Japan ups consumer broadband ante to 2Gbps: Report

While Australians are busy arguing whether 25 megabits per second (Mbps), 50Mbps, or 100Mbps delivered by the National Broadband Network (NBN) is "more than enough" for the country, a Japanese internet service provider (ISP) has launched a new 2Gbps service, as reported by PCWorld.

The price for this 2Gbps down, 1 Gbps up service on So-net, a Sony-backed ISP in Japan, comes in at AU$50 per month on a two-year contract, with an AU$525 installation fee.

Not only is this service 80 times faster than the Coalition's 25Mbps initial minimum speed for its version of the NBN, it also eclipses the 1Gbps maximum offered by the current incarnation of NBN Co, and leaves gigabit Ethernet in its wake.

Compared to the average Australian broadband connection of 4.3Mbps, the Japanese offering clocks in at a zippy 465 times faster.

The theoretical limit of the So-net service is reported to be 2.488Gbps downstream.

Japanese fibre rollout is also without the associated problems of needing access to another telco's ducts — imagine Telstra or Optus trying to string up a series of poles like NTT does.