Three Lessons Americans Can Learn from Japan's Success in Broadband

dahamsta

[Worth reading in full. Via IP. --adam]

Three Lessons Americans Can Learn from Japan's Success in Broadband
IKEDA Nobuo
Senior Fellow, RIETI

Recently it is rare to hear news of Japan's success, but the broadband business might offer an exception. The number of DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) subscribers tripled within a year to more than 6 million in Japan(refer to MPHPT's table). This is the fastest growth of DSL users in the world, leading to a number of its users second only to South Korea.

On the other hand, the United States is becoming "the Bangladesh of broadband," according to Gordon Cook, the publisher of the Cook Report on Internet. Hundreds of CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) invested in DSL during the dot-com boom, but most of them went bust when the bubble burst. Why did Japan's policy work while the American 1996 Telecommunications Act resulted in the massacre of CLECs? Here are my tentative answers.

[...]

dahamsta

[Follow-up on IP. --adam]

>Broadband subscribers in Japan (source MPHPT)
>
>              DSL        Fiber      Cable        Total
>Aug.'02   3,915,740     99,404    1,758,000    5,773,144
>Sept.     4,223,216    114,608    1,800,000    6,137,824
>Oct.      4,639,545    138,030    1,852,000    6,629,575
>Nov.      5,117,867    172,344    1,901,000    7,191,211
>Dec.      5,645,728    206,189    1,954,000    7,805,917
>Jan.'03   6,119,883    233,072    1,992,000    8,344,955
>Feb.      6,589,867    263,144    2,028,000    8,881,011
>Mar.      7,023,039    305,387    2,069,000    9,397,426
>Apr.      7,477,945    346,936    2,135,000    9,959,881
>May       7,907,437    398,336    2,183,000   10,488,773
>Jun.      8,257,118    458,293    2,224,000   10,939,411
>Jul.      8,541,340    531,332    2,283,000   11,355,672
>Aug.      8,881,039    608,045    2,304,000   11,793,084
>
>Households: 46,782,000 (Japanese Population Census, 2000, MPHPT)

Ripwave

Moreover, aggressive entrants and honest incumbents are indispensable for the proliferation of broadband.

That's us *$%!+# then

Jorinn

Six fold increase in fiber connections.....

spongebob

No Fibre here, no mandatory ducting for it in the building regulations despite the recommendations of the Civil Service a year and a half ago.

Only Limerick seems to have some systematic policies in place <respect>

M