Saturday, April 26, 2008
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Tokyo Broadband
At home in Tokyo I have 100 Mbps Internet service, and it's just part of the normal rent for this particular building. Granted, rents are high, but truly high-speed Internet service isn't even if you have to pay for it separately. ASAHI Net, for example, charges anywhere from 3,035 to 3,570 per month for 100 Mbps service to an apartment, depending on where you live. Even DSL service (12 Mbps downstream/1 Mbps) is just 1,990 yen per month.
I was just watching Walter Mossberg complain about broadband service in the U.S. (Mossberg is the Wall Street Journal's technology writer.) He is correct. The Japanese are way ahead.
As another example, in Japan "One Seg" is getting quite popular. With One Seg you can watch digital television on a mobile telephone, free. The picture quality is quite reasonable. One Seg doesn't work while riding subways underground, but for a 90 minute typical commute into work about 60 minutes will probably be above ground. For the other 30 there's always 3G mobile e-mail and Web browsing which does work in the subway tunnels.
If that's not enough, Livedoor has blanketed about 80% of central Tokyo with WiFi service. That's only 525 yen per month. For comparison, it costs twice that rate for T-Mobile WiFi service in the U.S. Per day.
I was just watching Walter Mossberg complain about broadband service in the U.S. (Mossberg is the Wall Street Journal's technology writer.) He is correct. The Japanese are way ahead.
As another example, in Japan "One Seg" is getting quite popular. With One Seg you can watch digital television on a mobile telephone, free. The picture quality is quite reasonable. One Seg doesn't work while riding subways underground, but for a 90 minute typical commute into work about 60 minutes will probably be above ground. For the other 30 there's always 3G mobile e-mail and Web browsing which does work in the subway tunnels.
If that's not enough, Livedoor has blanketed about 80% of central Tokyo with WiFi service. That's only 525 yen per month. For comparison, it costs twice that rate for T-Mobile WiFi service in the U.S. Per day.
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