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article [iht.com]
...said Monday that Yahoo Japan and Softbank BB would start offering a new optical fiber-based broadband service.Softbank will provide the service at speeds of up to one gigabyte per second and charge users ¥4,200, or $38, a month, the company said in a statement.
If they can offer speeds even close to this level it's going to spur a whole lot of hardware purchases. I know that my router, Ethernet cards and cabling would all have to be upgraded to take advantage of this speed. The availability of this service could encourage some development in consumer level products able to deal with this capacity, which is a good thing.
HD: Good evening sir, what seems to be the problem.
User: Well, I just connected to my new plan, went to check my email, and my computer blew up!
HD: Sir, exactly, what do you mean "blew up"?
User: Loud bang, smoke comeing from the computer, nothing on the screen! The Kids are Not Happy!
HD: Sir, which plan are you with?
User: Oh, I just joined that new megathingamy-per-second plan.
HD: Ahhhhhh, please hold (to supervisor: we have another one ...)
Onya
Woz
"We aim to secure six million broadband users...."
So are we talking about one 1000 megabit pipe contended among 6 million users?
TJ
TJ
So who is going to be the first person to do a "Napster" on every television channel's output in the world?
I suspect there is some massive contention
Yeh, looking at the UK, the great unwashed never ask about the contention ratio... which is 250 to 1 or worse on the cheap lines.
In addition, I assume that 1 gbps is only good for the last bit of the data's journey, so that is as good as useless really.
1gbit/s isn't terribly fast, about 2x cable in this part of America. But as mentioned by everyone else, those speeds aren't quite realistic. And again, you'd need gigabit lan cards to utilize it (not that they are super expensive anymore... the really expensive part would be the gigabit router you'd have to replace your old crappy linksys with ^_~)
Either way, it's a step in the right direction.
Nippon wa tatae yo!
1gbit/s isn't terribly fast, about 2x cable in this part of America.
Since when cable connections in the USA had 512 Mega bits?!?!?! I think that can't be true just like 1gbits could be true only in marketing terms - perhaps thats maximum possible speed to the local exchange or router, and everyone will have to share that pipe.
... or even worse - cap usage on say 1Gigabytes, like they do in the UK now - they flog 1Mbit connection with 1Gigabyte limit (2 hours of downloading at full capacity) for whole month!
Since when cable connections in the USA had 512 Mega bits?!?!?!
People are confusing MBps w/ kbps - where I live, Comcast Business is 5MBps down and 512kbps up for $200/month:
[work.comcast.net...]
1gb will be sweet. Good thing I got that 100mb network card :)
Just read over the BB site- add an extra (1000yen) $10 a month for the terminal rental, and (1000yen) $10 for the ISP service.
All together with tax- 7234yen $70.
I assume that 1 gbps is only good for the last bit of the data's journey, so that is as good as useless really.
I first heard about these connections in Japan about 6 months ago when I heard a friend had a 100 megabit/sec internet connection. I immediately begged if he would run a VoIP server for me (with voice traffic going through it) for a hobby project which he was delighted to do.
It performed appallingly - my 512k down 256k up ADSL outperformed his 100m connection by some margin.
I think there must be 1,000's of subscribers all on the same cable.
And for $38/month if you do some basic "back of a fag-packet maths" there would have to be...
TJ
First, keep in mind the difference between bits and bytes. A lowercase b means bits. An uppercase B means bytes. There are 8 bits in a byte, plus some other overhead. 10 to 1 is close enough. A 100 mbps connection is about 10 megaBYTES per second.
Now, to put 1 gbps (1000 mbps) in perspective:
* A T1 connection is 1.5 mbps. 1 gbps is about 600 times faster.
* The fastest residential DSL or cable connections are usually 2 mbps, 4 mbps, or perhaps 8 mbps. That's down. Up is usually considerably less. Even at 8 mbps, this 1 gbps connection would be 125 times faster.
* A standard eternet card is usually 100 mbps, a tenth the speed on the 1 gbps connection.
* I know of a handful of businesses who have 100 mbps connections, a tenth the speed on the 1 gbps connection.
* Most hosting companies provide either 10 mbps or 100 mbps connections. If you're utilizing a full 10 mbps of connection, it typically costs $500 to $1000 per month or more.
* Most hosting companies include about 1000 GB of transfers per month for as little as $100. On a 1 gbps connection, that would only take a few hours.
* Even the largest hosting companies I know only have about a dozen 1 gbps connections.
* With a 1 gbps connection, you would be able to fill up a 250GB hard drive in less than an hour.
This just doesn't sound right. Especially for $38/month. Maybe they meant 1 mbps?
I have no clue what you would do that would need that much bandwidth. Most web servers don't have connections anywhere near that fast. If you could really sustain speeds that fast you would be able to share movies in seconds. That's so fast it's almost scary.
However, this is probably last mile bandwidth. I really really doubt you could go past a peering point and get this kind of BW. So, forget about super fast SecondLife, Doom, EQ, Voip, whatever.
However .. You could probably down the Yahoo homepage pretty fast and watch all those cool flash adverts. They probably have inktomi cached on the network as well, so you might see some Ads (and some images) around the internet come down pretty quick as well.
No doubt they are working madly on some kind of online movie buying thing.
Pretty sure MSN/Ebay/Aol/Google/Etc will be at the same speed, though .. ;)
Though, I could see an EQ or a lineage or a whoever making some kind of side peering deal..
This just doesn't sound right. Especially for $38/month. Maybe they meant 1 mbps?
..nope that's not the case either, I've seen ads in Tokyo subway stations for 100mbps for $40 a month.
The head of Yahoo Japan, Mr. Son, has publicly ridiculed US broadband [webmasterworld.com] for its inability to keep up with Japan. Broadband in Japan is incredibly fast and cheap thanks to this man. His push to decrease prices and increase capacity have revolutionized this market.
Why do we need this much speed? Well, Mr. Son has bet the farm on this Yahoo broadband venture. He's buying telephone networks and entertainment systems so that his YahooBB service will be the most appealing package around. As David_M mentioned above, they're going to be pushing TV signals down this pipe as well. They've already got an impressive VoIP system that is challenging the big telephone monopoly here. They're working at building up a steady stream of content to fill this pipe, so even if it is last mile bandwidth it will be worthwhile for many.
The "backbone" of the service is 60Gbps.
The local connection is 1Gbps to a fiber optic splitter box, then 100Mbps to the home. So you're getting 100Mbps max.
So it looks like this:-
HOME <--- 100 Mbps ---> Local Switch <--- 1 Gbps ---> Backbone (60 Gbps)
Apparently, the plan is to share each local connection between no more than 30 customers, which is apparently less than 10% of competing 100Mbps offerings. So the worst case scenario is something like 33Mbps (1/30th of 1Gbps) and best case scenario is 100Mbps.
They are calling it 1Gbps because competing services don't have an intermediate faster connection, but connect via a shared 100Mbps fiber line to the backbone...
The net-net is a faster connection shared between fewer customers and should overall give a *much* faster service.
They've only started the rollout today, and it's so new their sales staff is still getting to grips with all the ramifications.
BTW, you can run their IP phone service (BB phone) on this new service, though the dialling process is a bit more complicated than for ADSL-based IP phones. The BB TV (cable TV service) isn't yet ready for the fiber-optic service, so it's not an all-in-one solution, but it sounds like they *may* add TV to the offering next year.
Oh, and there's a deal offering free installation and first 2 months free (if you sign a 12-month contract).
100 mbps to the customer is not 1 gigabyte per second. Hard to imagine that IHT got it that wrong.
SN
Apparently, the plan is to share each local connection between no more than 30 customers, which is apparently less than 10% of competing 100Mbps offerings. So the worst case scenario is something like 33Mbps (1/30th of 1Gbps) and best case scenario is 100Mbps.
That's assuming that the local switch is the bottleneck rather than the backbone. If there are more than 1800 customers using the full capacity on the backbone, each will get less than 33 Mbps.
It's still quite an amazing value. With 30 customers per local loop, they're providing a 1 Gbps connection (to the local loop) for under $1200. That wouldn't buy much more than a T1 here in the states.
Man, it would be great to get something like that here. ;)
[edited by: Woz at 11:14 pm (utc) on Oct. 6, 2004]
[edit reason] Tidying up [/edit]
Having said that, I got my info from a Yahoo! sales rep - spent nearly 20 minutes chatting to him about the service - and the brochures he gave me. He was the one who talked about the 30 customers per 1Gbps line - I haven't yet been able to find that information in writing.
