The NYT Compares Broadband Upgrade Costs in US, Japan

zxjio writes with this excerpt from a New York Times article about just how much networking infrastructure costs vary between the US and Japan: "Pretty much the fastest consumer broadband in the world is the 160-megabit-per-second service offered by J:Com, the largest cable company in Japan. Here's how much the company had to invest to upgrade its network to provide that speed: $20 per home passed. ... Verizon is spending an average of $817 per home passed to wire neighborhoods for its FiOS fiber optic network and another $716 for equipment and labor in each home that subscribes, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. ... The experience in Japan suggests that the major cable systems in the United States might be able to increase the speed of their broadband service by five to 10 times right away. They might not need to charge much more for it than they do now and they would still make as much money."

Thank you captain obvious

[TrentTheThief]

Of course verizon is going to milk its customers for every penny they can squeeze out. That what US telco's do.

Remember the bright star of ISDN? Yeah. Priced out of existence when simply selling in volume could have made them a mint.

Verizon! Bring me a 100Mbps line.

High density = no digging

[cheebie]

And what is the population density in the areas where they are installing this $20/house fiber optic? Do they need to trench through miles of yards to get the lines there? And how much time and resources do they have to exert fighting the local dictators in each and every state/county before they can even begin? A straight "it costs $x vs $y" comparison without looking at all the factors is useless.

about money, not efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean in the US it's all about making money? It's not about trying to do the rollout as efficiently as possible? Especially when they can repeatedly charge the customer for it? I'm shocked. Ahhhh, the joys of a hyper-capitalist society.

Re:High density = no digging

[mrobinso]

The Japanese aren't worryied about monetizing every inch of their infrastructure. Here in Canada we're 2 - 3 years behind in technology because the telcos are busy harnessing broadband, wired and otherwise, so they can add to shareholder value, and they have the wonderful auspices of Canada's oldest whorehouse, the CTRC, to protect them while they do.

Government protected, oligopolized hyper-capitalism is the new telecommunications mantra here. The end is nowhere in sight.

Re:High density = no digging

[tomhudson]

And what is the population density in the areas where they are installing this $20/house fiber optic? Do they need to trench through miles of yards to get the lines there? And how much time and resources do they have to exert fighting the local dictators in each and every state/county before they can even begin? A straight "it costs $x vs $y" comparison without looking at all the factors is useless.

So, according to your theory, high-density cities like New York should have broadband on a par with Japan.

Of course, this overlooks the fact tht in Japan, just as in New York, it's MORE expensive to trench in a high-density area than in the exurbs, where you can just quickly string the cable along existing utility poles.

final mile, not end-end

[petes_PoV]

screamingly fast connections are only useful if the box that is serving up content can keep up. That means that not only the end-server, but every node along the way, as well as the capacity of the cables/fibres is up to the job.

While it makes for nice, simplistic headlines (and even more simplistic marketing - along with unfulfillable expectations that just cause resentment and ill-feeling later) it's largely pointless. Far better for the providers to come up with a balanced delivery, than to go around having to make excuses for who someone's gigabit/second link is only running at 1MByte/s in real life.

Re:Things to remember

[nloop]

Did you read the article? I'm guessing no from your response.

The whole point of it was Japan used existing cable lines and upgraded it to docsis 3, which is cheap to do. There is no running of new cable to the highrises vs the suburbs. The article attributed the US's slow uptake of docsis 3 to lack of competition and fear of losing traditional cable services to streaming video. Not cost of adding new wire or running phone, which doesn't make any sense anyway because VoIP runs on cable just fine. The excessive cost is FiOS which is running new wire, but if the cable company wasn't asleep and upgraded their system before FiOS would be dead in the water.

Re:Things to remember

[kremvax]

>Most of Japan is high rises

>Also, a lot of the buildings in the US are older than those in Japan

You've clearly never ever been to Japan.

Why don't the cable companies upgrade? Monopoly.

[Futurepower(R)]

The article is badly written, it's true. However, the issue the article is trying to make clear is that there is a cheap way of providing much faster service: by upgrading cable service. Upgrading cable service doesn't require new cable, or work in the streets; it just requires new equipment at the central office and new modems for the customer.

The reason that the cable companies don't do that, apparently, is because in the U.S. they were granted poorly regulated monopolies. Therefore they can 1) lie to customers, 2) give poor service, and 3) give slow service, and still raise prices.

Re:High density = no digging

[jabithew]

You know, a state-protected oligopoly is hardly "hyper-capitalism".

Re:Crazy

[homey of my owney]

In Australia you suffer even more so than we do in the western US in that there's LOTS of space between A and B, making any infrastructure cost much higher than Japan where they measure that space in feet or inches.

Re:High density = no digging

[good soldier svejk]

You know, a state-protected oligopoly is hardly "hyper-capitalism".

Of course it is. Capitalism is an ownership model, not a market model.

Look at the Automotive Industry

[olddotter]

Are we really surprised that LARGE American companies keep whining that its too hard or expensive to offer high quality service that their customers want?

We are into 40 years of Detroit automakers largely ignoring what their customers want. As a result they were already in serious trouble before the current financial mess. Mean while Toyota and Honda were giving people what they wanted. High quality reasonably priced cars in the sizes and shapes people wanted. When we come out the other end of this mess its likely only Ford will survive and hopefully they will be more responsive to market demands.

I just hope someone American or foreign, comes in and shakes up the ISP/Cable/Phone market here the way that the Japanese car companies did the automotive industry.

Re:Crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

From a profit taking standpoint, they're doing exactly what they should be doing.

People that whine about infrastructure costs and the geographic area of the states are full of shit, and are falling for the same stale telco pablum they've been feeding us since the 80's. They're greedy, they don't actually compete with anyone (is anyone stupid enough to believe these Baby Bells aren't colluding with one another?), and most importantly, most consumers don't demand a higher quality of service from them and are in fact perfectly content to get screwed up the ass for what is pitifully mediocre service.

The technology is out there. We Americans either developed or helped develop a lot of it, and everybody is using it besides us. The incentives for improvement simply aren't there, and as long as the (heavily subsidized, perpetually price-hiking) telcos don't have any reason to improve, they won't.

Re:Crazy -Making the Same Error Repeatedly ...

[Herschel Cohen]

In the States (aka U.S. of A), tax payer money has been thrown at industries with neither oversight nor review of the lessons learned. For example, <i>American [U.S.]</i> industry, the eighty mile per gallon car resulted in the worst outcome. We got over sized SUVs and the <b>Bummer!</b>, albeit with the long term promise of pristine hydrogen powered electrics vehicles that we will probably never see. However, it scared the Japanese into action where without direct subsidies they were and are better positioned to produce vehicles with superior economy. Then we financed several build outs for the Internet, that resulted in the Telcos demanding more <i>return for their efforts</i>. Now we are savng the Banks and the Brokerage houses that caused our economic disaster. It is long past the time that the guilty should pay, with a reduced life style, which they were never entitled despite their fondest self regard and over estimated self worth.

[question: why aren't the extrans working?]

Re:final mile, not end-end

[saleenS281]

And you now fully understand the beauty of P2P.

Re:High density = no digging

[good soldier svejk]

Maybe you wouldn't miss it if you studied economics in college rather than relying on answers.com.

Re:Crazy

[rtb61]

No what is going on here is a neat trick of modern B$=PR marketing. They are spending $20 per house to 'upgrade' the network but, the article doesn't say from what it is upgrading ie, from lower bandwidth fibre to the home to higher bandwidth fibre to the home.

So typical modern news as marketing B$. Think about it, even when fibre in the street how much would it have to cost to cut into the fibre, lay it to a point in the home from the street and and the outlet, no way you can get that done for $20.

So no news there, yes it costs way more per house to upgrade from copper to fibre optic than it costs to upgrade existing fibre optic.

Same old lies about why the are holding up upgrading to fibre, truth is they have got an existing inflated investment in copper which has to be scrapped and they intend to hold onto it for as long as possible and, they will do everything them can to block government from actively pushing investment in fibre to the home. Upgrades to fibre are simply being done where the government in that country is acting in the majorities interests rather than the minorities corporate executive greed.

Re:about money, not efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

The US isn't capitalist. It hasn't been for the past century or so.

Re:High density = no digging

[bensch128]

So Verizon digging out their old copper wires and putting in fiber is a GOOD THING!

Imagine if only the cable company (Comcast here) could offer ultra hi-speed internet.

Since we (the US) don't require the cable companies to be common carriers (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/27/1510219) then customers wanting hi-speed internet would have only one place to go.

So I say to verizon, dig baby dig!

Re:Crazy

[i_b_don]

ok... I live in the Japanese countryside, or at least this is what they consider the Japanese countryside, but is NOTHING like the barren nothingness that you picture when someone from the US says "countryside". Population density in the Japanese countryside is still pretty dense.

Anyway, when I moved here nearly 3 years ago, I got 100Mb fiber to my house installed for something like $300 bucks full installation costs. Modems, first month payment, etc. I think it was actually more like $220 after discounts, but that was the price range. I now pay 50 bucks a month for this service and I've kept it and been very happy with it since it was installed.

Now keep in mind, this included two guys coming to my house and running fiber onto the property (stand alone house), and installing the cable modem plus router.

To compare, when I moved from the US, I was paying cable modem costs that were over $60 per month (with no cable service bundled, no extras) and maybe I'd top out at around 5Mb? I dunno, but no comparison in any case. When I was in the US I lived in Los Angeles.

You can't give me any of these bullshit population density arguments when i paid MORE for for LESS bandwidth in an area with a HIGHER population density. Something doesn't smell right here and its not a population density argument. i think it starts with an "M" and ends with "onopoly", and has everything to do with government and telcos/cable companies getting in bed together.

d