Too-Much-TV

FTTH increasing - March '04 broadband stats

Download japanbbsubsmar04.xls

Number of broadband subscribers in Japan, end of March 2004.

DSL 11,196,830 (10,904,236)
Fiber 11,196,830 (1,042,776)
Fiber 1,142,335 (1,042,776)
Cable 2,578,000 (2,546,000)
Total 14,917,165 (14,493,012)

DSL increase again just below 300,000/month. But fiber subs are now pushing 100,000/month for the first time (99,559 gain in March.) Almost 32% of households.

The Telecommunications Business Law revised last year and being implemented now, would force NTT East and West to allow other carriers access to its fiber network. NTT is also fighting a Fair Trade Commission cease and desist order claiming the NTT charges competitors higher fiber network access fees than it set as the monthly fee for it's retail fiber to the home service in violation of the anti-monopoly law.

Broadband in Italy and Sweden

Powerpoint about broadband in Italy and Sweden (file size about 1M.)

The presentation was in January, and most of the research done in July 2003 -- so parts are dated. But I think the conclusion is sound: eBiscom is the most advanced broadband company, beats everything going on in Japan and Korea. The only provider, large scale and out of "pilot", I've heard of that's offering fully integrated services, a real triple play.

I've used the notes function so there's a quite detailed description of each slide. Try to describe and compare the two leading European broadband companies, Bredbandsbolaget (Bredband or B2) in Sweden, and eBiscom in Italy.

Nikkei: Japan Broadband cheapest and fastest

Last Wednesday's (April 21) Nikkei describes a new report from the OECD claiming that Japanese companies are offering the cheapest and fastest broadband services:

"The survey, which was conducted in October 2003, shows Japanese companies leading the pack with KDDI Corp., NTT East Corp. and usen Corp. offering throughput of 100 megabits per second with their fiber-optic networks.

In addition, no foreign firms matched the copper phone line-based digital subscriber line (DSL) service of eAccess Ltd., another Japanese firm, featuring a throughput of 40 mbps."

[Yahoo!BB launched a 45Mbps DSL service at the end of January 2004.)]

"Three services offered by two Japanese companies made the list of the world's cheapest services, among those with throughput of at least 10 mbps. They are the 12-mbps Yahoo BB service of Yahoo Japan Corp., at 19.09 dollars per month; KDDI's 100-mbps service, which costs 20.07 dollars; and Yahoo BB's 26-mbps service, at 20.54 dollars."

I think Nikkei must be referring to the forthcoming "OECD Information Technology Outlook 2004", there's no new broadband/telecomms report (at the moment) on the OECD's website http://www.oecd.org

FTTH: over 1 million subscribers

Download japanbbsubsfeb04.xls

Number of broadband subscribers in Japan, end of February 2004.

DSL 10,904,236 (10,612,671)
Fiber 1,042,776 (960,926)
Cable 2,546,000 (2,510,000)
Total 14,493,012 (14,083,597)

About 31% of households.

Now over 1 million subscribers on Fiber. But DSL increase below 300,000/month for the first time since July 2003.

Roadmap to Tunis

The first preparatory meeting for the Tunis phase of WSIS will be held from 24 to 26 June 2004, in Hammamet (Tunisia). Information about the Hammamet PrepCom can be found here http://www.itu.int/wsis/preparatory2/hammamet/index.html.

One of the PrepCom's tasks will be to agree on the structure and mechanisms for the second phase of WSIS, and a recent meeting of the WSIS government bureau produced a draft "Roadmap" document describing the process to Tunis. Problem, the Roadmap's very wrong about the Internet governance working group. Suggested corrected version: Download roadmap_ajp.doc (Word document, view with track changes on.)

The govt. bureau's incorrect draft here http://www.itu.int/council/wsis/Geneva2_04/roadmap-18-04.doc