Tag Archives: Masayoshi Son

How to get fast Internet service —Susan Crawford

Susan Crawford has a plan for getting us fast Internet access for jobs, community, education, and health care.

Susan Crawford wrote for Wired 2 October 2012, We Can’t All Be in Google’s Kansas: A Plan for Winning the Bandwidth Race, about how the incumbent telephone and cable companies that provide our Internet access aren’t going to help:

They have no incentive to do so. Because they never enter one another’s territories, they don’t face the competition that might spur such expansion.

Instead, incumbent internet access providers such as Comcast and Time Warner (for wired access) and AT&T and Verizon (for complementary wireless access) are in “harvesting” mode. They’re raising average revenue per user through special pricing for planned “specialized services” and usage-based billing, which allows the incumbents to constrain demand. The ecosystem these companies have built is never under stress, because consumers do their best to avoid heavy charges for using more data than they’re supposed to. Where users have no expectation of abundance, there’s no need to build fiber on the wired side of the business or build small cells fed by fiber on the wireless side.

If the current internet access providers that dominate the American telecommunications landscape could get away with it, they’d sell nothing but specialized services and turn internet access into a dirt road.

So what is her plan?

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Softbank’s Son to install solar in Japan: watch out, Georgia Power!

The same Masayoshi Son who shook up Japan’s Internet market and is about to do the same in the U.S. is moving to modify Japan’s power market from nuclear to solar. Watch out, Georgia Power and Southern Company! If you don’t get a move on, Son-san will eat your lunch, too.

Mariko Yasu wrote for Bloomberg Businessweek 23 June 2011, Softbank’s CEO Wants a Solar-Powered Japan,

Masayoshi Son Billionaire Masayoshi Son made a fortune taking on Japan’s phone monopoly. Now he aims to shake up its power utilities after the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. The 53-year-old chief executive officer of Softbank says he will build solar farms to generate electricity, with support from at least 33 of Japan’s 47 prefectures. He’s asking for access to transmission networks owned by the 10 regional utilities and an agreement that they buy his electricity. No other company has secured unlimited access to the those transmission networks. The utilities would not comment. Japan’s main business organization, the Keidanren, called for “careful analysis” before any drastic change in the power system took place.

If Japan ever felt ready to back Son’s ambitious plan, this is the moment. Radiation has spread across at least 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) in the northeast since the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami led to meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. Outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan said in May he will rethink a plan to increase atomic power to 50 percent of the nation’s energy output from 30 percent. Renewable energy already accounts for 10 percent, according to Japan’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. Son wants to see that tripled by 2020. “The question is how this nation is going to survive after cutting nuclear power,” he said at a government panel meeting on June 12.

Complacent Georgia Power and SO, you maybe don’t think he can do it? NTT probably thought that, too:

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Japan’s Softbank buys Sprint because CEO Son says U.S. networks too slow

U.S. car manufacturers decades ago milked profits out of poor technology and got outcompeted by Japan on both quality and price. The same thing is happening right now with fast Internet service. We may not have to wait for Verizon and AT&T to get around to offering affordable fast 4G LTE Internet service: Sprint may do it first, now that Japan’s Softbank is stepping in.

Roger Chang wrote for CNET News 15 October 2012, Japan’s Softbank poised to supercharge Sprint network: Softbank CEO complains that U.S. networks are too slow, and with his $20 billion bid for Sprint, he aims to do something about that.

Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son isn’t impressed with the high-speed wireless networks in the United States.

“Everytime I come to the U.S., I say ‘Oh my God, the mobile phone network is so slow,'” Son said during a conference call with analysts today.

Now, Son is in a position to change things to his liking after Softbank and Sprint Nextel agreed on a deal in which Softbank would take a 70 percent stake in the U.S. carrier.

Sprint, which has struggled as a distant No. 3 carrier behind AT&T and Verizon Wireless, could get a boost from the deal, in which Softbank spends $12.1 billion to buy the controlling stake and another $8 billion in investment into the company.

What’s he aiming at improving?

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