TOKYO —

KDDI Corp will launch a fiber-optic communications service with upload and download speeds each of up to one gigabit per second on Oct 1. The new service will target people living in single-family homes and low-rise apartment buildings. The traffic speeds will be the fastest in eastern Japan, up drastically from the current 100 megabits per second.

With the service, KDDI aims to catch up with Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp, which has a share of over 70% in the market for fiber-optic broadband services for single-family houses.

KDDI will charge 5,985 yen in basic monthly fees for Internet and telephone services, down 1,155 yen from the current price, if a user subscribes for two consecutive years.

KDDI will start offering its fiber-optic services, which are now available only in six prefectures in the Kanto region and nearby Yamanashi Prefecture, in four cities in the northern prefecture of Hokkaido.

JCN

8 Comments

• 

  Zybster at 08:45 AM JST - 27th September

  Having such speeds is like trying to drive a Ferrari in a countryside; you can boast of theoretical speeds, but as it was shown in a discussion a few days ago, once you connect to "real" internet, especially using foreign lines, you get back to being stuck in the narrow lines or in the internet traffic. But hey, you get your bragging rights!

• 

  MrMukatsuku at 03:10 PM JST - 27th September

  It seems that Japan is the place to base your web server, to cope with incoming traffic.

• 

  geronimo2006 at 03:45 PM JST - 27th September

  It still good with more sites putting up content such as high definition video streaming. Just wish youtube would do it more.

• 

  hereandthere at 04:03 PM JST - 27th September

  well... what it says it not always what you get. KDDI gets a lot of things right, and overall I really like them... and they now own my Tepco fiber line(home, not mansion), they would like me to change to their HikariOne. .. telling me my Tepco will disappear in the future.

  After making arrangement for the change, they sent a "new" router which would be required... upon inspection of the router... it is over a year old, and not designed for 100MB-1000MB lines, upon inquiring with KDDI, they couldn't explain why... they are using their router's MAC addresses to verify customers, and you MUST use their their router... so I had to cancel their installation.... when they close my Tepco, I'll switch to NTT.

• 

  saru_au at 01:42 PM JST - 29th September

  hereandthere MAC addresses to verify customers, and you MUST use their their router

  just change the MAC address of your router to the same as the router they provide you with, most routers have that option.

• 

  saru_au at 01:50 PM JST - 29th September

  It seems that Japan is the place to base your web server, to cope with incoming traffic.

  not nessasarily, for simple web sites the 200ms (or more) delay from Japan to the world is still the problem, even at the speed of light it's still faster to have the server closer to the user, that's why AKAMAI have servers all over the globe...

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akamai_Technologies

  and NTT/USEN/KDDI may have good backbone(s) around Japan, but it soon bottel-knecks as you step off the islands

• 

  lameduck at 02:22 PM JST - 29th September

  These bandwidths are unrealistic and marketing BS.

  "KDDI will charge 5,985 yen in basic monthly fees for Internet and telephone services, down 1,155 yen from the current price, if a user subscribes for two consecutive years."

  O.K., this killed it anyway. I'll never sign a 2-year contract for broadband internet access. They are adapting the business model that they are using for mobile phones and try to lock customers for two years. What pisses me off is that they are even trying to do this with loyal customers by either offering new mobile phones at horrendous prices or offering a discounted phone only when renewing the current contract for another 2-years. On top of it, Japanese phones are usually locked which means that they cannot be used with a SIM card from a different carrier, even if technically possible. Rip-off artists...

• 

  saru_au at 10:07 AM JST - 6th October

  Japanese phones are usually locked most providers in most countries lock their phones...

  but as in other countries, for a few thousand yen you can have them unlocked (I use my old unlocked Softbank phone when overseas)

  check yahoo auctions Japan, plenty of helpful unlocker services there.

Register or login to add a comment!