100Mbps connection

I think I may have mentioned it a few times but I will mention it again just for good measure - one of the great things about having your own house in Tokyo is that you get to install a 100MB optic fiber internet connection without having to ask some deranged, warped sick landlord (do I give the slight impression that I don't like landlords?) Anyway - am I over the moon or am I over the moon? fiber To The Home (known as FTTH) has been around in Japan for some two years now but has only been available in some areas and costed a bomb - now FTTH is all over the place and the costs are trivial - we had FTTH installed recently - waited only 7 days before the 3 guys from NTT (Japans main telecommunications company) came to do their thang. And how much did all this cost? NOTHING! I managed to sign up during their campaign period which meant ZERO yen for the installation fee and ZERO yen for the next 3 months! I would have to pay 5000 yen after that though (about 50 USD).

Above: 3 blokes came - one of them is routing the optic fiber from some device while one other guy stands guard below the ladder guiding traffic and pedestrians. The 3rd person is in my room using some contraption (pictured below) to pull the fiber in to the house. The fiber is encased in a hard plastic sleeve but if you end up cutting it my accident (or in most cases have your gerbil gnaw on the cable) then you don't have a hope in hell of fixing it as the 3rd guy used some equipment (which looked like they dug up from an alien base on Mars) to attach to the modem.

Below: The device with "NTT" on it is the FTTH modem. The Airstation is our router which we got while we were living in Seattle - I chose the Japanese brand Buffalo and was glad I did because it works in Japan too. The black device is our NAS (Network Attached Storage) which also just happens to be a Linux box and the small silver device is a super compact 8 port hub.

Below: Using the site here I eagerly tested the speed and while I did not get 100Mbps, I managed to get an average of 61Mbps down and 58Mbps up - yep - the speed is roughly the same uploading too. Its things like this which make me rather happy that I live in Tokyo - especially when I visit London. I am in London as I write this post. My mum does not have broadband and am having to dial up (ouch) - but the rest of London seems to be on dailup too when compared to the FTTH connection speeds in Tokyo! British Telecom (they changed their logo for a 3rd time and it looks crap by the way) seem to be offering the fastest speeds - they just came out with a 2 ("......")Mbps connection which is better than nothing I suppose but for some reason, they put a cap of 30GB usage on even their most expensive package (29.99 pounds) - that's ten pounds more than what I will be paying for my FTTH connection in Tokyo! (which does not include any usage cap) Nuff said - no more London bashing - I did grow up here after all. Actually I may have to give it a bit of a bashing in a later post but will include some good stuff about London too :-)

There are other companies like Tepco (which is run by Tokyo's Electric company) but while they offer up to 6 months free - you still have to pay for the installation which costs about 40,000 yen and on top of that you have to wait up to a month to get it. The government started to invest heavily in broadband after they discovered that they were being beaten silly by the Koreans where roughly 80% of households are broadband enabled. Now it seems that Japan is the leading country in the world in terms of speed, cost and coverage.