Why is broadband so cheap in Japan?

[Áedán]

And just so expensive over here?

Looking for cheap broadband? Try Japan! I see plenty of people in the US telling me just how cheap their broadband access is. Yes, being stuck in parts of Europe where broadband is expensive has it's downsides. Then again, I look towards Japan, and see just how far in front of us they are.

Fancy an 8Mbit/sec broadband connection? Well, if you're on Yahoo Broadband, that's nearly the slowest speed they offer! Fancy a 50Mbit/sec broadband connection? That's ok, they can provide it! Oh, and if you don't want to pay too much for it, how does that 50Mbit/sec connection for less than $40 a month sound? No problem - Yahoo Broadband Japan can do it! So, how come so many countries around the world are stuck at less than 8Mbit/sec? Just what is going on that means so many other places are so far behind?

Any thoughts as to why we're lagging behind so much?

[GrahamGarside]

In the uk companys like BT are quite happy to sit making a profit whilest investing as little as possible in progress, they dragged their feet for as longs a possible offering unmetred dial up, same with broadband, and the same with faster broadband. They are happy with the amount of profit they are making getting as much use from the already there copper pairs we have vs the massive costs of upgrading the entire country.

[fearless joe]

i saw some town in, i think it was sweeden, on tv ages ago that had an experement done where they upgraded everyone there to 100mbit/sec fiberoptic conection or something.

ha just saw a bt add on the telly wile typing this, 20 quid a month lol

[Pitch]

I blame BT too.

Indpendant companies who use LLU are able to provide alot faster speeds.

Form my experience, alot of line will not support anything faster than 2mb. From BT's point of view, I guess the cost of upgrading this is unjustified.

Also I've heard Japan's external bandwidth is pretty bad.

[Áedán]

If you mean independant companies like Bulldog, I'd point you towards all the complaints they're getting! In many ways BT might be slow and have a stranglehold, but on the whole it works.

Not that I'd turn down a 24Mbit/sec connection mind you.

[skool h8r]

Me neither. Japan has very strict laws on what sites you can visit though and the 'questionable' sites are blocked throughout the whole country. I'm not bothered though, i think 2mbps is quite fast. Demon.net (UK) offer a great value service for the brits, better than the other 'commercial' ISP's. They've been around for donkeys years now but are still going strong.

At a research facility somewhere in the US (california i think) they successfully used a 1Gbps connection. It shows just how fast and advanced computers are these days. I suspect that was for a central gaming or P2P server though.

[Áedán]

CERN have succesfully transfered data the 11Km between CERN and Caltech at a rate of about 10GBit/sec..

[GrahamGarside]

Most people who are into p2p, specifically bit torrent would probably benefit more from a 20:1 contention ratio and SDSL link than a straight faster ADSL link

[calgar]

this stuff really pisses me off, gah, stupid BT

personally, i cant wait untill Be internet is launched...

[danrok]

I thought that the situation in Japan was due to a high-density population and high-demand for internet access.

[calgar]

another thing that annoys me about the UK is the cost of SDSL, i do alot of uploading and being stuck at 256kbs really ticks me off!

[skool h8r]

Whoa, some real competition out there. So many options, apart from for the europeans.

[Daniel ~]

Island to island, really doesn't make much sense, except they can get away with it. The USA might be a bit different when it comes to cost of infrastructure, but even with that it seems way out of line with what the Japanese are paying.

[Gizmo]

I suspect there are some hefty government subsidies involved, so that the Japanese are really paying about the same as everywhere else. Governments love to tax people and then use the taxes to subsize something. Makes it easier to hide government waste and kick-backs that way.

[Daniel ~]

Maybe we should out source for our governmental needs! Denmark seems to do a good job.

Allan can you get Denmark on the phone for us? We could save a bundle having the Danes do all our really self defeating stuff for us! ":O}

[jnansley]

Wasn't there a big deal a while back about one of the Japanese telco's running (or planning to run) 100mbit lines to every house?