In the States, we have pretty incredible Internet connectivity into our home.
Due to our close proximity to the Chicago El tracks, which serves as a convenient right-of-way for all sorts of fiber in the city, it was (relatively) inexpensive to pull eight pairs of fiber directly into our house. I only lit one of the eight pair and and ended up an OC3 (155mbit/sec) away from Chicago's largest private peering point. When we rented our place out, I turned the fiber down, but it still runs into our place, waiting for our eventual return.
Luckily, fiber to the home (FTTH) is commonplace here in Japan. For around $50/month, NTT will give you a dedicated fiber pair that runs from your home to their central office (CO). If you are willing to share your 100mbit/sec of bandwidth with someone, it's even cheaper.
NTT only provides you with transport to the CO, though. You need a separate contract with an Internet provider to actually make the line useful. NTT offers this service through OCN, their ISP subsidiary, but other firms offer better performance. RBB Today provide real-time, real-world performance reports on the various providers you can use.
The world is out to get me, though. We live in a compound, of sorts, made up of 13 centrally-managed condominium buildings. While a number of folks in our complex have fiber service, the management company stopped allowing new installs so they could step in and muddy the waters. This debate has been ongoing since before our arrival in November 2003. Meanwhile I am "stuck" with 45mbit/sec DSL from Yahoo! (real world performance, about 5-6 mbit/sec down, 1mbit/sec up) and a slow-as-molasses cable modem that I use as a backup connection, in case the DSL goes down.
But, thanks to Yukari's telecom connections, I got an update last week. Our benevolent condo managers are supposedly going to select a fiber vendor by the end of August, which means I could be at 100mbit/sec by the end of the year.
I sure hope so, because the most galling thing about being fiberless in Tokyo is that my father-in-law, who lives in Osaka, had fiber turned up in his apartment before he even moved in. And he doesn't even appreciate his annoyingly good luck. I've threatened to move in with him until my fiber gets turned up here, but I'm afraid I'd come back and Yukari will have turned my home office into a TV room or something.
Posted by pmk at July 31, 2004 5:08 AM