Jim Baller of the Baller Group sent around an interesting article yesterday (Japan’s Warp-Speed Ride to Internet Future).

It talks about how and why Japan is doing so much better than the US is doing. The indisputable reason is:

The copper wire used to hook up Japanese homes is newer and runs in shorter loops to telephone exchanges than in the United States. This is partly a matter of geography and demographics: Japan is relatively small, highly urbanized and densely populated. But better wire is also a legacy of American bombs, which razed much of urban Japan during World War II and led to a wholesale rewiring of the country.

They also say:

Japan has surged ahead of the United States on the wings of better wire and more aggressive government regulation, industry analysts say.

I didn’t know much about the history of broadband in Japan so I found it interesting. Apparently the Japanese government urged the phone companies to open up their lines to local ISPs, which installed lots of DSL. DSL is faster in Japan because the phone lines are generally shorter. It was very popular. (Apparently the early version of the Open Network was a good idea.)

The phone companies saw the potential and decided to install fiber to the home and premises – and that too has been popular.

Vince Cerf is quoted in the article. He is worried about the US being left in the dust. Clearly that is a real concern – I think one lesson we can take from Japan is the early success of the open network structure, for the vendors who opened the network, for the resellers, and the end customer.