I thought the free market was supposed to spur competition and the consumer would benefit from new innovation and lower prices... $150 for 50mbps?!?!?!?!? Props to the Japanese for this advancement

aesopbx

@kc2idf:
jkr said so.

riqgeez

Hey Gizmodo. Not to nit pick but the sentence, "Not only to they plan to cover all of Japan, but a fair bit of the Asian Pacific region." should have the first "to" as "do" instead.

TheCyberBob

@fuzzycuffs: rather stay here. too crowded over there.

riqgeez

@riqgeez: Who said it did?

kc2idf

this is synchronous? Wow, before those satellite links were alright for downloads, stupidly slow for uploads.

I'm impressed. I'd say I wish we got that in the US, but it'd be more truthful to say I wish I lived in Japan. :(

fuzzycuffs

@jkr: So how does it travel faster than light if it is indeed light?

riqgeez

@The-Joker: satellite also uses "light" as a means of data transport, it's just the kind you can't see.

jkr

@nutbastard: so if i put in the "kill all" command, after a few seconds, my avatar can dominate with it's uber huge pipe cannons. (just trying for the geekyist comment of the year).

jkr

I have more trust in fiber optic internet. Seems more interesting and the data travels with light, so that's cool. It has the potential to reach 10,000 times the speed of our internet. CERN (the maker of the Large Hadron Collider) is planning to use this technology to access the data made by the machine. Read here: [www.techtree.com]

The-Joker

ahahahaha, $150 for a 50 Mbps line, you guys are getting soooo ripped off. We get a 100 line for half as much, and in some places for a tenth the price (although I'm not THAT lucky personally). I piTy The fools wiTh The slow ass lines.

citizen024

My parents are still on 28.8bps dial-up. I don't know how they can stand it.

Abnormal

@riqgeez:
you mean mothra?

mr30gZune

@discounteggroll:
wlcrm has it right - latency would be unbearable for gaming. Even browsing would have a delay, but once the request goes through and it starts downloading, that's where you'd see the bandwidth step up to the plate.

nutbastard

we'll see what Godzilla has to say 'bout this!

riqgeez

@discounteggroll: bandwidth is not the same as lag. In fact, you'd probably have a significant amount of lag if you tried to game over this.

wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org] says its orbit is about 36,000 km which comes out to 120ms as an absolute minimum, from the base station to the satellite, and that's one way.

wlcrm

This all sounds great until the BORG knock down the satellite before assimilation and we cannot coordinate a counter attack.

:0

aec007

So FIOS can't even keep up huh? Then I'll hack into Japan's network.

riqgeez

So they'll be erecting endowed antennas all over japan for high speed porn?

mikehtiger

oh dear - Cisco stock might not be too happy on this baby.

there must be some bandwidth limit to the system - the satellite? and BTW - is it really 150 a month? not that I recall in NC anyway.

flyboy

there's negative lag when it comes to gaming. you shoot and kill other people before they even see you it's so fast

discounteggroll

Properly endowed, sounds like me.

riqgeez

@riqgeez: I most certainly did NOT say anything traveled faster than light. Re-read again, and don't put words in my mouth.

@jlawson: Well despite that, the current reigning theory is that even with quantum entanglement, information can not travel faster than light. The problem is trying to extract information from 2 particle entangled. The math is dense, but needless to say, the current theory stands. But it would be great if it was found to be wrong.

jkr

@riqgeez: About the faster-than-light: there's always photon superpositioning and quantum entanglement... Someday, instantaneous data transfer.

jlawson

In short, all the talk about lag versus bandwith comes down to the fact that satellite in general sucks for anything that needs real-time interactivity but is great for things that require high throughput. Great for torrents, absolutely miserable for mmorpg's.

kramthegram

Ey Maguwa don't complain! We only got friggen 4mb/s top here and that's the equivilent of 150 dollars for capped!

DJTripleRRR

Never post about cheap fast broadband..

I pay $60usd for 2Mbps ...

>:|

EL_RIEL

@outlanderssc: We did it for cheap oil! Worked great...

geschmidtt

Does this include Hawaii?
I read on their site that it uses "WINDS uses Ka-band frequency radio waves, which have a frequency range of about 20 to 30 GHz" I wonder if that sets off radar detectors.
I would trust those japs to come up with a better solution than the american telco companies anyday.

zsleek7

Hey, it was a choice - invade Iraq or spend the money on cool tech projects and education.

Like true Americans, we chose to blow stuff up.

outlanderssc

You'll still have some latency issues for gaming I think...

Either way, fucking awesome. I still want fiber in my house though, but getting pr0n beamed into my house just sounds cool.

Log1c

The problem with a Satellite connection to the internet is not the bandwidth -- that has always been acceptable, even with crappy U.S. companies. The problem is the latency. Who cares if you have a 155Mbps connection if it takes seconds for a packet to travel from your computer to the server and back. Yes, if you are just torrenting the world all day long, this might be good. But, if you actually want to get work done (Citrix, Terminal Services, etc), I suspect even this amazing connection would be borderline worthless.

Give me a call when they have 20ms ping times on this bad boy, and then they might actually have something.

Monty

@Monty: Bravo!

One key question they (sat providers) ask you is:

"Are you going to use this for online gaming?"

If you answer yes, they will steer you away from the sat option. Takes too long for the signal to pass through phone lines and go up to the sats, or bounce signals up to sats, down to ground and then back. I hate latency...

ltcmurray

I have internet connections all over the world in places I have business branches and yes our prices here are failures by comparison.

Satellite has lag it always will but it you are steaming Youtube for example, once it starts the stream you don't care,only interactive stuff suffers.

You DTV or Dish has the same delay , it just shifts you by a second or so. Satellite is best for multi cast down steam.

Bandwidth fixation is way overdone. Give everyone and OC3 connection and you can fill your hard drive inventory at the house by lunch, then what do you do?

Even 10meg DSL can steam video to watch and download a file in background and handle all the RSS you can eat.

Unless you have multiple users sharing a connection at home for most users 50 meg is just an overpaid status symbol.

JustADude

I'm with the latency issue.
Assuming geostationary satellites orbit ~38500km above the earth, light travels at 299792458 m/s... That comes to (excluding any other overhead) .1284 seconds or 128.4ms latency. This is unacceptable for online gaming. 0-40ms is nice for FPS online games. 80-100ms for MMORPGS... Anything else is pushing it. So my response to the story: Who cares?

mathdino