Too-Much-TV

Nikkei: Japan Broadband cheapest and fastest

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

FTTH: over 1 million subscribers

Download japanbbsubsfeb04.xls

Number of broadband subscribers in Japan, end of February 2004.

DSL 10,904,236 (10,612,671)
Fiber 1,042,776 (960,926)
Cable 2,546,000 (2,510,000)
Total 14,493,012 (14,083,597)

About 31% of households.

Now over 1 million subscribers on Fiber. But DSL increase below 300,000/month for the first time since July 2003.

Broadband subscribers - end January 2004

Download file

More monthly broadband statistics.

Number of broadband subscribers in Japan, end of January 2003 2004 (duh.)

DSL 10,612,671 (10,272,052)
Fiber 960,926 (894,259)
Cable 2,510,000 (2,475,000)
Total 14,083,597 (13,641,311)

About 30% of households.

(new DSL figures for February are just out today -- 10,904,236, up 291,565 on January.)

Looking at DSL Forum earlier today, saw that they comparing DSL subscribers with the number of main lines. It's an interesting way of looking at broadband uptake. Perhaps compare DSL lines with the number of telephone service subscribers is more helpful?

Number of telecommunication service subscribers 51,160,000
Number of main lines, 71,160,000

DSL subscribers % of telecommunication service subscribers = 20.7%
DSL subscribers % of main lines = 14.4%

Report from DSL Forum on DSL in the Asia Pacific region (Microsoft Word file).

At the end of December 2003, China had 10.95 million subs, leading the world market. Japan 2nd with 10.27, US 3rd with 9.12 million, and Korea 4th with 6.43 million.

More Softbank, more broadband

More from the Nikkei (February 13) about Softbank; they are targeting 6 million DSL customers by September 2005. Means they will need to gain around 110,000/month from now for the next 20 months. Softbank also said it plans to spend more on sales promotion.

About the broadband outlook generally, fiber subscribers have been growing gradually, and cable subscribers increasingly reasonably steadily. If Softbank's correct in their estimates, I think we can expect to see between 300,000/350,000 new broadband subscribers / month for the rest of this year and most of next.

eAccess remains the number 3 provider with 1.29 million subscribers, behind the NTT group and Yahoo!BB (Softbank). Launched a new 40Mbps service last October that has been popular. Availability is good:

(source: "Financial report for the mid-year period from April 1, 2003 to September 30, 2003" URL http://www.eaccess.net/ir/pdf/semi-annual-report_9-30-2003_final.pdf (Japanese))

Customers more than 2Km from the exchange getting better than 12Mbps. Basic monthly fee is ¥2,880, which I think makes it the cheapest DSL bandwidth anywhere in the world. Last quarter, eAccess revised their earning forecast upward by ¥0.5 billion to ¥1.5 billion for the full 2003 financial year. Higher network utilization resulted in significant decreases in backbone costs per subscriber and lower capex and depreciation.

Softbank, losses as broadband grows

Total number of DSL subscribers in Japan at the end of January was 10,612,671, up 340,619 from December.

Softbank issued quarterly results last week. The Nikkei reported the figures as a ¥93.68 billion net loss in the 9 months ending December 31, 2003. The Internet division was responsible for losses of ¥6.65 billion in the quarter ending December 31, ¥15.16 billion in the quarter ending September, and ¥24.20 billion in the quarter ending June. Total of -¥46.01 billion in the 3 quarters.

Yahoo!BB had 3.81 million subscribers at the end of January, up 122,000 from December. The NTT group 3,871,895 DSL subscribers, up just under 98,000 on December. Expensive catch-up.

Softbank gave the main reason for the losses as Yahoo!BB's spending on promoting its services, a lot of introductory free offers and "specials". (The sidewalk stall was back in my neighbourhood last weekend. 2 people standing around on a street corner for a Saturday asking people to sign up for DSL, VoIP and some content services.)

Broadband subs - end December 2003

Download file

Number of broadband subscribers in Japan, end of December 2003.

DSL 10,272,052 (9,911,306)
Fiber 894,259 (815,402)
Cable 2,475,000 (2,428,000)
Total 13,641,311 (13,154,708)

About 29% of households.

NTT's fixed line subs to fall to a 10 year low

Quoting NTT sources, last Saturday's Nikkei reported that NTT's fixed line subscribers will fall to a 10 year low, below 60 million, by the end of March 2004, down 2% on March 2003.

Decline said to be caused by cellphone use (79,787,200 at the end of Dec. 2003 -- Japan's population is 127 million) and rise of DSL lines which compete with NTT's ISDN. ISDN is at around 8.8 million lines, down 1.3 million from March 2003.

It's cellphones. Just wait for flat rate mobile.

Broadband subs - end November 2003

Download file

Number of broadband subscribers in Japan, end of November 2003.

DSL 9,911,306 (9,590,349)
Fiber 815,402 (756,211)
Cable 2,428,000 (2,376,000)
Total 13,154,708 (12,722,560)

Just over 28% of households.

December DSL subs are already available: 10,272,052

DSL subscribers, end Nov. '03

End of November, number of DSL subscribers was 9,911,306. Will have been over 10 Million by the end of December (update soon), from 5,645,728 in December 2002. 46,782,000 households in Japan, so quite good penetration.

There are many high speed DSL products available, 8Mbps, 12Mpbs, even 45Mbps, but all are best effort. A friend working at a large DSL provider said he thought very few would be getting less than 1.5Mbps.

Broadband and political pork

My colleague Takahiro Miyao has just written a short report about a municipal broadband project in a small Japanese town called Haramachi City, a few hundred miles north east of Tokyo. Haramachi has built a high speed local access network using fixed wireless (40Mbps both way), on top of spare capacity in the town's municipal fiber network. Financed partly by central government subsidies. Haramachi City is not the only rural Japanese town building this kind of network, and one interesting aspect of these new communication infrastructure subsidies is speculation that they are being promoted by politicians who are directing funds to help their constituencies and home regions in much the same way as they brought engineering or agricultural subsidies and public works projects in the past. Now this political power may be being directed at ensuring local regions have the best broadband communications available, i.e. it's political "pork" for the Internet age.

See http://www.glocom.org/tech_reviews/jt_review/20040106_s53/ for Prof. Miyao's report on Haramachi City.