Broadband japanese style

Yes. there are'nt so many crazy consumers over here.

I visit Japan on business and see the young crowding around window displays of the latest gadgets. The streets of Tokyo are filled with shops selling about 30 different versions of everything that's new in electronica, and they are buying it like crazy.
This is great environment to fund speed of change so the providers of both the systems and the equipment for their mobil systems and other computer comms, are confident they will get enough revenue so they leverage R&D with much higher investment than we typically do.

The other irony is they don't suffer from the sort of short term panic which drove the price of 3G licences in several European countries to ridiculous heights that represent virtual bankruptcy for the providers if theymake one false move.

The final and amazing thing is the collective loyalty of Japanese consumers to all things Japanese to the point where they pay "top dollar" in Japan for products that the likes of SONY sells at almost "dumping" level prices in other places in the world. The fact that they have to work all hours god sends to earn their money is one of the less atrractive aspects of the Japanese way of life


regards
GEOFF

Listening every day planning to "not fade away"

I have a stupidly 'wide' broadband connection at work, but at the mo' I haven't found the content to consider bothering to pay for it. Where it does help is that you can have loads of things downloading without anything slowing down (ie multiple movies on demand when Kazaa was busy), but I rarely find that stuff comes off the web at more than 1mbyte/sec. I guess when the content is there, it will become more interesting.

I am on broadband in Japan at the moment (though having just moved I have temporarily lost it as the telephone number is being changed over, another 10 days, so they say. I forgot to pre-order the ADSL changeover before the move) 100Mbit is available, but costs quite a bit more than the regular 12 or 24Mbit plans. I have the 12Mbit plan, which costs less than 20GBP per month. Of course, I don't get 12Mbit. Using the various tests available on the net for ADSL I seem to get about 3.4Mbit download 1.2Mbit upload, or around those figures. It's fast enough for me and can download 25MB files in under a minute. Pages are more or less instantaneous. The 24Mbit plan is another fiver a month and the 100 more again.

How much is ADSL in UK now?

New technology in Japan is generally affordable after the 'first wave' of buyers have had their pick. There are a lot of magazines which hype the latest toys so you know what to and what not to buy. The new generation of mobiles (one-to-one videophone, internet, TV etc) cost about 150GBP and maybe 40-50GBP per month.

Peter

I too am on broadband in Japan. 100 meg fibre, and my "council house" came cabled for it. Just plug a patch into the wall and go - no faffing around with extra boxes.

Chiba,
did you check your private topics? Just asking as no activity there for some time.
Are you living in a 'danchi' apartment?

Nodrog - sorry, missed your reply, and yes, living in a kodan.