This week, we’re taking a look at flaws in the OECD broadband study and the problems with relying on it to justify broadband policy changes.  One of the oft cited examples of countries doing broadband “right” is Japan.  Ironically, Japan usually resides just below, or just above, the U.S. in the OECD rankings (in the latest rankings, they’re just below us).  Yet Japan still commands outsized adoration.

However, a closer look reveals that the nirvana of Japanese broadband has been greatly exaggerated.

The Miracle of Japanese Broadband

If Japan has been held up as the shining example of low-cost, high-speed connections available to all, how could they slip behind the US?

The short answer is they never were the beacon of broadband they were held out to be.  While the maximum speed available to “some” in Japan is 100 Mbps, the fact is that, in most cases, that is a theoretical top speed.  The problem is these studies often use “advertised speeds” rather than actual speeds.  Advertised speeds sometimes do not meet the promise.  Most Japanese FTTH providers also include caveats that such a speed is not guaranteed and will, in fact, be lower during times of congestion.

In reality, roughly half of Japanese broadband connections are carried over DSL at speeds nowhere near 100 Mbps.

Surely, though, even with the speed being less than claimed, the fact that it’s so much cheaper makes it okay, right?  Well, not exactly.  The dirty little secret that goes unspoken in discussions of Japan’s low-cost ISPs is the fact that you have to subscribe to two different services to get an equivalent product to that offered in the US.  For example, not only would you subscribe for the network connection (essentially the equivalent of getting the physical line), but you also have to subscribe to an ISP (the network in Japan is divorced from the content).

For access to a 100 megabit connection and Yahoo! ISP service, you’ll be forking out between $55 and $60.  You may reach peak speeds at 2 a.m. when nobody is surfing, but the cost is not significantly different as a monthly outlay.  While some studies look at this calculation as the cost per 100,000 bits per second per month, it’s hard to actually quantify that if your speed is not guaranteed (or even static).

Looking at the OECD stats, we’ve already uncovered problems with the definition of subscription and the mathematical issues that result from their unit of measurement.  When other parties disseminate faulty and misleading information about cost and speed metrics, one realizes that most of the discussions about global broadband are largely anecdotal and not at all scientific.

As we have said throughout this series, there is a conversation to be had about ways to encourage broadband adoption.  That conversation, however, should be driven by facts, not anecdotal evidence and faulty math.

In our next installment, we’ll look at the challenges the U.S. faces getting people online.