Japan Offers World's Fastest Broadband Speeds

Reviewed by Takahiro MIYAO

Article:
Japan Offers World's Fastest Broadband Speeds
Pocket-lint, UK (9/15/2008)
http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/
17636/18660/Japan-tops-world-broadband-study.phtml

Comments:

It is reported that Japan has the fastest broadband connection speeds in the world, according to a recent study conducted by a team of MBA students at Oxford and Oviedo University, sponsored by Cisco Systems (see the link above). Japan is followed by Sweden, Netherlands, Latvia, Korea, Switzerland, Lithuania, Denmark, Germany and Slovenia, making the top 10, while the US is ranked 16th among the 42 countries surveyed. No wonder why this news is reported only in the UK and some European countries, but not in the US except a minor tech paper.

While it may be true that broadband connection speeds are the fastest in Japan, this does not necessarily mean that Japan offers the best broadband services or contents for Internet users. In fact, the utilization rate of broadband services is disturbingly low in Japan, compared to other countries such as the US and Korea. In other words, Japan fails to exploit the available capacity of its broadband connections to the fullest extent, while the government and the private sector, mainly NTT, are wasting financial as well as human resources in expanding broadband capacity by constructing a nation-wide optic fiber network system without regard for its content or usage.

Therefore, more efforts should be made to utilize rather than speed up broadband services in business, households and society at large in Japan. For example, the government, local communities and private businesses should work together to offer public high-speed Wi-Fi (wireless LAN) network services all over Japan, so that anyone can gain access to broadband services with his or her PC or keitai anywhere without paying high fees to a handful of communications companies.

Acknowledgment:
This review is adopted from the following blog (with its Japanese translation):
http://glocom.blog59.fc2.com/blog-date-20080916.html