Re: Japan and Internet Stats
Thread- Ray thanks for the url.
Gee no wonder when I listen to equipment vendors CC's they always say, "Asia, ex-Japan, reports rapid growth of xx%!" I had no idea Japan was so far behind in broadband access. I do know most companies report Asia as, "excluding Japan." What a discombobulated government. They apparently hinder standards that make sense, while promoting those that don't. Take their high definition-TV program from years and years ago. And take ISDN as a recent example.
IMVHO, ironically Japan takes the very early initiative to promote a technology before it becomes proven. And the government seems to have such a powerful influence as to eliminate what may be better competing technologies. -MikeM(From Florida)
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Moreover, the Japanese telephone industry invested heavily in an early version of a digital technology known as ISDN -- a type of phone service much slower than DSL and only slightly faster than modem data sent over a standard, analog phone line that many people in the United States still use for Internet access.
Although NTT has recently made overtures to the American DSL companies, industry executives said that the telecom giant was in no rush to invest in DSL -- in part because it is still anxious to retrieve its investment in ISDN.
For all the landline forces working against him, though, the biggest challenge to Kobayashi's vision of wiring Japan has nothing to do with wires at all. Just the opposite, in fact. The Japanese are heading onto the Internet in droves -- by wireless means.
Currently, according to InfoCom Research, there are between 20 million and 27 million Internet users in Japan, or approximately one of every five people in the nation. Of that number, nearly half -- some 10 million -- are connecting to the Internet wirelessly. Of these wireless customers, 7.5 million are using a service called i-mode, offered by NTT DoCoMo, NTT's wireless division. For nearly two of three i-mode users, this wireless link is their only method of access to the Internet.
InfoCom forecasts that the percent of Japanese population connected wirelessly to the Internet will increase to more than 85 percent by 2003, compared with only about 60 percent connected by fixed-line networks. |
