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."'"

Comments

Re:Population density? Small land mass?

[janrinok]

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.