Rural Japan, is like the suburbs here in the states. Japan is fucking tiny.
We still should have fiber everywhere in the states. And it should be provided by the electric coops that most of our rural areas run off of, but suggesting that Japan’s rural areas are anything like the US’s rural areas is laughable.
Thank again, Japan is the size of California. This is rural Japan not a suberb. And even many of the actual suberbs in California don’t have fiber to the home.
This is about monopolies running rampant and misuse of public money not about the technical feasibility.
Edit: These companies literally bought back their own stock to inflate their market cap instead of building out the infrastructure we funded.
I’m not saying that the USA shouldn’t have fiber everywhere, it should be like water or electric, my point was suggesting that rural japan is even remotely close to rural US is a bit of a stretch.
And cali is slightly larger than japan, not by much but it is, and that’s just one state.
I grew up in rural Ohio and spent time in rural TX as well for a brief period. As a kid, I walked about 20+ minutes to bail hay in my neighbor’s fields in the summer for cash. I am currently farming in rural Tohoku Japan.
Certain things are similar and certain things are different. To call where I live a suburb is just wrong yet we, and those even more rural than us, have fibre. I looked at buying land on the side of a mountain before buying this place and, although I’d have to pay for the run from the nearest point, I could still get fiber. Being Japan, I of course had to apply by fax machine, but the infrastructure is there for most of the country, both urban and rural.
Edit to add: we have multiple fiber companies as well, at least one of which being a fully private company.
If you live somewhere that has electricity coming from the energy grid then by default should also have Internet coming to your house as well. By defining the internet as a utility and treating it like one you would get more funding to build out the network. Something similar happened with phone lines way back in the day if I’m not mistaken.
What’s better than Starlink in the boonies?
Posting from my fiber-to-the-home connection in rural bumfuck Japan presently for no particular reason.
Rural Japan, is like the suburbs here in the states. Japan is fucking tiny.
We still should have fiber everywhere in the states. And it should be provided by the electric coops that most of our rural areas run off of, but suggesting that Japan’s rural areas are anything like the US’s rural areas is laughable.
Thank again, Japan is the size of California. This is rural Japan not a suberb. And even many of the actual suberbs in California don’t have fiber to the home.
This is about monopolies running rampant and misuse of public money not about the technical feasibility.
Edit: These companies literally bought back their own stock to inflate their market cap instead of building out the infrastructure we funded.
I’m not saying that the USA shouldn’t have fiber everywhere, it should be like water or electric, my point was suggesting that rural japan is even remotely close to rural US is a bit of a stretch.
And cali is slightly larger than japan, not by much but it is, and that’s just one state.
I grew up in rural Ohio and spent time in rural TX as well for a brief period. As a kid, I walked about 20+ minutes to bail hay in my neighbor’s fields in the summer for cash. I am currently farming in rural Tohoku Japan.
Certain things are similar and certain things are different. To call where I live a suburb is just wrong yet we, and those even more rural than us, have fibre. I looked at buying land on the side of a mountain before buying this place and, although I’d have to pay for the run from the nearest point, I could still get fiber. Being Japan, I of course had to apply by fax machine, but the infrastructure is there for most of the country, both urban and rural.
Edit to add: we have multiple fiber companies as well, at least one of which being a fully private company.
Posting from a fiber connection in rural vietnam. Also have 6GB 5g/day for <7USD/mo
Doesn’t fucking matter when you have as much money as we do.
I’m not suggesting it is. That’s part of my reply
Not even close to as small as people think.
Japan is 146k sq miles
Cali is 163.5k sq miles
Sure Japan’s not small but it’s not anywhere near the size of the US.
Japan is much more spread out which would also increase the logistics of getting fiber to rural areas.
The majority of Japan lives in the cities though. It’s a reason smaller villages are dying.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/15/in-japans-ageing-countryside-communities-are-facing-extinction
The younger population is moving to the cities.
The US has people moving to rural areas now, as it’s cheaper than cities.
https://dailyyonder.com/migration-to-rural-america-resulted-in-population-growth-last-year-census-shows/2025/04/21/#%3A~%3Atext=Net+Migration+in+2024&text=Thousands+of+people+moved+to%2Cnet+migration+of+240%2C000+residents.
We’re doing the opposite of what Japan is doing though.
If you live somewhere that has electricity coming from the energy grid then by default should also have Internet coming to your house as well. By defining the internet as a utility and treating it like one you would get more funding to build out the network. Something similar happened with phone lines way back in the day if I’m not mistaken.
https://www.ntia.gov/funding-programs/high-speed-internet-programs/broadband-equity-access-and-deployment-bead-program
There is a lot of controversy around this … and recently trump changed it to allow things like starlink… make of that what you will
Proper infrastructure development to bring them fiber?