Japan already has a domestic Internet service 20 times faster than the best in Spain and almost half the price.
With more and more digital information reaching our homes, the speed of the Internet connection has become one of the most important factors to take into account when contracting the service with one or the other operator. While in Spain the most fortunate can enjoy fiber optics with up to 100 Mbps of download rate (and 10 Mbps of upload), other countries launch speeds that are simply impossible in the rest of the planet. This is the case in Japan where a 2 Gbps connection is already offered.
On the one hand we have Google that is deploying its fiber optic service known as Google Fiber in a handful of selected cities throughout the US (they are currently in Kansas and soon in Austin). This connection promises speeds of 1 Gbps -100 times faster than the current ones according to its advertising- with a fee of $ 70 / month.
However, who really leads this sector is Japan where an Internet provider (ISP) called So-net Entertainment has presented its service of 2Gbps download and 1Gbps upload for ¥ 4,980 (about € 39). This means multiplying the speed of Google’s offer by 2x and by 20x the best offer in Spain … not to mention that the price is significantly lower.
The fiber optic service, called “Nuro”, however, has an initial installation cost of ¥ 52,500 (just over € 400) and is only available in the Japanese capital Tokyo and in Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Kanagawa or Saitama. This company, majority owned by Sony, uses GPON (Passive Optical Network with Gigabit Capacity) technology. So it’s no wonder that 25 percent of Japanese households are connected to high-speed networks.