Wait? Did you say 50 Mbps? Why, yes I did! 2004? Yep. Doesn't everyone have a 50 megabit line already? It's soo last year, afterall. Ok, so I'm exaggerating. It's really only 47 megabits per second. Confused yet? Think I'm joking?

Well, here's the scoop. About the fastest DSL line you can get in the US is about 6 megabit or so. We've got one at home. It's great. Nice and fast. Gives 600 kilyobytes per second downloads. If you're lucky, you can get Verizon fibre optics at 15-30 megabits per second. Even better!

So why, then, is the US considered to be behind in broadband? Well, it's apparently due to the obvious. We are.

8 Mbps lines were the norm in Japan in 2001. That's four years ago. 12 Mbps for 2002, 26 Mbps for 2003, and 47 Mbps for 2004. Seriously (Data from this months IEEE Communications.)

So what gives? How come we're so backwards here in the US? Even if everone had top end lines with fiber we'd be behind DSL in Japan.

This may make you wonder: What of fibre in Japan? There's a term for fiber like this (fibre, fiber, whatever): FTTH. That stands for Fibre to the Home. FTTH in Japan looks to already have -- or shortly have -- 1 Gbps lines available. Say, did my jaw just see your jaw on the floor? Apparently 100 Mbps FTTH lines have been available for a while and the norm is a 622 Mbps line.

Upload speeds are equally wonderful. The 100 Mbps lines are synchronous. The 622 Mbps lines give 156 Mbps uplinks and the 1Gbps lines are ... wait, that can't be right -- but it's printed ... 1 Gbps! Actually, the lines are typically shared in a cluster of houses or condos using normal 100 megabit ethernet. But it's still pretty darn fast.

Where's _my_ fast DSL???

Posted by Shane on September 16, 2005 7:11 PM | Permalink