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