Greetings!
Japan alone currently has about 30% more FTTH optical fiber broadband subscriptions than all EU countries + Switzerland + Norway + Iceland added together.
Similarly, Japan was far in advance of other countries in laying the foundations for the mobile internet, with the introduction of the DoPa (DoCoMo Packet) packet switched network on March 28, 1997, several years before packet switched networks were introduced in EU and elsewhere. However, Japan's electronics and telecoms industries largely failed to capture global value from this pioneering work. Essentially only Softbank with the SPRINT acquisition now has hope to capture such global value.
A very interesting point is that in EU there are many discussions and uncertainties how broadband fiber investments can be profitable.
Japan has solved this problem: FTTH business in Japan is profitable.
We see arbitraging opportunities in capturing value from Japan's know-how, similar to Softbank's "time shift" investments, arbitraging the time shift of internet roll-out in US vs Japan vs China, as explained in our Softbank-report.
Read more below, or in the 59th edition of our Japan-Telecommunications report:
on slideshare | purchase 59th edition of Jan 15, 2013 | subscribe and receive all updates
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