I noticed this morning that MM Research Institute of Japan released the recent broadband statistics for Japan. More than 21 million people/organizations now subscribe to broadband access. The bulk of that is ADSL, but close to 4 million are subscribers to fiber-to-the-home. Interestingly enough, I was on the phone until 2AM the other day helping my sister-in-law(yes, she's in Japan) set up here FTTH 100Mbps connection.

The interesting thing about the FTTH statistic is that FTTH now surpasses CATV internet access.
Of course, FTTH is so much faster, and only costs about $40-$50/month, although that does not include the ISP charge which can be as low as $10/month. Of course, if you throw on VoIP, and considering that EVERYBODY has a cell phone in Japan, increasingly folks are cancelling their land lines.

I remember doing some testing where I was downloading CDs (640Mb) in 5-7 minutes, and DVDs in about 30-40 minutes. Of course, I had to search out a download site that wouldn't throttle download speeds and those were few and far between. The speed though is amazing.