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1 Comment

    • ON: Thu Sep 6th 08:49 AM
      Commented on:
      NTT's IMS Project: Trailblazing or White Elephant?
      Hi Andy,
      first of all I want to say that I really like your column. It always provides good insights into what is going on in the communications industry. Now here's a few comments regarding your article on high-speed access in Japan.

      90% coverage with ultra-high speed pipes is nice but first of all it means some serious investment. Only if a sufficient number of subscribers can be attracted the carrier will be able to make money, and this is where the problem starts. The first graph shows that Japan experiences the same phenomenon as South Korea a few years ago: Subscriber numbers for the new higher-speed technologies (here: FTTx replacing ADSL, in South Korea it was VDSL replacing ADSL) ramp up slower and level off sooner than for the previous technology (which was new and exciting at that time). Even in Japan where access via FTTx is dirt cheap compared to other countries people are not really enthusiastic about having more bandwidth. I guess that to get them interested it will have to be as cheap or even cheaper than what they have today (unless somebody finally comes up with those fantastic value-added services that the industry has been fantasizing about for years). Now, what does this mean for the prices of equipment and chips that are required to enable these multi-megabit and gigabit services? Let's hope everybody will be able to reduce his cost fast enough. In the past this was not the case, and there is plenty examples of money-losing equipment and chip vendors in this business. Surprisingly, (too) many of those are still around.
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