{"id":384,"date":"2012-10-25T08:44:04","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T12:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/japans-softbank-buys-sprint-because-ceo-son-says-us-networks-too-slow.html"},"modified":"2012-10-25T08:44:04","modified_gmt":"2012-10-25T12:44:04","slug":"japans-softbank-buys-sprint-because-ceo-son-says-us-networks-too-slow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/japans-softbank-buys-sprint-because-ceo-son-says-us-networks-too-slow.html","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s Softbank buys Sprint because CEO Son says U.S. networks too slow"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nU.S. car manufacturers decades ago milked profits out of poor technology\nand got outcompeted by Japan on both quality and price.\nThe same thing is happening right now with fast Internet service.\nWe may not have to wait for Verizon and AT&T to get around\nto offering\n\naffordable fast 4G LTE Internet service:<\/a>\nSprint may do it first, now that Japan’s Softbank is stepping in.\n<\/p>\n

\nRoger Chang wrote for CNET News 15 October 2012,\n\nJapan’s Softbank poised to supercharge Sprint network:\nSoftbank CEO complains that U.S. networks are too slow, and with his $20 billion bid for Sprint, he aims to do something about that.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n\n<\/a>\nSoftbank CEO Masayoshi Son isn’t impressed with the high-speed\nwireless networks in the United States.\n<\/p>\n

\n“Everytime I come to the U.S., I say ‘Oh my God, the mobile phone\nnetwork is so slow,'” Son said during a conference call with\nanalysts today.\n<\/p>\n

\nNow, Son is in a position to change things to his liking after\nSoftbank and Sprint Nextel agreed on a deal in which Softbank would\ntake a 70 percent stake in the U.S. carrier.\n<\/p>\n

\nSprint, which has struggled as a distant No. 3 carrier behind AT&T\nand Verizon Wireless, could get a boost from the deal, in which\nSoftbank spends $12.1 billion to buy the controlling stake and\nanother $8 billion in investment into the company.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWhat’s he aiming at improving?\n<\/p>\n\n\n

\n

\nThat’d be a boon to Sprint consumers who are left waiting for faster\n4G LTE service even as Verizon and AT&T aggressively roll out their\nrespective networks. Son said that on average, Japanese wireless\nnetworks were much faster than their U.S. counterparts, and he\nlooked forward to bringing speed to these shores.\n<\/p>\n

\n“I think we can provide much better competitive technology and\nservices that U.S. citizens have never experienced,” he said.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThis is the same Masayoshi Son who\n\npestered the Japanese government<\/a>\nto\n\nlet Softbank sell DSL back in 2000,<\/a>\nand then invested heavily in infrastructure and marketing, eventually\n\nmaking a profit five years later.<\/a>\nAs a result, \nJapan gained a decade-long lead in Internet speeds<\/a>\nover the U.S.\nBy lead, I mean 100Mbps everywhere and 1Gbps some places.\n<\/p>\n

\nA professor I know says he gets 100Mbps where he lives in Manhattan.\nDo you?\nIn Japan the fast speeds started with NTT West,\n\nwhich connects the\nless densely populated parts of the country, not Tokyo.<\/a>\nAnd to get the fastest speeds, they switched technologies,\nfrom DSL over copper to FTTH, Fiber to the Home.\nNot just faster speeds:\nalso much less expensive than the U.S.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nIn the U.S., it looks like Son-san is about to leapfrog over\nour slug-like DSL and cable TV and bypass FTTH to\nget us affordable fast Internet speeds over the air.\n<\/p>\n

\nAs\n\nI wrote six years ago:<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nWill we see the next leap in wireless technology come from China, or\nIndia, or Africa, and get sold back to the U.S.?\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nSo the answer is: from Japan,\nleveraging technology originally invented in the U.S.,\njust like happened many years ago with automobiles.\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[1351,883,515,28,1352,1530,8701,507,8741,8702,12,7,879,29,878,818,8800,605,6,516],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-access-speed","tag-4g","tag-att","tag-cable","tag-cost","tag-coverage","tag-dsl","tag-georgia","tag-internet","tag-internet-access-speed","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-masayoshi-son","tag-price","tag-softbank","tag-sprint","tag-television","tag-tv","tag-valdosta","tag-verizon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-6c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}