-15 08:42 · Score: 1

What's holding them back - red tape, technical issues?

There is an interesting article in the latest edition of Wired on some of the differences between the US and the EU and why this may be the case.

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Re:Serious Question by dasmegabyte · 2003-07-15 08:44 · Score: 1

How about a much larger nation with far less centralization? How about environmental and regulatory concerns for any cabling project? Plus there's the cost...I worked on a plow crew down near NYC, for 6 conduits of fiber, we had a crew of 20 work for 4 months 6 days a week, 12 hours per day, at $30 per hour. And that was the cheapest rate. And we were only going the 60 miles from the tappanzee to newburgh.

Plus we need more power for repeaters, routers, etc. We'd need to have more hubs and more technicians manning them. There's just no way.

Which is why going over existing phone lines, cable lines, and power lines is such a good idea. Now if we can get all three going at the same time in all areas, we might see prices drop and speeds increase. But America is so big -- and broadband demand so low -- that the only way any company can thrive in most areas is by establishing a local monopoly.

--
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Re:Serious Question by EpsCylonB · 2003-07-15 08:46 · Score: 1

Compare the size of Japan and the USA.
Re:Serious Question by Dysan2k · 2003-07-15 08:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

Existing infrastruction is a definate. They wanna make more money on existing pipes, etc.

Profit margins? Well, I think there would definatly be more long-term (5+ year) profit than anything.

Lack of competition. This is an interesting one. I think the competition could very well exist, but it's a lot of funding which isn't available in this economy.

I believe another point is population density. Though people in the sticks would LOVE to have this kind of bandwidth, it's probably not cost-effective to run lines out into a sparesly populated area. Then again, they do run phone lines without worrying too much.

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-What have you contributed lately?
Re:Serious Question by bigpat · 2003-07-15 08:48 · Score: 1

I'm afraid it looks like we are stuck with the current services for a while. Companies have locked in a price structure based on bandwidth and with just a few large corporations with market control in certain local areas it seems unlikely that one of them would want to start a price/bandwidth war that would see their profits squeezed.

Hopefully there is enough competition in some markets between DSL and Cable to bring prices down gradually, but about $50 for a 1 Mbit download and 300k upload seems to be about what we can expect for the next while here in the US.

Sad really, since the technician that installed my first cable modem back in 1997 told me that the employees had their modems running at 10Mbits per second at home with the same equipment on the same network.

Seems the technology is more flexible than the business plan.
Re:Serious Question by carlmenezes · 2003-07-15 08:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

I think it's a combination of a lot of factors:

1) The Japanese are a people that seem to have an affinity for the latest gadgets and technology which is the reason a lot of really cool things show up first in Japan. Not sure if you can say the same about the average American.

2) I don't know how it works in Japan, but over here in the States, it seems that corporations are really out to milk the customer for all the green they can get. So I don't think it's not possible over here. I just think that instead of giving you 12Mb/Sec, they'd start off with maybe 10 for the first few months, then chop bandwidth based on average usage and drive the price up while all the time telling you they're actually making things better - basically what's already happening to broadband.

3) Also, if there was something like that over here, they would price it according to value. Let's face it : if people are willing to shell out approx $45 a month for cable/DSL, what would they pay for something like this? Answer : probably $100+ per month. Consequence : Nobody really buys it since the majority are not very tech oriented and really wouldn't see any justification to it.

4) Finally, you wanna bet whether the MPAA is going to sit idly by when something like this is going on? They'll probably turn the whole thing into some really expensive form of "PPV over IP" (pay per view over iP).

At the end of it all, look at the final price and ask yourself if you'd still go for it. And there you'd have the reason why it wouldn't work over here. If you boil it down to the basics, it's nothing but corporate greed.

--
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Re:Serious Question by the_2nd_coming · 2003-07-15 08:51 · Score: 3, Informative

as far as phone lines go....it is due to government subsidising.

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I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Re:Serious Question by Jad+LaFields · 2003-07-15 08:52 · Score: 1

OT, but the Tappan Zee Bridge has to have just about the best name ever.

But yeah I can imagine this being really expensive in even in NYC, the roads get torn up to replace pipes and wires often enough.

And even NYC is less crowded than Tokyo... we don't actually have people hired to squash us onto the subway cars, although sometimes I think it might help.

--
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Re:Serious Question by superdan2k · 2003-07-15 08:53 · Score: 5, Interesting

This may have been modded as Funny, and probably repeatedly so, but it's also very insightful. Certain things become more functional in an "overcrowded" situation -- things like structured high-bandwidth communications systems.

It's also fun to watch people being herded into the subways in Tokyo at rush hour. Provided you're not claustrophobic, that is.

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blog |
Re:Serious Question by Keith+Russell · 2003-07-15 08:54 · Score: 4, Insightful
So why can't they do something like that here in the States? What's holding them back - red tape, technical issues?

What holds up everything in American telecoms: The Last Mile. Our most common high-speed internet connections come from adapting the existing infrastructure, namely phone and cable TV. Nobody wants to run another line without justifying the cost. That's why rural areas were the last to get cable (and some may still be waiting!), while there's miles of dark fibre under many big cities.

Japan is a logical place for something like this because the population is so incredibly dense. They wouldn't be able to break even after 15 months, except for that last mile connecting a tremendous number of households. You just can't get that kind of bang-for-the-buck in Montana! :-)

Now, 2 cynical questions:
1. How are the Terms Of Service? Are they as liberal as, say, Speakeasy, or is it a Comcast-style "pay triple for VPN" scam?
2. Are they really breaking even after 15 months? Or are they breaking even after 12, and making the contract 15 to ensure some profit? Not that that's a bad thing in particular. My Inner Accountant thinks it's perfectly logical. :-)
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Re:Serious Question by $lacker1 · 2003-07-15 09:03 · Score: 1

yet another drawback to our manifest destiny driven urban sprawl. right up there with the poor public transportation infrastructure. ....and if the problem here is density, why aren't the larger cities and metro areas in america approaching this?

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Re:Serious Question by walterbyrd · 2003-07-15 09:04 · Score: 2, Informative

I think the telcoms in other nations are usually less privatized than in the USA. That $21 a month is subsidized by the government.
Re:Serious Question by mechaZardoz · 2003-07-15 09:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

Not surprising, really; after all of the rampant overspending on infrastructure in the US during the dot-com era, the existing big players are probably unwilling to pony up the money.
What they really need to do is make more efficient use of their existing networks.
Re:Serious Question by Synic · 2003-07-15 09:08 · Score: 5, Informative

Dysan2k said:
Existing infrastruction is a definate. They wanna make more money on existing pipes, etc

Synic's response:
Note that the vast majority of fiber optics that were laid during the dot com period are all what's called "dark" fiber-- that is, they are not currently in use. The problem is that most people are still not on broadband, because it isn't cheap enough, and so the fiber optic networks that were laid down before the dot com bust are just sitting there dormant in the ground. A lot of the companies that funded the insanely rapid expansion of fiber optic networks went out of business (including larger ones such as MCI Worldcom). Some are struggling to get by (such as Qwest) by trying to market and sell their networks in new ways (Video-on-Demand is only one that comes to mind). Additionally, companies that were solely based on enhancing fiber optic technologies like amplifiers have all gone out of business or been gobbled up by larger fish (Cisco) and their products have not really come to market in a big way since there's already an overabundance of fiber in the ground.
Re:Serious Question by KrispyKringle · 2003-07-15 09:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

Actually, the monopolies exist on cable but not on telephone lines. The laws in regards to telephone lines, as I understand it, actually require the line owners to share the lines with other companies--originally with the purpose of enhancing telephone network inter-call-ability. Since these laws apply to DSL providors and the like, you can get, say, Earthlink DSL through Verizon lines.
In comparison, the cable TV companies were granted regional monopolies, which still apply to cable ISPs, so there is very little competition in that arena. Which is why DSL is more socially responsible than cable.
Re:Serious Question by Eric_Cartman_South_P · 2003-07-15 09:15 · Score: 5, Funny

you'rerightovercrowdingcanbegood. justlookatallthespaceiamsavingwiththispost!
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:16 · Score: 0

You do get 12Mbit connections in the United States, but ATM overhead leaves you with only 1mbit of useable bandwidth. Petition your broadband company to use a cheaper and more efficient protocol.
Re:Serious Question by ackthpt · 2003-07-15 09:19 · Score: 1

So why can't they do something like that here in the States?
It's been tried, but on small scales. Typically you're facing behemoth Bells which, especially in light of their losses over the last years, are content to squeeze as much out of their aging copper as they can. And since nobody is interested in actually competing with them, as most who said they'd bury them are now dot-bombed out, it'll probably still be like this until you're old and gray.
Consider this for a moment. A factor we'll call Q for Quality of Life in the USA, which embodies quality of goods, healthcare, freedoms, expendable income, etc. It's been my impression that this was on steady growth in the USA until the first big recession in the 70's, thanks in no small part to the oil embargo. While there was a revival, briefly, in the late 90's, it wasn't anywhere near as good as it should have been. Many people overlooked the increases in costs, limiting of Q contriubting components, etc. Now things kinda suck and Q looks like it's taken a beating again for most people. Yet, in other parts of the world that Q has grown by leaps and bounds, meaning life has gotten much better for them at a rate faster than in the USA. Will Q increase again? I'm not terribly optimistic, because I think too many people have for too long expected someone else to pull and make it better than do the pulling themselves.
Want a better network? Build it yourself.

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Re:Serious Question by gladbach · 2003-07-15 09:19 · Score: 1

not only that, but japan solves a lot of its domestic problems by being a "government subsidised construction economy"

what I mean by that, is that they often solve unemployment and other issues by tearing down, and rebuilding stuff just for the sake of giving workers something to do under the guise of "improvement"

couple that with the smaller geographic area per capita of japan, and its a lot more feasible to lay the needed pipe so to speak...

--
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
Re:Serious Question by Muerto · 2003-07-15 09:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

you can't call them baby bells anymore. they are no longer baby... they are massive.. sbc is so huge, and no one can accuse them of monopoly... because they are a "baby bell"
Re:Serious Question by leeet · 2003-07-15 09:24 · Score: 1

This would probably work in dense areas like NYC. Otherwise the cost of wiring each and everyhouse would be prohibitive. Some areas in Tokyo are really dense, you can bend over from your balcony and touch your neighbourg's house. On the other side, in the USA, you have places where you have very large lots where you have 40 feet between each house.

Make a quick calculation and using the same area, you can probably wire 50 house in a normal street house while I bet you can wire 300+ in a dense appartment area in Japan.

Fiber *IS* cheap but it coast big bucks to bury it, do the end user installs, etc...

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-- Leeeter than leet
Re:Serious Question by lpret · 2003-07-15 09:25 · Score: 2, Funny

get rid of the vowels -- people can usually guess what it means. like this:
yr n ss fr tryng t rd ths
vs
your an ass for trying to read this

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This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:27 · Score: 1, Insightful

It may be more socially responsible, but unfortunately SBC Yahoo sucks big time, so I use Comcast instead. Aside from the price, I have no complaints about it.
Re:Serious Question by clmensch · 2003-07-15 09:34 · Score: 1

I live in Manhattan. Me want gigabit internet access! (The Time Warner cable modem barely cuts it...and isn't particularly cheap.)

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There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:34 · Score: 0

I dunno... I'm beginning to think there is a conspiracy to limit upstream bandwidth with asynchronous connections. I mean... you have to admit that it does keep P2P somewhat at bay. Anyone know if the 12Mbits is synchronous? When I think of what I could share if I wasn't worried about not being able to access my own server remotely or not having a decent ping for True Combat... ;) 128K up is simply not enough to serve much of anything and to get more is prohibitively expensive everywhere I've lived in the US and also here in Germany.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:34 · Score: 1, Interesting

Population density... people always bring that up. Then explain why in most places DSL is capped at 512k or some other low speed? The wires are already there, they are already being used, the equipment that is currently in use could go up to 8 megabits. But no, 512k is what you are allowed to get. And it costs more than 21 dollars. And if you are really unlucky, you're only allowed to transfer x GB per month.
How does population density explain that?
Re:Serious Question by Okonomiyaki · 2003-07-15 09:44 · Score: 2, Interesting

Japan is crowded but not overcrowded. I lived in Tokyo for a year and I can say the benefits absolutely outweigh the drawbacks. Transportation, communications, entertainment, it's all better there than here (Seattle, USA). Sure, living space is limited but when you have so much great stuff outside your door, you stop caring how little you have inside it.
Re:Serious Question by Felinoid · 2003-07-15 09:46 · Score: 1

Also the way the US government insists on inserting itself into every aspect of our lifes.
In the early 1990s (like 93 I think) there was an effort to bring about phone and Internet over cable. Early broudband. This was done with out any fedral aproval.
At first cable companys wanted to do two way cable to bring us internet access and interactive TV. The FCC said "No you have one way data.. only the phone company can do two way" so the local phone carrers asked if they could run coax. Same no.. only cable companys.
Well the Internet was a big deal and everyone wantted in.
Phone companys and Cable companys started striking agreements so they could do two way cable. Cable companys could provide phone service phone companys could provide TV service both would have the data service it was the best of all worlds for the consummer and we'd have it quickly.

No... The fedral government had to get involved and new laws were past. Then they desided it was a good idea and past yet more laws. And today we have what we could have had almost 10 years ago.

Not to say the fedral government is entirely evil. Right now there is some debate over a preposal for brodband over powerlines. Short version is "Sure you can have it but dump all your radio equipment FOREVER Muahahahaha." I think that sums it up nice a sloppy... I hate cliff notes so read the link if you really want to know otherwise use my cliff notes and look like an idiot.
I think I understand. To bad you couldn't use that for 802.11[?] carrer signals but I'm going to guess the signal would degrade before it got very far.

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I don't actually exist.
Re:Serious Question by Shenkerian · 2003-07-15 09:51 · Score: 1

You're technically correct, but last I heard here, the FCC seriously restricted its requirements for at-cost line-sharing for data.
What this means is that line owners don't have to lease use of their lines at cost unless the other company also provides voice services, so DSL-only outfits can be charged the proverbial "whatever the market will bear." Although this regulation may have little effect on existing DSL companies (and there's no guarantee of even that), it will negatively affect future competition.

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Re:Serious Question by hackstraw · 2003-07-15 09:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

I tried to go with another phone provider besides Verizon in my area, and Verizon (after a long delay) politely told the small phone company that the "port could not be opened".

So, I went w/o a phone for a few _months_ and finally went crawling back to Verizon.

Almost 2 years later, Cox Cable calls me and asks "Would you like to switch to our phone network and save $10 a month?" I said yes.

I dunno where they learned math at Cox, but I've always thought that 26 == 26, where 26 is the number of dollars per month for my phone.

Upon finding this out, I promptly cut my phone and cable from Cox.

I realize that phones are much more expensive in other countries, but the system is pretty fucked here in the US. One perfect example: _all_ (land line) phone companies charge extra _every month_ for caller ID. All of us know that this is part of the phone infrastructure (both ends have to know who's connected to who) and costs the phone company $0, and they want me to pay for this? Same with all of the other "services" that are charged monthly.

I don't understand how my isp bill for $15/month can get me anywhere in the world, but the phoneline that connects me less than 20 miles away costs almost 2x that. Something is not right.
Re:Serious Question by nomadic · 2003-07-15 09:58 · Score: 1

True. Considering how expensive it is to live in much of Japan because of that overcrowding, I wouldn't envy them their broadband; in general they more than make up for it with the rent payments...
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:59 · Score: 0

The MPAA is an American organization, which means that they are scorned invaders in Japan. If they intrude into internal Japanese affairs then they will risk losing every bit of influence they have.

Also notice that only 5-10% of people (ie, the heaviest users) would willingly shell out $100 a month; instead, this company is trying to get the ENTIRE market moved onto their network, while servicing them at a price that will (eventually) turn a nice profit.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:59 · Score: 0

Its expensive down there because the only thing the government is concerned with is the defence budget, and internet companies are quite happily ripping everyone off.
Re:Serious Question by deadsaijinx* · 2003-07-15 10:00 · Score: 1

which comes from a tax placed on your high-speed DSL line. And, iirc, soon from your cable internet :[

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YOU SUCK BALLS!
Re:Serious Question by GlassHeart · 2003-07-15 10:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

..money grubbing bastards with very little long term thinking ability.
Are you talking about the executives, or the shareholders behind them who ignore everything their companies do other than expecting an 8% average annual growth of their portfolio? Investing for retirement? You and I might be part of the problem.
Re:Serious Question by qtp · 2003-07-15 10:06 · Score: 1

The fedral government had to get involved and new laws were past(sic).

The project you are refering to was a pilot program for fiber optic to the home that was being deployed in several US cities by the telephone companies. The cable companies lobbied the government to stop the phone companies from delivering media content over the lines while at the same time planning to add telecomunication service over thier existing coaxial cable installations. The phone companies lobbied the government to stop the cable companies from offering phone service. both lobbies got what they asked for, and nobody got anything new for years to come.

Neither the phone or cable companies really understood the market demand for data delivery at the time, even though it was a no-brainer to many lay people.

Similarly today, the monopolies held by the cable companies on data service to thier customers, and the anti-competative practices the phone companies use against the competitors they allow to use thier wires, are stiffling competition in the market and creating the illusion that demand is lower than it actually is.

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Re:Serious Question by Stephen+Samuel · 2003-07-15 10:06 · Score: 0

(damn. no mod points)

--
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Re:Serious Question by hackstraw · 2003-07-15 10:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

This infamous "last mile" has been holding things up for at least 5 years now. I don't believe that this is still the case. The demand and the hardware are there. But then again, companies like @HOME can go bankrupt while being a monopoly in a high demand market, so there must be many, many things I don't know about business.
Re:Serious Question by petecarlson · 2003-07-15 10:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

The laws in regards to telephone lines, as I understand it, actually require the line owners to share the lines with other companies--originally with the purpose of enhancing telephone network inter-call-ability. Since these laws apply to DSL providors and the like, you can get, say, Earthlink DSL through Verizon lines.

There was a recent ruling that changed this. I don't have time to do the research on it right now, but here's an extract from Findlaw.com's analysys of The FCC'S UNE Triennial Review Order.

Article here

Line Sharing: Eliminated Over a Three-Year Period

The FCC eliminated line sharing as a UNE, to be phased out over a three-year period. Competing firms will only be entitled to acquire new customers during the first year and, during the three-year period, the price for the high frequency portion of the loop will increase incrementally towards the market cost of a full loop.

Competitive DSL services will be hit hard by this finding. The Commission apparently is betting on "intermodal" competition to prevent rate increases caused by its decision to eliminate DSL competition. For these competitors, a close reading of the language of the final order will be imperative to ascertain whether there is any basis for overturning this aspect of the decision.
Re:Serious Question by EzInKy · 2003-07-15 10:10 · Score: 1

which comes from a tax placed on your high-speed DSL line. And, iirc, soon from your cable internet :[

Well, I guess they could just start adding taxes to the food rural areas produce instead to keep them connected to the rest of the country.

--
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Re:Serious Question by (startx) · 2003-07-15 10:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yes, many, many places in the US are still waiting for cable TV. I'm currently just a scant 30 miles from St. Louis, and there's no cable TV, the Satellite TV is shit on rainy or windy days, and pretty much nothing is a local phone call. Don't even ask about DSL either.
Re:Serious Question by ipjohnson · 2003-07-15 10:16 · Score: 1

Move to upstate NH and you'll understand the "last country mile" problem alot better ;-)

My cousins can't even get cable ... hell in orange (where they live) they change the population sign for ever birth and funeral in town :)
Re:Serious Question by carlmenezes · 2003-07-15 10:18 · Score: 1

I was referring to the MPAA kicking up a storm should somebody actually offer this service in the states.

--
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:21 · Score: 1, Informative

You and those who modded you up didn't read the article. The guy's fighting against NTT (The "TT" in "NTT" and "AT&T" stand for the same thing), and Japan Telecom, his competitors even asked the government to hike the fiber rental fees to make his life harder. What about telcos in the USA, their life seems easier with friends in Washington.

Is this an example of American whinging, or what..?
Re:Serious Question by agent66 · 2003-07-15 10:26 · Score: 0, Redundant

*nods*

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Re:Serious Question by bb_referee · 2003-07-15 10:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

The "last mile" is really a hamper. Sure, lots of fiber was installed in the dot-com boom, but there's no money now to make it live. Until we see fiber to the curb (FTTC) similar to the ION project that Sprint rolled out in Las Vegas, the speeds will be slower for DSL. I used to work for Sprint, before ION, and I've seen lots of "last mile" wire. You've got wire out there that's not even twisted pair running from a home to the C.O. And in core neighborhoods in larger cities, lots of the "last mile" is overhead, not buried, which presents a whole host of other problems.

FTTC is the answer, but the telcos are not interested in investing in infrastructure right now. In areas where the telcos buried the fiber, they aren't interested in spending the money to make it live...it'll remain dark for a few years, I'd bet.

PS: I've heard some really bad things about Sprint's ION service...I didn't use it as an example of the type of service, only as an example of FTTC. Having worked for Sprint, I know how bad of a company it really is...

--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Re:Serious Question by really? · 2003-07-15 10:45 · Score: 1

turn the whole thing into some really expensive form of "PPV over IP" (pay per view over iP).

Actually, this is one of the stated goals of YBB's system. So, they are willing to drink a lot of red ink for now ...

--

"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:47 · Score: 0

All your communncations cost you 21.00, but the 12x12 apartment costs you 2400 and month. It all works out in the end.
Re:Serious Question by kamapuaa · 2003-07-15 10:48 · Score: 1

Differences in population is probably a big factor, but I bet the dominant one is the US's government-granted monopolies on both telecommunication and coaxial cable infrastructures.
Actually, Japan's economy is largely composed of government-granted monopolies. In Japan's case, telecommunications is dominated by NTT, which indeed posesses a government-sanctioned monopoly.
Japan doesn't have the equivalent of a Sherman Anti-Trust act. Americans put it there after WWII, but after the occupation this was one of the first things repealed, and all the large zaibatsu re-formed. Zaibatsu work around banks. Banks work around the government.
Regardless, government-sanctioned monopolies are inherent to wire-based telecommunications, because who wants to have 5 different phone lines hooked up to their house? Courts have tried to curtail this by forcing phone companies to lease their capacities, but obviously that's a less-than-idyllic solution.

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Re:Serious Question by jez9999 · 2003-07-15 10:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

How exactly do they grow enough food for people to eat in Japan? With that kind of population density and space at a premium, it must be difficult. Does Japan have to import much food to keep its people fed?

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== Jez ==
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Re:Serious Question by rodgerd · 2003-07-15 10:50 · Score: 1

The expanses aren't the problem; sure, someone running a ranch in the arse end of nowhere (Texas, Idaho, Montana, take your pick) is never going to get cheap good service in the way a city dweller is.

No, the problem is urban sprawl. When everyone wants to live in the 'burbs with their yard and whatnot, wiring up 10,000 households is hard and expensive. You've got to run a backbone to the suburb, then you've got to fan out over those 10,000 properties. Permission to dig up streets to lay cable. Just plain covering a larger area.

Places that have denser housing in their main population centres, on the other hand, have it easier, because, as you say, running a backbone down a single street lets you service a tower with 100 households, where the same cable in the burbs might give you one or two.

It's no different to the way high speed trains are viable in Europe or Japan, but not in the US. It's not the rural areas, it's the suburbs.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:51 · Score: 0

What about the lies that bandwidth cost m0ney to ISP's ?
Re:Serious Question by winse · 2003-07-15 10:52 · Score: 1

wouldn't it be

you're an ass

instead of

your an ass

or if you meant your, it would be your ass not your an ass

--
this sig is deprecated
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:59 · Score: 0

In Japan there are 200million people living on a tiny island. Even more significant, most of the population is concentrated in cities. If you run a few miles of fiber, you'll pass thousands upon thousands of potential subscribers. In my opinion this changes the build-out equation. Even in America's metro areas, we like to have our grassy spaces which makes the subscriber-per-mile factor much lower.
Re:Serious Question by Avumede · 2003-07-15 11:02 · Score: 1

Please keep in mind that overcrowded doesn't mean the same thing as "crowded". Overcrowded means that you have more people then the space was designed for. A 1000 unit apartment building with 2500 people living in it is not overcrowded, it's pretty reasonable. A ranch-style house in San Jose in 1999 with 4 renters living on the floor in addition to the 3 people that already live there is overcrowded.

It's not just a question of definition, it's a matter of architecture. Things can get uncomfortable pretty fast when you have more people living in a space then it was designed for. As opposed to just having a lot of people, in which case a good architecture might mean you would never really notice it.
Re:Serious Question by Your+Pal+Dave · 2003-07-15 11:04 · Score: 1

What holds up everything in American telecoms: The Last Mile.

And since in Japan it's the last kilometer, there's 1/3 less distance to run the cable. It all makes sense now!
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 11:11 · Score: 0

Do they still use cattle prods to get people aboard the train?
Re:Serious Question by d2ksla · 2003-07-15 11:13 · Score: 4, Interesting

Look at how densely packed Japan is. Look at the huge expanses of empty land in the states.
Sweden is the size of California, but has only a quarter (9 million) of the population. Yet the broadband prices are similar to Japan ($40/mo for 26/26 Mbit/s).

--

Freevo - Linux Multimedia Jukebox
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 11:14 · Score: 2, Informative

No, I don't get that. Have a look at Sweden, our dear friend Bredbandsbolaget (ISP) offers consumers 10Mbit for $30 and has done so for years. It was actually cheaper a couple of years ago, only $20. I don't have that ISP, but I got an offer from mine that this fall we can get 26Mbit for $35 a month. And Sweden is not a overcrowded country. There has to be something else. Better competition? Could be. Our government agency that handles these issues has been really, really consumer-friendly (as they are supposed to be), and forced companies with monopoly to let other companies get access to their network and sometimes even just lower their prices! I love them! :)
Re:Serious Question by RageEX · 2003-07-15 11:16 · Score: 1

It's plenty crowded in New York damnit. We could use some massive convergence over here.

When will we see an all-in-one one-stop WiFi delivered service (Internet/email/news, VoIP/telephone/voicemail, Mobile service, including WiFi, Digital Cable & Movie on Demand)?
Re:Serious Question by Billly+Gates · 2003-07-15 11:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

"So why can't they do something like that here in the States?"

Deregulation and corruption at the FTC. Poor SBC wants it all and can't sell T1's for thousands a month when bandwith is becoming a commidity.

For those who complain about infustructure I say bullshit. Any modern city or even suburb has fiber optics already under their feet. Infact according to an older slashdot article 98% of all fiber is dark. Why? Because Verizon, SBC and others will refuse to let those who laid the wires play on their playground.

Yes not all of American can be wired but why is it that when I lived in Manhattan could not get high speed internect access but at the same time could move to Kansas city and have all sorts of options for half the price? I had miles upon miles of fiber under my feet in New York but had no access to it.

Aren't monopolies great?

--
http://saveie6.com/
Re:Serious Question by Zarquon · 2003-07-15 11:41 · Score: 3, Informative

Well, you also have to take into account seafood.. Japan is an island nation and in general has more seafood in their diet. For an US comparison, think New England.

--
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Re:Serious Question by qqqqarl · 2003-07-15 11:43 · Score: 1

so how come there's no similar service in new york?
Re:Serious Question by leo_fischer · 2003-07-15 11:43 · Score: 1

1) The terms of service are the same as the other broadband providers: You can cancel any time with one month's notice, and there are no limits on vpns. Yahoo's provided access point is either a plain router, or a wireless/wired router if you want to pay a little extra on the rental.
2) From what I have read, some estimates are that they are spending $250 for each customer aquired. The contract has NO minimum length, as I stated above. 15 months just looks like an estimate of the break-even time.
Re:Serious Question by leo_fischer · 2003-07-15 11:46 · Score: 1

The japanese government has taken a very strong position, forcing NTT (which owns all the local exchanges) to provide access to all comers to it's facilities. The resulting *competition* is why broadband access in japan is 10 times better than the US. (10x the speed, half the price) From what I hear of the US situation, the FCC etc have caved in to corporate interests, just as the US govt in general has.
Re:Serious Question by Nogami_Saeko · 2003-07-15 11:58 · Score: 1

You bet. The whole idea on this side of the pond isn't to "make stuff better", it's to get maximum income for the least possible investment.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the "broadband" providers (and I use the term rather loosely, considering how much most providers have capped/restricted their service), would be at their absolute happiest if people were paying $50/month or more for the priveledge of checking their email. Actually, when you get right down to it, I suppose they'd be even happier if you gave them money, and they didn't have to provide any service at all, but heavily restricted DSL/Cable seems to be the next best thing.

Any data you transfer on top of "checking your email", such as, visiting websites, playing games, or (GASP!) downloading stuff is money out of THEIR pockets. They don't like that, mmm'kay?

So you keep your speeds restricted, you keep people's expectations low by having bandwidth and usage caps and server/software restrictions to help discourage them from finding new and interesting things to do with the connection which might possibly use MORE bandwidth (bad, mmm'kay?)

Think of the possibilities - with a 12 megabit connection, you can watch full DVD Movies in real time, you could use your buddy's computer as network attached storage, realtime DV editing (like what I'm doing right now in an edit suite, waiting for a damn render :), but have the media on one side of the city, and your editing interface comfortably at home, or wherever you happen to be.

I'd like that. A lot.

Ah well, as with most other things, Japan and Europe will lead, and North America will get dragged along eventually, kicking and screaming, bleeding corporate profits all along the way.

Fun, huh?

N.

--
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Re:Serious Question by Zork+the+Almighty · 2003-07-15 12:00 · Score: 1

Why does the answer to everything have to be "Move to Japan" ?
Want 12mbits/sec for $21 ? Move to Japan.
Want to live in Japan ? Move to Japan.
Geez, this is ridiculous.

--

In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Re:Serious Question by bigberk · 2003-07-15 12:01 · Score: 1

Existing infrastruction is a definate. They wanna make more money on existing pipes, etc.
Correct. At the time, decision makers in the industry thought that there would be perpetually rising demand for what they had then. They were wrong, and it seems that they have over-invested in what is now becoming legacy equipment (outdated; and more efficient and less costly technologies now exist).
Re:Serious Question by aztektum · 2003-07-15 12:06 · Score: 1

So that's the excuse for one company doing it across our entire country. What about just starting in the big cities? Why doesn't this happy all the way from NY City to Washington D.C.? I've never seen it but people tell me that stretch is almost complete "city."

I don't care about everyone having it right now, I just want to know why they haven't even started?

Could it be given that most companies are huge huge HUGE conglomerates that doing something in just a few areas won't justify the expense??

That's what I want to know. I already know we're more spread out than Japan.

--
:: aztek ::
No sig for you!!
Re:Serious Question by mandalayx · 2003-07-15 12:08 · Score: 1

1) The Japanese are a people that seem to have an affinity for the latest gadgets and technology which is the reason a lot of really cool things show up first in Japan. Not sure if you can say the same about the average American.
Well, have you considered the fact that Japanese tend to have more dispensible income than Americans? Why is this? Not necessarily because they are rich. Maybe because house prices are so astronomical in urban Japan that the money they can't spend to afford a house gets spend on other stuff.

3) Also, if there was something like that over here, they would price it according to value. Let's face it : if people are willing to shell out approx $45 a month for cable/DSL, what would they pay for something like this? Answer : probably $100+ per month. Consequence : Nobody really buys it since the majority are not very tech oriented and really wouldn't see any justification to it.
How's this for a justification? This internet connection for half the price is (theoretically) 30+ times faster than your 384kb/s DSL.
Re:Serious Question by bigberk · 2003-07-15 12:11 · Score: 1

Ah well, as with most other things, Japan and Europe will lead, and North America will get dragged along eventually, kicking and screaming, bleeding corporate profits all along the way
... that is, if America doesn't first fall apart, under the weight of a 6 trillion dollar debt, lack of resources and weak prospects for true home-grown innovation.

Who's cynical now?
Re:Serious Question by PetrusMagnusII · 2003-07-15 12:12 · Score: 1

maybe its just me, but i think so-net (sonys isp in japan) has been offering this service for a long time.. like, atleast a year.. i am not sure about the specifics of it, because in the crappy appartment i live in, we dont have a phone line, so i cant get dsl.. (but i can get cool wireless that i can use anywhere.. which is cool) but i have been seeing ads on the trains for so-net:s ubsurdly fast dsl for a while..

sorry about any spelling errors... i dont use english much anymore.. i havebeen living here in japan for about a year and a half and am a college student.. gomenn nasai ^-^
Re:Serious Question by mowph · 2003-07-15 12:23 · Score: 1

1) The Japanese are a people that seem to have an affinity for the latest gadgets and technology which is the reason a lot of really cool things show up first in Japan. Not sure if you can say the same about the average American.

That may pertain to the lightest, smallest MD players and newest game consoles, but in fact, it took almost three years longer than America or Korea just for ADSL to get around Japan. In the meanwhile, most people paid by the minute for dial-up or for obsolete ISDN.
If anything, the sad state of Japanese land-based telecom is the reason for the incredible success of cell phones, especially cellular based e-mail and internet applications, and other associated gadgets such as cell-based cameras.
And there you'd have the reason why it wouldn't work over here. If you boil it down to the basics, it's nothing but corporate greed.

And greed has nothing to do with Softbank's president's motives? This is the guy who was once the eighth richest man in the world and known as "The Japanese Bill Gates". By combining internet, voice, and TV / PVP services, together at an unbeatable package rate, he stands to create an even bigger monopoly than NTT. He's taking a loss selling the systems so he can hook the customers ... not unlike Microsoft's X-Box strategy.
Then again, I am glad that there are some options to NTT coming out for high speed internet at last. OCN (NTT's provider) has been one of the worst I've ever used in my life, with technicians repeatedly failing to show and useless technical support. I paid for two months of "access" even before my neighborhood had the technology to support ADSL just because I signed up early.
Now, with serious competition (especially Yahoo!BB) surfacing, they're at last starting to shape up. Ironically, their current campaign is for two months of free ADSL when you sign up. But I've used them for over a year and a half, with never a price cut or an improvement in service for the customers -- just sign-up packages to hook more.
Re:Serious Question by ysyi · 2003-07-15 13:01 · Score: 1

I'd guess that wiring up a small chunk of land in a dense, heavily populated area in Japan would be considerably cheaper than wiring up sprawling areas that make up many metropolitan areas of the USA. If I got my facts right, the total land area of Japan (incl. all the smaller islands) is slightly smaller than the state of Texas (that's in the U.S.A., for those of you who don't know). I know that doesn't mean too much (given that Texas is a huge chunk of land); but consider the fact that they can subscribe many more customers per square mile (or square kilometer, in their case?) of covered area than they would be able to over here (with the exception of NYC, maybe?).
Then again, what the hell do I know? I'm just another Slashdotter... What I'm really trying to get at is: CAN YOU IMAGINE A BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THESE?!?! WELL, CAN YOU?! Now that is the question that remains to be answered!
I hope that made sense, or something.
Re:Serious Question by the_ghost226 · 2003-07-15 13:11 · Score: 1

New Technology. Americans wait and see if it works there and then see if it can be adapted. The japanese tend to be very avant garde when it comes to new tech. If you know anyone who has lived there ask them about the gadgets available on the market. It will blow your mind.
Re:Serious Question by lpret · 2003-07-15 13:11 · Score: 1

If my first language was English I might feel a little ashamed and then label you grammar nazi. Instead I have decided to label you:
US-centric
I would love to see your spanish or tagalog or japanese. I thought so...

--
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Re:Serious Question by B747SP · 2003-07-15 13:27 · Score: 0, Troll

Note that the vast majority of fiber optics that were laid during the dot com period are all what's called "dark" fiber-- that is, they are not currently in use.
That's not what 'dark fibre' means. Dark fibre is 'private' fibre - a physical run of fibre that your traffic, and only your traffic, passes over. It's 'dark' 'cos it's 'secure', not 'cos the light is turned off.

--
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Re:Serious Question by Lost+Race · 2003-07-15 13:34 · Score: 1

the fiber optic networks that were laid down before the dot com bust are just sitting there dormant in the ground.
Is that really true? Are there many deployed fiber runs in which not a single fiber is active? My impression is that when the trenches were dug and the cables laid, an excess of fiber was included in all the cables so that future increases in traffic could be handled without digging new trenches. That is, all that "dark fiber" is just excess capacity (which is necessary and good) rather than deployed-but-unused connectivity.
Re:Serious Question by jrockway · 2003-07-15 13:42 · Score: 1

I have wireless internet, and I have no limitations at all. In fact, the admin who runs it forgot to limit my bandwidth, so I get 2 T1 lines for $24.95 a month. Beat that :)

--
My other car is first.
Re:Serious Question by lovswr · 2003-07-15 13:45 · Score: 1

I too, worked for Chairman Bill (Esrey that is). I was at the PLSC in Atlanta. They really bet the company on ION (Integrated On Demand) It did actually work, but was completely doomed because it depended on the last mile providers (read at that time, the 4 remaining RBOCs's).

As an aside..There were 5 RBOC's created when AT&T was forced to break up. Now there are four. 1.SBC (Ameritech/Pacbell* parts of the old SWB) 2. Qwest (USWest & the other parts of SWB) 3. Bellsouth (a little bit of GTE) 4 Verizon (Nynex, Atlantic Bell, & the rest of GTE). Those 4 are dying to merge down to two. Seems like Ma Bell was just down, but not for the count
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 14:02 · Score: 0

whoa...d00d said tagalog...

Nice zing! too...

Me jump off now ;-)
Re:Serious Question by Fulcrum+of+Evil · 2003-07-15 14:06 · Score: 0

,i> That's not what 'dark fibre' means. Dark fibre is 'private' fibre - a physical run of fibre that your traffic, and only your traffic, passes over. It's 'dark' 'cos it's 'secure', not 'cos the light is turned off.

Almost all fibre is private. Nice troll, though. The real problem with dark fibre is that it is a: mostly long haul, not metropolitan, where the demand is, and b: it's been laid because it's both cheap and necessary to lay additional strands (for fault tolerance).

--
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Re:Serious Question by Fulcrum+of+Evil · 2003-07-15 14:14 · Score: 2, Funny

Compare the size of Japan and the USA.

Now compare the size of Japan with the USA minux the midwest.

--
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 14:16 · Score: 0

$21x15 = $315

For 12mbit, I'd pay for the modem/hardware if less than $250 and then entire freakin contract in advance if they'd wanted.

I pay $20 for a stinkin POTS line now plus cable modem. This amounts to roughly $65 a month, or 5 months of service.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 14:19 · Score: 0

Yes, I've always wondered about that. A culture that largely avoids personal contact, e.g. no handshaking, yet are packed like sardine, right up to each other, so much so that groping are issues and having separate cars for women only had to come into play.

The words "en masse" takes on new meaning. Almost like watching stop photography of people's movements into trains...except that it's real time.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 14:29 · Score: 1, Interesting

All of us know that [Caller ID] is part of the phone infrastructure (both ends have to know who's connected to who)

Well, no. A phone call goes through many links in a chain. And none of those links need to know (or typically do know) more than which input port gets connected to which output port. The box closest to you gets told (for example) "I have a call for your line #17 coming in on DS0 3 of DS1 #12; make the connection". The box says "One ringie-dingie; two ringie dingies; Done". There's nothing in there about anyone's name, or the directory number (DN) of the originating end. The signalling (SS7) to arrange a path happens on a completely separate network, and the SS7 nodes aren't connected to your phone. The boxes on the immediate other end of the phone lines typically don't have knowledge or understanding of DNs at all.

and costs the phone company $0

Well, no. Caller ID typically is (or was, back when it was getting started) an extra feature in the switch software that the network operator has to pay extra money for. You can run your DMS 500 / 5ESS, or you can pay a few million extra and run them with the Caller ID option.

Also, the line card has to support some extra hardware. It needs a modem built into it to burst that Caller ID data between the first and second ring. Lines that don't support Caller ID don't need the modem, which includes lots of old lines cards, and cheap line cards. The POTS business is really cutthroat when it comes to cost-per-line (it's a commodity), and even a buck for a chip matters.

Then, of course, there's the simple matter that phone service with Caller ID is more attractive to some people than phone service without, and therefore it can be sold for more money. Prices are not always determined by cost + x%. Often enough, they're determined by the value to the buyer ("whatever the market will bear") and not the cost to the seller. Those are simply the maximum and minimum prices can have. When the two values are different, the actual market price can be anywhere in between.
Re:Serious Question by Metaldsa · 2003-07-15 14:37 · Score: 1

"you'rerightovercrowdingcanbegood. justlookatallthespaceiamsavingwiththispost!"

Sadly that is more readable than my perl code :(
Re:Serious Question by tuxtomas · 2003-07-15 14:39 · Score: 1

Population density is exactly the reason. Yes, they get some cheap broadband and VoIP, but I'd rather keep my fixed costs such as rent affordable. I don't think I could afford to live in Japan by myself. I used to have a roommate from Japan. He won't move back because he is so used to the open spaces we have in our homes. Not to mention the open spaces we have between our homes that would be worth how much in Tokyo?

--
Open source- the greatest equalizer mankind has ever seen.
Re:Serious Question by zerocool^ · 2003-07-15 15:07 · Score: 1

Existing infrastruction is a definate. They wanna make more money on existing pipes, etc.

This is more right than you know. We (netmar.com) called up Cogent, asking about bandwidth. The problem we've run into is that bandwidth for home users is getting cheaper (even though this thread is about home users getting bandwidth cheap in japan... it's still cheap here). You can get a DSL line with 1.5 Mb/s down and 384k up for $60/month from the provider here (blacksburg - ntelos). But, we have two T-1's from Ntelos (T-1's are 1.5 Mb/s) and they cost $675 EACH. Our SLA exists, but it could be better, for the price. The difference between business and home service is aweful.

So, anyway, Cogent can provide you 100 Mb/s for $1000/month if you're not a server-provider (i.e. office buildng, apartment complex), and $3000/month if you are (webhosting, ISP, etc). We called them to ask about the service, and they said they don't have any service in our area.

But, then they said they'd install a link for $124,000.

We, of course, told them to go screw themselves. We're not going to pay for them to install a link down to blacksburg so that then they can offer bandwidth to anyone in town for the same price we're paying.

But, the problem exists that Tier-1 providers want to charge EXTREME amounts for their bandwidth, yet are unwilling to expand their service areas.

And we've talked about it at Netmar many times - we love being able to say that all of our bandwidth is quality bandwidth, not cogent-esque links, etc (we have links from nTelos, Qwest, and Sprint), but it's hard to compete when people expect to pay similar amounts to what they pay at home. People get starstruck when they see Rackshack offer 700GB of bandwidth per month for $100, and they tend to overlook the fact that, if you go w/ Rackshack, your tech support won't know inet from init.

And we can't honestly figure out where the cost of bandwidth comes from. The hardware cost and line-leasing is obviously not free, but they are sunk costs, assessed whether the company uses them or not. We seriously can't figure out why bandwidth costs so much money.

~Will

--
sig?
Re:Serious Question by Art+Tatum · 2003-07-15 15:43 · Score: 3, Funny

If my first language was English I might feel a little ashamed and then label you grammar nazi. Instead I have decided to label you:
US-centric
Or even England-centric. They still speak English there, right? Heck, from the names, you'd think that England and English were related, wouldn't you?
Re:Serious Question by slantyyz · 2003-07-15 15:44 · Score: 1

You can get a DSL line with 1.5 Mb/s down and 384k up for $60/month from the provider here (blacksburg - ntelos).

Sorry, but that's not cheap. In Canada, you would pay roughly $40 CDN for that level of service (depending on whether you go with the telco or a bit provider, who can actually give you a better deal). In USD, that's around 30USD. Even 3MB DSL, (around $70 CDN) is cheaper than the $60 US/Month you're talking about. Call us tightwads, but $60US for 1MB DSL is way, way, way expensive.
Re:Serious Question by Art+Tatum · 2003-07-15 15:53 · Score: 1

How's this for a justification? This internet connection for half the price is (theoretically) 30+ times faster than your 384kb/s DSL.
Because most people only have email or do light web browsing. They don't care about downloading 700 MB movies or getting the latest kernel. That is THE reason broadband is failing here. Not enough people care to make it profitable.
Re:Serious Question by Millyways · 2003-07-15 15:55 · Score: 1

Here in Canberra Australia our local utilities company spun off a networking company called TransACT which has now run high speed networking past 50% of the homes in Canberra. Canberra's population is around 313,000 people and the city spans an area of around 40x40Km.

I can't believe that many cities in the world could be more spread out than Canberra is. We have lots of "green space" between suburbs and very little medium or high density housing.

TransACT fiber to the section copper to the house network has a bandwidth of around 53MB/s of which up to 1MB is currently available for internet in a standard household instalation. It also carries local and international free to air TV stations, Pay TV, and Video on demand.

You are kidding yourselves if you believe that an american company couldn't roll out a similar network.
Re:Serious Question by slantyyz · 2003-07-15 15:57 · Score: 1

Geography.

Look at how densely packed Japan is. Look at the huge expanses of empty land in the states.

Doing it here means wiring to every single family home. Doing it there means getting 1000 customers per apartment complex you hit.

While density is a totally legitimate point, I don't know if you can make that claim when an even larger country to the north of the USA, with only roughly 10% of the population seems to have broadband on par or cheaper than in the US. (I'm speaking of Canada, by the way).

Granted, people in rural Canada have the same bandwidth dearth that those in the "rural USA" (is there even such a thing?), but considering how Canada's "major cities" (even excluding Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal) probably have better access to cheaper broadband than cities of comparable size and density in the US, something tells me there is more at work than simply geography.
Re:Serious Question by Art+Tatum · 2003-07-15 15:58 · Score: 1

That $21 a month is subsidized by the government.
No, that $21 a month is subsidized by the taxpayers.
Re:Serious Question by slantyyz · 2003-07-15 16:02 · Score: 1

You are kidding yourselves if you believe that an american company couldn't roll out a similar network.

They can. It will just cost three times as much (with one third going to lobbyists), take three times as long to complete, and have one-third the efficiency.
Re:Serious Question by garymm · 2003-07-15 16:36 · Score: 1

They actually don't include vowels in Farsi, Arabic, and (sometimes) in hebrew.
Re:Serious Question by dytin · 2003-07-15 16:37 · Score: 1

Do you think that they don't care about money in Japan? They do. The reason that it is so much easier for them to roll out such a great broadband service over there is simple. They have a MUCH greater population density than we do. They are a tiny island compared to the vastness of the good 'ol USA. For a company to attempt to roll out the type of broadband like they are doing in Japan would be suicide. It would cost at least 10 times as much to create a network that could support a 12 MBit connection. It will take them 15 months to recover, it would take a US company 15 YEARS to recover the costs. Sorry but, there are a lot of great benefits to the US, we get bigger houses more land and more wilderness, as opposed to being cramped in a tiny apartment. But, we won't have broadband like Japan does for at least another 5 years or so. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Re:Serious Question by whatch+durrin · 2003-07-15 17:34 · Score: 1

I don't know about others, but I don't particularly like the idea of having an "all-in-one" provider.
Inevitably, a company offering more than one service begins to prioritize (by choice or necessity). Example: AT&T Broadband (now Comcast) offering digital phone service, cable TV, and cable internet. When you call them for service telephone problems automatically get priority.
After that, regular cable service gets attention, but at a much slower rate.
Third, they won't even talk to you about internet; you have to call a totally separate phone number and speak with a tech that's not even in your area of the country. If they have to schedule a service visit (hope you can wait a week) it gets passed back to AT&T/Comcast.
I can only imagine if my mobile phone service was with them.
I also don't like the idea of having a single link to provide me with every connection to the outside world, but if different companies could "share" the line for my service it wouldn't be so bad.

--
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
Re:Serious Question by whatch+durrin · 2003-07-15 17:47 · Score: 1

I would be calling Verizon and threatening to turn them in to the appropriate authorities (state Attorney General?) if they didn't allow Phone Company X to setup my service.
IIRC, they're supposed to allow other providers access to the lines (with certain restrictions).
I had something similar happen several years ago. I wanted DSL through a third party (FreeDSL, remember them?). I setup an account and they said it would be a while before they could verify whether or not my line was suitable (they had to contact BellSouth). FreeDSL called me and said I couldn't get their service. Ok, whatever.
I logged onto BellSouth's website where I entered my phone number to see if I was eligible for their expensive-ass DSL service. Voila! I can get BellSouth! How freakin' convenient!
I called BellSouth and told them of the discrepency. Magically, FreeDSL called me the next day and said my service would be setup soon, which it was.
Sometimes, you've just gotta be creative with the fuckers.

--
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
Re:Serious Question by Destron · 2003-07-15 18:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

That's not really what keeps them afloat. Japan imports a huge amount of food from other countries, and it is not as crowded as everyone thinks. Japan is about the same size as California, although with less arable land, and four times the population. Yet, they make far more rice than they can eat here and a huge portion of it goes to waste. The goverment is paying farmers NOT to produce food. Now consider that their population is declining. It's not exactly overcrowded. What IS overcrowded is Tokyo. The population of the countryside continues to decrease while Tokyo increases. People live in tiny apartments. An apartment complex (danchi) means 30 buildings, 10 stories each, 10 units on each story and a family in each 4 room unit. Seems easy enough to wire up to me.
Re:Serious Question by Frick · 2003-07-15 18:38 · Score: 1

One point. Unlike in the US there is no sign up period. I have the service and can canel at any time. Much like cell phones over here.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 18:59 · Score: 0

phone line is not subsidized, it is owned by the customer.
NTT just owns the exchange and the trunk lines.
you have to buy your line, can be 40,000Y, or buy from another customer.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 19:07 · Score: 0

most people in Japan actually live in Houses. Tokyo's average building height is under two stories.
same in Osaka, suburbs are all small (120sqm) houses packed together
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 20:06 · Score: 0

Well, most of the swedes are concentrated on southern Sweden.
Re:Serious Question by Afrosheen · 2003-07-15 20:44 · Score: 1

IIRC, Canadian bandwidth was government subsidized, wasn't it? Sure makes things alot cheaper when someone else already paid for it. The gov't should consider it's ROI in skilled workers, not dollar signs, because ultimately skilled workers result in dollar signs and generate taxable income. Since taxes up north are so much higher than they are here in the US it doesn't surprise me that your government could afford to pay for bandwidth.

OTOH, our country could too, easily, but considers ROI the old fashioned way: when will we get our money back. Plus, our knuckleheaded president and advisors want to go pick fights with anyone that looks suspicious and that's costing us out the yin-yang also. Maybe in 50 years when the hydrogen economy gets fired up (no pun intended) alot of this Middle East crap will wind down, but for now, it's bleeding us dry in more ways than one.

Anyway, consider yourself lucky. Let me know how your monthly transfer rate is treating you.
Re:Serious Question by muyuubyou · 2003-07-15 21:01 · Score: 1

Existing infrastructure, profit margins, lack of competition... people shelling top $$$ for the current shit...
Re:Serious Question by Lord+Kholdan · 2003-07-15 21:23 · Score: 1

Sweden is the size of California, but has only a quarter (9 million) of the population. Yet the broadband prices are similar to Japan ($40/mo for 26/26 Mbit/s).

Comparision is not valid however. In Sweden the goverment decided that every household will get a broadband and it is subsidising businesses to get that result.
Re:Serious Question by d95adam · 2003-07-15 21:36 · Score: 1

Comparision is not valid however. In Sweden the goverment decided that every household will get a broadband and it is subsidising businesses to get that result.

That might be a valid point if you live out in the countryside and want to get your own fiber to your house, in that case you could get a tax deduction. For ordinary xDSL there is no subsidising.
Re:Serious Question by Shinobi · 2003-07-15 21:39 · Score: 1

Not true. The various local governments are getting subsidies from the state to build up an infrastructure, and the goal is that local governments should also provide at least 5Mb/s symmetrical and full duplex to all the citizens . Companies such as Bredbandsbolaget, Bostream, Tele2, Utfors etc are not getting any subsidies. Instead Bostream, Bredbandsbolaget etc often rent capactity from the local infrastructure, to avoid having to lay down as much fiber as they might have had to.
Re:Serious Question by keithdowsett · 2003-07-15 22:31 · Score: 1

Population Density might have something to do with it. There's a lot more potential customers per square mile in Japan than most other countries.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 23:40 · Score: 0

and I label you as having the worst web page link ever.
Re:Serious Question by Ed+Avis · 2003-07-15 23:50 · Score: 1

So what are the units for measuring value for money in Internet connections?

Bits per second per (dollar per month)?

Bits per dollar?

--
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Re:Serious Question by dew-genen-ny · 2003-07-16 00:07 · Score: 1

dew-genen-ny said: MCI Worldcom are back! Just that they dropped the Worldcon part.....

--
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
Re:Serious Question by kumokasumi · 2003-07-16 01:13 · Score: 1

Well. They actually end up importing seafood, too...
Re:Serious Question by broeman · 2003-07-16 02:06 · Score: 1

overcrowding is quite a negative word, as it is mostly used in combination of poor countries. But this list of countries by population density shows quite some rich countries in the top. Japan is not as crowded as Belgium (close), The Netherlands, Malta and The Vatican City. I think infrastructure and investments in this makes the big benefit (South Korea, Hong Kong and Scandinavia among others do this, and have quite low prices on broadband/mobiles).

--

(yes this can be compared with sex)
Re:Serious Question by zerocool^ · 2003-07-16 02:15 · Score: 1

See, this is exactly my point.

Home users can get awesome bandwidth extremely cheap, but businesses that want to get T-x bandwidth pay thru the nose for it.

--
sig?
Re:Serious Question by Nogami_Saeko · 2003-07-16 03:19 · Score: 1

Ya, I didn't mean to imply that Japanese companies don't want to make money as much, or more than North American companies - I was more thinking along the lines that Japanese companies like to innovate, whereas North American companies are satisfied with the status-quo so long as it turns a profit.

N.

--
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Re:Serious Question by JerkBoB · 2003-07-16 05:15 · Score: 1

Home users can get awesome bandwidth extremely cheap, but businesses that want to get T-x bandwidth pay thru the nose for it.

That's because there is an assumption on the part of the bandwidth provider as to the usage patterns of home users versus business users.

Businesses are more likely to use large amounts of bandwidth for longer periods of time than average home users (p2p leeches excepted). Therefore, the bandwidth provider has to have more upstream bandwidth to service X business customers than they would with X home users.

The other part of the picture is that business customers usually get SLAs as part of their contract. Home users don't. It costs money to meet those SLAs (staffing, infrastructure, etc.), and it costs the bandwidth provider money when they don't meet their SLAs.

As a business customer, I can call my upstream ISP and scream bloody murder when their half of the EtherPoint connection to my company goes blip (and watch them scramble to make me happy). When my home DSL connection goes blip, I can choose to either wait on the phone for some first-tier tech monkey who tells me to power-cycle my 'DSL Modem' even after I tell them I've done that, or I can wait until they get their shit together and fix things (which admittedly doesn't happen but rarely any more).

--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Re:Serious Question by Penguinoflight · 2003-07-16 05:44 · Score: 1

That's a mute point. For example, Verizon will sell their service to Earthlink for such a high price that Earthlink won't be able to afford to compete with Verizons prices. It makes it look like Earthlink is expencive, (and yes, they are) but they could be cheaper.

Also, I'm not even sure if a second company is allowed to run lines where there are already lines, so with Bellsouth making a complete joke of line service here (I'm under the distance limit, but they don't provide access), I can't get someone else in, except for highway robbery "business dsl" starting at about $90/month for 128k.

--
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-16 07:12 · Score: 0

I agree. My wife is Icelandic and spent most of her childhood half in the US and half in Iceland and then lived in France for a few years. She's fluent in all three languages, but her grammar isn't great in any of them. On top of that, she doesn't have an accent when speaking English, so when people first meet her and she makes little mistakes, they just think she's dumb.
Re:Serious Question by Myrcurial · 2003-07-16 07:58 · Score: 1

Canadian residential broadband is not government subsidized. The currently low price is basically due to a giant pissing match between two companies -- Bell Canada and Rogers Cable (this shows trickle down throughout the rest of canada -- the other Stentor telcos, as well as Shaw cable, the other white meat of the cable industry). They're busy trying to steal customers from each other and they keep dropping the price to attract people up from the $9.95 / $14.95 a month dialup accounts. And the best part is that the government supports this situation by making sure that it is difficult for small market players to maintain themselves. If you want more details on the hardship of being an independent internet provider in canada, email me, I used to be one and I'll be paying off that debt for the rest of my natural born life.
Re:Serious Question by Crazy+Eight · 2003-07-16 09:25 · Score: 1

For the record, it has been claimed (with merit, I think) that urban living is more economically and even environmentally efficient than the alternatives. Think rainforest versus mono-culture.
Re:Serious Question by Crazy+Eight · 2003-07-16 11:44 · Score: 1

Or landporting it.
Re:Serious Question by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-16 13:42 · Score: 0

Gee, thanks slashdot! One uninformed fool makes a technically incorrect comment, I correct it, he labels me a troll, and some stupid moderator believes him. Fuckin' great. All americans are morons
Re:Serious Question by Synic · 2003-07-22 19:21 · Score: 1

That last statement is a fallacy.

i wantitwantitwantit! by Machine9 · 2003-07-15 08:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

omg! that is SUCH a great deal, compared to my sucky 256kb/sec line (that costs 40 !!!) yet another reason to move to the land of rising anime.

--

Machine9dotNet

Re:i wantitwantitwantit! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:36 · Score: 0

Attention: this article is a dupe.
Re:i wantitwantitwantit! by Machine9 · 2003-07-15 08:40 · Score: 1

you know, there's a reason visited links change color in Mozilla...
...so dumbass AC "funny men" can't trick us with your "jokes".

--
Machine9dotNet
Re:i wantitwantitwantit! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:54 · Score: 0

Links change color in every browser mister smartass
Re:i wantitwantitwantit! by Machine9 · 2003-07-15 09:00 · Score: 1

I am aware of this, but since I'm on SLASHDOT, I feel the peer pressure weighing heavily on my shoulders... as such I cunningly advocated mozilla.
I don't feel any different though...

--
Machine9dotNet
Re:i wantitwantitwantit! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:20 · Score: 0

The thing I love about the peer pressure at this place is that it makes you do good things, like use open standards, rather than bad things... like... I dunno... closed ones.

I'd move to Japan by Dark+Paladin · 2003-07-15 08:32 · Score: 5, Funny

But between being wisked away while standing on Tokyo Tower to another dimension, having to get Giant Monster insurance, dealing with being either attacked or defended by pretty magical schoolgirls, and of course the nearly daily alien invasions and city-wide explosions with dueling robots - I'm just not so sure it's worth it.

Then again, 12 Mbits is pretty good. Hm....

--
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel

Re:I'd move to Japan by Valiss · 2003-07-15 08:39 · Score: 4, Funny

But it's only $21/month. With the money you save on the 'net costs, you could afford all the other insurance.

--

-Valiss
Re:I'd move to Japan by KDan · 2003-07-15 08:42 · Score: 0, Offtopic

that isn't funny at all, are you people morons?

No. What about you?

Daniel

--
Carpe Diem
Re:I'd move to Japan by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:44 · Score: 0

Are you actually claiming that these things don't happen in Japan? Incredible.
Re:I'd move to Japan by Tumbleweed · 2003-07-15 08:48 · Score: 4, Funny

> With the money you save on the 'net costs, you could afford all the other insurance.

Dude, you are SO out of touch. Obviously you haven't gotten a price quote on Giant Monster Insurance lately. It's monstrous! Frickin' Gojira...

"All right, I'm gonna tell ya a story, and I don't wanna hear 'Act of God'..."
- Jack Burton
Re:I'd move to Japan by micromoog · 2003-07-15 09:09 · Score: 1

Did you just say "I know you are but what am I?"?
Re:I'd move to Japan by PipianJ · 2003-07-15 09:17 · Score: 1

Well... At least there are pretty, rich, and cynical Japanese girls who want to take over the world...

Even if their minions are rather incompetant...

...

HANDLEBARS.
Re:I'd move to Japan by jafac · 2003-07-15 09:24 · Score: 2, Funny

Yeah, but once they put a Cap on Awards in frivolous Giant Monster damage lawsuits, this problem will go away.

--

These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Re:I'd move to Japan by Physics+Nobody · 2003-07-15 09:25 · Score: 1

Wait...you consider those things to be negatives? I always thought they were bonuses. I mean...it's just cool ;)

--
Physics is good
Re:I'd move to Japan by Tumbleweed · 2003-07-15 09:30 · Score: 1

Nah, that's just a smokescreen by the Giant Monster Insurance lobby. This was already tried on Monster Island many years ago, and it didn't help at all. Insurance people _suck_. And not in a good way.
Re:I'd move to Japan by Harinezumi · 2003-07-15 09:37 · Score: 5, Funny

That's just in Tokyo, it attracts giant monsters and aliens like midwestern trailer parks do tornados. Move somewhere quiet like Sendai, and all you'll have to insure yourself against will be the occasional earthquake ^^
Re:I'd move to Japan by monopole · 2003-07-15 10:18 · Score: 1

But in Sendai you have to put up with northern long blade cherry blossom spirit attacks. And giant steam robots jumpting out of giant dirigibles to disrupt weddings!
See http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/3932/s akura1.html
Re:I'd move to Japan by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 11:08 · Score: 0

It just so happens I AM moving to Japan in 2 months! Does anyone have info as to how far outside of the metros this is available? I'll be living in Odawara, a bit north of Tokyo.
Re:I'd move to Japan by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 13:31 · Score: 0

taking a thread to the penultimate conclusion that the monster insurance lobby has failed to persuade legislators. but why?
Re:I'd move to Japan by Tumbleweed · 2003-07-15 13:45 · Score: 1

I think it probably has something to do with PETA lobbying on behalf of the Giant Monsters.

In my day, we sent the whole of the armed forces after giant monsters with nary a thought to any "environmental impact" and we sure as hell didn't worry about whether the giant monster was endangered or not. We fully intended to endanger the damned things! I just don't understand you kids these days...being kind to animals is all well and good until one friggin' STEPS on you.
Re:I'd move to Japan by Melchior_of_wg · 2003-07-15 13:56 · Score: 1

"... defended by pretty magical schoolgirls ..." This is supposed to be a *bad* thing?

Want pr0n at 12Mbits/sec? Move to Japan. by da3dAlus · 2003-07-15 08:32 · Score: 5, Funny

Then you can really be turning Japanese...

--

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.

Re:Want pr0n at 12Mbits/sec? Move to Japan. by ackthpt · 2003-07-15 09:04 · Score: 0

My thoughts exactly. That and spam. Expect it to explode out of Japan on this kind of service.

--

A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Re:Want pr0n at 12Mbits/sec? Move to Japan. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:26 · Score: 0

Huh? What kind of jack-assed causational argument is THAT!? Yahoo BB has been out in Japan for over 2 years now, and has been offering speeds of 12 Mb for around a year. This is only a logical speed upgrade from 12 to 26 Mb. I haven't seen any drastic increase in spam because of the service.

I gotta say, I love being a subscriber. I get a bridge type modem which means no routing bullshit (I do it all with Linux on MY terms). No filtered ports either. So to all you Americans without decent net access, allow me to commiserate by saying, "Muwahahahahah sux0rz!"
Re:Want pr0n at 12Mbits/sec? Move to Japan. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:31 · Score: 0

Only 12Mbits? I figured it would be faster given you're closer to the source...
Re:Want pr0n at 12Mbits/sec? Move to Japan. by Quikah · 2003-07-15 10:08 · Score: 1

Yeah but they pixelate all the naughty bits.

--
Q.

Wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:32 · Score: 2, Funny

Dirt-cheap, blazing-fast net access AND used schoolgirl panties sold in vending machines??? That's it, I'm moving!!!

/me calls realtor.

Prediction... by Fux+the+Pengiun · 2003-07-15 08:32 · Score: 2, Funny

Once users start logging onto this service, the downloading of tentacle pr0n will reach epic proportions.

--
Consensual sex is boring.

Re:Prediction... by n1nj4k3n · 2003-07-15 08:43 · Score: 1

So much hentai... so little time...
Unable to comprehend... brain embolism... core dumped
Re:Prediction... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:45 · Score: 0

how sad it is that i know what you're talking about

You know you're a nerd when by Webtommy88 · 2003-07-15 08:32 · Score: 5, Funny

You know you're a nerd when big bandwidth makes you this happy :)

Re:You know you're a nerd when by garcia · 2003-07-15 08:41 · Score: 1

it could be the fact that he is believing he will regain his top 10 richest men in the world spot.

I would be smiliing like fucking crazy if I thought I was sitting on the $100 billion winning lottery ticket #.

I'm so going to Japan by drskrud · 2003-07-15 08:32 · Score: 0

The Japanese are one step ahead yet again! As soon as this damn university degree is finished I'm heading out there to get my fill of Martial Arts, Anime, Heavy Metal, Guitars, Cool Gadgetry, and now fast connections. Why does Japan get all the cool stuff?

Want to Live in a Box ? by tealover · 2003-07-15 08:32 · Score: 0

Move to Japan as well.

Sayonara.

--
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to

Keep in mind.... by Vengie · 2003-07-15 08:33 · Score: 3, Insightful

Cost of living and land values in japan......before we jump the gun on how cheap this is. Look at the population density in certain parts of the island.....notably where this has been rolled out.

--
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)

Re:Keep in mind.... by tommertron · 2003-07-15 08:36 · Score: 0

Keep in mind the land values and cost of living in New York City... I highly doubt that kind of bandwidth is that cheap there, or London or other expensive cities.
I find it odd that at $21/a month, they still have to give away the modem?? I'd be more than willing to buy a modem to use. Hell, it's even better than my broadband ISP, which makes me pay them monthly for the modem use.
Tommer

--
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
Re:Keep in mind.... by EZmagz · 2003-07-15 08:38 · Score: 1

Look at the population density in certain parts of the island.
You hit on a very good point...in terms of pure area, you're not really looking at a huge plot of land in Japan. The cost of implementing something similar here in the States would be astronomically larger. However, that can't stop me from dreaming! ;)

--
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
Re:Keep in mind.... by leeet · 2003-07-15 09:29 · Score: 1

I lived in Japan and I had more money in my bank account then what I have now(!)

It is expensive but not that bad. Besides, you get pay (very well) in Yen so no problems...There used to be plenty of english only techies jobs for 40-50K per year. I start to regret that I left...

--
-- Leeeter than leet
Re:Keep in mind.... by sammy.lost-angel.com · 2003-07-15 10:08 · Score: 1

you should email me a list of jobs or where i can find some :)

AHHH by Pinguu · 2003-07-15 08:33 · Score: 2, Funny

Want 12Mbits/sec for $21? Move to Japan.
/me moves to Japan ;)

--
--

I have wood by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:33 · Score: 0

'nuff said

Computer Me is... by computerme · 2003-07-15 08:33 · Score: 2, Funny

Turning Japanese, Turning japanese... he really thinks so!

FAST! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:33 · Score: 0

Download the entire TubGirl anime collection in 15 seconds!

I get 12 MB/sec by skidrowe · 2003-07-15 08:33 · Score: 5, Funny

All you have to do is uncap your cable modem. Don't worry about the cable company, they won't ca- [Connection Lost]

Duh by Raul654 · 2003-07-15 08:34 · Score: 1

Any place that can produce Legend of the Overfiend is definitely an interesting place to live

--

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton

Re:Duh by Machine9 · 2003-07-15 08:37 · Score: 1

Don't forget that, besides multiple hundreds of tentacle penii, Urotsukidoji also has cool powers, as well as a storyline that is superior to most crappy hollywood movies :)
C'mon, you know you like hentai-tentacle pr0n and Uber powers.

--
Machine9dotNet
Re:Duh by usotsuki · 2003-07-15 08:48 · Score: 1

And don't forget PERFECT BLUE!!!

-uso.

--
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
Re:Duh by Tumbleweed · 2003-07-15 09:11 · Score: 1

I like Ping Pong Matrix better (sorry no URL - I'm at work)...

And if it's anything like the Playstation2... by ltwally · 2003-07-15 08:34 · Score: 1

...it will only take Japan about 5 years to ship it over here. By which time, they'll have the Next Great Thing.

Time-Warner, you suck.

Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese... all built in Korea.

--

/dev/random

Re:And if it's anything like the Playstation2... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:38 · Score: 0

Uh sorry, but all you gooks and japs were made in middle kingdom, china, sorry.

You don't have to move to japan! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:34 · Score: 2, Funny

You fools!

Just get a friend who lives in Japan to sign up and send you the modem in the mail.

Re:You don't have to move to japan! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:56 · Score: 0

Holy shit! Great idea! I'll call Mitsui now and ask him to string some fishing line accross the Pacific so that I don't even need a local phone line.

This is easier in Japan. by Valar · 2003-07-15 08:34 · Score: 4, Informative

This is easier in Japan than in America, for two reasons. Firstly, Japan is very densely populated, compared to most parts of America, at least. Secondly, they are a very wired (well, wireless too) culture. From what I've heard, Japan's last generation was their wired generation, and this one is their wireless generation...

--

====
Crudely Drawn Games

Re:This is easier in Japan. by realdpk · 2003-07-15 08:39 · Score: 1

Thirdly, they're (apparently) less concerned about stopping competing DSL products at every corner (ref: Covad, Northpoint, etc). We could have had this, but the telcos did not (and still do not) want it.
Re:This is easier in Japan. by nightsweat · 2003-07-15 08:51 · Score: 1

So why can't we do this in San Francisco and Chicago and Manhattan where the density would warrant the expense. I'd sure as hell sign up.

--

the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Re:This is easier in Japan. by zulux · 2003-07-15 09:19 · Score: 5, Funny

Firstly, Japan is very densely populated,

Certain portions of America are populated by dense people.

--
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Re:This is easier in Japan. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:04 · Score: 0

Certain portions of America are populated by dense people.

Only the portions north of mexico and south of canada. Hawaii here I come!
Re:This is easier in Japan. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 11:25 · Score: 0

Actually, 50% live in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and surrounding places.

The rest of the country is pretty rural. A friend of mine says they can get this kind of connection in the rural places, too. That's really amazing.
Re:This is easier in Japan. by SJ · 2003-07-15 13:05 · Score: 1

Aren't those portions in between the east coast and the west coast?
Re:This is easier in Japan. by Aadain2001 · 2003-07-15 13:39 · Score: 1

Yes, it's called Washington DC.

--
Space for rent, inquire within
Re:This is easier in Japan. by Art+Tatum · 2003-07-15 16:03 · Score: 1

No, I believe he was referring to Hollywood. DC is way down the list after pretty much every city in California and every town in the Northeast.
Re:This is easier in Japan. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 16:49 · Score: 0

No, it's called the White House

My Hentai addiction is happy by egg+troll · 2003-07-15 08:34 · Score: 1

Heh, this means I can get my tenticle plant rape anime AVIs so much faster now!

--

C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.

Tsk tsk tsk.. Amateurs :) by rylin · 2003-07-15 08:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

Want 26Mbps for $48.65 (USD)? (xe.com/ucc)
Move to sweden.

Bostream.se (Bostream "scream" product page)

But is it IPv6? by Trigun · 2003-07-15 08:35 · Score: 1

We want faster, but more importantly, we want more

Re:But is it IPv6? by skidrowe · 2003-07-15 09:00 · Score: 0

Mod parent up, I found this to be VERY insightful.

The rest of the story by El · 2003-07-15 08:35 · Score: 2, Insightful

That's $21/month only until Softbank goes bankrupt and discontinues the service... read the rest of the article. There still using the dot com strategy of losing money on every customer, but making it up in volume.

--

"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

Re:The rest of the story by buddhahat · 2003-07-15 08:44 · Score: 1

It's funny that Masayoshi Son's surname (Son) could be written with the character that means "loss" (as in loss of money).

--
------ How can making people laugh lead to bad karma?
Re:The rest of the story by Servo · 2003-07-15 08:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

That's how 99% of all service businesses operate. To cover expenses you must have a certain level of customers. Until that break even point is reached then you are losing money per customer. That has nothing to do with the dot com stragety.

--
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Re:The rest of the story by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:55 · Score: 2, Informative

Thats a misleading phrase, right there.

As is obvious from reading the article, they're not trying to make up thier losses with volume, but with ~duration~. It's a very simple, and common, business setup. I give you the equipment and service now, you pay me back slowly.

The risk is lack of a contract. When I go buy a big screen TV, or a house, or a Car, they have a contract saying that I will keep paying them, or that take my car away. With this, there is no such thing. However, I tend to think that the combination of lower costs and higher speeds should be almost as good.

Of course, if thats a normal price for Broadband in Japan, the man is crazy.
Re:The rest of the story by GatorMan · 2003-07-15 08:56 · Score: 1

Sounds like DirecTV Broadband. Sometimes too good to be true is just that. They sure had the customer volume and the features, but at the price point they were offering they simply couldn't continue (or so they said). Wonder where all the extra cash flow goes now.
Re:The rest of the story by leeet · 2003-07-15 09:33 · Score: 2, Interesting

Softbank is the Microsoft of Japan. They own software, hardware, game and publishing companies (amost others). They have capital and invest in USA and Europe. This Internet setup is probably just to amuse the president's daughter.

--
-- Leeeter than leet
Re:The rest of the story by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:00 · Score: 0

That's how 99% of all service businesses operate. To cover expenses you must have a certain level of customers. Until that break even point is reached then you are losing money per customer.

Uh, wait a minute there, you didn't read the parent with sufficient attention. You can NOT make money by losing money on every customer. No matter how many customers you have. The more customers, the more you lose.

The marketing droids at a dot-bomb I worked at in '99 - '00 did this on a product. We lost money on every one we shipped. They advertised the hell out of it in hopes of making money with volume sales. There was no economy of scale on this particular product, so the more we sold the more we lost. It was insane. And everyone looked at us funny when we brought it up at company meetings. Sigh...

Thanks, Softbank! by nacturation · 2003-07-15 08:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

Now, thanks to thousands of vulnerable Windows boxes, I now have a combined total of 1644Mbps of bandwidth to DDoS sites with.

On a more serious note, the cool factor of this is outstanding, but I sure hope they're handing out firewall software when they hand out those free modems on the street.

--
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.

Re:Thanks, Softbank! by Adam9 · 2003-07-15 08:43 · Score: 1

Hopefully they'll follow the US cable/dsl stragey and cap their upstream at 128kbps (or better yet 56kbps).
Re:Thanks, Softbank! by OmniVector · 2003-07-15 09:11 · Score: 2, Interesting

HOPEFULLY? This has always been one of the things that pissed me off about my cable internet provider. Not only does my service get slower due to incremental caps of bandwidth, but they don't drop the price, or have any future intent of improving the service.

I mean why should they bother? It's not like I can get up and switch to a faster service that costs the same or less.

--
- tristan
Re:Thanks, Softbank! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:47 · Score: 0

Uhh... you're an idiot.
Re:Thanks, Softbank! by a5cii · 2003-07-16 15:51 · Score: 0

In the uk the maximum upstream for personal users ie.. 512/1mbit/1.5mbit/2mbit adsl & cable is 256k thus services are advertised

[Adsl]
£23.40 per quarter 512/256 adsl
£70.00 per quarter 1mbit/256 adsl
£142.40 per quarter 2mbit/256 adsl

[Cable]
£21.00 per quarter 512/256 cable
£32.70 per quarter 1mbit/256 cable
£48.99 per quarter 1.5mbit/256 cable
£60.00 per quarter 2mbit/256 cable

the 56k access users get 0.5 to 0.75 of their download speed to upload so 56k user dloading at 5k a sec can upload at around 2 - 3k a sec

the 256k upload is the same in most european countries, i have 512/256 adsl and get 55 - 60k downloads and 27 - 30k uploads

~~Post meant to be informative~~

A5cii

and in the states by paradesign · 2003-07-15 08:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

it would cost $200 a month, have a DL cap at 10gigs, and only allow uploads at 128k.

im moving to japan, whos with me?

--
I want 2D games back.

Re:and in the states by tealover · 2003-07-15 08:44 · Score: 1

I get 10 Mbps for $45. No caps at all. 1 Mbps upload.

Why don't you have the same?

--
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Re:and in the states by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:52 · Score: 0

'cause stuff sucks. whatcha got it thru?
Re: and in the states by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:54 · Score: 0

Currently parent is just Score: 1, after a while it should be Score: 5 Insightful (without misspelling ofc ;).

This is really sad, how corporations insist on blocking development.. Isn't video-on-demand the dream of MPAA? If it isn't, it should be. At least it's the dream of the joe sixxxpack. Or music-on-demand, realtime-speed-guaranteed -- happy customers.

I hope the rest of the world could follow the example of this Japanise project. Imagine if everyone had 12MBps/50/mo plus markets were full of content-on-demand services. I bet there wouldn't be a real need for p2p anymore, at least with the current volume. P2P would restrict to rare material -- stuff you cannot get from these online stores, for example DVDscreener releases ;) But maybe film release systems could adapt to the new world.

Too bad the cable is so expensive.
Re: and in the states by Trigun · 2003-07-15 09:11 · Score: 1

VOD and convergence should be high priority on production companies lists. Imagine subscribing to a program, rather than a channel. Watch it when you want, rather than at the network time slot. Sure commercials would be included, unless you were paying for the programming. Want to watch Frasier, go ahead and watch! Company X pays big bucks for the spot, and we watch the episode, and see company X's commercial. No more prime time rates, and programming would have to become better, to attract the viewers.
Ahh, but what do I know?
Re:and in the states by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:23 · Score: 0

I don't know, because it's not offered in his area, or 99.9% of the US? that might be why, where the hell do you fucking live?!? I pay $50 a month for 1.5mb down, and 128k up
Re:and in the states by fobbman · 2003-07-15 10:23 · Score: 1

According to their 2000 census, about 126,549,976 others.
Re:and in the states by toddestan · 2003-07-15 10:41 · Score: 1

This doesn't happen to have anything to do with station wagons full of harddisks, now does it?
Re:and in the states by Mjec · 2003-07-15 13:20 · Score: 1

and in the states... ...it would cost $200 a month, have a DL cap at 10gigs, and only allow uploads at 128k. im moving to japan, whos with me?
I can see why you want to do this, and I think it is a good idea. but why do we have to move. I'm sure with the right advertising a co-operative non-profit organisation designed to bring broadband of this quality to every urban home in major centres around the US (and the world) would be effective

Think: we set it up, get some decent news coverage, go to progressive politicians... then we ask for some cash in advance, set it up as a co-operative organisation, to keep costs down, and put in this link. Go gigabit. We would undermine all these corps who cap at 10gb and limit uploads. Here in Australia we are capped at 3gb! We need to fix this... and by creating a co-operative we can. You could even charge extra per gb over, say, 20, but at cost. If we all work together then we can all have this for this price.

I know that most of this will be touted as communist crap, but just think about it. Go off, do a cost-benefit analysis. Crunch some numbers. I'm sure you could get it to work in the big cities at least. If you can get some politicians to support it then you might get more ordinary people in as well - all the better.

My $0.02 for today... just a thought. Please don't flame me too badly... It is an idea, nothing more.

--
"But everyone should know everything." -markab

It Never Fails by dragin33 · 2003-07-15 08:37 · Score: 0

Why is it always _Not_ where i live! Blast Hornet.

Well... by Lugor · 2003-07-15 08:37 · Score: 1

If I move to Japan and try to get my porn..
I would still be having slow network issues...
trying to shove all that data through the transpacific lines...
and getting leakage.... think of the fish!!!

Re:Well... by randyest · 2003-07-15 09:14 · Score: 1

If I move to Japan and try to get my porn..

. . . you will be disappointed unless you're into blocky mosaic overlays over the naughty pink parts. Of course, there are black-market places to get the real deal (notably, Akihabara the famous electronic city, which is also jammed full of tiny porn shops) but the "good" sections are usually marked "Japanese Only" or "No Gaijin (Foreigners)".

Sure you can download from overseas sites, but the Nihonjin take their porn laws pretty seriously, and you can find yourself in a heapload of trouble for even posessing a (poorly) hand-drawn pic of a chitsu (the best naughty pink part).

Of course, mainstream bookstores carry scat, snuff (real? I dunno, hope not), pedophilia, and the most bizarro stuff you've never seen (tentacle anima is nothing in comparison), just as long as you don't show the chitsu . . .

It's truly a strange place. And the gubmint is rather deeply involved in everything, which leads me to believe that this cheap cable is getting some gubmint subsidy. I mean, compare with their phone system, which can run $700-800 (one-time, non-transferable) to get hooked up (which is why so many Japanese use mobiles as their only phone), and you can see that population density doesn't always provide cheap wired services.

--
everything in moderation

how much are tickets to tokyo? by kraksmoka · 2003-07-15 08:37 · Score: 5, Funny

no, seriously, i love sushi, and cute asian girls too. this could be the break i've been looking for!

ok, maybe not :P

--
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel

Re:how much are tickets to tokyo? by PetrusMagnusII · 2003-07-15 12:17 · Score: 1

right now.. around 2,000USD.. right now (well, in about a week) most of the colleges in japan will be done for summer vacation (i am super excited, this has been a long semester).. so that means, everyone in japan goes to australia, england, okinawa, or america.. so.. its freekin expensive.. 2,000 without breaking a sweat.. youd be better to wait until mid-september.. then i think tickets will drop to under 700USD..
the airport code Narita is NRT.. from the airport, it is real easy to get anywhere you need to get .. just hope on the train.. but dont take the NRX, its like 3,000yen and doesnt get you to tokyo any faster then the local trains..

I can't believe it by naner42 · 2003-07-15 08:38 · Score: 1

Is this bandwidth limited or is it a free-for-all?

--
Self realization: I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?"

Re:I can't believe it by really? · 2003-07-15 11:04 · Score: 1

free-for-all ... as far as I can tell.

--

"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley

eww by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:38 · Score: 0

Ok, you got me. blech.

What's Japanese for... by mrkurt · 2003-07-15 08:39 · Score: 1

"jealous"? Which is what I am at the moment. Of course, Japan is a small, densely-populated nation, and I imagine this is a relatively easy network to set up and get customers for-- You'll have a lot of people close to the backbone. More power to Mr. Son-- I sincerely hope it works out as a business proposition.

--
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)

Re:What's Japanese for... by Cryptnotic · 2003-07-15 09:01 · Score: 1

(adj) jealous; envious

--
My other first post is car post.
Re:What's Japanese for... by Sexy+Commando · 2003-07-15 09:21 · Score: 1

Here.
Re:What's Japanese for... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 19:02 · Score: 0

For those who dont read hiragana:

u ra ya ma shi i

Consider the size of Japan by jinglecat · 2003-07-15 08:40 · Score: 0

Japan is an island. A very small island with a lot of people crammed onto said island.

Why is the cost surprising? It does not take much to wire high-high speed internet to Japan considering density and that buildings are closer together than in the US.

Now it would be suprising in USA for that same prices, because USA is much bigger than Japan (Obvious) and would require more resources for the total land area to be networked.

This is not really surprising.. NYC is also wired for super-fast connections because "all the shit is closer together"

Re:Consider the size of Japan by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:01 · Score: 0

This is not really surprising.. NYC is also wired for super-fast connections because "all the shit is closer together"
Rrrrright! So show me the 12Mbits/sec for $21 offers in NYC please...

why it won't work in america... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:41 · Score: 1, Insightful

for the same reasons why rail based mass transit don't work in america...

Japan's urban and commerical populations are so densely packed that it's cost effiecient to run high speed lines to everyone in a neighborhood... for example, say to wire up a connection from san francisco to san diego alone will probably be more than enough cables and routers to wire up all the islands of japan... high population density = more easially connect user base. same reasons why we don't see a high speed mass transit system that goes from SF to NY here in the states, it will take tremendous infrastucture and capital, as long as us Americans have a good suppy of arab oil to power our SUVs, we're not going to change anything.

Re:why it won't work in america... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:51 · Score: 0

Here's a counterexample. The UK has a much higher population density that the US, albeit lower than Japan I guess. However, our railway system is falling to pieces and a 500kb/s connection costs roughly $40/month. It's probably got as much to do with short-termist, non-visionary industry leaders as it does with large empty spaces.

Sign me up... by SealBeater · 2003-07-15 08:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

nuf said. Tho I would love to see what they "allow" users to do with all that nice bandwidth.

SealBeater

--
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!

Re:Sign me up... by ag0ny · 2003-07-15 14:50 · Score: 1

Anything. I've got a 100Mbps fiber optics line at home and I'm running my server on it. Unlimited traffic.

Of course, ilegal contents are forbidden, like anywhere else. And remember that porn is ilegal in Japan, so probably there won't be as much abuse as there would be in other countries.

--
My site

move to Japan? by oever · 2003-07-15 08:42 · Score: 1

What? and lose my 100 Mbits/sec for 10 euro connection? No way!

Don't believe me? Check this out.

--
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.

Re:move to Japan? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:48 · Score: 0

I tried checking out your link, but it looks like the Swedish Chef got there first.

Exactly by siskbc · 2003-07-15 08:43 · Score: 1

Here, they could maybe do the eastern seaboard, or parts of it. 'Course, that's a big chunk of people, so I am surprised it hasn't been done more than it has.

--

-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat

Population Density by nacturation · 2003-07-15 08:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

Given that info, I'd be more than willing to sign up for the requisite 15+ months. So why can't they do something like that here in the States? What's holding them back - red tape, technical issues?

If you packed half the US population into 1/20th of the land space, the economy of scale would make it affordable enough. As it stands, to do this in the average US city (compared to the average city in Japan) would be ten times more expensive.

Now there's nothing preventing anyone from doing this in high-density downtown areas in major cities. In fact, there's a company which is currently doing this for all their new buildings. I quote:

"It is also Canada's first fully-wired fiber optic community. Concord Pacific's Digital Neighborhood (TM) connects residents to the world of digital communications with hi-speed modemless Internet access."

--
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.

Re:Population Density by elmegil · 2003-07-15 09:13 · Score: 1

As it stands, to do this in the average US city (compared to the average city in Japan) would be ten times more expensive.
Ok, I'll sign up for 150 months at that price :-)

--
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Re:Population Density by MoonBuggy · 2003-07-15 09:15 · Score: 1

As it stands, to do this in the average US city (compared to the average city in Japan) would be ten times more expensive.

I'm in the UK, which AFAIK is denser than the US overall, but even if it did cost 10x more here than in japan, that's $210/£130 per month. OK, it's alot of cash, but if you remember that the prices shoot up after about 1.5Mb/sec here anyway (it's about £20 for 0.5meg, and about £100 for 2meg) and take off the £50 per month or so that my phonebill comes to it's perfectly reasonable, even at ten times the price.
Re:Population Density by jez9999 · 2003-07-15 11:10 · Score: 1

If you packed half the US population into 1/20th of the land space,

Or the whole US population into 1/10th of the land space :-)

--
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.

Decisions, decisions by IWantMoreSpamPlease · 2003-07-15 08:43 · Score: 5, Funny

Let's see here:

(1) Cute Asian chicks
(2) Tons of Anime
(3) Sushi and lots of it
(4) Massive broadband throughput
(5) No DMCA (yet)
(6) Sony
(7) BeOS fanatics

Hell..where do I sign up?

--
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.

Re:Decisions, decisions by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:58 · Score: 0

(8) Police state
(9) No guns allowed
(10) You have to eat sushi
(11) Steak costs $200/lb.
(12) Like holidays at Disneyland, without the rides

Hell is waiting for you!
Re:Decisions, decisions by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:59 · Score: 0

Dood, you had me sold on #1...
Re:Decisions, decisions by Alan · 2003-07-15 09:14 · Score: 1

(8) - been to an airport lately?
(9) - good riddence! Course, everyone there knows kung fu right?
Re:Decisions, decisions by Tower · 2003-07-15 09:14 · Score: 1

Hmmm, sounds like Rochester, MN

(1) You'd be surprised - an increasing # all the time.
(2) There's plenty of young tech people here - there's got to be Tons around
(3) Got me there
(4) Uh... there is Charter cable modem and a few DSL choices
(5) D'Oh
(6) "
(7) I can see two from here, if I stand up (cubes make that easier).

(8) The cost of living is incredibly lower than Japan, and you don't have to struggle with a new language. With the savings, you could fly to a coast to eat good sushi.

Or, maybe you'd just be enjoying the open spaces, and that rather pungent all-natural fertilizer from the farms...

--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Re:Decisions, decisions by forkboy · 2003-07-15 09:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

(8) Broom-closet sized apartments that cost thousands of dollars a month
(9) Elbow-to-elbow people in almost any public place, all the time
(10) Haughty disdain for Americans by most of the older population
(11) Expect to work 12 hour days if you get a job there. Be ostracized and frowned upon if you don't. (if not fired outright)

Did you still want to sign up?

--
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Re:Decisions, decisions by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:22 · Score: 0

Moron. (9) No guns allowed is a reason to go there! Eg take the UK. No guns allowed and guess what - almost no gun crime.
Re:Decisions, decisions by duffhuff · 2003-07-15 09:22 · Score: 1

Dude, you forgot the most important one!
(8) Get all those Squaresoft games early!
(9) If you're into Airsoft, Tokyo Marui makes some of the best stuff. Period.
Seriously though, the language is a bitch to learn. Just read this to find out why (I don't think the author is 100% serious ;-).
Re:Decisions, decisions by BigBadBri · 2003-07-15 09:35 · Score: 2, Funny

Yeah, but
(13) Whalemeat sushi
(14) Fugu - like Russian Roulette, but tastier.
And what sort of price do you expect for steak when each bull has his own masseur?
Add cherry blossom, Mt Fuji, and the bullet train, and I think it's a winner, myself.

--
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Re:Decisions, decisions by Trolling+for+Profit · 2003-07-15 09:38 · Score: 1

(8) Porn censorship laws
(9) Dinners of seaweed, raw fish, and other nasty stuff
(10) The awful Japanese language
(11) Merchandising in your face everywhere and everyday
Re:Decisions, decisions by gnovos · 2003-07-15 09:44 · Score: 1

here.

--
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Re:Decisions, decisions by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:44 · Score: 0

Not no guns allowed, just no high-powered assault weapons. Oh, and a strict licencing regime for shotguns and the like, including mandatory secure storage lockers for the weapon and ammo.
Re:Decisions, decisions by gnovos · 2003-07-15 09:47 · Score: 1

(11) Steak costs $200/lb.

You've never tried Kobe beef... Give it a try some day, you'll understand after the first bite.

--
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Re:Decisions, decisions by gnovos · 2003-07-15 09:49 · Score: 1

(11) Expect to work 12 hour days if you get a job there. Be ostracized and frowned upon if you don't. (if not fired outright)

Did you still want to sign up?

If you are a white American you'll find that this, and many other rules, don't actually apply.

--
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Re:Decisions, decisions by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:01 · Score: 0

Before you call someone a moron, why don't you do some research. Guns in America have very little to do with the American crime rate. (America being the USA in this copntext of course). Check out "Bowling for Columbine". The documentary asks some very good questions - that have not been answered. I would wager that it is our American attitudes that cause the crime - not the availability of the tools. Please watch the movie - even if you think Michael Moore is a bit off in normal life, the movie is a very well balanced approach to find out why so many people die from gunfire in the USA. I was pleasantly suprised at how well the movie was balanced.
Re:Decisions, decisions by csguy314 · 2003-07-15 10:10 · Score: 2, Funny

What!? You mean use Ruby instead of Python? No thank you.

--
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Re:Decisions, decisions by AvantLegion · 2003-07-15 10:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

You forgot:
(8) Pay $1500 a month to live in an apartment half the size of your current bedroom.
Re:Decisions, decisions by fisgreen · 2003-07-15 10:20 · Score: 1

Hell..where do I sign up?
Navy
Air Force
Marines
Seriously, the year and a half I spent in Yokosuka was best time of my life. I can't wait to go back!
Re:Decisions, decisions by isorox · 2003-07-15 10:25 · Score: 1

Aside from the 2 hours of fantasy between the credits?
Re:Decisions, decisions by ag0ny · 2003-07-15 15:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

(8) Broom-closet sized apartments that cost thousands of dollars a month

Not really. If you want to live in central Tokyo, it's going to be expensive, of course. You can find one-room apartments (around 20m2) starting at around 70000 yen (almost $600). The farther you go from the center of Tokyo, the cheaper it gets. Also, Tokyo is the most expensive city in Japan. Just go to Osaka or Hiroshima and you'll find 3 and 4-room apartments for a bit more than that (around 100000 yen/month).

My wife an I are living in the east border of Tokyo (half an hour from Shinjuku), and we're paying $1100/month for a nice apartment (photos here). Probably small by american standards, yes, but more than enough space for us.

(9) Elbow-to-elbow people in almost any public place, all the time

No. That's true only during rush hours (7:30-9:00am) and express trains in the afternoon/night. The rest of the time is quiet enough. And about crowded public places, these are only the places where lots of people go: Shinjuku (specially the Kabukicho district), Shibuya, Ikebukuro or Harajuku. And I bet you would pay to be there even if only to see the girls. ;)

(10) Haughty disdain for Americans by most of the older population

This is probably true (I'm spanish, and I've never been discriminated in any way in the time I've been living here). But I guess that the fact that most young people do like foreigners (ie: girls) compensates for it.

(11) Expect to work 12 hour days if you get a job there. Be ostracized and frowned upon if you don't. (if not fired outright)

I'm working in a Japanese company and I work 8 hours/day (like the rest here). Before being here, I was working also 8 hours/day. Anyway, if you don't speak Japanese (or don't want to), you can always find a job in an american company.

--
My site
Re:Decisions, decisions by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 15:22 · Score: 0

You forgot:

(8) Godzilla
(9) Evas
(10) Magic Card Fighting People
(11) One Word: Pikachu
(12) Most importaintly, the language

Although it would be cool to purchase a Gundam... /me goes back to model kit
Re:Decisions, decisions by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 15:38 · Score: 0

(13) tentacle rape hentai
Re:Decisions, decisions by marko123 · 2003-07-15 16:18 · Score: 1

Has anyone done a survey of what languages are used in which countries based on the people's ability to actually pronounce the languages' names?

I mean, Looby and Pighton sound silly, but I guess so does Haskerrr, Vishyuar C Pruss Pruss and Purr.

Using Apache might be OK, but with MySQR on Rinarks?

(Before you do-gooding racism witch-hunters get on my tail...
Taking the piss out of the way people say things is not racist, so piss off and take a rong harld rook at yourlsefs. )

--
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Re:Decisions, decisions by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 19:46 · Score: 0

If you are a white American you'll find that this, and many other rules, don't actually apply.

And who would want to hire you in Japan for your whiteness alone (and despite the laziness and the lack of language skills)
P.S. Many Asians need bigger T&A. Cuter faces too.
Re:Decisions, decisions by Lord+Kholdan · 2003-07-15 21:31 · Score: 1

(8) Porn censorship laws
That's what the broadband is for! duh.
Re:Decisions, decisions by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 21:57 · Score: 0

And who would want to hire you in Japan for your whiteness alone (and despite the laziness and the lack of language skills)

The answer: Many! There is _always_ an "eikaiwa" gig, so too is there considerable demand in the entertainment industry. If you have experience in your field you'd also probably have an easier time getting a job than a non-"white" "gaijin."
Re:Decisions, decisions by Jedi+Alec · 2003-07-15 22:52 · Score: 1

Still. His point is valid, if for the wrong reason, according to you...

--

People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Re:Decisions, decisions by Lord_Dweomer · 2003-07-16 02:01 · Score: 1

"(8) Porn censorship laws
(9) Dinners of seaweed, raw fish, and other nasty stuff
(10) The awful Japanese language
(11) Merchandising in your face everywhere and everyday
"
Right, the porn sucks...yeah...but they also have love hotels, so you can make your own...and what about those of us who love sushi and other japanese food, and who enjoy learning new languages? I'm with ya on the merchandising though...but then again, its not much different than America, except its more insidious in the states.

--
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!

Obvious Response by Raul654 · 2003-07-15 08:44 · Score: 1

You know you're a nerd when big bandwidth makes you this happy

OR

Maybe it was the asian school girl under the table when the picture was taken :)

--

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton

Re:Obvious Response by ogre2112 · 2003-07-15 09:40 · Score: 2, Funny

Nah, he obviously just saved money on car insurance by switching to Geico.

There's not much I can say... by Randolpho · 2003-07-15 08:44 · Score: 1

... except "Boooooiiiiiinnnng!!!"

Oh, and "Droooooooooooooooooooool!!!!!!1!"

Daddy wants. Daddy wants bad!

--
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson

Re:There's not much I can say... by Randolpho · 2003-07-15 08:49 · Score: 1

Ug. I make myself sick sometimes. I'm such a bandwidth whore.

--
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Re:There's not much I can say... by waspleg · 2003-07-15 22:23 · Score: 1

and a schitzophrenic
Re:There's not much I can say... by Randolpho · 2003-07-16 01:42 · Score: 1

I'm not schitzophrenic!

Me neither!

--
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson

12? Pshaw! by Martin+Kallisti · 2003-07-15 08:44 · Score: 5, Informative

Here in Sweden, you can get 26 megabits/second, for $45/month. ^_^

Re:12? Pshaw! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:53 · Score: 0

Damn... must be that Bork edition of Opera translating that page into Swedish Chef on me again.
Re:12? Pshaw! by FrostedWheat · 2003-07-15 08:59 · Score: 1

What's even more impressive is that it's symmetrical! 26mb/s both ways!

Now *that's* broadband!
Re:12? Pshaw! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:24 · Score: 1, Interesting

Yepp, Sweden is *the* broadband country..
I've had 10 Mbps in both directions for only $30/month for over 2 years now.. And it's not ADSL or VSDL. It's simply a RJ45 outlet in my wall.
http://www.bredbandsbolaget.com
Re:12? Pshaw! by duffhuff · 2003-07-15 09:25 · Score: 1

Holy cow.

That does it, I'm moving to Sweden. I've already got dual citizenship with Sweden and Canada. Screw localization issues! 26 megabits here I come!
Re:12? Pshaw! by jafac · 2003-07-15 09:35 · Score: 4, Funny

Damn, with that kind of bandwidth, you could digitize yourself, transmit yourself to Ireland, rape and pillage, and transmit yourself back at a profit.

Viking never looked so attractive!

--

These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Re:12? Pshaw! by kir · 2003-07-15 09:57 · Score: 4, Informative

I live in Japan (not Tokyo though... and its not as "dense" here). Starting in Aug or Sept, YahooBB will be offering 26Mb/s for (from what I've been told) 300 yen more than their 12Mb/s service (which is about 3500 yen/month). I don't have YahooBB (I'm with NTT for static IP service that doesn't cost an arm and a leg), but many friends do. That BB phone is pretty damn cool (VoIP phone). No caps. No restrictions. Yes, they runs servers. Yes, they suck down things that would infringe on some FAT RICH bastard "Intellectual Property" rights...

Did I mention my sister-in-law has 100Mb/s FTTH (Fiber To The Home)? I think she only pays ~9000 yen a month (~$85). Granted, she gets no where near 100Mb/s, but I have sucked a torrent or two down for her... AT ~40Mb/s! I swear, I heard a sucking noise coming from her computer while they were downloading. HE HE HE. When I saw that, I almost divorced her sister (my wife) and married her.

--
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
Re:12? Pshaw! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:10 · Score: 0

>Here in Sweden, you can get [bostream.se] 26 megabits/second, for $45/month. ^_^

Well. In Finland you must pay 50 ? ($47) /month of 512/512 kilobits
God. Why our government was funding on digital television, but not fast network?
Re:12? Pshaw! by tamnir · 2003-07-15 10:24 · Score: 1

Well in Japan you can also get 100 Mbps fiber to the home. This is what I run. With a static global IP I am paying about 100 us/month.

--
I code, therefore I am.
Re:12? Pshaw! by Captain+Large+Face · 2003-07-15 10:38 · Score: 1

And fortunately, a RFC defining the methodology for such a method of transport already exists!
Re:12? Pshaw! by andrewleung · 2003-07-15 12:37 · Score: 1

we're still talking Megabits per sec?!

how about: GIGABITS per sec... to reach the potential of your gigabit ethernet equipment, in japan, you can get gigabit ethernet TO THE HOME for only ~40,000yen (~$337) per month!

now that is SWEET!

on bit torrent, i've been downloading stuff at like 160KBps and uploading at like 100KBps... and the best thing is: they keep giving us MORE bandwidth!!! i love it!

the funniest thing when talking to north americans about "broadband" in the home is that they're still using "kbps"... while here, we're talking "Mbps" and greater...

fyi, comparisons for ALL the fibre providers in tokyo, monthly leases here

size does matter :-)
Re:12? Pshaw! by Psychic+Burrito · 2003-07-15 13:29 · Score: 1

> but I have sucked a torrent or two down for her... AT ~40Mb/s!
Woohooo! That's incredible! The harddisk must have been the bottleneck! :-)
Imagine, instead of harddisk we all just use fat internet pipes because it is faster! :-)
Re:12? Pshaw! by Komarosu · 2003-07-15 20:43 · Score: 1

And the best thing for brits, they still get the BBC over there i think :)

--

"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
Re:12? Pshaw! by Alkonaut · 2003-07-15 22:01 · Score: 1

What's interesting about the broadband infrastructure is that in Sweden your connection quality will probably be better if you live in a less densely populated area because of subsidies. In the major cities you get 26mbit DSL connection for $45/month. I'd guess about 50% of buildings have 10mbit/RJ45 for a little less (around $30-40/month).

Then you have for instance my parents who live in a single family house in a village/suburb of about 3000 residents. Recently they got their own fibre dug in(!) promising 100Mbit and even more in the future. This was of course done by the local power company owned by the state...

Only in between are you out of luck, i.e. in the less densely populated areas without a kind power company or similar that digs gigabit wires at a loss. Then you resort to assymetric dsl 128/512kbit which reaches 90% of households in Sweden at $40/month.
Re:12? Pshaw! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 22:10 · Score: 0

Given the general lack of high bandwidth connections in Ireland you find it takes a while for you to arrive or get back!
Re:12? Pshaw! by Jedi+Alec · 2003-07-15 22:56 · Score: 1

hold on, so one moment you're boasting about gigabits, and the next you give an example of 160KBps downloads? I mean, unless you have 20 of those downloads running simultaneously that's hardly impressive...

--

People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Re:12? Pshaw! by andrewleung · 2003-07-16 03:43 · Score: 1

good point. i should have mentioned that the service is not available yet, but will be very soon.

the thing about with lots of bandwidth is that you still need to find something to fill it... bit torrent seems to be the way to do it. i'm thinking of upgrading to fibre just for that.

will the last person to leave the country by way2trivial · 2003-07-15 08:45 · Score: 5, Funny

please remember to turn off the lights?

--
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

Re:will the last person to leave the country by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:53 · Score: 0

And take down all the flags. Oh, and don't forget to set fire to D.C.
Re:will the last person to leave the country by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:15 · Score: 0

Oh, and don't forget to set fire to D.C.

Again? Hmm, yeah, it is about time they tried a new color on the White House.
Re:will the last person to leave the country by rastos1 · 2003-07-16 01:39 · Score: 1

More important is to shut all the windows ...

i really hope he succeeds by ed.han · 2003-07-15 08:45 · Score: 1

just on principle, anything that can give NTT docomo a run for its money in that market is probably a good thing for the JP consumer. but isn't that cost of customer conversion a tad high? i mean, i know the yen isn't doing exactly great against the dollar but but still, does anyone have figures on what it costs ISPs in other countries so we have some sense of how well this effort could be sustained?

(yes, i'm aware that son's strategy really doesn't require tons of success immediately, having RTFA; just curious.)

ed

12mbps in USA, when and if... by nsda's_deviant · 2003-07-15 08:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

So Masayoshi Son is betting the company and taking huge huge huge amounts of debt to build an incredible no where else on earth network that has great potential. Making telecoms obsolete and making media outlets change their game to provide on-demand tvshows/movies is world leading pace, but how is this guy going to keep it up if he can't make any money? The whole broadband pipe dream has been alive for decades around the world but recent US bankruptecies of big broadband (cite: XO) argue that whoever builds the architecture is not the likely winner in reaping all the benefits. Its great for the average Japanese getting fat pipe, but the lack of ability to make any immediate profits are detering US cable cos to make great infastructure. Maybe I'm wrong here but this article just pushes the point that infastructue building is a thankless job. This article to me says that US isn't going to be getting ultra fat broadband anytime soon since no one is going to take the enormous (1-2billion reserve) financial hit. So the problem again arises, how is anyone going to make any (real) money by carpeting cities with broadband?

Re:12mbps in USA, when and if... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 11:27 · Score: 0

Two things:
-Its great for the average Japanese getting fat pipe

According to the Chinpokomon South Park episode, the US has much larger pipes on average.

-So the problem again arises, how is anyone going to make any (real) money by carpeting cities with broadband?

AOL carpets cities in CDs and I think they're staying in business, and AOL is much slower then broadband.

Slashdot is soo japan-centric by pacc · 2003-07-15 08:45 · Score: 1

seriously, this might give some hope that we can move on even after ADSL is upgraded to VDSL.

Though, the question that ought to be asked is what hi-bandwidth services they have in Japan that we don't get in the rest of the world (that brings in any money to the ISP that is...)

Re:Slashdot is soo japan-centric by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 16:58 · Score: 0

As to the subject you selected, duh. Japan has the second largest economy in the world. It's also rather tech driven. Take the two together, and you should be surprised that there aren't more articles relating to advances from east asian countries.

Dear slashdot by arcanumas · 2003-07-15 08:46 · Score: 5, Funny

Dear slashdot. I am writing you to inform you that this will be my last post from my country (Greece) as i am now moving to Japan. Don't worry though as i will be acquiring one of those new hyper fast connection that i saw on your site a moment ago.
I will miss you while i try to settle to my new homeland and try to learn Japanese (Alas, whatching Bruce Lee movies has not been very helpful). I have to stop writing as my parents are coming to tell them goodbye (I haven't told them yet as it was decided 5 minutes ago.)
Naturally as an adicted Slashdot reader i will find a place to live by submiting an "Ask Slashdot " Story and browsing at score 5.

Your faithful reader.

--
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.

Re:Dear slashdot by randyest · 2003-07-15 09:18 · Score: 1

Alas, whatching Bruce Lee movies has not been very helpful

Maybe because Bruce Lee is not Japanese and has never been in a Japanese-language movie (with the possibility of dubbed versions)? Just a guess.

--
everything in moderation
Re:Dear slashdot by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:23 · Score: 0

Actually, Chinese Connection had Japanese spoken in it. But I guess it doesn't qualify as a Japanese-language movie.
Re:Dear slashdot by calethix · 2003-07-15 09:24 · Score: 1

" I have to stop writing as my parents are coming to tell them goodbye (I haven't told them yet as it was decided 5 minutes ago.)"
And you even told slashdot before your parents.. they must really feel loved. :)
Re:Dear slashdot by nickmcghie · 2003-07-15 09:24 · Score: 1

duh.. of course watching Bruce Lee movies isn't gonna help you learn Japanese.. Bruce Lee is Chinese
Re:Dear slashdot by Bueller_007 · 2003-07-15 09:56 · Score: 1

>Alas, whatching Bruce Lee movies has not been very helpful
Uh, that could be because Bruce Lee is Chinese.

General rule of thumb: Short family names = Chinese, long family names = Japanese
Re:Dear slashdot by arcanumas · 2003-07-15 09:57 · Score: 1

Ok. Ok. To all you who pointed out that Bruce Lee is Chinese. You are right and i was wrong. I guess i lost my right to go to Japan... I will unpack my bags now.

--
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Re:Dear slashdot by csguy314 · 2003-07-15 10:15 · Score: 2, Informative

Naturally as an adicted Slashdot reader i will find a place to live by submiting an "Ask Slashdot " Story and browsing at score 5.

For best results submit it here.

--
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Re:Dear slashdot by qute · 2003-07-15 22:20 · Score: 1

Bruce Lee was from china...

--
-- Make software not war

Yes, but by Raul654 · 2003-07-15 08:46 · Score: 1

It could have been better. How? As a snuff film :)

--

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton

Re:Yes, but by Machine9 · 2003-07-15 08:55 · Score: 1

you wouldn't call the scene where a nurse *explodes* because of the size of Megumo's dick snuff?
well...some might call it "disgusting"...
...personally, I call it "innovative"
but, in order to stay on topic, won't everyone and his brother get this, and start massively leeching porn?? with the result that the ISPs bandwith will be used up in milliseconds?

--
Machine9dotNet

Damn Our Infrastructure by Schezar · 2003-07-15 08:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

The main obstacle to having cool things like this in the US is twofold:

1. Large landmass consisting of major population centers separated by great distances.

2. Massive existing (and functional) infrastructure.

We can't just "overhaul" the system: it's too deeply entrenched. Couple that with the fact that the majority of Americans can live without a lot of this tech, and that's the end of that...

Why bother with the expense and hardship of upgrading a system that, for the majority of people, is just fine?

--
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!

Re:Damn Our Infrastructure by greggman · 2003-07-15 14:15 · Score: 1

But that's just the problem, this TECH is something most americans want, they just don't know it :-p

I'm serious, net at 56K vs net at 12meg goes from curiousity to actually massively useful.

Those societies living with the massively useful net are going to stomp all kinds of ass over those living without because having it be ubiquitous is going to inspire tons of ideas for use that are not inspired in the non-wired, U.S. society.

Also, why does the entire U.S. have to be wired? For now just wire L.A., S.F, N.Y., D.C., Chicago and a few other metropolitian ares. It seems like those areas are concentrated enough that money can be made.
Re:Damn Our Infrastructure by DAVEO · 2003-07-15 18:36 · Score: 1

Also, why does the entire U.S. have to be wired? For now just wire L.A., S.F, N.Y., D.C., Chicago and a few other metropolitian ares. It seems like those areas are concentrated enough that money can be made.

Very true. I've been with Optimum Online, which is available in the NY metro area for about five years now, and I get speeds of 4.5 mbps. I've had some service issues with them, as one time around 99 or 00 they were phasing out the old modems, but didn't inform us, and despite six visits from their tech staff, none were able to diagnose the problem, and so we were without service the majority of each days for a month, and forced to pay $150 to upgrade to their new modem, but since then, the service has been near flawlessly reliable. It started out at $29.99 a month for subscribers to their cable service ($10 higher for non-subscribers), but they are now raising it to $45. I do hear some people have their service capped lower than this, but it works quite well for me.

--
-DAVEO

20 megabit DTMD is better than DSL by truthhurts1 · 2003-07-15 08:47 · Score: 0

WiFi for Cable . Actually i thought of this for Cable networks but i never thought anyone would really try to PATENT it which is stupid since they didn't invent the technology. Could revolutionize wired internet just like Wifi did for wireless

Who cares? I've got fiber 100mbit/sec in Tokyo by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:48 · Score: 0

12mbit? Already Yahoo is looking at deploying 25mbit ADSL to its customers. Usen offers 100mbit fiber optic connections. I pay 3800 yen/month (~$32 USD) for this service and get my own subnet of 4 static IP addresses. It's sweet. And there is no upload/download cap. I can run my own web server, etc. No nasty firewalls. Just raw bandwidth. My problem is finding sites that can support the speeds I have. Usually my bottleneck is the opposing site now.

12 Mbits/sec? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:49 · Score: 0

Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!

Funny thing is... by garrulous · 2003-07-15 08:49 · Score: 1

I remember a couple of weeks ago in an article on wifi for Africa, someone was lamenting the decrepit 128 kbps isdn backbone in Japan, or somesuch.

Are you kidding me? by borgasm · 2003-07-15 08:49 · Score: 1

"And, of course, Son's own net worth has cratered to around $1.1 billion, a slide that makes him History's Biggest Money Loser."

The poor guy....he only has 1.1 billion dollars...

I think I'll be lucky if i see 1/1000 of that money in my lifetime.

How about tossing some engineers that business cash...we are the ones building the stuff....

Re:Are you kidding me? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:56 · Score: 0

The poor guy....he only has 1.1 billion dollars...

I think I'll be lucky if i see 1/1000 of that money in my lifetime.

How about tossing some engineers that business cash...we are the ones building the stuff....

You could always move to one of the few remaining communist countries. Then, no matter how innovating you are, you'll all get paid the exact same wage ... as that part-time soup kitchen worker.
Re:Are you kidding me? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:29 · Score: 0

Whereas the alternative is to give wads of cash to health insurance and pension companies, because your state system is incapable of supporting those who need it. Better make sure your gated community has good fences, the mob outside might start getting restless.

Nothing special by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:50 · Score: 0

$21 is cheap, but I wouldn't say there's something special about it. I've been using 10mbits/sec VDSL for five years now, in Finland and it costs 50euros/month. The swedish people have even better connections for lower prices.

What about the price of everything else? by oopy_-_ · 2003-07-15 08:51 · Score: 1

While I love sushi as much as everyone else, the $21/month for internet access is only cheap when you ignore the fact that a medium sized house in Tokyo is $10,000 per month and a jar of peanut butter is $15.

Then again, they basically pay you to borrow money at current interest rates, so it's not a totally bad deal.

Re:What about the price of everything else? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 19:50 · Score: 0

you can pick up a jar of skippy at the gaijin store for 350-500yen, about 4-5$

$10,000 a month for a house, only if you have to live with the plutocrats and gaijin CEO's etc.

Modem? What modem? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:51 · Score: 0

I had ethernet here in Sweden for a couple of years now. There's no need for a stinking modem. I just plug my cat5 in the plug in the wall. 10mbit for roughly $40/month, but it was considerably cheaper when they started out. Apartment providers here have deals with broadbrand providers who installs the full ethernet kit. And there's state sponsored backbones being built all over the country. All adding up to cheap and available ethernet broadband.
They're also rolling out VDSL with full duplex up to 26mbit! But to get those speeds you need to live very close to the phone station. Although there is an entry fee since you do need a modem for that it's still very cheap, less than $40/month.

And now the government is trying to make some laws to stop people from sharing and leeching online! Good freaking luck with that plan. The warez scene in Sweden is HUGE. Sometimes I think half the warez scene is run from Bredbandsbolaget. Some people on that get up to 100mbit. In the wall. At home.

The difference between Japan and the U.S. by nemaispuke · 2003-07-15 08:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

The difference doesn't necessarily have to do with population density and size, it has to do with adoption of technology both in the industrial/technological and consumer bases. American companies try to milk every last dime out of a technology before they adopt anything new (HDTV sound familiar)? And even then they complain that it will cost them billions, wah, wah! I have a great idea, bring a Japanese ISP over, snap up some of that dark fiber and see how long some of these lame ass ISP's hold out against a company wanting to actually do something for its customer base!

Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by geek · 2003-07-15 09:36 · Score: 1

American companies don't milk every dime. HDTV has been slow to adoption because most people don't have it and are perfectly comfortable with what they have. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Most people can't afford or are smart enough to not waste money on every new hot gadget and technology that comes out. This is a lesson they haven't learned yet in Japan where the national debt is HUGE and their economy is just barely staying afloat. Japan got drunk on western democracy and capitalism after WWII. They will slow down and pace themselves in the near future and find themselves in the same boat as us, pacing themselves on the rate of adoption of technologies. Capitalism is about building better mouse traps. When a company builds a better mouse trap the market will change, government intervention destroys that natural process. Tivo is a classic example of this, it's a better mouse trap and as such is being adopted by people who find it valuable.

Blaming a nations corporate sector because it isn't forcing technology down peoples throats is ignorant, disgusting and makes me damn glad I live in a free country with a free market where I can decide the direction corporate America takes by voting with my hard earned dollars.

Your grudge against corporate America is unfounded in fact. Corporations go where the money is, if there is money to be made in new ventures it will be.
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by ameoba · 2003-07-15 09:44 · Score: 1

The real difference is that in the US, we speak English and can get by with 8-bit ASCII; the Japanese, OTOH, need Unicode to transmit data, thus they actually -need- 12Mb connections.

--
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:05 · Score: 0

and most people don't have HDTV sets because they can't get HDTV programming!

Pretty much anything new involves a chicken/egg situation which only the corporate side can solve.

If most people could actually get proper HDTV (and not the silly version where the broadcaster can do poor quality to get 3 channels into 1), see it demonstrated, they would likely buy it (and as they buy it the price would come down faster than its current limited adoption allows).

The big problem, mainly it seems in North America, but also in Europe and elsewhere, is that companies have convinced us that they have the rigth to continue to maintain the status quo forever, and with this they use their money to buy laws and influence a gullible public to achieve it.
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:10 · Score: 0

This is going to be a rant, but: bull-fucking shit.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

This is *EXACTLY* the type of American thinking that is keeping this country behind. Having lived in the US for most of my adult life (I am an American, but have traveled extensively), I can see that parts of the US are no better than 3rd world countries in terms of adoption of new technologies.

Like you, corporations don't like taking risks. They'd much rather sit around on their fat asses and tell consumers that they need to buy their old, boring product that have established profit margins.

TiVO haven't run an advertisement since they launched. ALL of their business has been through word-of-mouth. And the cable companies have repeatedly tried to SUE them because you can skip advertisements.

Media conglomerates like AOL-Time Warner want consumers to STFU, have piss-slow internet access that forces them to buy their music and movies in stores. They don't WANT consumers to have broadband because it will pull them away from their existing media outlets.

Here's the shit that I've been putting up with here in the US trying to get decent broadband:

* Consumers have been utterly screwed through local teleco monopolies refusing to allow other companies to operate on their turf (see Covad's battle to bring their DSL solutions into local telephone exchanges).

* The telecos then offer shitty expensive service. Qwest's pride and joy: 256kbps DSL for $40 a month - you get a USB modem and have to use MSN as your ISP. WTF? This isn't Ethiopia. I'd rather use dial-up.

* The cable companies (here, that's Comcast - monopolist assholes that they are) comes in and wants to sell you 1.5Mb cable modem with a 128kbps upload cap and terrible reliability (friends with this service can testify that it sucks). This service is worthless to me. Oh - and you might get a discount if you buy their $90/month cable TV package also. They can fuck off.

In conclusion: Myself and many of the people I know (even my PARENTS) have had huge struggle to find internet connectivity that works for them. Nobody wants to sell them a cheap, fast solution - even though the market for it would be huge, and several of my friends who are currently sticking with dial-up would switch to broadband. There *IS* a market for cheap, fast (at least 2MB/s) broadband - even if it was double the price of dial-up (at $40/mo). But the US corporation's attitude is to slug it out between themselves while offering the minimum service standard possible - and the consumer gets raped.

Population density has NOTHING to do with it - look at Sweden (and the other slashdotters reporting 26Mb/s for $40 a month).

(FYI, I ended up settling on Earthlink DSL's "best effort" service - which turned out to be 1.5MB down, 384kbps up, $50/month. I'm happy with the service, not the price, but it's the best deal I could find. Apparently they barely break even on that deal because of the extortionate rates the telecos charge to put their equipment in the telephone exchange).
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by sparrow_hawk · 2003-07-15 10:24 · Score: 1

This is a lesson they haven't learned yet in Japan where the national debt is HUGE and their economy is just barely staying afloat.

Current US national debt: (as of 15 July) $6.67 trillion

Current Japanese national debt is claimed to be in excess of 140% of their GDP, which the CIA World Factbook lists as $3.55 trillion, making their estimated debt about $4.97 trillion.

So, yeah, their economy is in bad shape, but ours is fast approaching similar straits and we *aren't* seeing the same kind of innovation the Japanese experience. While I agree that government regulation isn't necessarily the answer to this, I'm not sure if we can always trust free enterprise either. It certainly seems like Japanese companies are more interested in pushing the envelope than American companies are.

And I hardly think these technologies are being "forced down people's throats," either, since I would assume you have a choice whether or not you want to subscribe to broadband -- it's not like the cost is inextricably included with the cost of an apartment or something. Aren't a lot of Slashdotters (myself included) pining for the opportunity to vote with our hard-earned dollars *for* 12MB/s broadband? Since when have corporations listened to us?
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by GPB · 2003-07-15 10:27 · Score: 1

bring a Japanese ISP over
NTT has owned Verio (one of the major backbone providers in the US) for a while now and I have to say it hasn't changed the state of US connectivity (for end users) very much.
-B
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:54 · Score: 0

If you look at in perspective the U.S. economy is several times bigger than Japan's. Also, if you've been keeping up, the economic news isn't all that bad in the U.S. and its probably becoming better.
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by geek · 2003-07-15 10:57 · Score: 1

Japan is a much smaller country than the U.S. so it's debt will naturally be smaller in proportion. I don't know what their population is, I'm guessing it's in the same neighborhood as our own but you have to remember the trend in Japan is only a decade old where as ours has been several decades long. There are to many variables to work out in a slashdot post but the underlying point I was making is that Japan moved way to fast and is now suffering a terrible price as we are. It's a bit worse for them however. Cultural issues must come into play as well so like I said I can't possibly run all the numbers in a post.

The corporations in Japan have a habit of ditching older technology altogether rather than working on things like backwards compatibility. I mean this in the broader sense, there are of course plenty of exceptions such as Sony and the Playstation 2. This is what I meant by shoving it down their throats. It's often times upgrade and keep up or lose what you have.

There have been many companies offering cheap and fast broadband. They all died. If the demand for broadband was there on a large scale then people would be paying for T1's etc and driving the cost down as a result. The fact is I have a cable modem that sits idle most of the time because all I do is surf the web and answer email with the occasional streaming video. My 2 meg connection is wasted in many ways. Why would I demand 12 megs when I barely use 2? Most people are in line with me. If there was a demand for 12 in this country you bet your ass companies would be scrambling to provide it.
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by mandalayx · 2003-07-15 12:27 · Score: 1

American companies try to milk every last dime out of a technology before they adopt anything new (HDTV sound familiar)? And even then they complain that it will cost them billions, wah, wah!

It all seems very greedy and stupid until you happen to buy a share of a telecom. Then anything that will drive your stock up $1 (and make you a few bucks) seems very reasonable..
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by Art+Tatum · 2003-07-15 16:15 · Score: 1

It's a nice try but you're wasting your time with the Slashbots. Anything and everything that's wrong with their lives is a result of "Fascist Corporate Conspiracies". They have neither the capacity nor the desire to understand supply and demand.
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by geek · 2003-07-15 16:41 · Score: 1

That's been my experience as well. It's the corporate boogie mans fault, not theirs.
Re:The difference between Japan and the U.S. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 19:53 · Score: 0

Japanese are huge savers, they have saving equal to something like three times the national debt.
the US on the other hand, are net debtors . . .

yeah, I'm quite sure of this by carpe_noctem · 2003-07-15 08:51 · Score: 1

"Here Jack, take these magic beans."

--
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K

bandwidth by nation poll? by ed.han · 2003-07-15 08:52 · Score: 1

this might be an interesting poll if it hasn't been done all that recently...

ed

No, really by sunilhari · 2003-07-15 08:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

How can I invest in this guy's company? Seriously, the guy is obviously so far ahead of the curve that getting in now (while he's in debt) will make me a wealthy man. Because he's investing in hardware and not software, his idea might actually work.

This doesn't seem like another webvan, but what the hell do I know?

Re:No, really by duffhuff · 2003-07-15 09:33 · Score: 1

Seriously, the guy is obviously so far ahead of the curve that getting in now (while he's in debt) will make me a wealthy man.

If I had a dime for every time I heard that phrase during the dot-com era (especially on MSNBC / CNN / whatever) I'd be a rich man too. Most people didn't seem to care that the price / earnings ratio was like 100:1, or even 500:1.

Though today people are far more cautious of what they invest in, it would still take a carefull analysis of their business plan and financials before I would commit any money to invest.

I am moving to Japan! by joelhouse · 2003-07-15 08:52 · Score: 1

That is 1/3 the cost of my cable modem each month. In 36 months the ROI would pay for my trip. Now if I could figure out a way to pay my salary. ;-)

The downside of cheap international calls by ScottMaxwell · 2003-07-15 08:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

3c/min to New York

Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but I worry about the trend toward cheaper long distance, especially cheap international calling.

Why? Well, if you think telemarketing calls are bad now, wait until every business on the planet can afford to call you. Just like spam, but with your damn phone ringing off the hook 24 hours a day.

You can bet there's somebody in Japan who can afford to bug you for 3c/min, if it helps them sell a few more useless widgets.

``Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible,'' as Frank Moore Colby wrote.

--

``Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.'' -- Richard Dawkins

Re:The downside of cheap international calls by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:16 · Score: 0

Guess that blows the National DO NOT CALL list out of the water, just call from another country and circumvent the law.
Re:The downside of cheap international calls by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:17 · Score: 0

OMG! Does the National DoNotCall list apply to calls originated by persons in non-US countries? Soon, telemarketing will export all of its US domestic jobs to India and ...
Re:The downside of cheap international calls by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:20 · Score: 0

But it is a lot easier to deal with. Most people do not get calls from Foreign Countries, so you can just have them blocked from calling you.
Re:The downside of cheap international calls by pyrotic · 2003-07-15 09:29 · Score: 1

Well, if you think telemarketing calls are bad now, wait until every business on the planet can afford to call you.

It's already happening. In Canada prisoners are phoning the US for market research, because calls are cheap, prisoners are cheap, and you don't have huge staff turnover in medium security jails. In India staff are madly cheap, well educated, and calls are cheap too. There are specialised traing programs to get sales agents used to the country with which they are dealing - which sport teams are cool, how the weather is etc. But in both these cases, calls are only made between 5-9 pm (US time) as people get even more pissed off with calls outside those hours.
Re:The downside of cheap international calls by gnovos · 2003-07-15 09:51 · Score: 1

You can bet there's somebody in Japan who can afford to bug you for 3c/min, if it helps them sell a few more useless widgets.

Hello chief, let's talk, why not?

--
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Re:The downside of cheap international calls by Ibanez · 2003-07-15 09:52 · Score: 1

Knowing what little I know about Japan and their culture, I'd be willing to bet they have very little problems with phone solicitations.

And as was mentioned in the last article about the Donotcall.gov list a lot is already outsourced overseas.

AND I would not be surprised if those companies, do to the bulk calls, only pay that much already.

Blake
Re:The downside of cheap international calls by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:02 · Score: 0

I'm planning on buying/building a cheap PBX for home. Want to ring my phone? Guess my extension.
Re:The downside of cheap international calls by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 11:28 · Score: 0

Sounds like we'll have to have an International Do Not Call Treaty. But first, we'll have to get Shrub out of office because he doesn't believe in international treaties.
Re:The downside of cheap international calls by silverhalide · 2003-07-15 12:01 · Score: 1

Simple fix to that.

Get caller ID.

Tell your phone company to block any calls that don't have phone numbers (Almost ALL telemarkets block caller ID when calling).

Problem solved!

Might piss off your friends who do it, but I want to know who's calling before I pick up.

Turning Japanese (-2, Troll, Off-topic) by usotsuki · 2003-07-15 08:53 · Score: 2, Funny

Ithinkimturningjapaneseithinkimturningjapaneseirea llythinkso...
Turningjapaneseithinkimturningjapan eseireallythink so... :}

-uso.

--
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS

Obligatory Haiku by baggachipz · 2003-07-15 08:53 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Fast Internet makes me hard
Cable rips me off
Lousy Japs get the best stuff

Re:Obligatory Haiku by el_salvador · 2003-07-15 09:06 · Score: 0

Haiku definition:
What is Haiku?

Haiku is one of the most important form of traditional japanese poetry. Haiku is, today, a 17-syllable verse form consisting of three metrical units of 5, 7, and 5 syllables.

check the definition, you my friend, suck at the intarweb
Re:Obligatory Haiku by baggachipz · 2003-07-15 09:09 · Score: 1

Slashdot reader whines
Worries more about others
than finding girlfriend
Re:Obligatory Haiku by el_salvador · 2003-07-15 09:10 · Score: 0

here's one dedicated so slashdotters all over the globe! fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap
Re:Obligatory Haiku by atrader42 · 2003-07-15 16:59 · Score: 1

This isn't good yet You must await patiently Porn won't come that fast

My life sucks... by mb12036 · 2003-07-15 08:55 · Score: 1

I pay $45/month for 128k DSL...

And I'm feeling lucky to have that since I'm in a rural area. *sigh*

Wish I could speak Japanese... :(

Just hope the same thing happens in the UK. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 08:56 · Score: 0

As of now, 2Mbit broadband around £35-£50/month while 8Mbit is still over £100/month. But concidering the competiveness of the ADSL ISPs over here, and with more and more rural exchanges being upgraded the price will come down.

Re:Just hope the same thing happens in the UK. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:15 · Score: 0

Yes all with 256kbps upload! 2Mbps SDSL is £6000 pa from easynet if you are lucky enough to live near an exchange. Fiber/LES is about £7000 install - both ends.

BT wants to become a broadcaster, they stall the infrastructure to milk profits from what was stolen from the public when they were privatised. In short: Nothing like this is even in sight for the UK.

Keep dreaming ;)

I want it! by gamgee5273 · 2003-07-15 08:57 · Score: 1

$21/month in Japan should be actually less in the US when you think of exchange rates, inflation and cost-of-living (Big Macs are what? Like $8 over there? I'm too lazy to go look - sorry). $21 here would be chicken feed...

Hell, I would pay $30/month to dump my current cable modem service for something like this.

Somehow, however, I suspect that no one will pull this off in this country. Between the government and the big corporations, I can see this floating like a lead balloon...

Now, if I were to telecommute from Japan...

Re:I want it! by Anonymous+Custard · 2003-07-15 09:07 · Score: 1

$21/month in Japan should be actually less in the US when you think of exchange rates, inflation and cost-of-living (Big Macs are what? Like $8 over there? I'm too lazy to go look - sorry). $21 here would be chicken feed...
Hell, I would pay $30/month to dump my current cable modem service for something like this .

$30/month? Most folks pay $49 for DSL or Cable after the first few cheap introductory months. I'd glady pay the same $49/month for higher speeds (duh), but I'm not sure if I'd pay too much more. The download speed I get with cable (sometimes near 5 megabit) is fast enough for almost everything I do online.

--
$8.95/mo web hosting
Re:I want it! by IdleTime · 2003-07-15 09:18 · Score: 1

I'll gladly pay $100/month for such a connection!

Heck, it's only 5 bags of blow and that's gone in a few hours!

--
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Re:I want it! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:18 · Score: 0

I can see this floating like a lead balloon.

And I remember a band that once got their name from someone that said they fall like a Led Zeppelin.
Re:I want it! by leeet · 2003-07-15 09:39 · Score: 1

Bigmac's were about $3 last time I checked. Why eat a bigmac in Japan? It's like trying to eat fresh sushi in Montana. Forget about it...

--
-- Leeeter than leet
Re:I want it! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 19:36 · Score: 0

Mcdonalds and the local burger slingers (first kitchen etc) had a price war and cut all the burger prices by half. yes by half.

I lived there, I got paid twentyfive hundred yen an hour. YahooBB cost me Y2800 per month, but they didn't bill us for nine months because we complained about the speed (too far from the exchange)
Tokyo is expanesive but even in Osaka you can find apartments for Y50,000. (500$)
Re:I want it! by gamgee5273 · 2003-07-16 07:41 · Score: 1

It's a reference Americans can grasp. The last I checked (with a Japanese coworker of mine, no less) - a couple of years ago, the going rate for a Big Mac in Tokyo was equivilent to somewhere between $6-$8.
And i somehow suspect that it isn't that hard to eat fresh sushi in Helena, at least.
Re:I want it! by gamgee5273 · 2003-07-16 07:43 · Score: 1

My point is - I'll pay much more than what the service price actually translates to here. Like I said: due to cost of living issues there, $21 would be more like $14 or so here. Thus, I would be willing to pay double or so - $30 - to get it.

Whats availiable here by MC68040 · 2003-07-15 08:58 · Score: 1

In stockholm, Malmo and Goteborg in swden you can get 10mbit via lan for a measily $25-30 a month too, so it isn't unique other than as for the higer bandwidth architecture they used.

2 years ago by presroi · 2003-07-15 08:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

heise.de

08/01/2001:
NTT to install 100 Mbit lines in the living room

So, this is not really new news. Besids the fee.

There must have been a /.-Story as well

German headline follows:

NTT legt 100-MBit-Leitungen bis ins Wohnzimmer

NTT will heute einen Glasfaser-Breitbanddienst starten, der Übertragungsraten von bis zu 100 MBit/s schaffen soll. Nach einem Bericht von EETimes will die japanische Telefongesellschaft diesen Service den Endkunden für einen Grundpreis von deutlich unter 200 Mark pro Monat anbieten.

I agree about the wired culture....... by Ride-My-Rocket · 2003-07-15 08:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

Japanese seem to be at least 5 years ahead of the US in many respects, where consumer electronics are concerned. If you've ever been to Akihabara in Tokyo -- an electronics district -- you would realize how much more of a fundamental use the Japanese make use of communications devices. So yes, this might be a bit easier to roll out in Japan, where adoption is concerned.

However, I'm not so sure about the "densely populated" argument. Granted, it doesn't make sense to wire more rural communities -- so start with the densest areas of the biggest US cities. Manhattan is pretty densely populated, and there's a ton of unlit fiber lying beneath the streets. There's no excuse for new buildings that are erected not to be wired with fiber -- and yet, it continues to happen. The biggest reason: telcos have a monopoly, and are content to sit on existing profit margins for as long as possible. If you allowed 3rd parties to provide FTTC / FTTH (Fiber to the Curb / Fiber to the Home) services, I bet you'd see them picking up the pace pretty damn quickly.

And I don't want to hear anything about the US not having had enough time to do a rollout of this scale. When I visited Japan in 1998, they were waaaay behind the curve. At least three NTT central offices that I visited during my stay there had dialup connections to their own backbones in their own offices!

Re:I agree about the wired culture....... by Lionel+Hutts · 2003-07-15 09:15 · Score: 1

Nobody's stopping anyone from running fiber to the home. The RBOCs have a near-monopoly on wires because nobody has wanted to spend the money on them, not because they can't.

The phone companies will do this here, in urban areas at least. Somebody else will if they take too long.

--
I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm, LLP does not necessarily endorse the contents of this message.

greed by frovingslosh · 2003-07-15 09:01 · Score: 1, Insightful

So why can't they do something like that here in the States? What's holding them back - red tape, technical issues?

What's holding them back here? Greed. Why should your local telco offer you 12 mbs, VoIP and DVD movies for $21 when they can gouge you for $50 for ADSL alone, and not even guarantee a 1.5mbs download? And they sure don't want it including quality VoIP. Can someone else other then the telco offer it? Not if they have to get the wires from the telco, same problem. That pretty much leaves the cable companies. But then the system who have to co-exist with the existing cable signal, and even if it does do you really expect the cable company to offer this speed and these services a this price when it has a history of getting a lot more for a lot less? Both the local telcos and the cable companies have local monopolies, and have a history of increasing rates that exceed inflation and are extremely hard to justify when you know the facts behind them.

--
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.

Priorities by fm6 · 2003-07-15 09:04 · Score: 1

I don't follow Japanese affairs much, but I'm pretty sure that monster insurance is a secondary concern, at best. More basic expenses, like rent and food seem to be more of an issue.

Cheap internet? Hah! by cybermace5 · 2003-07-15 09:05 · Score: 4, Informative

Better hope you can fit into a wiring closet, if you think cheap bandwidth is a good reason to move to Japan. Even the smallest of basic one-person apartments, in the areas where this kind of bandwidth is available, cost upwards of $800/month. Not to mention the six month deposit.

Basically, everything but bandwidth is expensive.

In contrast I get a large kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms in a quiet neighborhood for $440/month. I have more space than I can use, fairly reliable 2mbps cable modem for $40 a month, room to park my car and money to put in my savings account. I'm not even home to use my bandwidth for ten hours of the day, and cable modem is more than fast enough. Ain't America great?

--
...

Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by cybermace5 · 2003-07-15 09:08 · Score: 1

Please note that "2mbps" should actually be "2Mbps." Though some might claim their cable modem is in the millibits-per-second range....

--
...
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Dynedain · 2003-07-15 09:14 · Score: 1

$800 for a 1 person apartment...sounds like here in West Los Angeles....

--
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Phil+Wilkins · 2003-07-15 11:04 · Score: 1

$800 for a 1 bed in West LA? That's a good deal!
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Dynedain · 2003-07-15 11:29 · Score: 1

no, thats for a small studio....i would be incredibly happy if i could find a 1 bedroom at that price

--
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by m3djack · 2003-07-15 11:46 · Score: 1

You obviously don't live in Boston. I can get a piece of shit studio in boston with radiators, a kitchen I can barely fit into, noisy deteriorating buildings, no AC, and a single 20 amp circuit for, are you ready for this? $900/mo.! Something tells me my $900 is going to go a bit farther in Japan...
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by mikemacman · 2003-07-15 11:48 · Score: 1

Even the smallest of basic one-person apartments, in the areas where this kind of bandwidth is available, cost upwards of $800/month. Not to mention the six month deposit.
Japan is actually more affordable than you are describing. First, there is no 6-month deposit, and you can get a 2 bedroom apartment in the outskirts of Tokyo for $800/month.
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by gnovos · 2003-07-15 11:50 · Score: 1

Better hope you can fit into a wiring closet, if you think cheap bandwidth is a good reason to move to Japan. Even the smallest of basic one-person apartments, in the areas where this kind of bandwidth is available, cost upwards of $800/month.

Wow, so half the price of San Francisco!

--
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Sanga · 2003-07-15 11:56 · Score: 1

Even the smallest of basic one-person apartments, in the areas where this kind of bandwidth is available, cost upwards of $800/month. for a moment I thought you were talking about the Bay area!
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 12:05 · Score: 0

Don't be ridiculous. San Francisco and a number of other Bay Area cities are much more expensive. $800 is a damn good deal. Densely populated, too, but broadband's still tres expensive.
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by zenyu · 2003-07-15 12:05 · Score: 2, Informative

Even the smallest of basic one-person apartments, in the areas where this kind of bandwidth is available, cost upwards of $800/month.

Heh, and I pay $1100 for my small one-person apartment in NYC and then $86 for 0.125 Mbps upstream (incl. cost of required phone-line I never even bothered to connect to a phone to)... how is this not a better deal again?

Reminds me of that senator that interrupted Greenspan today after he said the 2 million jobs lost in manufacturing in the last year didn't matter because the "standard of living in America is the greatest in the world!" The senator just asked, "have you ever been to Scandinavia?" Then Greenspan corrected himself, "the standard of living in America is the greatest in the world, for a country of our size." Which is basically just saying we're better off than China and India.
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by mandalayx · 2003-07-15 12:29 · Score: 1

Better hope you can fit into a wiring closet, if you think cheap bandwidth is a good reason to move to Japan. Even the smallest of basic one-person apartments, in the areas where this kind of bandwidth is available, cost upwards of $800/month. Not to mention the six month deposit.

Sounds like where I live. For example, I paid $1108/mo to *share* one room abt 15x10 in the Berkeley dorms. So when I saw the chance to have my own studio for $1025/mo, I was so happy!
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by cybermace5 · 2003-07-15 12:38 · Score: 1

When I say "basic" I'm not talking about the same thing you are. I'm talking about approx. 180 square feet, no furniture, no appliances, no bathroom.

--
...
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 13:17 · Score: 0

Holy crap. That's so cheap. Here in Berkeley, I pay $1250 for a one bedroom apartment. It's like... Holy crap. I need to move wherever the crap you are and get an apartment there.
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by pao93 · 2003-07-15 13:22 · Score: 1

People! Japan is not as expensive as you think. I have a 2 bedroom and dining room kitchen (6 jo, 6 jo, 12 jo) apartment. Very nice and new. The cost is around 600$. Ok, its not in central tokyo, but then i wanted a garden and a parking spot so i deal with the commute. You can rent whole houses in parts of Tokyo (Nippori for eg) for just over a grand. If you wanna be a playah and live in Aoyama, then sure, shell out lots of money, but Japans prices have really come down since the bubble economy burst.

Also, food isn't expensive here if you know where to shop. Beer, wine, liquor is cheap. Dining out is reasonable and no bloody tipping on top of that.

Ok, i'm sounding like an ad for 'living in japan' but i just thought i'd put my 2 cents in and dispense with some of the myths. I think these misconceptions partially arise from conditions here 10 years ago and the fact that most people who have these ideas maybe only visited Japan (which IS expensive for tourists). Everything but bandwidth is NOT expensive here!

c
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by kylef · 2003-07-15 14:13 · Score: 1

Norway gets a significant portion of its GNP from oil, as do several other small nations throughout the world. Qatar, for example, has no taxes and free college for all citizens.

Comparing standards of living in these countries to those countries that profit mainly by trade, manufacturing, and services (like Western Europe, Hong Kong, and the US) is not a legitimate comparison. Not everyone is free to live in those places where natural resources supplement income.

And before you complain too much about your small, overpriced NY apartment, realize that you're living in one of the two most expensive and overcrowded places in the United States (the other being SF). If you want to compare the standard of living and other statistics from where you live to other cities in the US, check out this MSN House & Home page. Pretty cool, eh?
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by zenyu · 2003-07-15 15:53 · Score: 1

Not everyone is free to live in those places where natural resources supplement income.
Very true, and often those resources turn out to be curses. I wouldn't compare the US with some place like Luxemburg either. But it might be fair to address why life can be so much better in a place like Sweden or Denmark. I think it's a number of factors, and I wouldn't want us to make some of the choices they have made because we have a different set of values, many of which I cherish. It does seem like smaller countries have better government. If we took some lessons from this, for instance by redrawing some state borders along lines of common interests and giving more power to these entities and less to our central government, it might benefit not just our economy but also our happyness by giving us canditates to vote for instead of just against.

And before you complain too much about your small, overpriced NY apartment, realize that you're living in one of the two most expensive and overcrowded places in the United States (the other being SF).

I'm not really complaining, I like NY. I even like my "efficiency" apt, though a bathtub would be nice. SF is my distant second in the US. I don't think NY is overcrowded, though I do agree that it can be expensive. I wouldn't even say overpriced considering the insanely restrictive zoning laws the real property owners managed to get enacted. My point was really that even a dense city that is very comparable in infrastructure costs to Japanese cities we still don't get these services at a reasonable price. In a more capitalist part of the economy like food service things are very different, I can get a very good meal at a resturant for $5 here. You can open a resturant in NYC with less paperwork than it takes to provision a single copper pair from an ILEC, and it shows in the pricing.

I really like that comparison web page BTW.
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Art+Tatum · 2003-07-15 16:26 · Score: 1

giving more power to these entities and less to our central government, it might benefit not just our economy but also our happyness by giving us canditates to vote for instead of just against.
Yes. This is the way it was, originally. The Bill of Rights wasn't even intended to apply to the states--only to the national legislature. In the early days, states could and did restrict freedom of the press and announce official religious holidays and no one minded. Even Thomas Jefferson did this while he was a governor. Once he became President, he refused to pronounce days of fasting and prayer, since he felt that it was not proper for the national executive to pursue such an action.
I can get a very good meal at a resturant for $5 here.
Yes, this is something that I noticed when I lived in northeastern New Jersey. Food wasn't very much more expensive than it is here, while housing was at least 10x as expensive. Gas prices were about the same.
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 16:39 · Score: 0

Damn...around here, $900 a month easily gets you a sizable home--paying the mortgage, not the rent.

I know a fair number of people that commute 1.5 hours a day each way. They say that if they lived in the city, sometimes the downtown commute would take 45 minutes, and that living on the outskirts was 1.25 hours, so they moved 15 minutes by highway and the cost of living dropped like a rock.
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by kylef · 2003-07-15 16:43 · Score: 1

You can open a resturant in NYC with less paperwork than it takes to provision a single copper pair from an ILEC, and it shows in the pricing.

Haha, your point is well taken. Is there any wonder why Americans are so obese? :-P

As for Sweden, there were some posts a while back (I forget the thread) discussing the relative advantages/disadvantages of the Swedish governmental system that were quite interesting. Perhaps I can uncover them and post a link...

I actually admire Scandinavians greatly. I wish their populations weren't so stagnant. (To save you some searching for the population growth rates: Denmark 0.29%, Finland 0.14%, Sweden 0.02%, Norway 0.47%, USA 0.89%, Qatar 3.02%)

At least they're non-negative, unlike Bulgaria at -1.11%, Ukraine at -0.72%, and Russia at -0.33%...
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 16:54 · Score: 0

Sometimes I am in sheer disbelief when people make country to country comparisons. How stupid are you?

If standard of living is all that matters to you, move the hell out. The reality is, standard of living TO YOU really encompasses blood relations and ties (family), community (friends, neighbors), as well as political freedoms (of which we have many, despite all the political mongering you see from -any- camp) and opportunites (choice of jobs, social strata, etc.).

If you want to compare category or sector A of one country to another country's A, that's fine. But extrapolating beyond that to make a point is silly and disingenious. e.g. most other country's school systems kick the shit out of the public schooling in the US, but the US still dominates in the upper academia circles hands down.

If you want to keep it in proper context and make a country versus country battle, you better be a hell of a lot more knowledgeable than you seem.

btw, when Greenspan talks about the 2 million lost jobs, he means the BIG companies. Most of the smaller, efficient businesses (aka corporations which like to hand out pink slips) are doing big ass sales, given the weakened dollar (yes, I said weakened; you did know some sectors "want" a weak dollar, right?).

Most of the people that came to the states for education or work end up wanting to stay. Most of them realize the opportunities here, even during a crappy economy. I say that speaks better than political rhetoric by some Vermont senator who doesn't need someone to point out where the stage is.

btw, 2 million jobs in manufacturing lost means shit if you have other jobs to replace them. In the 70s, millions of manufacturing jobs were lost. The problem then and presently is really that we don't have similar paying jobs replacing them. No one cried in the mid 80s, during the yuppie boom, when manufacturing jobs were lost to east orient countries. Why? Because service and professional jobs were increasing.

That is the nature of economic evolution.

btw, economics is a cause and effect engine, but usually it's staggered 4-8 years from the policies set. Many would argue the flight from the US is due more to increased employee protectionism and benefit protection than the workers being lazy, et al. Globalization sucks for a society like the US supposedly has.
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 20:30 · Score: 0

500EUR/month for a 2-story building with three rooms, bathroom and kitchen, and we have a 22% VAT!
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 23:17 · Score: 0

Try Sunnyvale, Bay Area $1350 for a 1 bedroom apartment with floorboards so thin, you can tell where the upstairs tenant is standing at any time of the day. And the cable TV system is still analog. Or Brighton, England 850 pounds/month ($1200/month) for any one of the following: [1] A 1 bedroom flat, with either a mailbox shared by eight other residents, or [2] A 2 bedroom flat with one of the rooms locked with the owners belongings stored inside. [3] A 1 bedroom flat, next to a builders woodyard, constantly in use 12 hours/day. None of these places have access to cable TV or broadband either as they are all backyard developments. But you are still expected to pay a security deposit of one month's rent, to be paid at the same time as the first month's rent (+$2400). And you'll be required to pay the property tax for each year (+$1500).
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by cybermace5 · 2003-07-16 01:31 · Score: 1

You people all need to move out to a nice little city, say 75,000 to 150,000 and the largest city for 50 miles.

--
...
Re:Cheap internet? Hah! by Phil+Wilkins · 2003-07-16 05:41 · Score: 1

That's more like it. Colleague pays $1200 for a 1 bed, we pay $1650 for a 2 bed.

Well .. yes by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:06 · Score: 0

I will miss you while i try to settle to my new homeland and try to learn Japanese (Alas, whatching Bruce Lee movies has not been very helpful).

I would imagine so. SINCE HE IS NOT JAPANESE!!

Idiot.

Re:Well .. yes by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:34 · Score: 0

When they were handing out the capacity to understand irony, I guess you were towards the back of the queue.

Density and Density by fm6 · 2003-07-15 09:07 · Score: 1

Your argument makes a lot of sense. Still, any geek can't help but be aware that Japan seems to get kewl technology long before it comes to the U.S. -- if it comes at all.

translate? Are there any limits by signal914 · 2003-07-15 09:08 · Score: 1

http://bbpromo.yahoo.co.jp/promotion/service/modem 26/index.html

Can anyone translate? Are there any limits? Certainly you can't peg it for a whole month. The peering costs would be more than $21/mo.

Re:translate? Are there any limits by randyest · 2003-07-15 10:00 · Score: 1

Hmm, babelfish choked on this page. Wierd. Here's what I can get: there are several up-front charges amounting less than US$100. And, I am quite sure that it is not $21/month, rather for full 26Mbit, without renting hardware, the cost is at least yen3838/month (~US$33) or yen4828/month (~US$41) including equipment rental. This is for YahooBB DSL, translated from the page linked below, which maybe different from the service mentioned in the article, but it's available now.

Anyway, it's still quite good since there are no bandwidth or usage limits or caps, in either direction -- I checked ALL of the little notes (and there were many) and terms & conditions pages. No limits. Wow.

Here's a breakdown of the charges from http://bbpromo.yahoo.co.jp/promotion/campaign/thre efree/charge.html , all units are yen, and currently there are about 116 yen/US$:

ISP = 1st 3 months free, 1290 per month from the 4th month on
voip is free, no charge ever for this

ADSL service provider charge:
8Mbit = 990/month
12Mbit = 1190/month
26Mbit = 1390/month

modem with LAN and wifi rental
8Mbit = 690/month
12Mbit = 890/month
26Mbit = 990/month

phone co charge for ADSL line (3950 one-time fee), then monthly**:
Eastern Japan = 168
Western Japan = 176

modem + wireless LAN adapter rental is free for 3 months, then 990/month

telephone help with setup is free
in-home setup help costs 6800

Monthly Totals (after 3 months free, not including any one-time fees):

Eastern Japan**
8Mbit = 3138
12Mbit = 3528
12Mbit + rental = 4528
26Mbit = 3838
26Mbit + rental = 4828
"DSL only"* = 3138

Western Japan**
8Mbit = 3146
12Mbit = 3546
12Mbit + rental = 4536
26Mbit = 3846
26Mbit + rental = 3836
"DSL only"* = 3146

* I'm not sure what this is exactly, but it's the same price as 8M service.
** Eastern and Western Japan have different phone companies, and Western is a little more expensive.

--
everything in moderation

Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by chmilar · 2003-07-15 09:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

It might be due similar reasons why the Mobile Phone systems in Europe and Japan are so much better than in North America.

In Europe, everyone decided to standardize on GSM for mobile phones. Then, they could focus on providing excellent service and services, instead of fighting over the "basics". They can move their infrastructure forward, instead of reinventing the wheel.

In North America, the mobile providers picked different, incompatible technologies (even within the same company/network!). The idea was to foster competition and innovation. Instead, the whole thing has resulted in an annoying mess, and the customers have suffered.

Europe still has a lot of competition in the mobile phone space, but it is based on open standards.

The same situation happens with the "landline" phone companies. There is a lot of different technology out there, and a lot of "bridges" to glue networks together. Probably the only reason the networks interoperate at all is that they are built on top of a national infrastructure that was laid out before deregulation caused so much fragmentation.

With a more uniform technology base, it would be possible to roll out new services cheaply and efficiently.

You just have to be careful that the whole system doesn't stagnate because the standards are not flexible enough to move into the future, or that one company controls the whole thing, and it is too fat and happy to make progress.

NTT, in Japan, probably has a nice infrastructure that allowed this network to be built. They probably learned their lessons from the Japanese TV and electricity fiascos (they have both PAL and NTSC TV systems, and both 110 and 220 volt power)!

--
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.

Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by jrumney · 2003-07-15 09:29 · Score: 1

I don't know quite why you've been modded informative. 1) Japan is not in Europe, so the mobile phone system in Europe has nothing whatsoever to do with this. 2) Like the US, Japanese mobile providers picked different, incompatible technologies. Like the US, noone else uses the technologies that Japanese mobile phone providers picked. 3) Japan has only NTSC TV systems and 100 volt power. It does use both 50Hz and 60Hz for power depending on where in the country you are though.
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 11:20 · Score: 0

The same situation happens with the "landline" phone companies. There is a lot of different technology out there, and a lot of "bridges" to glue networks together.

Oh, you mean like that Internet thing? Yeah, that'll never never work. We won't really enter the computer age until we use a uniform technology base and agreed-upon standards, like Minitel does.
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by RzUpAnmsCwrds · 2003-07-15 12:19 · Score: 0

"It might be due similar reasons why the Mobile Phone systems in Europe and Japan are so much better than in North America."

Oh, right. You mean that you have SIM cards. Well, so do we. Or maybe you meant that you use GSM? We have that too - three major providers who all have roaming agreements. Or maybe that you have GPRS? We have that too. T-Mobile charges $29 over here for unlimited nationwide GPRS.

So, we have 3G CDMA, GSM, GPRS, interoperable SMS. Why is the European system so much better?
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by beeblebrox87 · 2003-07-15 12:33 · Score: 1

I don't live in the US. But I've visted there several times in the last few years, and there is nowhere I can find a simcard for my GSM phone. I have my phone scan for GSM networks and it finds none, even in large cities. When I am am back outside the US and my phone works again, I send messages to cell phones in the States (using numbers that work for voice-calling the same phones) but the messages are never received. My phone works in places like Tanzania, but not in the US.

Perhaps I'm just missing something huge, but I have get to find any evidence that the US system is anything but horibly behind the rest of the world.

There is no sig.
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by BJH · 2003-07-15 12:50 · Score: 1

I do agree with you, but I just wanted to note that 220V power is offered in Japan for commercial applications (supermarket freezers, that sort of thing), as the current required for 100V to run these things gets a bit ridiculous once you exceed a couple of kilowatts.
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by blahbooboo2 · 2003-07-15 13:24 · Score: 1

Actually, cell phone service is good in the U.S. it is MUCH cheaper then in Europe!!!! Ever try calling a European cell phone, its CRAZY expensive for the caller!
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 14:39 · Score: 0

While the GSM networks are all fairly (T-Mobile) to very (AT&T, Cingular) new, and the total landmass large, even compared to the whole of Western Europe combined, and hence the GSM coverage a bit spotty outside of major urban areas, this is a strong point.

Many people complained that the Europe-wide legislation mandating the GSM standard provided better infrastructure and technology, using arguments like "in Europe, cell phones are now cheaper than land line phones" (back when that was a surprising idea to Americans) and "Europeans can swap SIM cards and move from network-to-network across the continent." However, the price argument was only true due to the exorbidant pricing of European land lines -- even in the late '90s, and perhaps before, American cell prices were significantly lower than those in Europe, and today that is as true as ever. And this is even more true with data -- while AT&T continues to charge an arm and a leg for GPRS, at worst they're roughly comparable to most European providers, and meanwhile T-Mobile offers unlimited GPRS with a voice plan for $19/month ($29 data-only), with new promotions for $10/month unlimited data, and a per-byte rate of $3/MB. As for the roaming argument, that has nothing to do with GSM being mandated, but rather with a bit of cleverness on the part of the Scandinavians who designed the system -- and it is something we have in the US, too, since, as the above poster pointed out, we do have more major GSM operators than CDMA. And speaking of interoperability, just try to send an inter-carrier SMS in much of Europe. In the US not only can you do this on all GSM networks, SMS travels transparently between CDMA, TDMA, and GSM carriers.

The place where this argument of government support falls apart, though, is in technological forward progress. The now-EU countries sold the deal to the Scandinavians while Qualcomm was developing far-superior technology. CDMA networks and phones may seem clunky to consumers, but the underlying RF technology is [was] revolutionary. Without Qualcomm's work, we would currently be even further from achieving the promises of 3G, as there would be no well-tested, advanced radio technology to efficiently support such bandwidth. CDMA -- the RF multiplexing idea, not the US standard employed by Verizon and Sprint -- is the first tested and proven technology node at which all the data-centric, high bandwidth ideas of 3G become possible. Nokia and Ericsson battled for months or years to avoid chosing CDMA as the basis for 3G GSM, but in the end were forced to cave to what they've now admitted is revolutionarily superior RF technology.

Furthermore, while W-CDMA has yet to seriously materialize on the world market (due to a poor investment environment, to be sure, but also due to multi-year schedule slips and massive unforseen technological hurdles in development), CDMA2000 1xRTT today provides more than 3x the usable mobile data bandwidth of GPRS with vastly more efficient spectrum utilization -- and with a level of investment comparable to the upgrades all the GSM operators have done to support GPRS.

I'm not trying to toot Qualcomm's horn. I'm not a Verizon or Sprint customer (previously T-Mobile, now AT&T GSM). I have great appreciation for Scandinavian handset design, and the early innovations in cell technology in Scandinavia (in spite of all the credit given to AT&T). However, I think all the arguments that people make about European cell technology/service/price being better than those in the US because of a government-mandated standard are very ill-informed and misled.

Peace.
~jrk
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-16 04:28 · Score: 0

A point which can be drawn from it is that we (in the USA) over-rate the benefits of capitalism and under-rate the benefits of standardization.

McCarthyism still chokes us even to this day... There is a happy medium somewhere, and we are letting fear hold us back while other countries advance...
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-16 07:18 · Score: 0

But of course, in the US both the sender and the *receiver* pay. Bwahaha what's up with that, seriously pwned dewd :P
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-16 07:21 · Score: 0

Expensive? Not at all. And particularly not when you're on a cell phone yourself.
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by RzUpAnmsCwrds · 2003-07-16 08:37 · Score: 1

Yes, but:

The sender pays for a local call (free from a landline, uses plan minutes from a cellphone) and the reciever pays with plan minutes. I have 1000 anytime minutes (that's over 10 hours a month) + unlimited minutes 9PM-6AM, as well as no roaming and long distance. I NEVER exceed my plan and NEVER worry about my minutes.
Re:Standards vs. Competition/Innovation by jrumney · 2003-07-16 19:34 · Score: 1

The voltage between phases in Japan is about 175V, not 220. Unlike the US, it is extremely uncommon to find three phase power sockets in Japanese homes. So 100V is all most people ever encounter.

Pricing by mobileskimo · 2003-07-15 09:08 · Score: 1

I remember reading a trade article about pricing. A majority of pricing strategies are kept very hush hush because they do less with the cost of providing products or services and more to do with negotiated limits on what consumers are willing to pay and what extra profit corps can squeeze. It makes perfect sense. If you can make $20 a month on something you sell, and you think you might be able to make $21 would you try to sell it at the higher price to make $21/month? how about $22/month? how about $25? $30? maybe $40? $50 it is then! It's all a matter of where this bar is set.

--
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp

Who is Cringley? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:11 · Score: 0

Sounds interesting. does ynone have a link to said column?

Re:Who is Cringley? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 17:41 · Score: 0

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030626. html

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030703. html

Far reaching implications? by noelp · 2003-07-15 09:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

This sounds great. If I lived in Japan, I would be signing up asap.

However, I kind of feel this is just another step along a somewhat dangerous (maybe that is too strong a word, but bear with me) path.

The internet, as it was envisaged, is designed to be a system whereby a large chunk of it can get destroyed/removed and data can still flow around that gap. Packets take all sorts of routes to get from A to B. All very good stuff, and something I am sure everyone is more than familiar with.

So, a disaster of some description happens, and we can all still get most of what we want as a result of this clever system. But with increases in bandwith such as this, more and more content (some trivial, other very not so) is pushed to the edge of the network. One ISP goes awry now and a huge number of sites/content/services can just dissapear. These sites do not have multiple backbone connections etc etc. With bandwith such as discussed here, you can host a site for a pretty decent number of users. (Wont take much of a slashdotting...but never mind...)

If people continue to push/provide content and services from the very edge of the network, then the very point of this network seems to be defeated. There is a lot of crap out there which I would not miss, but there is also a lot of stuff out there that I would. God bless the google cache is all I can say.

Thoughts?

--
'Internet! Is that thing still around?' - Homer Simpson

Re:Far reaching implications? by bucky0 · 2003-07-15 14:51 · Score: 1

Many colocation centers provide redundancy over multiple internet pipes through multiple ISPs. I'm not a network guy, but I think the protocol they use to do that nifty stuff is called BGP. Anyway, if a link to an ISP goes down, the routers automagically know to route the data through the remaining links. I remember reading stories about how on 9/11 many internet links were brought down with the towers but the internet hummed along(albeit with more latency and packetloss)

--

-Bucky
Re:Far reaching implications? by noelp · 2003-07-15 20:56 · Score: 1

Exactly - backbones, large pipes and colo's are set up to deal with this kind of thing - and in general (there are exceptions) they do it well.
I am thinking of Joe Bloggs actually having a machine set up in his bedroom, a dynamic dns , and his own website etc. His link goes down and he is gone. Period. 95% of the time that may well be a GoodThing. 5% it may actually have some implications.

--
'Internet! Is that thing still around?' - Homer Simpson
Re:Far reaching implications? by kumokasumi · 2003-07-16 12:01 · Score: 1

The invulnerability of the Internet has probably always been a lie anyway. If you physically took out a few key data centers, traffic would be horribly crippled. Remember the train wreck in the tunnel in Baltimore a year or two ago that cut fiber running through the cable? I became totally unable to hold a connection to the West Coast and everything just really sucked. You're entirely correct that this would exaggerate the problem, I think, but I'm not sure it's enough to really worry about.

Why would they ? by Archfeld · 2003-07-15 09:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

How can it cost less than 0, when they can just raise the price on the existing inferior connect and with the FEDs ensuring a 'competitive market' rest assured that they will generate new 'profit' without spending a dime. I can see the lure if broadband was intensly tough market but most places in the US are limited to one or 2 providers.

Somebody PLEASE correct if I am wrong but out here on the west coast, we've seen comcast take-over AT&T's broadband, and in the process, raise rates, institute caps, crack down on home networks, try and filter mp3's, while SBC DSL has cut-off 95% of their newsgroup access, begin marketing their customer information through Yahoo, even though as a regulated utility they had access to information that was required by law, and not segregated from their utility pool, so people REALLY GOT OUTED. I mean once you've gone broadband it takes A LOT to go back to dial-up so the cable/phone company MONOPOLIES really have people over a barrell already greased up...

--
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?

Re:Why would they ? by Sylver+Dragon · 2003-07-15 10:09 · Score: 1

You're right that, as far as getting the line itself goes, we're pretty much screwed here. But at the very least there is still a very modest level of competition. Myself, I am getting ready to jump to DSLExtreme for my ISP. Sure, the money for the line still ends up in Verizon's pocket (that is unavoidable), but at least not all of it does. And, I can get a 1.5Mbps/128Kbps line for $50/month, with static IP, and a TOS which allows me to host my own mail/web server, and have multipul computers behind a router. Yup, its not quite competition, but what do you expect when the phone lines are owned by Verizon?

--
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Re:Why would they ? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:56 · Score: 0

Nah.

Comcast lowered rates and raised caps. They're raising the caps to 3mbit down. Mine is.

Bet you don't even have a cable modem.
Re:Why would they ? by ball-lightning · 2003-07-15 16:17 · Score: 1

Is there anything wrong with Verizon? I have Verizon DSL and I haven't had any problem with them (reliable, fast) and not only that, but they fought (and lost) against the RIAA, and even told the users who were going to shortly be under attack (so they coudl burn their hard drives, of course). Seems to me that Verizon would be a copmany you would want to pay.
Re:Why would they ? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 17:46 · Score: 0

Comcast raised my rates by $15/month because I don't subscribe to cable TV (I have DirecTV, thankyouverymuch.) I haven't seen any change in the 1.5down/256up bandwidth, but I also very much resent having them raise my rates as I watch wholesale prices for 1Mbit dip down to $40 and below.

So a big FUCK YOU to Comcast. I was happy with ATTBI...
Re:Why would they ? by Archfeld · 2003-07-16 02:59 · Score: 1

Yes I do have a cable modem thru COMCRAP, an SDSL line thru covad, and a T1 via work, covad as well. I bet you don't even have a clue what the TOS changes from AT&T to comcrap were do ya ?? Well you just run along and play, let the adults talk, have a peice of candy maybe. AC's should not be seen or HEARD :)

--
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Re:Why would they ? by Sylver+Dragon · 2003-07-16 04:19 · Score: 1

My only real problem with them is thet their TOS specifically states that I am not allowed to host a server on my DSL line. Plus, I would have to pay extra to get a static IP.
Don't get me wrong Verizon DSL has been ok as far as service goes (they need better customer support training, but that's not a big problem to me), I just don't like govenment enforced monopolies. Also, cosidering that I will get a static IP, and about double the download speed for the same price, I don't see any reason to not switch. Mind you, I don't need much in the way of upload speed, my website is small, and doesn't see much traffic, I don't spam, and don't send a lot of email, so my upstream requirements are modest.

--
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.

All Your Broadband Belong to Us! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:16 · Score: 0

You think Japan broadband good? Ha! That is because you are pabo! Korea BEST!!! 20mbps DSL $20/mo, 50mbps available now and 100mbps coming this year!

Seriously, look here: http://www.dailywireless.org/modules.php?name=News &file=article&sid=894

Ha! by InsaneCreator · 2003-07-15 09:19 · Score: 3, Funny

That's nothing! I get 56kbps for $80 per month!

(I think I'm gonna go sit in the corner and weep, now)

I'm posting this from a Softbank/Yahoo BB account by HiGuys · 2003-07-15 09:20 · Score: 5, Informative

We've got this hooked up in the house I live in just outside of Tokyo. We split it among all the members of the house.

It's actually pretty sweet; the modem itself came with a little PCMCIA-like slot card as a part of a bonus offer, which gives us a pretty strong wireless LAN with no extra hardware (I'm two floors away from the modem, and it's a concrete earthquake-proof house); you just slide in the card and set up WEP or whatever. We also got this free calendar/calculator thingy which has a cool sliding mechanism. Hey, it was that or a coffee mug (or something else, I forget what). Anyhow, we also got 2 months (or was it 3?) free just for joining on top of all that.

I can confirm what the article says about the teens in white jackets pimping the stuff outside of every station, too. They're everywhere.

If anyone has any questions on the service, fire away. Despite the 24-hour porn dog in the next room over (he has somewhere near a 100 gig collection), the connection is still pretty speedy.

All your Pr0n by l33t-gu3lph1t3 · 2003-07-15 09:20 · Score: 1, Funny

...are belong to us!

--
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------

DoS attack from Softbank by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:21 · Score: 0

I had, some time ago, a DoS attack including some source IPs from Softbank. They did take 10 days to block the attack origin after i sent a bunch of e-mails. In my opinion first thing Softbank must do is to create an "efficient" abuse team.

Regards.

Prove it! by TheSync · 2003-07-15 09:22 · Score: 1

Can someone prove to me that they actually have 10 Mbps or greater Internet bandwidth from home for under $100 per month? I just don't believe it.

Re:Prove it! by randyest · 2003-07-15 10:17 · Score: 1

If you can sort out the confusion babelfish will spew at you, point it to this YahooBB Japan DSL price chart. It's not as cheap as the service mentioned in the article, but it is 26Mbit for ~US$41/month (assuming 116yen/US$).

For more clarification of the babelfish machine-translation artifacts, here's a decent translation, but that's from me, so I dunno if you'll trust it -- you know how much I like to make people feel bandwidth envy.

While I'm here, I'll share some choice funny Engrish from the babelfish translation:

As for proposal simplicity! Now we can propose immediately * * Make wait it does not do to utilization! * * Proposal day July 16 day Construction completion due date July 25 day. After the completing the construction, connecting the modem which reaches, the Yahoo! Start of BB utilization! As for details this way.

As for proposal? Telephone number is inputted from correspondence area check just!

As for construction? Because it is construction of NTT inside, being at home there is no necessity!

As for setting? Because video and the CD-ROM help, you feel at rest even alone!

--
everything in moderation
Re:Prove it! by Shinobi · 2003-07-15 22:05 · Score: 1

Hop on to Direct Connect and join one of the Swedish hubs. If you find people with BBB or Tele2 tags, you have found some. Heck, there are even a couple of hubs that have limited logins so you can only connect if you have a 10Mb/s or better connection, by limiting to the IP-ranges used for those connections
Re:Prove it! by TheSync · 2003-07-16 05:51 · Score: 1

What is Direct Connect? Do you have a URL?
Re:Prove it! by Shinobi · 2003-07-16 07:10 · Score: 1

It's a filesharing system. Basic client for Windows can be found here: www.neo-modus.com The best clients are DC++ and oDC, available on SourceForge and www.gempond.com/odc respectively, but then you need to find a hublist. There are Unix clients available, but they suck

Comming soon... by zulux · 2003-07-15 09:23 · Score: 1

From Japan, with their high-speed Internet connections, the dreaded:

First Prost, Lock-star Stile!

--

Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.

pah thats nothin by orbitalia · 2003-07-15 09:23 · Score: 1

In Sweden you can get 29mbit/sec for 48.6789USD

Perfect for P2P by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:23 · Score: 0

You could download mp3's
before the RIAA could type "netstat -na"....

What i am curious about by jjshoe · 2003-07-15 09:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

What i am curios about is the bandwidth required to supply. In my town i think that we would have no issues getting permission to use telephone poles or dig trenches as needed to run wire and covering the initial cost. What i wonder about is how do they pay for the bandwidth? are they linked up to the telephone company? are they linked up to something else?

--
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount} /dev/girl -t {wet;fsck;fsck;yes;yes;yes;umount} {/de

Big deal by Isbiten · 2003-07-15 09:25 · Score: 1

In sweden you can get 26MB/sec up and down for 49$ Here's the proof!

--
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.

Moving to Japan by dazdaz · 2003-07-15 09:27 · Score: 1

You can't just move to Japan and start working. It requires a Japanese work permit which is'nt so easy to obtain.

http://japanupdate.com/previous/01/12/06/story15 .s html
http://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/visa/03.h tml#b

Regards

Re:I'm posting this from a Softbank/Yahoo BB accou by HiGuys · 2003-07-15 09:27 · Score: 5, Informative

Sorry for replying to my own comment, but I forgot one REALLY cool feature:

If you plug a phone into the modem itself, then you get IP-phoning without any setup. Calls to Canada for like 2 cents a minute or something, plus the quality hardly changes from a regular international call (actually, it's far superior to many regular calling solutions). It costs more to make a phone call from an hour's drive away in Canada than it does to call half way around the world with this thing, and it just plugs right in, which I find pretty incredible.

Move to Japan (lyrical adaptation) by djeaux · 2003-07-15 09:27 · Score: 4, Funny

Well, I'm starin' at my VAIO, a-drinkin' Kirin beer.
My IRC was lagging when it all came clear.
I hopped into my Honda, it's a little bitty car.
And I'm drivin' down to meet you at the Sushi Bar.
But don't tell me I'm crazy until you hear my plan.
I'm gonna buy two tickets and move to Japan.

I'm gonna move to Japan,
I'm gonna move to Japan.

So if you've got no job and the cable's too slow,
And it's too far to the switch at the ol' telco,
Just pack your bags and don't forget your Kimona,
And you'll be wallowing in bandwidth all the way to Yokohama.

We're gonna move to Japan,
We're gonna move to Japan.

Tokyo's got the neon.
Put a pot of green tea on.
Akira Kurosawa,
Sapporo Okinawa.
Girls with almond eyes,
Downloadin' everything twice.
It's the land of tradition,
But I'm a man on a mission.

When we get to Japan we're gonna do our part,
To use up that bandwidth with all of our heart.

From the unemployment line I see lots to be done
And they're handin' out gigabit in the land of the risin' sun.
And I love my mom and my apple pie,
But sayonara Uncle Sam, hello Samurai.

We're gonna move to Japan,
We're gonna move to Japan,
We're gonna move to Japan,
Hey, we're gonna move to Japan,
The home of the wired man.

It's rolling.

(Liberally adapted from The Band's "Move to Japan" -- 1993)

--
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)

Re:Move to Japan (lyrical adaptation) by ar1550 · 2003-07-15 16:01 · Score: 1

(Liberally adapted from The Band's "Move to Japan" -- 1993)

Damn, I started reading this thinking it was to the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme. I guess I'll probably have to turn in my geek credentials now.

--
I once shot a man in Reno 'cause they cancelled Firefly.

Politics and Economics of Fiber and DWDM by drwho · 2003-07-15 09:28 · Score: 5, Informative

People want to know why we can't do this in the US. Lots of finger pointing at telco greed (somewhat true) but there is more than just that, which is blocking such a revolution.

There is a huge difference between the highly connected and not areas in the US, due to the way technology has developed. Lots of fiber was put in the ground over the past ten years, fed by the expansion of telecom and datacom industries. Once the right-of-way has been purchased, the building permits acquired, the trenches dug and conduit layed, is is just a small bit more expensive to put in a lot of fiber than it is a little. So it wasn't uncommon to see 24 fibers where one would carry the traffic. This also provides some redundancy in case of failure.

You can get a lot of miles with small signal loss on fiber, but every time you splice it, there is a cost in both signal in addition to the economic. So the idea is to lay fiber to carry a lot of traffic to point B from point A, not stopping along the way.

The metallic plant (copper) is old and available and easier to splice, but has horrible performance. But this is fine if you are only going a couple of miles...most of the time. many times it can't even get that far (I am cursed with a crappy T1). Too expensive to run fiber out for everyone, splicing along the way.

So there was already all this capacity between places like New York and Boston and Washington DC, but a paucity to places like Burlington Vermont. Then there was all that 'dark fiber' that was kept in reserve, no signal going through it. But what exacerbated the situation was the development of DWDM technology, which made it possible to run much more data through each of these fibers by utilizing signals in bands that are closer together. But this equipment is expensive.

The end result is that bandwidth rich areas get richer, and the poor aren't helped at all. For an example of how bad this is, some years back the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority sold rights to run fiber down the 'pike, which stretches across the state east and west. This was very profitable in the densly populated eastern half of the state, dominated by Boston and the Rt.128 technology hub. But out in the western the hinterlands, that is across the Connecticut river and deep into area code 413, it wsn't seen as profitable. So the fiber did not run past Westfield, leaving the rest of the state left out and still with pokey, expensive, 1960s age technology. There was a great cry that again the rural population was being screwed, and a consortium was formed, called Berkshire Connect (http://www.bconnect.org) to take over the fiber rights and get western mass lit up. Unfortunately they teamed up with Global Crossing and they had many bankruptcy problems which slowed the project. But it is up and running, they've got 50 members they say, but I have no idea what the actual cost of connectivity is. I am sure it is much more expensive than what we pay in Boston.

I am not sure what can change this situation. Yes, government grants step in and throw some money around, but it will take a real lot to change the basic underlying economics. My guess is that the precipitous drop in the cost of equipment fiber, and real estate rights with the telecom market crash may bring prices into the affordable range, and maybe some local people are hired by the government as part of a public works project to put it all into the ground.

Then, there's microwave. But its reliability is an order of magnitude less than that of fiber.

The only reason not to sign up for 15 months.. by Brad+Mace · 2003-07-15 09:32 · Score: 2, Funny

is that at that speed, you might have downloaded everything on the internet already

Re:I'm posting this from a Softbank/Yahoo BB accou by davidesh · 2003-07-15 09:33 · Score: 1

what's the latency to US like?

average throughput?

allowed to run services?

Which child to sell? by boy_afraid · 2003-07-15 09:34 · Score: 0, Troll

Which child do I have to sell to get that OR earn enough $$ to live there and get the service?

Re:Socialism by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:41 · Score: 0

You have to pay one way or the other, unless private hospitals give treatment for free Stateside. No, didn't think so.

Still, you're all right. Screw the poor families on the other side of town.

Unless Ultraman was a very good friend by boy_afraid · 2003-07-15 09:41 · Score: 1

You could afford the insurance, but only if ULTRAMAN was your very best friend and would show up protecting your @ss!

Re:Socialism by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 09:43 · Score: 0

do you think for all your taxes in america, you are getting anything? (besides bail-out of billionaires via corporate welfare (which, btw, is getting both ''disguised'' better and more disgusting these days))

i'd rather have 50% of my taxes spent on bettering the whole society than lining the pockets of the insanely wealthiest 0.5% of the population

damn "conservatives" bringin it on like that... If you don't like it, start your own country based on hate and ignorance

If they're using NTT Copper by BigBadBri · 2003-07-15 09:46 · Score: 1, Interesting

why are they promoting VOIP that will undercut NTT's core operations?

Is it a sensible strategy to undermine your supplier?

Is it a deliberate strategy, with the aim of picking up the infrastructure on the cheap?

Personally, I can't help thinking that they are shooting themselves in the foot - their VOIP offering appears purely parasitic to me.

--
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!

it will last? by tomstdenis · 2003-07-15 09:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

When cable modems were new in north america they weren't as slow as they are now. They promised break-neck speeds that would boggle your mind. Now they give speeds that nearly rival dailup modems [well kidding but you know what I mean].

Funny thing that.

Hmm :-)

--
Someday, I'll have a real sig.

what about the yen? by donkiemaster · 2003-07-15 09:49 · Score: 1

the yen is big time in the dumper, anybody have insight into the yen/dollar to make sense how good a deal this is? for all I know you could get a new widescreen tv for $50 in japan.

yay for me, boo for you by allgoodnamesaretaken · 2003-07-15 09:49 · Score: 1

I am reading this article on the aforementioned service and man is this one sweet ride... watch me fly WEEEEEeeeee..... And the modem they use has a card slot for 802.11! that was the main selling point for me, that and the cute girls handing out the damn things @_@

Re:yay for me, boo for you by allgoodnamesaretaken · 2003-07-15 10:11 · Score: 1

oh, but something DODGE happened when I was in Akasaka, I was walkin' around (just walkin around) then a japanese boy who was handing out modems comes up to me and he can speak fluent english.. hes like:
punk - "hey, wanna sign up for yahoo! BB?"
me - "nah, I already got it.."
punk - "do you like it?"
me - "yeah I love it!"
punk - "can you cancel your current plan and join up again with me? I have 2 more contracts to fill to meet todays quota!"
me - *moon walkin the hell outa there*

Re:I'm posting this from a Softbank/Yahoo BB accou by HiGuys · 2003-07-15 09:49 · Score: 3, Informative

I can't get the thoroughput/ping at the moment, since I'm on wireless with only 2Mbps making it all the way upstairs (when I do a speed check, I get every single byte that I should be getting of those 2Mbps). I remember that when we did check it we got a very significant percent of the advertised 12Mbps. As far as the latency on the voice IP goes, it's at very close to zero. No real difference from usual phone conversations.

I also haven't run into any problems running any services, aside from working around the firewall, but that has nothing to do with Yahoo or Softbank. I've done FTP servers, the dude next room over hammers P2P, and ICQ/IRC/whatever works well too. I'm not really doing a whole lot with the connection, however, since most of my time is taken up with studying. Internet is mostly wasting time on Slashdot and checking my mail.

Government Regulations, you know by Rick+Richardson · 2003-07-15 09:50 · Score: 1

Suppose that 1000 USA geeks were living in a geek-hive apartment building and most wanted to order super high speed service for $21.

The phone/cable companies would be jumping up and down to offer the super high speed service for a lower price because they make it up in lower costs and higher penetration.

But there would be no way for them to offer it because the government, led by left-wing whiners, would demand that everybody in the city be offered the same deal at the same price. Regardless how expensive it might be to wire up individual houses. In addition, the government would require you to pay an extra $5/month to subsidize libraries, schools, and the poor so that they could get the cheap high speed for free.

Re:Government Regulations, you know by bb_referee · 2003-07-15 10:13 · Score: 1

...led by left-wing whiners...

I once heard it said that the only difference between a democrat and a republican congresscritter is the name. It doesn't matter if you are a left-wing or a right-wing congresscritter, you will do whatever in your power to protect the money rolling in from whatever side of the fence you are on. Lobbyist money is very compelling!

--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Re:Government Regulations, you know by d34thm0nk3y · 2003-07-15 13:46 · Score: 1

Wow, left wing whiners forced comcast to offer me cable modem service? Or is it right wing fascists wont let my brother get DSL? I guess it must be the second because the government is currently led by republicans...
Re:Government Regulations, you know by Jedi+Alec · 2003-07-15 22:41 · Score: 1

Define "left-wing whiner" ?

--

People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Re:Government Regulations, you know by Crazy+Eight · 2003-07-16 12:53 · Score: 1

I can't wait for those whining left wingers to release their grip on the Presidency, the Senate, and the House. They're the only thing stopping me from getting cheap broadband.

economic of scale... by Dumbush · 2003-07-15 09:57 · Score: 1

something I learnt in intro level microeconomic class...

basically, the total cost of laying out the infastrusture for certain industry is pretty high. To cover the high cost, a high volume of cutomers are needed. Each customers bring in marginal revenue, but little marginal cost. So enough customers will eventually lower the cost/customer ratio below revenue/customer ratio. If this goal is accomplished, the firm makes a profit, otherwise it's in trouble. The certain level of customers the parent spoke about is when marginal revenue = marginal cost. Note: marginal cost could goes up if the customer base exceed a certain number(let say the network is overloaded), then the firm is forced to expand it's infastructure. In this case marginal cost/customer might become higher than marginal revenue/customer. Such is the case of diseconomic of scale. (lesson: don't make your simcity larger than the equilibrium level!)

Industry that requires large economic of scale to be efficient are explict natural monopoly behaviour. In this case, it seems this behaviour benefit the consumer, as the firm mandates a low cost of their service in exchange for a higher market demand.

Grammar Lesson of the Day by joe_bruin · 2003-07-15 10:08 · Score: 1

I think it is about time we had a frank discussion about grammar. I know we've all been avoiding this for quite a while, but the problem has really gotten out of hand. Let us consider the original story.

Softbank, in Japan, has built a gigabit ethernet network to replace DSL over ATM, which costs peanuts to maintain and run.

This sentence, besides abusing the word "which" (should be "that"), goes on to imply that an entity named "Softbank" has created a gigabit ethernet network, that is replacing the existing DSL, and that the DSL network costs "peanuts" (slang, but we shall drop the matter). What the original poster likely meant was that the new network costs "peanuts". A proper version of the sentence follows:

In Japan, Softbank has build a gigabit ethernet network that costs peanuts to maintain and run, to replace DSL over ATM.

The travesty continues:

For $21 a month, Japanese users get 12Mb/sec, free VoIP (without quality loss) calls to users on the same network, (3c/min to New York), and DVD-quality movies.

This sentence is simply a disaster. One cannot start a sentence with "for". If this alone was forgiveable, the comma after "month" delineates the meaning of the sentence. And for some reason, the author chose the parenthsize one of the benefits the users may get.

Japanese users, for $21 per month, get 12Mb/sec, free VoIP calls to users on the same network (with no quality loss), 3 cents per minute to New York, and DVD-quality movies.

Finally, the poster concludes with the following train wreck of a sentence:

The company needs users to stay with the service for 15 months to break even, given that it is giving modems away for free.

Here, the implication is that if the users do not stay with the service for 15 months, the users will not break even. Also noteworth is the phrase 'for free'. If the company is giving something "for" something else (in effect, exchanging it), it cannot accept "free" in return. Again, "break even" is slang, but we will leave it be.

Due to the fact that the company is giving away free modems, it needs the users to stay with the service for 15 months so that the company can break even.

Remember, Slashdot, grammar is what separates us from the animals. Please post responsibly.

__joe_b (not posting anon, for the hell of it)

Re:Grammar Lesson of the Day by slantyyz · 2003-07-15 16:26 · Score: 1

Yes, Virginia, grammar is important. Maybe people should spend more time editing their posts.

This is the Internet, however, not the New Yorker. Slashdot posters come from all over the world. For many of them, English is not their first language.

If the point of the message comes across, be a bit more forgiving of the grammar. Slashdot is a community of global users, who happen to use English as a common language.

One cannot start a sentence with "for". If this alone was forgiveable, the comma after "month" delineates the meaning of the sentence. And for some reason, the author chose the parenthsize one of the benefits the users may get.

If starting a sentence with "for" is not a good thing, is starting a sentence with "and for" any better?

Remember, Slashdot, grammar is what separates us from the animals.

Stop being a grammar nazi. Few people can produce perfectly spelled posts without grammatical errors or style issues. I'm not one of them, and either are you.
Re:Grammar Lesson of the Day by whatch+durrin · 2003-07-15 18:22 · Score: 1

Moron...
In Japan, Softbank has build a gigabit ethernet network that costs peanuts to maintain and run, to replace DSL over ATM.
Listen, grammar nazi, unless you're prepared to perfectly correct the writing, don't even try (especially if you don't understand the correct verb tense to use).

--
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).

Less distance-Less fiber by TitanBL · 2003-07-15 10:11 · Score: 1

Not supprising - being that the island of Japan is roughly half the size of Texas. (143,939/268,600 sq. miles)

At that price... by Malic · 2003-07-15 10:17 · Score: 1

...I'd stay for much longer than 15 months!

--
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...

Re:At that price... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 20:15 · Score: 0

anybody and everybody in Kansai (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Nara) in west Japan can hook up to the electric company's FTTH (K-Opticon) and get 100Mbps service for about 40-60$/month, but the are not cause their wife (who controls the family budget) figures YahooBB at Y3000/month and 8Mbps is good enough.

Son's ultimate goal by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:18 · Score: 0

... is to start selling harddisks, dvd writers and other media. At that speed, everyone will be downloading everything and find that their drives are too small. It's his strategy for selling his gadgets.

Now he's probably off spending a couple of billion dollars buying Maxtor or something :)

Ancent people omitted vowels, too. by pario · 2003-07-15 10:23 · Score: 2, Informative

Ancient people like Hebrews and Egyptians actually omitted vowels in writing, which makes it next to impossible for archaeologists to find out the actual pronunciations of words. In fact, all the names of Egyptiaon pharaos are creations of Egyptologists, with vowels added for the sake of their convenience. I am pretty sure saving expensive materials like sheep leather and papyrus is an important factor to this convention.

Re:Ancent people omitted vowels, too. by blowhole · 2003-07-15 11:50 · Score: 4, Funny

I thought they used hieroglyphics.

CAT SPEAR TRIANGLE MOON!
In Mesopotamia, MOON TRIANGLE CAT SPEAR!

--
"Ask me about Loom"
Re:Ancent people omitted vowels, too. by Hideyoshi · 2003-07-15 12:51 · Score: 1

It's a bit more complicated than that. The fact is that the ancient Egyptians spoke a semitic language, and all semitic languages share a great deal of vocabulary and pronounciation in common, so we can use phylogenetic techniques to reconstruct what many Egyptian words would have sounded like.

If we look at Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Tigrinya and other semitic languages, and see that a word sounds similar in most of them, and we have historical evidence to attest that this isn't due to one language borrowing from another, we can be confident that the Egyptians would have said it in a similar manner. For instance, the Arabic word for "book" is "kitab" (derived from the root for "writing"), while in Hebrew we have "k'tav", so we can guess that the Egyptians would also have said "kitab" or "ktab."
Re:Ancent people omitted vowels, too. by Miskatonic · 2003-07-15 18:14 · Score: 1

I don't understand why this is funny. Are you not familiar with hieroglyphics?
Re:Ancent people omitted vowels, too. by thempstead · 2003-07-15 20:50 · Score: 1

No, MOON TRIANGLE CAT SPEAR would be how Yoda would say CAT SPEAR TRIANGLE MOON.
t
Re:Ancent people omitted vowels, too. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-16 07:45 · Score: 0

In Soviet Russia, heiroglyphics are not familiar WITH YOU!

Income Tax? by Blacklotuz · 2003-07-15 10:23 · Score: 1

Whats the income tax rate in Japan? If its lower than the US and I can find a nice place wired with this internet i'll move tomorrow.

A pity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:38 · Score: 0

If the Feds didn't have so-called "national security" concerns about foreign telcos gaining a foothold in U.S. markets, we might look more attractive to them.

I'll sit and watch ... by ehiris · 2003-07-15 10:44 · Score: 1

... how much fun they will have downloading from the web site I host on my 56K.

Nobody wants to run another line without justifyi by way2trivial · 2003-07-15 10:45 · Score: 1

About 20 years ago, I remember reading that the last in service (USA) magneto driven telephone lines were finally replaced with modern lines...

magnetos == hand crank phones... with human operators to connect your call..
the dial tone replacements had been out for 100 years or so..

and you want cable in the boonies? less than 50 years after cable TV was invented?

cable tv is generally considered as being invented in the 1940's

--
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

oh I would love that by AssFace · 2003-07-15 10:48 · Score: 1

I currently have a 256K downlink ADSL and 128K uplink.
I pay the phone company over $100, and then the internet side over $100 - they are both the same company if you follow up through the books high enough.
In the end, I am paying $250 a month for a 256K connection.

Hell, at work we are on a 128K *frame fucking relay*. (we are trying to get wireless, but the cruise ships block our signal)

Oh what I would give for that... droool.

--

There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.

What's the old joke? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 10:50 · Score: 0

The company needs users to stay with the service for 15 months to break even, given that it is giving modems away for free.

So what's their secret plan for making a profit? Volume, Volume, Volume!

Bad Karma Statment Below... by versob · 2003-07-15 11:09 · Score: 1, Insightful

It seems Slashdot posters love to bash anything with INC in their name. It is always those evil companies with all their money. The companies should be forced by legislation to share all of their assets with everyone else because I don't have Gigabit internet access in my house. Why would a company in the current market want to expend a ton of money to run fiber to each home when he is in turn forced (by legislation) to share that fiber with his competitors??? The companies competitors didn't put a dime into the new infrastructure. I look at it this way, a company spends the money for an asset (ie: Infrastructure) and in turn he owns it because he paid for it.. DUH! Just like you own your car, house, boat etc. when you buy it. Looks like some Slashdoters are going to be sharing their homes, cars, boats etc to the less fortunate in society.. It is always easier to waste other peoples money isn't it, but when it comes to your cash (assets) that's a different story..

Big deal, we already have it. by Atomic+Frog · 2003-07-15 11:17 · Score: 1

10Mb/s up and downstream, pure Ethernet.
For a mere $25CDN a month, that's like $18US/month.

And I don't even have to commit to 15months.

Yes, zipping along from sunny downtown Vancouver, Canada

Don't believe everything you read. by shimpei · 2003-07-15 11:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

For a more sobering data, check out the this graph of speed vs. distance to NTT station on Yahoo BB's web site. (It's in Japanese, but you should be able to read enough of the graph to get the gist of it.)

As you can see, you basically need to live next door to your local NTT station in order to get 12Mb/s. Living 2km away (not unlikely, even in allegedly densely packed Tokyo) gives you maybe half that. Even the new 26Mb/s service doesn't give you 12Mb/s at 2km.

OK, here's the scoop on Yahoo! BB by gpvillamil · 2003-07-15 11:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

OK, I work in the telecoms field in Japan, and I know the Yahoo! BB infrastructure well. I asked them directly why they can offer 10x the speed at 1/2 the price, and this is the answer.

1) Different DSL encoding standard: they use a set of standards called Annex A, Annex C and Annex H to provide fast DSL over copper. (Incidentally, many of the DSL providers in Japan also provide 8 and 12 mbps service - this is a Japan specific point). Yahoo! BB IS a DSL service.

2) Low-cost all IP network: the back-end network is basically a single gigantic Layer 2 gigabit Ethernet LAN. There is no ATM, SONET, etc. any of that stuff. It all runs as IP over Ethernet. The network architecture is actually quite radical. Fiber links are rented from a variety of sources, at dirt cheap prices.

3) Regulatory support and low prices for access: the telecoms regulator, in a fit of pique, forced NTT (local telco) to offer access to the copper lines for less than $2 - dramatically lower than in other markets.

4) Extremely low cost operating model: customer support is only available via e-mail or web. You install your own equipment. (Incidentally, there are frequent complaints about Yahoo! cust serv, so they finally had to open a call center)

The offering is extremely clever. The DSL modem has an analog phone jack in the back into which you plug your existing phone, fax machine, etc. You continue to receive calls over your analog line, so your phone number does not change. Outgoing calls are checked by the DSL modem and routed over VoIP if that is cheaper. If the DSL modem fails, the analog port simply connnects straight through to the existing analog line.

There is no technical or geographical reason why the Yahoo! BB model can't be implemented in other places. They are using copper lines from the incumbent for last mile access, and a published standard. The real barrier is probably that in other markets the telcos are trying to squeeze more return out of outdated, expensive networks. They don't want to build out a back-end for 10x the current traffic using their existing high cost network model.

Funny, that's the bargain package these days! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 11:29 · Score: 0

The Yahoo! broadband guys have already got 26 Mbit pipes for sale for about $34 a month, with the first 3 months free! And they have that same IP-phone deal too that Softbank does as well. It's most likely a rebadging of the same service...

Yahoooooo!

There's a price chart at the bottom. The higher price includes a wireless LAN kit.

Good thing I studied Japanese back in school....!

Re:I'm posting this from a Softbank/Yahoo BB accou by mlerner · 2003-07-15 11:29 · Score: 0

ok thanks for getting me jealous here, I pay $40/month for a mere 1.5 mbps and I don't get the full speed. I'd probably move to Japan but a friend and I want to open up a business here in Canada.

Want 12 Mbit by SharpFang · 2003-07-15 11:36 · Score: 2, Funny

Want 12Mbits for $21/sec? Move to Poland. (...) .For 12Mbit a month...

(it's not SO bad. But it's bad.)

--
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2

Been there, done that by LeftOfCentre · 2003-07-15 11:49 · Score: 2, Informative

While this is a very good offer, it doesn't seem that extraordinary. Bredbandsbolaget in Sweden has offered 10 MBit/s ethernet for a long time with a present price of around $36 per month. That's more expensive than the offer this story mentions, but not all that much. I'm one of their many happy customers. (No, I'm not getting paid to say this.)

Or... by flamingweasel · 2003-07-15 11:51 · Score: 1

He knows exactly what this service will do to NTT if it catches on. VoIP for cheap could drive NTT out of business, at which point Softbank becomes a neccessity (like the airlines here in the States) to the country. So if Softbank's business model were to catch up to them, it's bailout time!

1. Offer amazing service for incredibly cheap
2. ???*
3. Drive only alternative for neccessary public service out of business
4. Profit!!! (or Bailout!!!)

*: I'm not sure how they'll hang on for long enough to kill NTT

--
Cthulhu loves you.

You should try Milpitas, CA by _avs_007 · 2003-07-15 11:59 · Score: 1

I turned down a job offer there, because a single occupancy apartment at the time as $1400 a month. If I wanted a fridge it was an extra $40 a month. If I wanted a parking permit, an extra $17 a month. And it wasn't exactly a "nice" apartment either.

$900 for a studio doesn't sound too bad, (I guess). In downtown LA, my friend's studio was like $1600 a month. And it didn't even have a kitchen, it had one of those "kitchenettes". He moved out when he "lost" his snake... It crawled out of the aquariumand and disappeared somewhere :-o

Futurama by _avs_007 · 2003-07-15 12:03 · Score: 1

But maybe this cramped room has a nice closet, like Bender's!

The downfall of this network is so simple... by felonious · 2003-07-15 12:08 · Score: 1

How long will this network stay up when GODZILLA returns?

If GODZILLA fights Rodan again then we're talking serious downtime...

--
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.

It's the "in thing" by chiasmus1 · 2003-07-15 12:15 · Score: 1

I believe the real issue holding the States back is the price of a modem connection. In Japan you have to pay for local calls at about 10cents every 3 minutes. This is then added to the price of the Internet connection.

With Japanese cell phones you can also get connected to the Internet. This attracts more people to the Internet in the first place. Everyone sends email to their friends and they receive email. For those who can stand the small screens this is okay, but for many, this is not enough. The Japanese people as a whole like to spend money, but are only interested in the latest and greatest features. The 12Mbps connections are now on the low end of the connection speeds and these do not cost local phone rates. I find people advertising in stores and even offering to sign you up for a few free months at 56Mbps or even 100Mbps if you have a house and not an apartment. All you need to do is pay the price of installation.

For those interested in the Internet 12Mbps is a good speed to start at and they know they can just move you up in a year or two anyway. It is only a matter of time before the culture as a whole will decide 12Mbps is out and 100Mbps is the in thing.

The country moves up because of peer pressure and the corporations nurturing of that trend pressure for business.

Reply: Serious, You are right! have a Cigar by OldHawk777 · 2003-07-15 12:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

s2m0n,

Well you did not state the facts professionally, but you got the facts 100% correct from my observations. I thought (and said) the Capitalist Republic, Politically correct FCC and do-nothing Congress might do something as far back as 1997.
I gave up in 2000. There could and should be much better communications services in the USA. I live 40mi south of NYC and still can only get two phone lines ... no xDSL. Vorizon and others are charging prices (in the east) that are absurd. 128K up and 384K down is not broadband it is narrow-band.
Cable and Satellite TV companies can't figure out how to make one consolidated bill and VoIP is beyond the cable companies understanding. US communications are beginning to look more like a "Banana Republic" phone company with declining service quality and options, and the prices (except all the great "Call this Number" cheap calls) are going up to line the pockets of the Dumb-Don Bell.
Much of the frequencies that the FCC sold are going to waste. Spread-spectrum with frequency-hopping and wireless overlapping regional (T1 or better mobile and home, the wireless local-loop) coverage by multiple companies using non-conflicting frequencies sets never happened. It should have happened, but it did not.
I believe, that a good portion of the unused and/or poorly used spectrum should be taken, back from the TelCos, by the FCC and a significant portion set aside, for the public, as "Open Spectrum" space with some reasonable protocol and standards use requirements.
Folks almost anything that is in Japan or Europe cities, should and could flourish in the major USA cities (NYC, NO, LA, KC, ...), but piss-poor planning and management or corruption and lies make failures of US. Today, we should ask our CEOs, politicians, ... "What have you done for US lately?" Most could only Blow-Smoke (BS) at you, without ever being able to provide an honest answer to the question.

The Capitalist Republic of US

OldHawk777

Reality is a self-induced hallucination.

--
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?

Not quite by EvilStein · 2003-07-15 12:23 · Score: 1

With the money you save, you can apply it to your INSANE rent/house payment. :P

Tokyo is *EXPENSIVE* to live in.

I lived there until 1998. I would love to go back...

I'm in japan by antoinjapan · 2003-07-15 12:57 · Score: 1

and the guy next door to me pays about 4000 yen a month for 100mbps optical fibre. They only took credit cards so I couldn't get it. By the time I got a credit card I had signed up for adsl for just a few hundred yen cheaper.

GSM in USA by chmilar · 2003-07-15 13:00 · Score: 1

As the poster you quote, I will tell you that I live in California.

I have a GSM-only phone on AT&T's mMode. I tried T-Mobile first, but it had no signal at my home, which is in the midst of a dense urban area, and only a short distance from the T-Mobile store. There is no signal for my entire block!

Needless to say, T-Mobile's coverage is extremely poor. AT&T, in my area, is better, but still spotty. And if you travel away from major cities or Interstate highways, there is nothing! If I drive to Mammoth to ski, there is no signal for the last 150 miles of highway, and none in town. (But TDMA phones work.)

On the other hand, I used this GSM phone in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. It got a signal in all but the most remote spots, and it even got a signal in some of those places. Why? Because they use one standard. (China Unicom is using CDMA, but many people told me that Unicom's coverage is as bad as GSM is in the States.)

My friends have taken GSM phones to Europe, and had total coverage.

So yeah, we have GSM/GPRS in the U.S., but the coverage sucks! I just hope that AT&T, T-Mobile, and whoever else will eventually roll out enough coverage to rival Europe and Asia. It is pretty embarrassing to be technologically inferior to third-world countries like Cambodia!

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Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.

Re:GSM in USA by RzUpAnmsCwrds · 2003-07-16 08:34 · Score: 1

T-Mobile and AT&T just signed a roaming agreement, which greatly improves GSM coverage throughout the US.

It's still not good enough, but it's getting there. Look at Verizon CDMA if you want great coverage.

The problem is not so much the carriers as GSM. GSM has a 16 kilomiter HARD cell size limit. It is impossible to use a GSM phone more than 16km from the tower (it's called slot delay) even if you can get signal. CDMA cells can be two or three times bigger.

Covering the entire US (remember, Western Europe + Korea + Japan + Vietnam + Laos would all fit into the US with room to spare) with 16km cells is a challenge. In Europe, one GSM cell could cover several hundred times more people than a single GSM cell in the rural US. In Europe, there is no such thing as a nearly uninhabited 400x300 mile landmass (Wyoming).

"It is pretty embarrassing to be technologically inferior to third-world countries like Cambodia!"

Technology does not equal coverage. From that point of veiw, we are actually superior, as we developed CDMA to combat the cell-size and capacity problems with GSM.

Trivial, but... by suwain_2 · 2003-07-15 13:03 · Score: 1

This is a trivial question, but it's bugging me: Why is the limit 12 Mbps? Why not 10? Or 15? 12 Mbps seems like an entirely random number to me.

Is 12 some sort of magical number, or is it as arbitrary as I'm convinced?

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suwain_2 :: quality slashdot p

12Mbps? Try this... by budn3kkid · 2003-07-15 13:06 · Score: 1

Yahoo! Japan's giving out 26MBit/sec ADSL with Wireless LAN package, with an initial first-3-months waiver... how cool is that... oops... have to wipe drool from my keyboard now... :) BuDn3kkID

Only Very Partially Correct by mowph · 2003-07-15 13:12 · Score: 1

They probably learned their lessons from the Japanese TV and electricity fiascos (they have both PAL and NTSC TV systems, and both 110 and 220 volt power)!

This is only very partially correct -- some Japanese international hotels are wired with 200 volt power in addition to Japan's standard 100 volt. This is simply a convenience for customers bringing appliances from other countries.

You are probably thinking of the cycle difference between east and west Japan. Basically everywhere west of Shizuoka is 60 hertz, while everywhere east of there is 50 hertz. This is a fairly minor difference, and all Japanese appliances are designed to work in either. In fact, I have never had any problems using 120V/60Hz North American appliances in the 100V/50Hz regions of Japan.

I have never seen, or heard of a PAL TV in Japan, but again, it is possible to get dual PAL / NTSC VCRs. Japan does manufacture PAL devices for export to other countries, as well.

The idea that Japanese customers could buy an appliance and have it not work in their homes due to multiple power systems / TV systems is pretty ludicrous.

I live in Japan by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 13:16 · Score: 0

First off, Softbank is the owner, and the service is marketted as Yahoo!BB. Not just that, but they rolled out the new 26Mbps Down (1Mbps Up) ADSL service. It works great. There is no 15 Month prerequisite. It's just that they don't break even until the user stays with them for 15 months.

That said, I can get a 100Mbps (Reality check = 50Mbps up/down) Fiberoptic line w/ 8 static IP addresses for less than $300/mo. ;-)

there are a lot of rice fields by lingqi · 2003-07-15 13:18 · Score: 3, Informative

i kid you not. nearly every square centimeter of arable land is used to grow rice. (and when not in rice season, usually wheat. Corn is very very hard to come by in large quantities - never will you see 10cents a cob sales such as ones in SafeWay)

Well, that and Japan is physically *bigger* than Great Britian. (granted, 80% are mountains, which leaves 20% for crops)

with so much land devoted to rice, livestock is hard to come by and they import a lot of beef from various places (australia, US, Canada) - in fact there are sometimes commercials advertizing US beef, with cowboys and all that shit - even though that's total bs. veggies are equally few in quantity and lots are imported. Fruits too (fruits and veggies are very expensive)

seafood are plenty, though.

(as to why they don't import rice - well, see if they did all the rice farmers would be out of a job, and we can't have that. besides japanese are very proud of their rice - not sure why, other than maybe japanese rice is about 10x more expensive than rice anywhere else in the world.)

--

My life in the land of the rising sun.

Re:there are a lot of rice fields by aitsu · 2003-07-15 15:29 · Score: 1

Pot calling the kettle black. In the US and Europe, you not only have protectionism in farming, you also have massive subsidies which are used to buy votes. In Japan, at least the politicians aren't relevant to the economy.
Re:there are a lot of rice fields by thefluxster · 2003-07-15 17:47 · Score: 1

Finally, someone who understands the economics of Japan! Bravo!

You can't survive very long in Japan without adapting your meals to center around rice. Poultry and seafood are the primary sources of protien, not to mention the large quanities of tofu that are consumed by most of the population. If you ever take a trip out into the farmlands of Honshu, you're bound to see rice paddies forever with the occasional chicken farm. Don't worry, just follow your nose if you want to find one.

Wheat is grown quite substantially in Hokkaido though nothing comparable to what we see in the States. Also, cattle ranching is fairly common up there also due to its more temperate climate and open spaces. But again, they won't be exporting any surpluses any time soon.

Agricultural science is considered one of the more respected fields in colleges in Japan, and who can blame them. Whoever figures out how to provide enough rice for the whole country while keeping prices competitive with America deserves some respect!

--
Ever notice how fast Windows runs? Neither did I.
Re:there are a lot of rice fields by pilkul · 2003-07-15 18:57 · Score: 1

while keeping prices competitive with America
What are you talking about? Have you compared rice prices lately? Rice is literally 10 times more expensive in Japan than in America.
Japanese agricultural policy is a disaster. It screws over Japanese consumers and developing-world farmers for the sake of handing over pork barrels to a handful of special interests. It's even worse than American and EU policy (as hard as that may be to believe). What do you find to praise?
Re:there are a lot of rice fields by chinakow · 2003-07-15 23:07 · Score: 1

Cowboys aren't bs, I have seen them, they still do rope cattle and ride horses, and all that happy shit, its a place called Montana, I don't like it , but I am sure the cowboys do.
Re:there are a lot of rice fields by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-16 02:35 · Score: 0

Yeah, there used to be this funny/stupid commercial in Japan advocating boycotting US rice (where they get a lot of their rice)... A US flag ship is arriving carrying rice... High on a hill a little Japanese rice sees the ship coming in, girding himself with little 'rising sun' headband and samurai sword he makes his way to the docks with all his fellows, and these little japanese rice begin waving their samurai swords, shouting and yelling and the Big US Flag ship turns tail and runs away... I kid you not!
Re:there are a lot of rice fields by TheLink · 2003-07-16 02:48 · Score: 1

"as to why they don't import rice - well, see if they did all the rice farmers would be out of a job, and we can't have that. besides japanese are very proud of their rice - not sure why, other than maybe japanese rice is about 10x more expensive than rice anywhere else in the world"

Well their rice does taste different. Better for their cuisine. I've been to a restaurant where they served a purportedly japanese dish/set with chinese-style rice, and it just doesn't do it for me.

Different rice is good for different stuff (basmati, jasmine, spanish etc). It really makes a difference. Use the wrong type of rice for the wrong dish and it usually doesn't work out well.

The Japanese tomatoes, cucumbers and apples taste pretty good too. Of course the way they grow their Fuji apples makes a difference - apparently in some cases they make sure there's only one apple per branch. Sure the chinese "fuji" apples are cheaper, but they're just like big ordinary tasting apples, and I get kinda bored of a big bland almost starchy tasting apple 1/3rd of the way through.

Fortunately some people still grow stuff for taste, and it's not all about more for cheaper.

BTW the prices for watermelon in Tokyo are obscene. Not sure why. Not even talking about the cube/square shaped watermelon to suit their small fridges.
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- Too many replies beneath your current threshold
Re:there are a lot of rice fields by brakk · 2003-07-16 07:21 · Score: 1

"Corn is very very hard to come by in large quantities"

But you can buy used panties by the truckload!!!
Re:there are a lot of rice fields by thefluxster · 2003-07-17 06:06 · Score: 1

Whoever figures out how to provide enough rice for the whole country while keeping prices competitive with America deserves some respect!
I was speaking theoretically...

--
Ever notice how fast Windows runs? Neither did I.
Re:there are a lot of rice fields by pilkul · 2003-07-17 19:53 · Score: 1

Ah, I see, I misunderstood you. Sorry.
In fact, though, it would be extremely easy to do this. Simply remove all trade barriers and other protectionist policies. Tada! With the very low cost of sea transport, 100% of rice in Japan is imported, and prices are about the same as in America.
This is so easy that whoever figures it out doesn't get any respect from me. However, someone who actually manages to get this policy past Japan's sluggish, special-interest clogged parliament does deserve respect.

Yahoo! BBs Annex protocol happends to suck by winston_pr · 2003-07-15 13:22 · Score: 1

In order to provide cheap connections, Yahoo BB utilises the "Annex A" standard as opposed to "Annex C" as the other major providers do. (ACCA, eAccess & NTT Flets) Now what does this mean? It means that the connection is A LOT mor suceptible to ISDN noise. And as ISDN is still quite high in use here in Japan, I wouldn't jump on the Yahoo! BB offer. Especially with NTT offering 100Mbps (New Family Type) connections for just a fraction more. Also, let me give you one word that counts Yahoo! BB out of the game: "NAT". Cheers

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"6EQUJ5"

Storage! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 13:40 · Score: 0

how has no-one picked up on this?!
with that kinda bandwidth id need racks of dvd burners and sum /SERIOUS/ hard drive arrays...
im stealin space on every machine i own already (command.com? pah. pr0n.mpg will go there)

Re:Storage! by Big_Breaker · 2003-07-15 14:46 · Score: 1

No you don't b/c at those speeds you can just redownload what you need when you need it. If you haven't used something for a few days... just delete it.

I'm not even where I was at 4 years ago. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 13:58 · Score: 0

4 years ago I had DSL with a good company, that offered no restrictions on what I could do with it, though it was PPPoe you could shell out $5 more a month and get the same IP assigned to you each and every time, it had 1.2 down 1.2 up. Essentially a poor mans T1 for only $49.95 a month, a decent mail server, and the ability to run my own. Plus 100MB of extremely high traffic hosting thrown in (which most people didn't take advantage of).

Now the best I can get in my area is an SBC plan that will maybe give me 128K up and 384K down, tons of restrictions, awful yahoo mail... No matter how much money you throw at them, you can't get it up to 1.2Mb up, and even a plan that offers half of that is $70 a month.

I hardly see this as progress.

Anything you want by wirefarm · 2003-07-15 14:04 · Score: 1

Web servers, mail servers, unlimited uploads and downloads. Whatever you want.
I do all of that and more.

(Yes, my site is running on my home connection.)

Cheers,
Jim

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-- My Weblog.

100 megabits is only $40 in Japan too by greggman · 2003-07-15 14:08 · Score: 2, Interesting

http://www.usen.com

Other companies provide 100 megabit service for slightly more like NTT at around $55 a month.

A bigger concern, as an American, is that the U.S. is going to go down in flames in the near future because Japan and Korea are both wired to the max. There entire societies are changing because of ubiquitous access to FAST internet. That means Japan and Korea will end up leading the world in innovative net apps and hardware since they are the ones living in a wired world, not the U.S. The U.S. needs to get off it's ass and get us wired!

Re:100 megabits is only $40 in Japan too by evilviper · 2003-07-15 16:07 · Score: 1

Why the hell does everyone keep saying this crap? Since when does nation-wide fast bandwidth mean technical leadership?

Hey, just about everyone in the USA has a car, does that mean the USA is necessarily going to be the leading force in car production worldwide? Hell no!

High-speed networked applications are still going to be developed in the US if for no other reason than that most companies have had faster networks than this for quite a long time now, and some of these companies are larger than the country of Japan on their own.

Secondly, having the newest gadget doesn't mean that you will be leading the world somehow. In fact, all this really is is another example that japanese are fond of wasting money on the newest product, no matter what. In the US, lots of people have a PS2 or XBox or GameCube console, in japan, it's not unusually for most everyone to have all three. Does this mean Japan is going to take over the world? No.

In addition, I'd like to say that the internet is very very overhyped. It is only useful as something of a virtual community center. There ace stores, there is lots of free information, there are lots of person to person communication going on, but that's just about all there is to it. You can't do any important business over the internet, because it may suddenly fail to function for any trivial reason, at any time. Even if the Japanese do have some sort of lead in high-bandwidth internet application development (which I don't believe), that doesn't mean they are going to make trillions of dollars off of it, it's just the freaking internet!

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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant

1900mhz by FunOne · 2003-07-15 14:09 · Score: 1

GSM in Europe/world is 800 or 1800 mhz, GSM in the states is 1900 MHZ because 800 & 1800 are already taken for government use.

You have to have a tri-mode phone to work both Europe & the states, most European companies sell dual mode phones (800/1800) since few of their customers travel to the states.

The problem isn't the US GSM system, its your phone, my GSM phone works fine here in the US.

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FunOne

Even more disgustingly-cheap price quotes by The+Kenman · 2003-07-15 14:10 · Score: 1

From another favorite tech-site of mine, experts-exchange.com: "Fiber optic is very cheap here in Tokyo and it costs just 55$ per month." http://www.experts-exchange.com/Networking/Q_20678 464.html#8927881 (read the original author's comments a few posts down to find the quote) At those rates, that's roughly over 50 times the value of what I'm getting with my roadrunner connection, which I think is somewhat economical, and I don't even want to compare the $55:100mb/s to a US T1 that goes for $600+:1.5 mb/s. Local loops are now cheaper for us, but that will probably only reduce the price for a T1 marginally. The greed never ends. I thought capitalism was supposed to provide for better prices all-around? Gee, could it be the fault of the F*#@&!@$ FCC?

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ASCII silly question, get a silly ANSI.

Re: Oops by The+Kenman · 2003-07-15 14:13 · Score: 1

Sorry, the actual quote is: "Its a 100MB connection and there will be only one IP address. We will have to use NAT. Fiber optic is very cheap here in Tokyo and it costs just 55$ per month."

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ASCII silly question, get a silly ANSI.

Mecha Godzilla by Mazzie · 2003-07-15 14:35 · Score: 1

You could download the entire Godzilla collection AND the source code to reveal the secrets of Mecha Godzilla's supreme intellect, all in under an hour from Kazaa!

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Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.

Not all of Japan by Da+Weave · 2003-07-15 14:39 · Score: 1

If you life anywhere other than Tokyo/major cities you miss out on alot. I live all the way in Tohoku prefecture (northern tip of Honshu). I can't get any kind of broadband period. Oh well, the food's still good.

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"In post 9-11 soviet russia, only beowulf clusters of welcomed overlords are belong to old grit-eating Koreans!" aendeur

meh by foobar42 · 2003-07-15 14:52 · Score: 0

Kickass Internet access may be $21/month, but then again mortgages are now multi-generational. Easy come, easy go. Consider your TCO for living in Japan, then get back to me. ;-)

How about 100Mbps for $30? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 15:21 · Score: 0

And you don't even have to go to Japan!

But you do have to move to rural Washington state

Jeez by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 15:39 · Score: 0

A post about broadband in Japan and fucking losers talking about cute Asian girls and shit. I'm glad you guys exist cause I can laugh at you dumb losers.

Ahhh! by sharkey · 2003-07-15 15:43 · Score: 1

All your base-station are belong to us!

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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.

believe it when I see it... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 16:00 · Score: 0

I read about this scheme of Son's to try to buy the broadband market in Japan. First, he's running out of money. Second, he has admitted that he will need to retain a customer for 15 months to break even on the cost of obtaining that customer. Third, his brilliance in pumping money into Yahoo! has been dimmed by his less than stellar investments in failing technology recently. This is one VC who refuses to believe that the bubble burst. Well, I guess it just takes a little longer for some folks...

Then maybe I was mistaken..... by Ride-My-Rocket · 2003-07-15 16:21 · Score: 1

I thought that there were some issues in implementing FTTC/FTTH. Something about the last mile........? If not, my bad. But in urban areas, there's no excuse.

Japan=YES, India=NO! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 17:13 · Score: 0

Thank Gawd they can't code their way out of a paper bag. Now if the Subcontinent were to start dredging GbE cables through their slums and passing out free VIA-powered Linux laptops to everyone under 30, I'd say we're all screwed reAd-wRite-and-blue, upside down and backwards even.

GPL communism and the local-loop monopolies here must be wiped off the face of the Earth or we will be wiped off the face of the Earth.

eh? by lingqi · 2003-07-15 17:28 · Score: 1

i didn't mention anything about the US / EU, how /why did you drag them into it?

fact is fact - Japan DO in fact not import rice due to various political and economical (mostly political) factors, regardless of the policies of US / EU. Besides, rice-farmers do get heavy subsidary from the JP government too last I checked.

I mean, economically speaking I think if japan did not have so much rice-farmers and imported more rice it would be beneficial on a lot of levels:
* no more rediculous price on rice (yes price is high in general but rice is worse than most)
* a lot more land freed up for whatever else - I'd think land is generally in short supply in Japan
* theoretically the farmers can get other jobs that more productive for themselves (despite heavy subsidary they don't make a lot of money) as well as for the economy
* less tax that would need to be used for subidizing farmers.

i mean, when land become this expensive, it just really becomes impractical (economically and otherwise) to have them still be used for farming. I understand the "connection with the land" thing and all, but i mean, come on... for crying out loud import some rice and actually grow some affordable fruits! watermelons prices are like completely insane - and i won't even mention honeydew etc.

but whatever. I am just pointing out what I observe and (think i) know.

--

My life in the land of the rising sun.

Re:eh? by Destron · 2003-07-15 18:16 · Score: 1

About not being farmers anymore -- it wouldn't work very well. (I live in the countryside so I am only speaking on my observations).
* First off, most of the people doing the farming are eldrely.
* Secondly, have you noticed that more people already do less work in Japan? Japan attempts to let everyone have a job at the cost of creating a lot of useless jobs. e.g. 6 people guiding your bicycle around a 2 man street work site (that it takes 6 months for them to finish).

Basically, if nobody farmed anymore they would not have any other job to do. I do think they should farm less rice and expand their production of fruits, vegetables, and legumes other than soy. Those $5 peaches are good but how many can you afford to eat a year?
Re:eh? by aitsu · 2003-07-15 21:01 · Score: 1

EU/US were brought in just to put some perspective on things. There is not a country in the developed world that does not have protectionism in some form or other in agriculture. The argument is moot.
*Have you tried making sushi with Thai rice? Onigiri rice balls with saffran? Mochi with Chinese rice? It just doesn't work. Me? I would like cheaper Japanese rice. The solution is not just to import the stuff (although given time, that may help just a liiiittle.) Japan tried this in '93; a 5kg bad of Thai rice was 980 yen, compared to 3500 yen for Japanese rice (non-subsidised, FYI). The shops gave up stocking the imported stuff after a few months because it simply didn't sell. I should know; I bought the much cheaper imported stuff but for Japanese cooking (I was a bachelor in those days) it simply did not cut it.
*Land is in short supply in the cities. That's not because the countryside if full of subsidised rice paddies though. Land redistribution is possible only when industry and commerce move out from the overcrowded cities. They won't. The govenment tried it with Sendai and it flopped _Relatively_, land is still dirt cheap in the countryside (pun intended).
*Fruits are damn expensive. Are you saying that's because there's no land to grow them on, because it's all taken up by rice paddies? Tell you what, the fruit farmers have to be geographically near to their markets (i.e., cities) due to the short shelf-life of their produce. Land is expensive around cities, and there are no rice paddies here. That's why fruit is expensive in Tokyo.
Hell, I can live without watermelons but my BB connection... no way ;o)
Re:eh? by lingqi · 2003-07-15 22:04 · Score: 1

thai rice is ok for eating your regular meals. saffran I don't eat, but I like to point out that mochi rice (sticky rice / sweat rice) is originally from china, and I would think you can find some quality mochi rice from there. btw i think thai rice (if cooked with more water than you think you need) is ok for onigiri.

I think in 93 japan was still in (i mean, actually these days also, but to a lesser extent) the "expensive means better" mood. I can remember a clear example where Jonny Walker black-label lowered its MSRP, the demand DROPPED. I think it's more like a mentality thing - price and demand does not fit the same inverse corrolation as other countries.

land is not only in short supply in cities, in my opinion. if you look at the population density of the "rural" (inaka) areas, it would be orders of magnatudes higher than, say, midwest US. besides, companies seem to have also been moving away from the whole "we MUST have a headquarter in tokyo" thing, so land in rural areas are gaining value.

i don't think price of fruits has anything to do with geographic location. In NY you can get fresh lychee air shipped from china for reasonable prices. I will grant you that shipping anything in japan is an arm and leg, but that cannot be the reason why you can't get cheap fruits because by your reasoning in the countryside the fruits would drop in price. - unfortunately I live in the countryside (north of the kanto plain - i can see nantai-san on a good day) and I still have to rely on those 100% vegetable juice for my fiber / etc supply because fresh fruits are not affordable by my living standards.

--
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Re:eh? by aitsu · 2003-07-16 17:23 · Score: 1

This is turning into a chatroom/blog!
I think the "expensive means better" mentality is still prevalent, but I don't think this relates to commodity goods such as rice. Johnny Walker is a luxury good and as such, I guess what you say is right - demand must have dropped off after the price cut.
Regarding population density, I think it's not too crowded in the countryside. Sure, it doesn't compare to the US midwest, but that's not comparing like for like. Take somewhere like the UK. It's probably a better comparison. Regarding companies moving in to Tokyo, that is ironically exactly what my company is planning on doing this year. It's where most of our customers are. Geographical proximity is still extremely important in Japanese business.
Funny thing about fruits. I shop around but strangely enough, I'm in Tokyo and I can find stuff that's reasonably priced. Sure, fruits are expensive as a whole but I can get 2 whole grapefruits for 50 yen. Bunch of bananas for 80 yen. Not bad at all by European standards. But it doesn't explain why you can't get the cheap stuff where you live so evidently YMMV.
Re:eh? by lingqi · 2003-07-16 19:32 · Score: 1

I don't personally believe people treats rice as much of a commodity as you make it to be. i mean, people i know around here would go to tanbo-side rice-dispencers and buy rice for quite a bit *more* expensive than store rice, I think. Granted they are always like "yeah fresh rice tastes better" so maybe I just never had the luxury of trying them.

Even if you don't compare to the midwest (west of mississippi), even in virginia / florida / carolina(s) you will still find that japan has a higher population density than these fairly well-established regions. Granted japan has a few thousand extra years to get settled, but i can't find another good one to compare...

Your company must be the exception to current trends. the building where my company's headquarter is at (NS building shinjuku, actually), is emptying because nobody want's to stay there for the high rent anymore and consequentially the floors are becoming vacant one by one. kinda weird actually.

as for fruits, I am comparing to US (technically, china-town) standards, so maybe we are operating on a different scale.

--
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Re:eh? by aitsu · 2003-07-16 20:57 · Score: 1

Well, rice is definitely a commodity product. It's not a question of how people treat it, it's the sheer volume of consumption that defines that one.
Population density: Try comparing with a EU country like the UK, Belgium or Holland. Mind you, that's not an accurate measure of "crowdedness" because of the shortage of flat land in Japan. But it's the only measure I can think of.
Many businesses are moving out of Yokohama and shifting "back" to Tokyo because the Tokyo rents are that much cheaper these days due to the excess supply of new office space. There is absolutely no point in setting up shop in Yokohama when you can pay the same for the same floor space in Shinagawa. My company is no exception.
In the US, amost everything is cheaper than in most other developed countries. Yes, from your perspective fruits must seem very expensive.

1-2 Billion eh? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 17:43 · Score: 0

Well if the US would stop hemmoraging cash to the tune of $1 BILLION dollars PER WEEK fighting "terrorism" we could afford to blanket the whole country in Fiber-To-The-Home TWICE A MONTH! (though I think the 1-2 billion estimate is quite a bit low)

Either way the 500+ BILLION dollar deficit (yes, DEFICIT not debt, this is how far we are in the red for just THIS YEAR) is more than enough to redo any infrastucture you want. Fuck that, just get rid of the damn war on drugs and that should be plenty of spare cash!

The US is turning into a freakin' college freshman with it's first credit card and sadly it has no limit and a REALLY REALLY big APR.

-Evil Lord Drewcifer
PS. Vote Libertarian

This is a good deal, but there is one drawback by Destron · 2003-07-15 18:00 · Score: 1

I'm on DSL in Japan and the service is VERY cheap and quite fast. The only drawback is that you are required to pay the monopoly telephone company NTT for their service at $30 a month -- just for the basic service. And, it costs $500 to set up.

They said that; I'm not so sure that it's correct by MickLinux · 2003-07-15 18:12 · Score: 1

Listen, my internet provider offers 120Mbit internet for sale. Since it was only about $5 more expensive than 20Mbit internet, I got it... and found that its real rate was 8kBit. No joke: they'd overloaded their access lines.

Now, that is one problem that ISPs have, but there are lots others. The article said that this guy has yes-men everywhere. I could see where the yes-men were not telling him everything, and the whole thing starts to bog down before it ever gets profitable. Finally, you wind up with him in debt.

That said, this guy seems to know his history. With USD3.4 billion in debt, those banks are going to have to make him the governor of some small war-torn province so that he can pay them back. And he's then going to offer "pay double taxes during my term, and get an exemption: it will cover 3 terms!" Then he's going to use that money to raise an army, whip the opposition armies, and then come, see, conquer.

Well, maybe not. But if that isn't his backup plan, I think it's quite possible he's in a WorldCom load of trouble.

--
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's

Life is good here in Tokyo.. by apetime · 2003-07-15 18:29 · Score: 1

With regards to internet access of any kind, I think Tokyo is a pretty good place to live. Right now, I can get up to a 100 Mbps Fiber connection for about $70 US straight to my apartment. FTTH is the next buzzword here, like ADSL was last year. The situation is the same with wireless internet: Softbank's wireless service is fairly widespread within big metropolitan areas, and is free for the moment. Hotspots for NTT's 802.11a/b network are even more common, and you can get unlimited access for about $45 US a month, or just buy day passes for $5. If you need a more mobile connection, the Air H" 128k service is usable almost anywhere and runs a flat rate, as well as NTT's 64k flat rate service.

In big cities like Tokyo, there are tons of choices, lots of competition between companies, and service is good.

Re:Serious Depravity by thedji · 2003-07-15 18:38 · Score: 1

This is where I commence slashing my wrists!

I have always been happy with my AU$100/month (~US$65) 512/128 ADSL connection. And that's still capped at 7gb peak, and 7gb offpeak (midnite-7am + weekends).

By the time this post is submitted, it could have been submitted an additional 51 times in Sweden, and still had about 15 green ones left over for beer!

--
... and then there were none

Photo? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 18:57 · Score: 0

So who is Satoshi Miyazawa?

They're not so "wired" by pilkul · 2003-07-15 19:14 · Score: 1

Japan is not really wired when it comes to PCs. Cellphones, game consoles, yes, but not PCs and not the Internet. Japan is actually years behind America as far as the Internet goes. The Internet is still not widely used in companies, home Internet is generally overpriced, and universities in Japan have only just started to offer public Internet access (and they still don't let students plug in with their own laptops or PCs in their dorms).

The Japanese PC software industry is very weak. Hardware drivers aside, I'll bet you've never once in your life used a program written in Japan on your PC. They just don't export any PC software. Probably the only Japanese software you have ever used are games on your console. Japanese people don't generally use Japanese software either --- they use Japanese translations of MS Windows, Word, IE.

My theory is that adoption has been slowed down by the ubiquitousness of English and roman characters in the PC world (e.g. in URLs, programming languages and HTML). Anyway, it's not inaccurate to say that Japan is "wired", but PCs are an important exception.

land in Japan by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 19:15 · Score: 0

there is lots of land in Japan.
there are huge derlict industrial sites, vast under built below standard housing tracts that should be leveled,
but there are also rice farms practically in downtown Kyoto and Osaka. one block there is a twenty story Kyocera plant and next door is a two acre rice field. go figure.

In Italy, too by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 20:15 · Score: 0

NTT was inspired by an Italian telco, FastWeb, active with FTTH/ADSL since 1999 in the major cities of Italy (170.000 FTTH subscribers in the 6 major cities).
The service is a dream compared to price (10 mbit direct IP over ethernet and free national calls over VOIP included except GSM calls, no fixed costs of any kind for 85$/month, optional VOD of dozens of TV and SAT channels); the only major drawback, a private PATted IP address.
You can't compare this kind of service with a T1 or any other business leased lines: SLA, MTBF and tecnical backgrounds are extremely different.
I bet that this is the future, and sooner or later major FTTH players will emerge around the world.
I wonder why the US are understimating this technology so much: digging and cabling in the US is 1000 times easier than Italy or Japan, given burocracy, the cities structure and existent infrastructure.
It's only a matter of $$$.
Italy is for sure less "hive" than Japan, so if the technology fits for Italy and the business model is valid (and it is: Fastweb is the only New Market italian company doubling customers and revenue on a semester basis since 4 year), every other "westernized" country can succesfully adopt it.
It's only a matter of finding people good at it, time and enough $$$.

An happy italian FTTH subscriber since 2000.

There's a lot of unlit fibre by goldcd · 2003-07-15 20:37 · Score: 1

that telcos would love to be able to sell to people. There's a lot of people who'd be prepared to pay for this fibre. The problem we have is the 'last leg', somehow getting some fibre running through your city into the back of your PC. The copper phone system can be used, as with ADSL and also cable networks, but these both have a problem with contention and balancing.

8% annual growth? by pommiekiwifruit · 2003-07-15 21:20 · Score: 1

Sheesh, 1% would be better than what I've been getting. I thought pensions were supposed to get bigger as time went on, not shrink! :-(

I would sign up for 5 years by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 21:44 · Score: 0

How many would sign up for 5 years for 12Mbits/1Mbits broadband to their home?

Land/Population by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-15 21:47 · Score: 0

Everyone talks about "density" in Japan and how the u.s. is so "sparsely" populated. This is almost silly. Look at either seaboard of the u.s. and you've got something similar to Japan. On the East you have NYC, DC, Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, and other large and mid-sized cities. In the west you have LA, San Fransisco, Seattle, and still more mid-sized cities.

Wire up the seaboards and string them together with the other major cities in between, leaving the empty spaces alone....the same way you can have high-spead rail...(which has been avoided with the same excuse)

There's plenty of density there so stop it with the excuses and stereotypes of both the u.s and Japan.

On a side note, There is _lots_ of empty space in Japan (sparsely populated) especially as you get away from the major cities...It's called INAKA.

Re:I'm posting this from a Softbank/Yahoo BB accou by qute · 2003-07-15 22:26 · Score: 1

I have a question for you:
What IP does that guy in the room next over have and can I get a login on his FTP-server ;-)

--
-- Make software not war

Yokohama Sheraton by kyoko21 · 2003-07-15 23:35 · Score: 1

I'm actually from Northern Virginia, currently away on business staying in Yokohama, Japan. The Sheraton that I am staying at has rolled out LRE (Long Reach Ethernet) that utilizes standard twisted copper phoneline over their standard POTS network. I was quite shocked at how fast the speed is on this network because when I did several speedtests, I was averaging speeds around 1.5mbps up and down. Not too shabby and I only have to pay 1000 yen for the service for the entire duration of my stay. Talk about super sweet! Considering how people think the Dulles Corridor being the "Silicon Valley" of the East Coast, they are so wrong. From what I have seen here, the people here consume data/information services like there is no tomorrow. Albeit cell phones or wireless, the japanese people are crazy about information. I have been walking around the streets and each electronic store I walk by there is a sign for the new Yahoo BB service. People seem to be pretty wild about it because I see people signing up for it. I guess I've rambled on and gone off topic. Bottom line, I would not be surprised that Yahoo BB become a giant because if they can get their data faster, I believe they will want it. It's like what the old saying goes: if you build it, they will come.

I live in Here by Zonaflash · 2003-07-15 23:39 · Score: 1

We've had video cell phones for about 2 years now. People still pay per-minute charges on their land-lines. If this wonder product really existed, they should consider ADVERTISING it in Japan, not reporting it in WIRED.

--
SoftBank Haiku: The bandwidth broadens; Users sign up in millions. Where are the profits?

Want to pay $100 for a watermelon? Move to Japan. by Junior+J.+Junior+III · 2003-07-15 23:42 · Score: 1

Want to pay $10,000/month for an apartment the size of your closet? Try downtown Tokyo.

Some things are cheaper some places, more expensive in others. All in all though, I think the US telecommunications service industry is pretty screwed up, and it's causing us to fall behind. But moving to Japan isn't going to save anyone any money.

--
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!

or 100MBS for $4,000 by martin · 2003-07-15 23:42 · Score: 1

yummy, now that's serious bandwidth for very little..

You insensitive clod! by splerdu · 2003-07-16 01:50 · Score: 1

I'd PAY to get attacked by pretty magical schoolgirls, see daily alien invasions and city-wide explosions with dueling robots....

Likely doomed to failure by MoNsTeR · 2003-07-16 02:20 · Score: 1

Yet another example of malinvestment spurred by artificially depressed interest rates (90's boom anyone?). Note the extremely long time-to-profit projection. If the Japanese economy recovers and rates rise back to normal levels within 2 or 3 years (which admittedly isn't likely) then this enterprise will tank, unless their prices come way up in the meantime.

(http://www.mises.org
for those interested in the business cycle effects of interest rate manipulation)

Softbank is Korean company, not Zapan. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-16 02:44 · Score: 0

The origin of ADSL is Korea.

Re:Cheap mansex? Hah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-16 10:29 · Score: 0

I got some cheap mansex for you, sparky mcbigdick.

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Want 12Mbits/sec for $21? Move to Japan.

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