世論 What Japan Thinks

Regardless of the headline above, there is of course always a difference between the rated speed and the actual speed that one achieves, and even though nearly two in five are on fiber-optic-based FTTH, often shared lines into apartments are capped at 10 Mbps per dwelling to help prevent one person hogging all the bandwidth. This was one of the findings from an article published on japan.internet.com reporting on a survey conducted by goo Research into the internet environment, with the column focusing on home connection speed in particular.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 18th of November 2007 1,098 members of the goo Research internet monitor group responded to a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.8% of the sample was male, 17.6% were in their teens, 19.3% in their twenties, 15.8% in their thirties, 17.1% in their forties, 18.3% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

I’m basically happy with my connection speed, and I blame any site slowness as much on the internet in general as on the last mile in particular.

Perhaps you are wondering what the average person does with this fat pipe, in particular are they running P2P programs. Well, it just so happens that just recently another survey was conducted on P2P software usage in Japan, which might provide an interesting point of cross-reference.

Research results

Q1: What sort of home internet connection do you have? (Sample size=1,098)

FTTH (Fiber-optic To The Home)	38.4%
ADSL 1Mbps – 10Mbps	14.4%
CATV (Cable Access Television)	12.7%
ADSL 10Mbps – 20Mbps	10.7%
ADSL 50Mbps or more	5.8%
ADSL 40Mbps – 50Mbps	5.2%
ADSL 20Mbps – 30Mbps	3.4%
ISDN	2.4%
ADSL under 1Mbps	1.6%
ADSL 30Mbps – 40Mbps	1.6%
Analog dial-up	1.4%
Mobile phone modem	0.5%
Other	1.9%
Don’t use internet at home	0.2%

The data is a bit difficult to take in with multiple ADSL speeds, so let’s group them together.

Q1: What sort of home internet connection do you have? (Sample size=1,098)

FTTH (Fiber-optic To The Home)	38.4%
CATV (Cable Access Television)	12.7%
ADSL 50Mbps or more	5.8%
ADSL 10Mbps – 50Mbps	20.7%
ADSL under 10Mbps	16.0%
ISDN, dial-up, other, none	6.3%

Next, those with narrowband connections (ISDN, analog, mobile phone and others) or no connection whatsoever were eliminated, leaving 93.7%, or 1,027 people, to answer the following questions. Note that some of the newer specialised mobile data cards run at up to xxx Mbps, which is hardly narrowband, but for the sake of this survey they were treated as such.

Q2: How satisfied are you with your current connection’s speed? (Sample size=1,098)

Very satisfied	8.4%
Satisfied	51.8%
A little dissatisfied (to SQ)	30.5%
Very dissatisfied (to SQ)	7.5%
Don’t really know	1.7%

Q2SQ: When do you feel dissatisfied with your current connection’s speed? (Sample size=416, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
When viewing embedded videos	293	70.4%
When viewing embedded photographs	136	32.7%
When viewing embedded Flash	96	23.1%
When sending or receiving email	64	15.4%
When uploading photographs to blog, etc	49	11.8%
When using file sharing P2P software	36	8.7%
Other	42	10.1%