Japans super high speed internet cost?

[Colt45]

Originally posted by: ed21x

by that argument, you have around 9 million residents in a 300 sq mile area of New York City, and a metropolitan population of over 19 million, which is pretty much as dense as Seoul per unit area. And internet still sucks in NYC. I think the greatest factor by far is the fact that the internet infrastructure in asia is subsidized by the government and given priority much like a utility company, while in the US, it is completely privitized and even worse, given its own monopoly.

this

 

[Newbian]

Hey... as long as they keep us supplied with tentacle pr0n I don't care if they have a bit faster connection.

 

[Toonces]

I :heart: my NTT FLETS 100Mbps connection.

Text

 

[theprodigalrebel]

I pay $20 a month for 512kbps, the 1Mbps option is $50. Fuck that.

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: Bignate603

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: Bignate603
Comparing Japan to the US for cost to wire up homes isn't a fair comparison. Population density in Japan makes it easier to wire up a huge amount of homes with less work. I do think that cable companies can do it cheaper and faster than they do, but unless we want to live packed together much more than we do right now it will always cost more to connect up broadband.

the overwhelming majority of japanese live in cities

the overwhelming majority of americans live in suburbs around cities

Fixed. The majority live around metropolitan areas in a humongous sprawl that is far less densely packed than Japanese or European cities.

most people in japan and europe live in 'suburbs' too, they just aren't zoned as separate cites. For that matter, i don't think any major city anywhere quite matches the density of say, chicago or manhattan.

There is a huge difference between Asian 'suburbs' and US suburbs. For example, the fifth largest city in population in Illinois is Naperville (neighboring Aurora is second) with a density of 1,401 per square kilometer. It's pure residential suburbia. The city of Chicago has a density of 4,816 per square kilometer and Chicagoland is 509 per square kilometer.

Hong Kong, the entire SAR, has a density of 6,054.5 per square kilometer, and less than a quarter of the area is actually developed. A 'suburb' like Sha Tin has a density 6 times of Naperville. Yuen Long has a density three times, and this is including wetlands parks and country parks.

For Japan, let's take Osaka. It has a density of 11,893 per square kilometer. Osaka prefecture has a density of 4,664. The city of Osaka and its suburbs have a population density almost equal to the city of Chicago itself.

 

[skace]

Maybe if large cities had 160Mbps on the cheap people would feel more inclined to move back into cities?

 

[freegeeks]

this is wat you get in France from ISP "Free"

100 Mbit down / 50 Mbit up unmetered internet
Unlimited phone calls in France
IPTV HD service (150 channels)

30 euro / month

if you are not in one of their FTTH regions, you get the same thing on ADSL2+ (28 Mbit down / 1 Mbit up)

Free revenue was 1,2 billion euro / net profit was 150 million euro (they are one of the most profitable ISP in the world)


If the distance argument was true, as as Belgian I should enjoy some of the fastest and cheapest internet in the world. Belgium is basically 10 million people cramped in a small country all living in cities. We had stupid internet caps here since there was broadband. My Dutch friends 100 km to the north and French friends 100 km to the south all enjoy faster uncapped internet, with more services (IPTV, VoIP) for basically half the price.

Luckily, because of better regulation and more competition on the Belgian market, we are slowly moving away from caps

 

[Modular]

Originally posted by: freegeeks
Luckily, because of better regulation and more competition on the Belgian market, we are slowly moving away from caps

Just as we are moving into them here in the states :disgust:

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: OCguy
No shit? It is a fucking island. You cannot compare.

So is Manhattan... yet we don't consumer internet packages for anywhere near that high speed or low cost there. Hmm...

 

[PokerGuy]

Sad to see this country fall back in yet another field behind other countries. We choose to play politics and greedy ISP's effectively leverage local politics to stifle innovation and competition. :|

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Originally posted by: PlatinumGold

Originally posted by: Wheezer
Text

If you get excited about the prospect of really, really fast broadband Internet service, here?s a statistic that will make heart race. Or your blood boil. Or both.

Pretty much the fastest consumer broadband in the world is the 160-megabit-per-second service offered by J:Com, the largest cable company in Japan. Here?s how much the company had to invest to upgrade its network to provide that speed:$20 per home passed.

The cable modem needed for that speed costs about $60, compared with about $30 for the current generation.

By contrast, Verizon is spending an average of $817 per home passed to wire neighborhoods for its FiOS fiber optic network and another $716 for equipment and labor in each home that subscribes, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

Those numbers from Japan came from Michael T. Fries, the chief executive of Liberty Global, the American company that operates J:Com.

His larger point: ?To me, this just isn?t an expensive capital investment,? he said.

The experience in Japan suggests that the major cable systems in the United States might be able to increase the speed of their broadband service by five to 10 times right away. They might not need to charge much more for it than they do now and they?d still make as much money.

The cable industry here uses the same technology as J:Com. And several vendors said that while the prices Mr. Fries quoted were on the low side, most systems can be upgraded for no more than about $100 per home, including a new modem. Moreover, the monthly cost of bandwidth to connect a home to the Internet is minimal, executives say.

So what?s wrong with this picture in the United States? The cable companies, like Comcast and Cablevision, that are moving quickly to install the fast broadband technology, called Docsis 3, are charging as much as $140 a month for 50 Mbps service. Meanwhile other companies, like Time Warner Cable, are moving much more slowly to upgrade.

Competition, or the lack of it, goes a long way to explaining why the fees are higher in the United States. There is less competition in the United States than in many other countries. Broadband already has the highest profit margins of any product cable companies offer. Like any profit-maximizing business would do, they set prices in relation to other providers and market demand rather than based on costs.

Pricing at Liberty varies widely by market. In Japan, its 160 Mbps service costs 6,000 yen ($60) per month. That?s only $5 a month more than the price of its basic 30 Mbps service. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, it charges 80 euros ($107) for 120 Mbps service and 60 euros ($81) for 60 Mbps. Mr. Fries said that he expected these prices would fall over time.

?Our margins go up,? he said. ?But we are delivering more value.?

Cable executives have given several reasons for why many cable systems in the United States are going very slowly in upgrading to Docsis 3. There?s little competition in areas not served by Verizon?s FiOS system, which soon will offer 50 Mbps service. And some argue there isn?t that much demand for super-high speed.

Mr. Fries added another: Fear. Other cable operators, he said, are concerned that not only will prices fall, but that the super-fast service will encourage customers to watch video on the Web and drop their cable service.

The industry is worried that by offering 100 Mbps, they are opening Pandora?s box, he said. Everyone will be able to get video on the Internet, and then competition will bring the price for the broadband down from $80 to $60 to $40.

Aren?t you worried that the prices will fall too? I asked.

?Maybe,? he said very slowly. ?We?ll see how it happens. We want to keep it up there for now. It is a premium service.?

ya, what it cost verizon to roll out fios to each house is really relevant here. ;roll: it costs verizon significantly more because it is new infrastructure. once the fiber is in place, verizon can increase speeds with very very minimal investments, at the rate of Cents / house not dollars per house, hence they made the move to fiber. cable company's with docsis 3 will be able to compete for a short period of time, but looking 10 to 15 years in the future, fiber has a huge advantage, hence verizon decided to invest so much more into fiber to the premises, vs cable companies and AT&T's fiber to the communities.

This is the same reason companies have fiber backbones internally. We run fiber as much as possible (which for us is from the core of the network all the way to the distribution closets where we have to use copper from there since our PC's don't have fiber cards in them), and then all we have to do is upgrade our equipment and can immediately get speed benefits.

For example, we just went from 10 mbit to 10/100 mbit at the desk (our applications rarely made that 10 mbit limit). Because of the fiber to the closet, all we had to do was buy new switches. We will be able to do the same with gigabit equipment in the future for minimal cost.

ISPs have the same thing, once that backbone is in place all you need to do is upgrade the equipment to offer more speed.

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: KeithTalent
Competition may be part of it, but there is also a lot less land to cover in Japan, which would help reduce costs by quite a bit I would think. I also think this has been discussed ad nauseum here before.

KT

exactly. Japan has 10X the population density of most of the U.S. It is a lot cheaper to get everyone bandwidth.

 

[PokerGuy]

Originally posted by: rudder

Originally posted by: KeithTalent
Competition may be part of it, but there is also a lot less land to cover in Japan, which would help reduce costs by quite a bit I would think. I also think this has been discussed ad nauseum here before.

KT

exactly. Japan has 10X the population density of most of the U.S. It is a lot cheaper to get everyone bandwidth.

The population density argument might hold some water in terms of the cost of providing high speed bandwidth to the homes, but it doesn't explain why consumers elsewhere have no caps or fewer caps, while here in the US ISP's are moving towards more caps and restrictions, in addition to slower speeds.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: rudder

Originally posted by: KeithTalent
Competition may be part of it, but there is also a lot less land to cover in Japan, which would help reduce costs by quite a bit I would think. I also think this has been discussed ad nauseum here before.

KT

exactly. Japan has 10X the population density of most of the U.S. It is a lot cheaper to get everyone bandwidth.

I can understand that argument if the service is available but very expensive, but the issue is the availability. It just doesn't exist.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: rudder

Originally posted by: KeithTalent
Competition may be part of it, but there is also a lot less land to cover in Japan, which would help reduce costs by quite a bit I would think. I also think this has been discussed ad nauseum here before.

KT

exactly. Japan has 10X the population density of most of the U.S. It is a lot cheaper to get everyone bandwidth.

But it isn't an all or nothing proposition. As was stated earlier, cities, and other densely populated areas could get a speed boost, but it isn't happening.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
Yeah, that Lafayette fiber service is nuts. Honestly I'd like to see more communities look into building fiber infrastructure and either running it themselves or leasing the lines out to multiple ISPs to encourage competition.

The best part is you don't even need to get the bumbling bureaucrats in DC involved. Run the idea by your city commission or something.

:thumbsup:

That's the way it should be done. Once enough of the voters are on board, let the city invest in the last mile infrastructure, then just let providers have access to the lines with a per user fee.

 

[13Gigatons]

LA, Chicago, NY should have superfast internet speed if the density problem was really an issue.

The telephone and cable companies just want to gouge people as long as they can get away with it.

 

[BoomerD]

If we tried that here, all the righties would come out crying "SOCIALISM!!" because gubment ain't-a spossed to be competin with bizness...:roll:

 

[uhohs]

mariko <3

 

[Homerboy]

So, I'd like to know, what would everyone do with 160Mbps service to your house that you cant do with your 8Mbps?

160Mbps in Japan is great.. for any website/location hosted on the island getting off the island and anywhere else you're still going to see a snails pace.

 

[Homerboy]

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
Yeah, that Lafayette fiber service is nuts. Honestly I'd like to see more communities look into building fiber infrastructure and either running it themselves or leasing the lines out to multiple ISPs to encourage competition.

The best part is you don't even need to get the bumbling bureaucrats in DC involved. Run the idea by your city commission or something.

:thumbsup:

That's the way it should be done. Once enough of the voters are on board, let the city invest in the last mile infrastructure, then just let providers have access to the lines with a per user fee.

I have to look into this Lafayette deal more closely.... thats great they ran fiber all around the city and connected everyone's house up on the cheap. But what does all that fiber connect back too? Lafayette running their own network now? Who are they buying upstream from? No body is going to peer with them... what their ASN?

Having 10Gige to your house is great, but if the other end is connected to shit, who cares?

Edit: Im guessing: Lafayette Consolidated Government AS 25921 is the network their service is running through. That being said, looks like they are mumtihomed through AT&T and Qwest (Which is interesting since previous poster said BellSouth (AT&T) tried to kill the project).

Who's footing that bill for the upstream connectivity? if they had only a single 10Gige upstream (thats only 200 people leaching at 50MBps mind you....) that's tens of thousands a month. Whos paying for that in their taxes? Bandwidth, even from you at-home ISP isn't free people.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: uhohs
mariko <3

wtf

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: BoomerD
If we tried that here, all the righties would come out crying "SOCIALISM!!" because gubment ain't-a spossed to be competin with bizness...:roll:

Actually anyone with an IQ over 50 knows that if the US Government ran fiber to your house, they will put a filter on it.

They are already talking about censoring subsidized broadband.

 

[ZetaEpyon]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
most people in japan and europe live in 'suburbs' too, they just aren't zoned as separate cites. For that matter, i don't think any major city anywhere quite matches the density of say, chicago or manhattan.

You have obviously never been to Tokyo.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

People love to yell and shout about how you can't compare population densities, blah blah, but at least you would have decent internet in the highly densely populated areas of the US like... NEW JERSEY or Manhattan, or hell the whole Northeast.

I think it's time to just admit that:

A) We're slower at deployment compared to Asia/Europe when it comes to tech like broadband, communication, etc.

B) We're behind the curve in general. The best example is cell phones. Just look at our shotty 3G networks and everything. Once again you can claim population density, etc, but when you have crappy reception and busy networks, then that means we not only failed to provide extensive coverage (If you wanna use the large area argument, here it is), but at the same time our networks have crappy capacity (so large area = fewer people/area right? then why do we have congestion issues compared to Asia?)

C) Everything in the US just costs a buttload.