Submitted by robataka on Fri, 12/02/2005 - 08:26.
I noticed this morning that MM Research Institute of Japan released the recent broadband statistics for Japan. More than 21 million people/organizations now subscribe to broadband access. The bulk of that is ADSL, but close to 4 million are subscribers to fiber-to-the-home. Interestingly enough, I was on the phone until 2AM the other day helping my sister-in-law(yes, she's in Japan) set up here FTTH 100Mbps connection.
The interesting thing about the FTTH statistic is that FTTH now surpasses CATV internet access.
Of course, FTTH is so much faster, and only costs about $40-$50/month, although that does not include the ISP charge which can be as low as $10/month. Of course, if you throw on VoIP, and considering that EVERYBODY has a cell phone in Japan, increasingly folks are cancelling their land lines.
I remember doing some testing where I was downloading CDs (640Mb) in 5-7 minutes, and DVDs in about 30-40 minutes. Of course, I had to search out a download site that wouldn't throttle download speeds and those were few and far between. The speed though is amazing.
Printer-friendly version
Regarding Japan, that 21
Regarding Japan, that 21 million figure is a huge jump over 7,806,000 broadband subscribers as of Dec/02... triple vs. US about double in the same timeframe. With a population of 127,000,000 (wow that's a lot for such a small country), that represents about 17% of people in Japan have broadband access. By the end of 2005 the US will have a population of around 300,000,000 and around 41,000,000 broadband users, representing 14%. Almost none of that is 100 Mbps/fiber nor will it be any time soon.
If you are interested in this, check out http://www.internetworldstats.com/