Slashdot Mirror
Japan: VoIP for the Masses With 050
securitas writes "Red Herring has a brief article about wide-scale VoIP deployment in Japan with the introduction of the new 050 area code. The new area code 'allows plain old telephone service (POTS) to seamlessly transition to voice-over-IP (VoIP).' Japan is now the largest country to deploy VoIP. Six companies have bought 8.5 million VoIP phone numbers, with 68% (5.78 million) of the new numbers owned by Softbank BB Phone. At $.010 for a three-minute call, the cost is three to eight times less expensive than regular wireline service."
As do Packet8, Vonage, and quite a few others in the US - this is what most people mean when they say VoIP these days, not weird geek-only talk-through-your-computer systems. Vonage is in fact a bonafide CLEC, meaning there's number portability and all the other stuff you would expect with real phone service (I don't think the rest of them in the US are CLECs at this point). The only difference is the last mile to the phone - dedicated old-school copper, or broadband internet. Of course, you can also argue VoIP is just another internet service that runs over TCP/IP networks. Both arguments seem legitimate to me - frankly, I doubt that services that look, act, talk, and quack like ducks will be able to avoid taxation by claiming "hey, we're not really ducks".
Even in NA, you can get phone service where every call costs you money, be it in the next state or next door. It just depends on how much you want to pay for a monthly fee. $10/mo and every call costs you 5 cents a minute, $20/mo and you can call within a certain area for free & everything else is 2.5 cents a minute, or $30/mo and all your intra-LATA calls are free and then you pay your LD company $24.95/mo for flat rate LD. Nothing is free.
Minor nit. Japan does not really have that small of a land area. If you were to move Japan over to Europe, it would be the second or third largest country there. (I believe France is the only purely European country that would be larger.)
Japan's problem is on the maps it's right up against Russia and China on one side--the largest and fourth largest countries--and the North Pacific on the other--a fairly empty part of the largest ocean. And, if you look across the Pacific, you've got Canada and the US--second and third largest--to compare against. With all those big spaces to compete against, of course it looks small.
Several reasons for Japan's fast broadband growth are as follows:
As has been pointed out, broadband modems are being passed out on the street by yahoo bb, who's service is cheaper than the phone companies' service. They are doing this at a great loss to try to build volume. They also include VOIP functionality, with calls to the US being charged at 5 yen (about 4 cents) a minute.
Unfortunately Yahoo's availability is limited outside major cities. I live in a suburb of a prefectural capital and cannot get service. Another reason BB rates are rising, is that is is the only way to get flat rate internet access, as even local calls are charged per minute. Yes, ~$20.00 flat rate isps exist, but when the phone bill jumps $40, it is no longer a good deal.
Also, although the bandwidth seems high and the rates seem low, the study probably doesn't take into account the fact that you need to pay both the phone company and a seperate isp for most connections. That can easily push the cost up into the 40-60 dollar range, and outside the major areas (tokyo, kyoto, etc.) the bandwidth rates are much lower. My fastest transfer rate was on a RH iso, about 60k over my 12MB connection. The penetration rates and adverstised speeds only show a small part of the broadband picture in japan.
I'm not sure why the actual phone calls are so expensive, but I do know that you have to buy a phone number there. I think some European countries are similar. Kind of a strange situation, but you pay ~$500? (can't remember, it was at least a couple hundred) for a phone number. Then, when you leave or move or whatever, you sell it. Of course, you still have to pay for phone service on top of that.
A lot of things are priced differently in Japan compared to America.
I live in Japan and have Yahoo!BB and their bundled phone service, BBPhone. The cost to call within Japan is 7.5 yen for 3 minutes. The cost to call the USA is 2.5 yen for 1 minute. The current exchange rate is about 108 yen/dollar, so these calls are incredibly cheap (about 2 cents/minute). However, the cost to other countries varies (usually much higher; it costs me about 25 yen/minute to call my friends in the UK). Anyway, this is much cheaper than what the new VoIP services will be charging, at least according to the Red Herring article. They state the cost will be 10.5 yen/minute, which is 4 times what I'm paying now. Why would people in Japan switch to VoIP when BBPhone is already so much cheaper than botht he new technology and the old NTT service charges?
BTW: the Slashdot post states that the cost is 1 cent/minute, but that doesn't match the article, which states that the cost is 10.5 yen/minute, which is about 9.5 cents/minute.
------- "One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people." -- G. KHAN