Americans invented the Internet, but the Japanese are running away with it

Belatedly, I'm coming around to agree with the views of colleague Preston Gralla regarding the pitiful state of broadband in the U.S. What made up my mind? This powerful mini-chart in The Washington Post:

Median download speeds, in megabits per second, for selected countries:

Japan         ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 61 Mbits/sec
S. Korea     ||||||||||||||||||||||| 46
Finland       |||||||||| 21
Sweden      ||||||||| 18
Canada      |||| 8
U.S.             || 2
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Source: Information Technology & Innovation Foundation / Communication Workers of America

Wow -- talk about a picture worth a thousand words. The Washington Post reported -- from Tokyo -- that "broadband service here [in Tokyo] is eight to 30 times as fast as in the United States -- and considerably cheaper." Why does this matter? More from the Post:

Accelerating broadband speed in this country [Japan] -- as well as in South Korea and much of Europe -- is pushing open doors to Internet innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States.

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.

Ultra-high-speed applications are being rolled out for low-cost, high-definition teleconferencing, for telemedicine -- which allows urban doctors to diagnose diseases from a distance -- and for advanced telecommuting to help Japan meet its goal of doubling the number of people who work from home by 2010.

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

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.

In 2000, the Japanese government seized its advantage in wire. In sharp contrast to the Bush administration over the same time period, regulators here compelled big phone companies to open up wires to upstart Internet providers.

In short order, broadband exploded. At first, it used the same DSL technology that exists in the United States. But because of the better, shorter wire in Japan, DSL service here is much faster.

Update: Scott Bradner (a Network World columnist) analyzed the same Washington Post article and concluded:

[T]he biggest problem is that [Verizon's fiber-based] FIOS is unavailable in almost all of the country [U.S.] and the actual speed of DSL in most places is very slow, especially if you host servers. Maybe someday we in the United States will get reasonable-cost, high-speed Internet options, but it may be a while.

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Related:

• Report: U.S. lags behind other nations in broadband speeds
  
• U.S. broadband penetration: A pitiful 24th in the world
  Why the U.S is a broadband ghetto
  
• It's time for the Feds to subsidize broadband
  
• Bush's broadband plan: A miserable failure
• Why rural Americans are doomed to second-rate broadband