Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
By Ryan Womack, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, June 24, 2009 - Actual costs in the price of residential broadband in Japan are both cheaper and faster than those in the United States, according to a new report from the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative.
Chiehyu Li, a research fellow of the NAF, assembled a price comparison of residential broadband that includes types of broadband - cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), and fiberoptics - and the speeds and which these prices include.
Japan's most extensive incumbent telephone provider Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) has focused on fiber-optic lines, in competition with Yahoo! BB and @nifty, offering downloading speeds ranging up to 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) to 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps).
The U.S.’s principal fiber -optic broadband provider is Verizon Communications, with downstream speeds of 10-50 Mbps. The comparison shows fiber in Japan costs around $25-56 per month, or $0.06-0.70 per megabit) for condominium residencies and $55-67 ($0.03-0.60 per megabit) for single house residencies, still less that Verizon's $50-145 per month ($2.90-5.00 per megabit).
The same three Japanese companies compete in the DSL and cable service fields, with speeds up to 8-50 Mbps with costs around $30-60 per month ($0.40-$32.00 per megabit), but there is...
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