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Japanese Online Connectivity Ahead of EU/US
An anonymous reader writes "The experience of getting online in North America and Europe is years behind the internet connectivity options in Japan, the New York Times reports. While here in the US cable and DSL options are still struggling to reach rural areas, eight million Japanese consumers are now enjoying fiber optic speeds at home for comparable prices. The article explores the fiber-to-the-doorstep approach the country's telecoms are taking, with examination of both the ups and downs of such an ambitious project. 'The heavy spending on fiber networks, analysts say, is typical in Japan, where big companies disregard short-term profit and plow billions into projects in the belief that something good will necessarily follow. Matteo Bortesi, a technology consultant at Accenture in Tokyo, compared the fiber efforts to the push for the Shinkansen bullet-train network in the 1960s, when profit was secondary to the need for faster travel. "They want to be the first country to have a full national fiber network, not unlike the Shinkansen years ago, even though the return on investment is unclear."'"
Japan is pretty small, so it wouldnt cost as much to roll a new infrastructure every 5-7 years. Unlike the US or Australia.
"(insert country name) connectivity ahead of US"
Doh. That's as obvious as saying "Mortality is the leading cause of death".
'Cause I'm posting from Japan!
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Anyone have any #'s for fiber rollout to the home in the US?
Googling around for stats on Verizon FIOS seems like as of 2Q 2007, they claim 3.9 million homes have FIOS availability, and are aiming for 18 million by 2010. http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/2007/10/01/comcast-starting-to-feel-heat-from-verizons-fios/
As for actual customers numbers, I have no idea, but am curious. I happen to live in an area--Northern VA--where I know a decent number of people with FIOS, though I still have cable modem..
Are there any other serious fttp competitors to Verizon out there?
Does that mean that dialup there goes at about 25 mbps, but the sound of it connecting can deafen you?
Why the press is obsessed about the number of on-line connections? Why it's so darn important metrics? Could it be that as it's a single dimensional number it's easy to grasp, report and compare even though it does not have direct relation to thinks that matter, like innovativeness and on-line commerce.
"[B]ig companies disregard short-term profit and plow billions into projects in the belief that something good will necessarily follow."
We might want to discuss all the various reasons as to why America has fallen so much behind. In the past, we brought up land area and population density while forgetting that some countries in northern Europe with lower density fare better. Nobody ever brought this up even if that's one big obvious difference right there.
I found it very telling that they had a bunch of theoretical uses for all the bandwidth, and one actual case - a clueless EverQuest player who somehow thinks having a 100 megabit connection helps. Sure, they have super fast Internet. The big question right now is "so what?"
I suppose eventually some sort of service will take off that makes it worthwhile, but for now, it's just not happening.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Come on. We're talking about Japan. A few small islands with a relatively dense population.
Compare to the US with roughly 30 times the landmass. Yes, we have dense population centers. But outside the major cities, the population is incredibly diffuse.
It's far easier and less costly to cover Japan in Fiber than would ever be possible in the US.
If you did the same thing in the US, the amount of underutilized fiber would grossly dwarf what was actually in use.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Japanese Online Connectivity Ahead of EU/US
Unfortunately, the "connectivity" is in the form of tentacles.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
So you're telling me Tokyo, one of the densest cities in the world, is easier to wire for broadband than rural Wyoming? Shocking!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The notion that Japan's ability to roll out broadband everywhere is somehow the result of strategic, and forward thinking lacking in the west is so much hype.
Japan is a tiny island. The United States consists of the fairly large part of the North American continent and Europe, taken together, is not entirely tiny either. Of course it will be easier to wire Japan than it would be the USA or Europe.
People that argue that Japan is somehow doing something "unprofitable" to get a strategic gain need to wonder why Japan protects its telecommunications sector to the extent it does. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and other telecommunications concerns would love to get into Japan, and have been pushing the governments of the USA to get Japan to open its communications backplane to foreign competition, but, really, to no avail, as evidenced by the following cites:
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-3841226_ITM
http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org/legacy/050399-report-on-japan-deregulation.htm
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5D6143DF937A15750C0A9669C8B63
So sure, you can buy into the hype, but the reality is, Japanese telecommunications are both anti-competitive and comparitively easy to do.
This is my sig.
Is it wrong that the main reason for this connectivity boost is just for increased access to tentical rape porn?
I'm an Australian living in Japan and I've been here a couple of years now. Australian internet basically sucks - ask anyone with half a clue. Coming to Japan meant that I had a faster connection to my home than any company I'd worked for in Australia. (26Mbs down/1Mbs up vs. 8Mbs). It seemed crazily fast. Then when I moved house, I upgraded to 50Mbps fibre. It's what they call a 'mansion-type' (mansion just means apartment in Japan). The building has 1Gbps, and each apartment has a 50Mbps connection to that little black box. I've seen it transfer 4 megabytes a second to a friend of mine on the same setup. And the whole thing costs about $35 US a month at current rates. There are faster plans too. Standard FTTH is 100Mbs and I think there's some kind of family plan where you get 1Gbps to the home and then as many 100Mbps connections as you like hanging off that. I seem to remember a story on Slashdot (maybe last year?), about the Japanese government teaming up with NTT and Fujitsu to get 10Gbps connections to the home by 2010. I can't wait.
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
Japan was basically levelled in the Second World War, and thus enjoyed the benefits of rebuilding infrastructure following logical planning for the future from the ground up, unlike the US/EU that are saddled with centuries-old cities. It's much easier to lay fiber if you've already got the conduits, etc. for it.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
All that you say is quite correct, but there are significant differences between why it is being done in Japan and not done in the USA. Firstly, Japan is claiming that it is not being done to realise immediate profit. I think that is quite forward thinking, and not the sort of behaviour that I imagine we will ever see in the US. Secondly, they also believe that if the superfast network is made available then the innovative use of that network will automatically follow. I agree. Clever people will start to imagine novel uses for such a network. Sure, innovation could also be found in the US if people had a fast network to use, but in many cases they haven't. I think that Japan will become a leader in network usage in small, densely populated areas. That is nothing to scoff at. There may well be many business opportunities that can arise from having that level of expertise.
You are correct in saying that it could not be done in the US in a cost-effective manner. So what? It doesn't mean that it is not worth doing or that there will be no benefits. Perhaps it just means that those benefits will be of little use to Americans.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
"compared the fiber efforts to the push for the Shinkansen bullet-train network in the 1960s, when profit was secondary to the need for faster travel."
Profits and/or speed were not the drivers as claimed. Much of the construction was financed by a US$80 million loan from the World Bank. USD$80 mil in 1960 dollars is approx. 1/2 billion in today's money.
The initial project was originally discussed in the 1930's with construction beginning in 1959 - the Tokaido Shinkansen started running on October 1, 1964, in time for the Tokyo Olympics. National pride was (and still is) the driver, not the need for speed...
Notice that China is following a similar process, with the Maglev in Shanghai running at 433 kph and drawing significant attention as the 2008 Olympics in China are just around the corner.
Also, note that "Shinkansen bullet-train" is redundant - 'bullet train' is a literal translation, thank you very much.
You are spouting bullshit, very fine, very fresh and very pure bullshit.
Why? The city/state of New York and other such places in the US easily have a similar population density as Tokyo. Nobody is claiming that the many remote regions in Japan are as well serviced as its major cities.
But dumb people like you immidiatly take it as an excuse, oh the US has some remote locations therefore big population centers can't have fiber. This offcourse perfectly explains sweden, again a country with far better connections then the US AND a far lower population density. They are however not dumb americans and decided that they would install fast connections were people live.
You don't have to cover the US in fiber anymore then any other country has, just the places were lots of people live. In between these major cities you can KEEP the existing fiber that is already in place. So please tell me again what is so different about japanese cities compared to american cities that the japanese have rolled out that LAST mile of fiber and the americans are still on copper?
Because again if you weren't a dumb american you would know that the US has a fiber network, this story is about the last mile.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Your argument would hold if within the cities of highest density you would get 100mbps or 25 mbps on premise without a problem and without selling your first born. That does not seem to be the case, ergo your argument is groundless and AT BEST only explain why there is no high bandwidth available in sparsely rural area.
Furthermore I keep hearing this argument for, how many years now ? In the mean time many sparsely dense country like your northern neighbors get a better bit rate in both more dense and sparsely dense area...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
We have better internet connectivity than you up here in the great white north.
We've had it for a while too. Of course, advancing rather than complaining might be why your dollar is only worth pennies nowadays.
Why don't the big cities in your glorious US-of-A have fiber for the last mile? Are they not as densely populated as Tokyo?
The article is about fiber to the home, not for long-haul transport. Even in rural Wyoming there is fiber everywhere, except for the last part to the user. You don't have to lay humongous amounts of new fiber, the backbone infrastructure is already in use, again, even in Wyoming. You just have to make an effort to replace the last mile(s) to the home.
In Japan they are willing to do that, because there isn't an immediate lust for profit. A sort of "if you build it, profit will/may come". For that same reason it will never happen in the US. Because you --as a people-- are shallow, narrow minded pricks with a degenerate obsession for short-term money.
Population density:
/sq mi /sq mi /sq mi
Japan: 872.8
EU: 289
USA: 80
fiber optic speed?
I didn't realize fiber optics had a speed. I thought it was just a tunnel for light.
WTF is fiber optic speed? How about Japanese get 45 gigamillizetabits/s and eu/us gets 6mb/s. That has meaning. I can run 10mb/s over a copper wire, I can run 1000mb/s over the same copper wire. At one point in time, it was the fastest you could do over that copper wire. If I said "copper wire speed" people would think I as dumb.
I currently live in Tokyo Japan, but normally I live in Sweden, A very sparesly populated country in the northern Europe. I do not agree with the author of this article. I have what they call "FTTH", Fiber To The Home. It is said to be 100 mbit. However when measuring using speed test against servers in Japan I get 2 - 20 mbit. I.e., Extremeley poor. The international connectivity suck a lot, it is comparable to my experience in the dominican republic. I get speeds of around 20 kbyte/s to europe and experience high packet loss. The login procedure is very awkward. While you are not logged onto the internet, you can still access some sites, such as yahoo.jp or even use Skype. You are auto-logged out after a certain amount of time. Since I am behind NAT a lot of things does not work good, P2P or downloading the latest WoW patch takes ages, even when it is small.
:)
I have ordered some ADSL subscription from Yahoo and NTT, but I have not yet recieved any confirmation on my order (was 3 weeks ago).
I talked to some friends here in Tokyo and they confirm that the internet really is this bad; they are used to NAT, low international speeds and very irregular and poor performing national speeds.
Compared to the 24/8 mbit DSL I have in Sweden (we also have fiber in Sweden, but not in the area where I live) the internet service is light years behind, even though it on paper sound very good with fiber to the home and all. At home in Sweden I always get 24/8 when tested against the speed test servers in Sweden. Sweden have excelent international connectivity and uploading stuff to friends in the states is usually done at around 4 mbit/s. The internet is also very stable and I usually have bittorrent running 24/7 resulting in some 1000 GB transfer every month. That would be impossible here in Japan, because they seem to be a lot more draconian about what you may and may not do. For example I may not use P2P applications or use a lot of bandwidth (some examples given, chatting with webcam). In Sweden noone cares and everyone is just uploading stuff like there is no tomorrow; resulting in even faster backbones and better infrastructure since the ISPs must invest more to cope.
Generally I find that many things in Japan is about sounding good or seeming to be good but how it is in reality is not that important. I think a major problem is that they actually do not have that much internet infrastructure, very weak backbone and most networks are build "ad-hoc" without a bigger plan, just run another fiber down the telephone poles and hook it up at nearest station.
But the people here don't seem to mind that much. They use cellular phones for communication and Wii or PS3 for computer games. The internet here *is* yahoo for most people. The only person I have met so far that was a heavy internet user was a foreign worker from Vietnam
Anyhow, back to the article; the article is the result of a combination of Japanese "look good on paper" with the journalist quest for write impressive articles and a bit of "It is always greener on the other side of the fence"-thinking.
How many mistakes can one make in single sentence?
First, Europe is years behind Japan and South Korea -- those pesky Asians go head to head in wiring their countries. Europe, even Western isn't uniformly connected, there are years worth of difference between the countries. North America isn't uniform either: Cannada is basically on pair with Western Europe, while US fell years behind even some Eastern European countries.
I mean, I live in Warsaw/Poland, far from the city centre and I have a choice of two physical cable operators, and two physical DSL operators. On top of that, one of the DSL operators (TPSA) is a monopolist (dominant operator in today lingo) wich by law has to sell BSA and WLR to dozen or so virtual DSL operators which compete with each other and with TPSA. I don't think you can get this kind of choice even in NY, which is a part of megalopolis with the biggest population on Earth and one of the biggest population densities in the world.
Wroclaw (Breslau for those teutonically inclined) is a much smaller city, yet it had fiber laid in sewers couple of years ago, reaching all parts of the city with speeds up to 100Mbps.
And don't even get me started on municipal and private wifi networks in rural areas... They just work, selling not only IP, but also phone services based on VoIP.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Funny that the telcos can't get off their arses and roll out fiber to the premises - population density is pure BS.
The State of Washington is rolling out 100 MB connections to school districts across the state....including one-room schools in rural bumfark Washington.
'The heavy spending on fiber networks, analysts say, is typical in Japan, where big companies disregard short-term profit a [..] for the Shinkansen bullet-train network in the 1960s, when profit was secondary to the need for faster travel. "They want to be the first country to have a full national fiber network, not unlike the Shinkansen years ago, even though the return on investment is unclear."'"
:P but I'm simply not Japanese.
I have the feeling many managers would get a heart attack reading this. But don't we read every day stuff like "companies exist to make money!", "it only matters if it makes more money!".
God damn it, sometimes I wish I was proud to be a Japanese
These guys can think in more than one dimension.
There comes a time when that argument becomes lametastic, as the US drops more and more on broadband lists as other countries manage to install fiber.
The little Sony Vaio TR-1MP that I'm using now tops out at around 24 MB/S in any speed test I can find. My big dual-opteron with gigabit ethernet can pull down high 90s, as can my iMac Pro.
What I find, though, is that I never get anything like this kind of data throughput because most of the web is throttled at a few mb/s per connection and many sites are getting smart to users with download managers and restricting the number of connections at any one time. It's frustrating to have to wait 15 minutes to download a porn^H^H^H^Heducational video when I know my fiber connection is capable of pulling it down in a matter of seconds.
Even using torrents for TV shows, I almost never go above a few hundred Kb/S even downloading 3-4 episodes or LOST or suchlike, as there are simply too few users with fast enough connections feeding the data to me.
If I were downloading Japanese content, that might change, but they are extremely strict with copyright law when it comes to their own stuff and people have been thrown in jail for downloading AND for sharing japanese movies.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Until the US government is willing to regulate the telephony sector adequately, you will have shitty telephony services and very rich fatcats at the top.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Japan was wired with ISDN first (Japan was all ISDN when I got there in 1999). My Japanese keitai in 2002 still has some features not available in the US today (the dictionary mode works right, to name one).
There is a lot to love about engineering in Japan. I wish they'd sell more of (the best of) it abroad, but that's their privilege.
[1] Singapore Airlines which just won some kind of award for inflight entertainment with a new Linux-based system is not bad though.
Just did a quick check, and most sites seem to say that Japan's total area is the size of Montana.
Which does put things in perspective: In the context of the entire United States of America, that is indeed small...
don't be stupid and think japan is a small place, it's actually quiet large, not your small island at all.
your also ignoring the fact many EU countries with less dense populations have better access then the USA. explain that one away genius.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Why invest in fiber when Wimax is soon here?, good economical choice particulary in Nippon. I hope Wimax that's the succesor to Wifi with it's 10mbit in 10 kilometer area won't be hidden from the public like 'Fast TCP' (tcp software update that gives couple k's mbit).
And the "return on investment is unclear." sure is but i'll bet that media sales will rise tenfold or more if there's also copyrighted media available with daft protection and not only piratetorrents like now.
since when fuckstick?
Firstly, Japan is claiming that it is not being done to realise immediate profit. I think that is quite forward thinking, and not the sort of behaviour that I imagine we will ever see in the US.
:)?
You'll see it in US. In a global market, if Japan's strategy follows long term success, and US follows short term profits, not far from now (it's already happening btw, US economy is plunging down), Japanese telecoms will outgrow their own market, and their forward thinking would have earned them the cash to invest abroad.
How would you feel if Japanese companies build the US Internet infrastructure of tomorrow
Japan: 377,576 sq/km USA: 9,372,608 sq/km That says a lot right there.
The United Stated has very slightly over 26 times the land area, while only a little over 2 times the populace. Simply dividing the land area by people (an extremely rough measure of cable?), you get 10.96. But actually even that is misleading. When you consider the amount of rural area in the United States compared to Japan, the cost to reach cable to them is even more, because you are running cable (copper or fiber) a lot farther to reach a relatively few people. It is not a matter of square miles per se but rather a sparse network, which ups the relative cost even more.
I think it is fairly obvious that if it is going to cost us 10 times as much or more (or even close to that), then it is no wonder Japan has been doing it faster. Duh.
In May I went to Tolyatti, Russia. About 1 million people living there. It's not a grown city, but a planned one. Huge Plattenbaus with more than 600 apartments each.
The family I lived with had a 8Mbit/s down / 256 kbit/s up ADSL connection. Pretty nice for Russia, I thought. One day they told me, that someone would come "to make the Internet faster". Ok, I thought. What will happen, it's already fast. Install some Voodoo software to tweak IP option optimized for ADSL?
The next day some people from the Internet provider came by with tools and stuff. One of the guys had a Toolbox labeled with "Splicemaster 2000" and my jaw fell down. They really got fiberoptics to the home. Synchronous 100Mbit/s. But as far as I know, most Internat access is prepaid. You buy a prepaid card for say 500 MB for about 50 Rubels (~2 US$), enter the pin code via phone and then you can surf.
`dd if=/dev/sig ibs=120 count=1`
The article explores the fiber-to-the-doorstep approach the country's telecoms are taking, with examination of both the ups and downs of such an ambitious project. 'The heavy spending on fiber networks, analysts say, is typical in Japan, where big companies disregard short-term profit and plow billions into projects in the belief that something good will necessarily follow.
If it's considered ambitious for a tiny country like Japan to be doing this, then it's downright mind boggling that Verizon is doing this in the US - systematically digging up half of America to install fiber to the home. Doing it pretty damn fast too.
Here in Norway I cannot get fiber to my home in Oslo, but when we bought a new cabin up in the central mountains, the local power company by default pulled fiber along with the 3x65 Amp 400 V power cable. (Actually, what they do is to pull fiber to the local distribution box, then they place a 1/2" PVC tube along with the underground power cable to the building site. After the cabin was finished, they came back and spent 10 minutes blowing a fiber through the PVC tube.
The cost is the same as for ADSL in downtown Oslo.
BTW, Norway has a very sparse population, and this goes double for the mountain areas.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
New York City: 10,456 people/km (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City)
San Francisco: 6,111 people/km (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_francisco)
Tokyo: 5796 people/km (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo)
Does this say something, too?
I keep hearing this excuse, but it really doesn't add up. I've visited Japan and spent quite a bit of time in the USA. Comparing Tokyo to NYC seems fair; they seemed to have similar population densities. Does NYC have the same level of connectivity as Tokyo? I also stayed in a small town in Japan (Takada, for anyone who's interested), and I've seen a lot of American towns of similar size; do they all have comparable connectivity? Getting the connection to the city is fairly cheap, it's the last mile that is the really expensive bit, and the cost of that is relative to population density.
The low average population density of the USA is often given as an excuse, but it ignores population distribution. If you look at a map showing the population density over the whole world, the western half of the USA, with the exception of a few dots and some very dense concentrations on the western seaboard, is almost completely empty in relative terms. If you confine yourself to the eastern half, you'll see huge areas the same density as Japan, and the rest the same or greater density than the EU.
Yes, Japan does have an advantage in terms of overall population density (although it is far more mountainous than most of the populated places of the USA), but nothing like a factor of 20 advantage for the vast majority of the population of the USA.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm entirely ambivalent - I'm a Brit! But I accept the point that you are making.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
I think this is a flawed argument. If the majority of the US population lives in urban areas, it doesn't make a difference if the overall population density is much lower than in Japan (80 vs 800 /sq mile).
A quick google on rural-urban population density for US and Japan gave me the numbers 75% urban population in the US, vs 78% in Japan. (Note: I don't know how precise these figures are, and if they use the same definitions of urban vs rural).
NY's actually pretty easy to explain. A quick history lesson:
Their infrastructure is a mess. It's old, it's outdated, and the scary thing is that nobody really has a firm grip on just how bad it is.
The Queens blackout last year was a prime example of this. It lasted almost two weeks, and Con Edison (NYC's public utility) didn't have any idea what was the main cause of it. Every time they patched the hole, another part of the system would fail catastrophically.
Earlier this year, a portion of 42nd street exploded, because a hundred-year-old steam pipe failed. The particular pipe had never been tested, and the steam system evidently does not have any sort of system to shut off the flow in the event of an explosive decompression.
Have you been on one of the Subways recently? How about Penn Station? NYC still doesn't have ATO on its subways, and uses an ancient interlocking system that forces the trains to run at wider intervals than they could. There was a fire a few years back in a room full of relays and other electrical equipment that dated back to the subway's original construction. It was feared that that line would be offline for years, as the only people who knew about the equipment in that room had been dead for decades, and there were no accurate or plans of how to rebuild the room.
They're currently in the process of building a new subway. One of the most expensive parts of the project is just going to be locating and moving existing infrastructure, because the city doesn't have a terribly good idea of what's buried underground, and moreover what's still being used and what's abandoned.
New York City was one of the last places on the planet where you could buy DC off of the grid. Many older buildings had lifts that were old enough to pre-date alternating current. It was finally discontinued last year, as DC power transmission is horrendously inefficient.
A few years ago, a lady was electrocuted after touching a metal streetpole. In the investigation that followed, Con Edison discovered hundreds of poles and metallic surfaces with hazardous levels of stray voltage in them, all in public places.
These examples pretty strongly support the hypothesis that New York's infrastructure is in a scary state. I'm not terribly surprised that the telecom systems aren't completely up to snuff -- they've got a host of other things to work on. NYC's infrastructure was hastily constructed in the early 20th century, and then neglected for the remainder of it. Now the money's finally in place, and something's being done about it, but it's still going to be a while before we see any tangible results. There are Verizon and ConEd trucks on every corner laying new cable -- just give it patience, and it'll eventually get done.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Parent hits the nail right on the head. It is the collective mindset of a people that determines what can be achieved. Where the american people used to lead in grand projects (space exploration and moon landings come to mind) they have now regressed to an opportunistic and limited mindset.
Perhaps that is inevitable for a civilisation in decline, maybe grandiose things can only happen when riding the (economic) wave upwards. Now that the economy is tanking hard there just isn't enough drive to achieve anything important anymore.
Intesting to think about cause and effect: is the economy evaporating because of general apathy, or the other way around?
Well, it was fun while it lasted, thanks for all the fish.
Listen up, nonbelievers! Government-subsidized infrastructure is teh satan.
Look what the Japanese Government has done to their citizens. They can get from Yokohama to Tokyo in under an hour. Where I come from, you sit stuck in traffic for an hour just trying to get to the Bart station in the bay area. Pity we don't have toll roads in that area. Oh wait, they do. And they're jammed. That's capitalism, folks. Parked on the 80 listening to Rush Limbaugh. Megadittos!
I say the Government should never have funded DARPA much less the Internet. We should have stayed with what the free market could bear - BBSes. Now thanks to Communist Government subsidies I can listen to Rush Limbaugh online... hey wait. What a nice idea.
Maybe I could call Bush and get him to fund high speed internet to watch Rush Limbaugh live on IPTV. And have virtual circle jackoff sessions watching Michael Weiner..er, Michael Savage... online!
Yeehaw! I say we subsidize 100mpbs broadband NOW!!! For capitalism!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
"North America and Europe is years behind the internet connectivity options in Japan"
;)
//0xFE
I live in i small town in Sweden with a population of about 15,000 people, far from all the large cities. My internet connection is a 30 mbit down, 30 mbit up, full duplex, no limits, fiber connection costing me 399 SEK per month (ca $60). I can't say I _feel_ years behind Japan.
I also heard recently that all the apartments in Stockholm that were owned by the local municipiality (allmännyttans boende) were getting 100 mbit fiber. That's 100,000 appartments. According to the article, this would make Stockholm the most wired city in the world.
I also read a few years back that people who live in houses, in larger cities I think, can have 100 mbit fiber. The telco doesnt put unlit fiber to all the homes, instead they put empty plastic tubes. And when a customer wants broadband they "blow" the fiber cable using compressed air all the way through the tube. Pretty smart if you ask me.
And, on a TV-prgram about file-sharing here in sweden, the reporter said that we had the fastest back-bone in the world. I think this is true, look at all the BT-sites and DC-hubs that we have. And how _fast_ they are.
Also, my aunt and her husband who live out on the country side are getting broadband, _real_ broadband not DSL.
I personally feel that Sweden is pretty wired, maybe the NYT should check their facts before they publish their articles.
The big differnce between the Japaneses and American telcoms is that when they get tax breaks they actually use them for what they're intended for and not to line their pockets. Our companies have been getting tax breaks and for the most part just gave themselves bonuses. Read Bruce Kushnick $200 billion broadband scandal. Nothing short of the shameful behavior typified by the Bush administration. Not that the Democrats or the rest of Congress have been any help. Imagine a country that thinks of the next generation
and rest assured that'll never be America. Just look at the bill they'll get for George's
national disgrace of a war. Sayonara America!!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
This article clearly shows that the US has legacy broadband. Real broadband is 100 megabits and higher, with bidirectional gigabits to the home being how broadband should be defined. I become angry when I see TV commercials by cable companies referring to their legacy, dumbed-down broadband offerings as "blazingly fast".
I've heard that Japanese visiting the US feel like they are visiting a technologically third-world country, as well they should.
The effect on innovation is devastating. It is like the difference between animal power and engine power. If one horsepower is a fundamental limit, innovators will try to figure out how to best arrange teams of animals to get work done. However, with engine technology the scope of innovation greatly expands.
Legacy broadband is like animal power. Innovators with real broadband can conceive innovations that those with dumbed-down, legacy broadband can't even imagine. This can have serious adverse effects on the economy.
The telecom and cable companies have gained control of the FCC and are dumbing down the US market. They are doing so because real broadband is a disruptive technology that threatens to undo their business models and those of the entertainment and content companies. If we accept the dumbing down of broadband it is at our economic peril.
OH NOES!!! The US lags behind Japan! This may be true. However...
...
1. Telcoms. Yes, the telcoms screwed the pooch. They were supposed to have this a lot farther along than it is. But they're getting to it. Currently, Verizon has ~4 million households wired for fiber. But they are they only company rolling out fiber? And I'm glad it's only one. I really don't want ALL of them digging up my yard every few months.
2. States vs countries. The US is not a monolithic block. Rather, it is a collection of 50 states, each with their own rules, etc.
3. Size. All you clowns saying size/density doesn't matter are FOC. It is significantly easier to wire 50 million houses than 105 million. And when you consider the physical distance between houses, it's even more expensive. Wiring up 20 houses per mile is harder/slower/more costly than 50 houses per mile. US houses generally have more land between. Which leads us to
4. But why aren't the cities wired? Equal density to Tokyo. Well...Tokyo doesn't have a 150 year old infrastructure. NYC infrastructure, for instance, is horrendous. Chicago the same. Pulling yet another new set of lines through there would be a nightmare. Tokyo and a host of other cities in Japan were leveled in WWII. Some almost totally. With a large influx of worldwide money, they started over in the 50's.
Verizon seems to be concentrating on the smaller midsize cities and suburbs first, rather than trying to tackle the hardest nuts first.
5. Customer inertia. Most of the US has had cable/DSL available for a while. Even with it available, a lot of people don't see a personal need for it. Now comes in fiber. Convince me to change. What type of connectivity did the average house in Japan have? Did they go through a long period of 'better than dialup'? I have fiber available, but am satisfied with my current cable connection. I haven't seen a need (yet) to restructure my house connections and billing again.
Are we behind? Maybe, maybe not. But there are a variety of reasons why this may be true, other than just "The Japanese are so much better than the US."
Well, if US companies can skip small towns for DSL (oh, the torture of living somewhere that was just 100ft too far to be wired up for DSL- at least I'm living in a big city now), then why can't they do the same for fiber and only focus on the big cities? 100M both ways for everyone in NYC/LA/DC/wherever, and DSL/dialup for the smaller towns. (oh, and do enlighten me on how comparing a big city to a big city drops context entirely).
OSx86 FTW
Yes please- better than the current US telcos, at least (and besides- with NTT comes DoCoMo, and decent cellphones don't hurt either).
OSx86 FTW
Wait- so you can't get high-speed internet in the cities, but you can in the "middle of nowhere"? how interesting.
OSx86 FTW
You mean where I can choose between Verizon or Verizon, with the possibility of choosing AT&T Wireless if you're desperate for something else (although if we're going to count that we have to drag Softbank, Willcom, bitwarp, and au into the picture too)? Yeah... Oh, and did KDDI suddenly disappear?
OSx86 FTW
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Japan averages 340 people per square kilometer. The United States averages 32. Why am I supposed to be surprised that a country with ten times the population density has more pervasive broadband?
Maybe the telcos aren't ALLOWED to provide any more the they can deliver to the NSA.....
Certainly the state of the internet in America leaves much to be desired, but one of the reasons that Japan is able to stay so far ahead of the curve is the area. Laying down new cable anywhere is surely expensive, but with Japan having something like 5% of the area that the USA does, it's less prohibitive.
You cannot deny that Japan is ahead of the rest of the world. Blame it on size of country, population density, or whatever, but it still is ahead of EVERYONE else.
Yes, the USA is sparser, so more costly to fully wire, and the EU as a whole (though judging it as a whole is foolish, as individual countries vary HUGELY in how much fibre they are offering: compare Sweden and Slovenia, for example) is quite big in itself, BUT even those that have no excuse, like the United Kingdom (which, let us not forget, is still officially part of the EU), are WAY behind Japan. The UK is a relatively small country, but with one of the worst internet connection speeds in Western society. Not only is it overpriced, but it's only recently that ADSL2 took off. Fibre is virtually non-existent!
I live in the UK, and I speak from experience when I say it is truly terrible, internet-speed-wise.
But many people here, as far as I have seen, are actually criticizing the story. Saying it's obvious that Japan is faster. It's not obvious. They have different priorities, and so different results ensue. Now the rest of the world, as so magnificently portrayed within this discussion, is jealous. Almost angry, in fact, at Japan's audacity to have a different way of thinking that seems to have benefited the people of the country, rather than just the big-shots.
Perhaps our bitterness at our countries' practices regarding consumer services should not be directed at making excuses and going on the defensive, but more at looking at ways to improve our lives, perhaps by taking a leaf out of Japan's books, and altering priorities.
Sadly, however, large corporations do not want to alter their priorities if it means costing them even the tiniest fraction of their foreseen short-term profits. So why are we all complaining anyway? We built the society we live in, it is our proverbial bed, and now we must lie in it.
~~~hsl~~~
Because what is the point of broadband? Pretty much video and pirating. It's low on the American priority list.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
These examples pretty strongly support the hypothesis that New York's infrastructure is in a scary state.
A better example: If you see Kurt Russell, Ernest Borgnine and Adrienne Barbeau together, you'll *know* that NYC is in a scary state!
One hundred of them, to be exact!
is not bullet train, but "new main line"
With a fibre optic line, you can deliver ultra high speed internet, infinite HDTV channels/on-demand, telephone, videophone (at HD quality so e.g. GPs can use it to diagnose patients in their homes) and many other services not even invented yet. The internet and IP based services are the future for at least the next 50 years, probably a lot longer.
Western companies can't seem to see past end-of-year figures and shareholder meetings.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"Japan is claiming that it is not being done to realise immediate profit."
That's great and all, but I suggest this is somewhat disingenious.
The profit may not be immediate, but it will happen eventually.
In the US, blanketing the country isn't a viable option. Because in many of the areas they'd service there would NEVER be a profit. And worse, these low-density area would always be a money-losing proposition.
Do areas of Japan have this problem? Sure! But with their lower landmass, and higher total population density, their problem is orders of magnitude less significant than what would happen in the US.
Of course, if you want to be the one to volunteer the billions to lay and provision all this fiber, and the billions more to keep it provisioned and for upkeep, go ahead.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No, it does NOT ignore the population distribution. "Struggling to provide service to rural areas" is a big part of what TFA is saying. YOU are the one who is ignoring population distribution, laws, and other matters.
Wiring up a big city, within a state that is partly rural and has things like "equal access" laws, does not equate to wiring up a nation that is darned near one big city. It is apples and oranges.
The problem with your argument is that Norway is roughly the size of our state of New Mexico.
The US is roughly 30x as big.
As said, the problem in the US is a COMBINATION of population density in rural areas and sheer land mass.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Again, you're STILL talking about 30x the land mass that needs to be serviced.
My point is, Japan going more or less universal fiber is similar to, say the NY metroplex going all fiber (less, since areas of the NY metroplex's infrastructure is such a tangled mess).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
What counts here isn't absolute but relative size:
I.e. population per sq/km and population distribution (urban vs rural).
On both those measures Norway is a lot closer to Canada than the US.
Besides which we have the mountains and fjords, i.e. a very fractal landscape which makes all forms of infrastructure much more expensive than in Denmark (or even New Mexico).
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Spoken like a true ignorant American...
.iso files, etc.
:-)), when I can start downloading the latest linux .iso files from distrowatch...
Have you been to Japan? It's mountainous...very, very mountainous. It's why Japan are the world leaders in technology for making tunnels in mountains (for their world-famous shinkansens...haven't seen anything like that in the U.S.). Boring through thousands of tons of solid rock is not easy.
Hell, most of the U.S. is flat, so it should be a snap, don't you think?
No, the real reason is the U.S. government (and U.S. monopolies) are not particularly interested in decent access for their citizens. Wouldn't want them to have alternative sources of information,
I can't wait to get back to Japan next week, (in a small town, south of Kyoto, and the house has a fiber connection!
Virtually a pain and impossible where I am now (in North America).
IMHO, watching broadcast TV isn't cool, it's just getting it from a different cable. Surfing the net a bit faster is always nice, but not a real breakthrough. Web servers at home are semi-cool, and for most people DSL or cable is enough. Playing interactive games is cool, and uses peer-to-peer connections as well as client-server, but again, DSL is enough. Uploading and downloading music and video is semi-cool, and it'd be easier if everybody had a few Mbps of upstream instead of just fast down, slow up, but I haven't heard that there's anything radical happening in that space in Japan or Korea (and anime compresses really well compared to real video
Grocery-shopping by internet is something that old people in Korea have been doing - that's semi-cool. Video conferencing from home is something I've done since dialup days, though 384kbps was a big step up - but I'm not going to put a Cisco Telepresence rig in my house.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The interesting part is that power companies are bundling fiber with their power cables. Which means that and new building can get connected, even if it's in the mountains.
I lost my sig.
From Verizon
All with a one or two year agreement! Gee, it's no wonder people are sticking with cable. They've combined the worst pricing schemes of both cable and cellular companies.
30MB for $180, what a deal, it's like paying for four cable lines every month.
FAST Up to 5 Mbps/2 Mbps
A $99 value - 1st month FREE
Just $29.99/mo. for months 2-7
$39.99
FASTER Up to 15 Mbps/2 Mbps
A $109 value - 1st month FREE
Just $39.99/mo. for months 2-7
$49.99
FASTEST Up to 30 Mbps/5 Mbps
1st month FREE
$179.95
Oh, and that includes broadband TV with about 50 channels and on-demand video rental.
:)
So... Who wants to come and live in Sweden?
I see, the answer is to get American cities bombed...
Can't you give some credit to our Japanese overlo^H^H^H^H^H^Hfellows?
The late 80s called. They want their Japanese business superiority fearmongering back.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
...I wonder how different the internet landscape would be in America if the power companies got into the game...
OSx86 FTW
It's yet another example of a different mindset in Japanese corporations and governments than the US. First, even corporations look to what can benefit their own country above others, something lacking in our own. Second, if you can't prove in a memo or Power Point slide how something will be profitable in 2-3 years, US companies don't want to listen. Japanese, Korean, and now Chinese, companies have that long view. They know that Fiberoptic networking will create greater efficiency throughout the country, and, in the long run, benefit all. American Telecoms are all worried about defending their own turf and preventing others from profiting. Look at the fights Google has had over wifi. There is no profit to setting up here, because they would have to fight our Jingoistic policies toward foreign corporations, and Congress is well-known for taking a great idea and fucking it up. We look out for number 1. They look out for everyone. We've seen in the auto and computer industry how that works in the long run. I swear, in 50 years Tokyo will be like The Jetsons and we'll be the Flintstones.
I can't imagine the Internet not being the future, at any point in the future. It can replace all the separate communications systems in use today (telephone, radio, television etc). It might be in a different form than today (high-speed long-range mesh-network wireless?) but it will still be the Internet...unless you're saying that in 50+ years there will be some catastrophic event that will set us all back to the stone age (Running out of oil? Nuclear war (as a result)?) Even then the Internet will be one of the first things to go back up right after running water and electricity. Or maybe in 50+ years the Internet will fall out of favor due to being controlled by totalitarian governments. That could be a tougher situation, even if it might be possible to bypass the controls and take it underground, like the China firewall or file sharing situation today, it could kill off the Internet as a mainstream communications medium.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Wait. You mean all these slashdot comments with a list ending in
4. Profit!
do not actually print all the way?
umm.. I'm finding it quite difficult to find this "Share" ( of which you speak. Mostly I suspect because of the generic nature of the name.
You wouldn't happen to have a link?
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Estonia has already had home Internet over fiber optic at affordable price since about year 2000. Like in Japan, it is mainly available in city area. In the countryside, core infrastructures were rebuilt with fiber optic after the collapse of USSR, so only the last mile has copper and brand new one at that. For the handful of really off-road villages not connected to the phone network, WiMax is available (not to mention the plethora of other wireless technologies available to Estonian consumers).
In a nutshell, just because dinosaurs in Western Europe don't have their act together doesn't mean that whole EU is a load of crap. Look east of Berlin and you'll find a dynamic side of EU that has all the latest gadgets and is busy inventing the next ones too.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Yes, mods. There's only one viewpoint and everyone who takes one side should be modded up while all others should be modded down.
Defending America seems to be on-par with bashing Linux here these days.
Well, you guys have fun masturbating to fantasies of fundamental Japanese technology being superior to American technology, regardless of any facts.
Oh, why bother? The Japandroids won't accept any rational reason for the differences besides worshipful Asianphilic gushing.
Just think of the countries America needs to invade first!
Yes, but in other areas they might have huge profits instead, easily covering the losses in other areas and then some.
The best example of this is actually Microsoft, where huge losses in many departments (like the XBox) is covered by huge profits in the OS and Office departments.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
The Japanese are ahead of the US and UK for a simple reason. They are more intelligent. The average American and European has a high school education. The average Japanese has a University degree. In other words the Americans and Europeans are stupid.
Even videoconferencing doesn't need much - corporate teleconferencing usually runs about a 384kbps codec, so it wants a bit faster than 384kbps upstream, but talking-heads video is just fine at 128kbps, and the new H.264 codecs use about half the bandwidth of the earlier ones - so it's cheaper to burn a bit more CPU and get a 192kbps bitstream than to upgrade the broadband infrastructure.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks