and TAD:
Your average high end computer today (and for the past several years) would have no problem pushing out 90GB per hour…much less per day as you speculate. Welcome to the 21st century.

US broadband is weak, borderline shameful, but getting better.

Hilarious! You’re a funny guy Michael.

If that’s your one argument, perhaps you should go back and read the many arguments that people in the comments on that thread made dismantling it. For instance:

These caps are equal to 3% of a user’s upload 24/7. In Comcast’s area, that would be 324 MB a day for 6/1 service, or 9.7 GB a month.

These caps are much, much worse for the service offered than Comcast’s rumored 250 GB cap or the actual 400+ GB cap they currently use to remove excessive users from their network today.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Long-Awaited-Japanese-Caps-Arrive-930GB-Per-Month-95580

Have a nice day.

-Dustin

There are a large number of companies looking at new technolgies for delivering broadband. There are companies looking to serve broadband over power lines, via satellite, through wirelesss technologies, etc. etc. All of these will have different constraints.

With cable, the constraint is generally due to analog television channels carried on the same wire. For every channel migrated from the analog to the digital tier, cable can free up bandwidth for other things. As they have moved toward digital delivery they have increased bandwidth speeds, but they have also used that capacity to roll out services like OnDemand.

The Comcast pilot underway in the Twin cities is using that recovered capacity to test the DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems and delivering 50mpbps. Using the DOCSIS 3.0 channel bonding technology, cable companies are looking at increasing speeds up to 160mbps and beyond. That’s going to take some time to roll out nationwide, but it’s coming.

Now, not all cable operators have the same capabilities, but as they continue to upgrade their facilities they’ll be able to provide different and faster services.

However, you can’t just build your way out of the problem. As cable adds more capacity, application developers will write programs that consume more bandwidth. That’s why the industry is also working with developers to identify ways they can optimize their applications to strike a balance between network performance and not placing burdens on others.

$50 for 100mbs line in Japan….US Telcoms would have NO business. The only reason that US telecoms make money is that they are a monopoly and really don’t compete. Guess I live in LA—I want ATT service, but cannot get it since ATT will not compete with guess who–Verizon. ATT will service 1 block over, but not my block. I can see their ads but cannot get them. So my real choices are cable vs. verizon–some choice–NOT! Maybe in the far future when there are four or more choices, Verizon will increase my speed without me paying more or give me more services. I talk to my friends in Holland—for what we pay for, it is pretty bad for what parts of W. Europe get.

Nobody is badmouthing Japanese Internet providers. What the original post attempted to do is point out that Japanese broadband a) doesn’t quite live up to the hype it gets in some circles, and b) is actually more expensive when you consider the fact that you’re paying for two different services. If you wanted to, you could also include c) suffers from many of the same troubles that plague American broadband.

As an example, you are correct about your “up-to” number. That’s really no different in Japanese ISPs. Shared node networks will always have difficulty in guaranteeing throughput because heavy users put a drag on everyone else’s connection.

That’s what OCN was attempting to deal with in imposing the cap and what American ISPs have attempted to deal with through network management practices and caps.

Do the Japanese benefit from population density that makes running fiber more cost-efficient when compared to the long hauls US ISPs have to run? Yes they do. Does that enable them to provide upgrades to their core network in ways that are more expensive in the US? Yes it does.

However, the Japanese have clearly demonstrated that you can’t simply build your way out of bandwidth constraints. Once they upgraded their network, traffic expanded quickly to consume all the available capacity. They’re now being forced, despite that increased capacity, to implement the same types of caps you see in the US.

The ONLY large ISP in America that comes even close to competing with that is Verizon, with their FiOS service, which as it sits currently has no bandwidth caps. Time-Warner, Comcast, Cox, all have limits much lower than OCN.

Sure, you can go on about how the japanese consumers might not be getting full 100mbit service, but the last time I called my cable provider about not recieving the full advertised speed I was subscribed to, I was quite clearly told that this was an up-to number.

Now coming back to what is advertised and what is offered. You rightly say that speeds as advertised are not always the same as customers receive. But then again, none of your members is claiming the same. Let’s have a look at Docsis 3.0. It’s a great technology, but it is a shared medium. I do hope your members are not claiming that end-users can all watch HD-TV over IP when using Docsis 3.0 because that will breakdown pretty quickly. 160mbit/s shared over multiple users is not alot.

However, in Japan local loop lengths are alot shorter than in the US. Many times the DSL equipment is within 100 meters of the end-user, since it is installed in the basement of the appartment builings many Japanese live in. So the advertised 100Mbit/s can be easily achieved using VDSL2 (Michael Turk ADSL is a primitive technology, we’ve moved on)

Now if you want’t to cite something that the US is leading in, name the Fiber deployments. You’re doing better there than most of Europe. (oh wait, that’s Verizon)

But what does Hikari One cost this is the FTTH service of KDDI: Well you can get it for 73 dollars, 100mbit, telephony and television. http://www.kddi.com/english/dion/connection_services/ftth/hikari-one.html

Even more fun it’s to look at what the French are paying. Free.fr has an Internet, TV, and telephony offer (with HD-TV, remote viewing of tv, unlimited calling to 70 countries etc) for 30 euros.
(When comparing prices assume a 1 on 1 price parity between dollars and euros, the dollar has devalued quite alot in a small period of time, or did your income also rise with 60%?)

All in all, the conclusion is quite simple. The US is lagging, using any and all available statistics. None of the argument brought forward here change that fact in any significant way.