Too-Much-TV

Ian Thorpe, flowers and US ears

Twice now Ian Thorpe's stuck a bunch of flowers in the US competitor's face during the podium photograph.

During the 400 freestyle ceremony he put his non-flower encumbered hand around Grant Hackett's shoulder, and the flowers in Klete Keller's face. After the 200 freestyle today his clear hand went around van den Hoogenband, and the flowers to Michael Phelps. One more time and you'd think it might be deliberate...

(OK, so I find the first week of the Olympics boring. Still watching at 2:30AM, but it's definitely a little boring. Except Yawara-chan of course.)

Broadband Japan: users June 2004

Download japanbbsubsJune04.xls

Broadband subscribers in Japan, end of June 2004.

DSL 12,068,718 (11,819,177)
Fiber 1,417,483 (1,327,775)
Cable 2,702,000 (2,661,000)
Total 16,188,201 (15,807,952)

New subscribers for the month below 400,000 for the first time since September 2002. July will likely see a further drop.

Study reported in the Nikkei last week breaks down numbers for March 2004 by market share:
1. Softbank 35.8%
2. NTT East 20.4%
3. NTT West 16.1%
4. eAccess 13.4%
5. Acca Networks 10.4%

NTT's combined share is larger, but Softbank seen as the market leader. eAccess boosted sales when it introduce a 40Mbps service ahead of rivals (see http://www.too-much.tv/glocomish/2004/02/more_from_the_n.html), but dropped back again since and its market share on the year dropped 0.1%.