Why I Want to Move to Japan

It turns out that Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. had just put a 1Gbps fiber-optic connection into the building, and fiber-to-the-home broadband is now available. For ¥4,200 ($36) per month, I can get a 100Mbps Internet line into my apartment and, if I don't care about losing my phone number, add telephone service for no charge.

$36 for 100Mbps! When does the next plane leave for Japan? Have I complained lately about how we are fighting them over there rather than building up our high-speed infrastructure over here? You could watch 5 HD channels at the same time with that speed. You could stream movies from Netflix. Instead I am paying $45 a month for 3Mbs.

Of the 23.3 million homes that had broadband connections at the end of March, 5.5 million had home-fiber connections. That's just under a quarter of all domestic broadband links, and the number is growing fast.

1/4 already have fiber. That's just not fair. Of course, Japan has 46.8 million households so for some reason only 1/2 of them have broadband connections. What is wrong with those other half?!

Update: According to this comment in digg:

Here in sweden we get 100Mbps fiber optics for about 43$/month, but its 100Mbit down/10Mbit up

Definitely time to move.