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?

[suv4x4]

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 :)?

Re:Population density? Small land mass?

[Terje Mathisen]

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