It looks like Japan will skip the muni Wi-Fi and WiMAX/LTE era when it comes to making high-speed wireless broadband available to all its citizens.
Japan’s newly launched and experimental Kizuna (for “ties between people”) satellite promises to provide broadband to homes, mainly in rural areas, with download speeds of up to 155 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 6 Mbps. It can also be used following disasters when landline broadband is unusable.
Users will need a relatively small and inexpensive 45-centimeter (18-inch) dish -about the size of a small pizza or the dish that satellite TV services use.
The project is also called WINDS (Wideband Internet working engineering test and Demonstration Satellite). It’s part of the government sponsored e-Japan project whose goal is to create the world’s most advanced information and telecommunications network.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries jointly developed the satellite, which was launched last Saturday.
By comparison Verizon currently offers 25 Mbps up and down in selected areas where it has deployed its FiOS fiber optic network. Verizon says FiOS could ultimately offer speeds up to 100 Mbps.
US cablecos, led by Comcast, promise speeds upwards of 100 Mbps and higher, perhaps even up to 160 Mbps, beginning later this year. Last week Motorola announced consumer premises and network gear for the cablecos’ next-generation DOCSIS technology, which will make those speeds possible.
The Kizuna satellite program is at the beginning of an initial four-month test. More advance tests will start in October. The service is expected to be available to every home within five years and bring “real” broadband even to remote locations on islands and in mountainous areas.
“I hope that satellite technology will be well incorporated into our lives,” Yasuo Nakamura, WINDS Project Manager, said on the JAXA Web site. “I’d like to see a society where everyone benefits from space technology without being aware of it. I hope the day soon comes when all satellite technologies are naturally embedded in our everyday life, and people don’t take space to be a special world. I’d like space to be part of our lives, and hopefully, WINDS will be a catalyst for this.”
The launch is the first step in the Japanese government’s demonstration of technologies that could revolutionize Internet-based communications. Who needs DSL or cable modems or fiber optic if the speeds and geographical coverage promised by the Kizuna satellite prove to be real?
JAXA is putting up most of the money for the project, which has a five-year budget of $484 million. The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology is anteing up $56 million. Not to put a political twist on things but the $484 million is less than what the US and its allies are spending every two days in Iraq. Estimates are that the American foray into Iraq is currently costing the US and its allies about $275 million a day.
Japan is a step ahead of the US and Europe when it comes to broadband speeds and ubiquity. DSL is considered slow and archaic there, much as dial-up is in North America and Europe. Fiber optic networks already cover much of the more densely populated areas in Japan and provide speeds upwards of 100 Mbps to consumers at monthly rates that are about $40 a month. Only rural areas are limited to slow DSL broadband speeds.
In North America and Europe consumers can get broadband speeds in the 1 Mbps to 6 Mbps range for about $40 or so a month. Consumers in rural areas have to settle for dial up (remember that hiss, crackle and pop era?) and pay $15 to $25 a month.
A major advantage of satellite-based broadband is, in addition to its near 100% coverage, its availability when a natural disaster occurs such as a tsunami, earthquake, typhoon or volcano. (Japan has about 60 active volcanoes.) “Even if communication networks are disrupted and electricity lines are down, an Internet connection can be easily set up anywhere,” Nakamura said. Kizuna will be used to link to small mobile stations to replace a disabled Internet backbone line.
The Kizuna service will demonstrate distance learning between teachers and students. Nakamura said that Kizuna’s multicasting capability would facilitate more interactive communications with remote classes.
One of the two antennas on the satellite is aimed at the Japanese archipelago. The other is aimed at the entire Asia Pacific region.
In a joint announcement, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology said the satellite’s other antenna would provide the Asia Pacific region with high-speed Internet connections between Japan and other nations. That’ll cover about a third of the planet – an area stretching from the central Pacific to India.
Hmmm. Wonder if they’d like to do North American and European satellites? Download speeds of about 1.2 Gbps will be offered to businesses via 5-meter (15-feet) antennas.