Japan launches world's fastest home internet

Date: April 16, 2013

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Comments 266

Stan Schroeder

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Fibre-bliss: Japan is now home to 2 Gbps interent.

This post was originally published on Mashable.

While Australians compare the merits of Labor's fibre-to-the-home national broadband network with the Coalition's fibre-to-the-node proposal, Sony has installed the world's fastest home internet connection in Japan.

So-net Entertainment, a Sony-backed Japanese ISP, has launched a fibre-based internet service that reaches download speeds of 2 gigabit per second (Gbps), making it more than 20 times faster than the offerings of both Labor and the Coalition in Australia.

The Nuro, as the service is called, is available to homes and small businesses in Tokyo and six surrounding prefectures, Computerworld reports.

The upload speed is a little slower than download at 1 Gbps, but it's still faster than most of us get anywhere else in the world.

By comparison, the ultra-fast Google Fibre broadband internet service offers a "mere" 1 Gbps download speed – which is still some 100 times faster than today's average home internet connection – in Austin, Texas and Kansas City, Missouri in the US.

Nuro costs 4980 Yen ($A50) on a two-year contract, plus a 52,500 ($524) installation fee.

Mashable is the largest independent news source covering digital culture, social media and technology.

10 comments

Really shows how backward in technology we are in comparison to the best there is to offer and yet the Libs STILL want to take us back even further down the ladder! HANDS OFF MY NBN.

Commenter

LukeS

Location

Sydney

Date and time

Tue Apr 16 02:51:49 UTC 2013
- Firstly, its not your NBN and secondly by the time the Labours NBN hits the major cities for home use you will just be as annoying as you are now by saying how backwards we are.
  
  Commenter
  
  Michael
  
  Location
  
  Sydney
  
  Date and time
  
  Tue Apr 16 03:06:26 UTC 2013
- Agree! In this context it is unbelievable that we are even contemplating spending $30billion on an already obsolete system.
  Could Abbott and his Coalition + supporters (luddites all of them) and go sit in a dark cave and draw crayon pictures on the walls or something and stop getting in the way of the rest of us who are happy to embrace technology and change?
  
  Commenter
  
  Milo85
  
  Date and time
  
  Tue Apr 16 03:14:04 UTC 2013
- Sony - isn't it a private company? not a Govt? says it all doesn't it. Why is ALP wanting to do the job of a private company? maybe it's their socialist agenda. Why doesn't someone talk to Sony in Australia? Hello Captain Underpants.
  
  Commenter
  
  enough is enough
  
  Location
  
  Labor party La La Land
  
  Date and time
  
  Tue Apr 16 03:14:11 UTC 2013
- Actually it's worse than that. The Liberals want to spend 30 billion dollars on a completely inferior NBN network. There is technology around already that can achieve 25mb/s over a full copper network. But this will not be good enough in the future. Therefore if the Liberals get in at the next election they essentially be wasting 30 billion dollars on a network that will be completely obsolete and adding on to a copper network that is completely stuffed already. Do the NBN properly with fibre or leave it at its copper state or we will be wasting 30 billion dollars on a completely inadequate network!
  
  Commenter
  
  Andy
  
  Date and time
  
  Tue Apr 16 03:34:35 UTC 2013
- @ Enough
  A private company will never offer this type of system to Australians outside Capital cities and very large towns. Telstra, Optus and many others have already stated the returns would not be worth their time and money. So do we just allow the rest of the country to go without like always when it comes to infrastructure?????
  
  Commenter
  
  Col
  
  Location
  
  Sydney
  
  Date and time
  
  Tue Apr 16 03:36:07 UTC 2013
- @ enough is enough
  What's commercially viable in one country is not necessarily so in another country
  Before anyone says that's exactly the reason to not go ahead with NBN, a lack of commercial viability doesn't necessarily mean a lack of ECONOMIC viability.
  Where there's a disconnect between commercial and economic viability, THAT's where governments should step in to bridge the gap, and not in a half-hearted manner. Goodbye Captain Speedo.
  
  Commenter
  
  Tee
  
  Location
  
  Sydney
  
  Date and time
  
  Tue Apr 16 03:48:21 UTC 2013
- Even though private companies do the work in Japan they are heavily subsidized by the Japan government.Either way it takes the government to drive the technology otherwise private enterprise would not do it as it is not profitable.
  http://gizmodo.com/307203/why-does-japan-get-all-the-super+fast-fiber-optic-love
  Also Milo85, why it is obsolete? The fibre in Australia is the same as being installed in Japan. The difference is the equipment at either end. Sony is installing new hardware that is capable of higher speeds and as technology improves more speed can be got out of fibre just like ADSL has increased the speeds over the old dialup using the same copper network.
  
  Commenter
  
  Hof
  
  Location
  
  Sydney
  
  Date and time
  
  Tue Apr 16 03:48:22 UTC 2013
- @ Col Sydney | April 16, 2013, 1:36PM
  Why do we need to connect the whole country to the NBN ?
  You cant expect the latest infrastructure in every corner of the country.
  The ROI is not worht the cost to the taxpayer.
  In high density cities it will, in the sticks use wireless !
  
  Commenter
  
  got pr0n ?
  
  Location
  
  in the cloud
  
  Date and time
  
  Tue Apr 16 03:51:56 UTC 2013
- Daft comment. Let's spend huge amounts of cash on speeds we don't really need in a struggling economy when thousands of people are losing their jobs left right and center. Or shall we perhaps do something more sensible? Grow a brain.
  
  Commenter
  
  Borg
  
  Location
  
  Melbourne
  
  Date and time
  
  Tue Apr 16 04:06:57 UTC 2013