Japan's Local Communities with High-Speed Internet Access: The Case of Haramachi City

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 19:38:28 +0900
From: Adam Peake <ajp () glocom ac jp>
Subject: Japan's Local Communities with High-Speed Internet Access: The Case of
 Haramachi City

Dave,

My colleague Takahiro Miyao has just written a short report about a 
municipal broadband project in a small Japanese town called Haramachi City, 
a few hundred miles north east of Tokyo. Haramachi has built a high speed 
local access network using fixed wireless (40Mbps both way), on top of 
spare capacity in the town's municipal fiber network. Financed partly by 
central government subsidies. Haramachi City is not the only rural Japanese 
town building this kind of network, and one interesting aspect of these new 
communication infrastructure subsidies is speculation that they are being 
promoted by politicians who are directing funds to help their 
constituencies and home regions in much the same way as they brought 
engineering or agricultural subsidies and public works projects in the 
past. Now this political power may be being directed at ensuring local 
regions have the best broadband communications available, i.e. it's 
political "pork" for the Internet age.

Please see <http://www.glocom.org/tech_reviews/jt_review/20040106_s53/> for 
Prof. Miyao's report on Haramachi City.

Thanks,

Adam

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