Can somebody help me decide on an isp?

[times-up]

I will be moving back to Fukuoka next month and havent lived there or had internet access in japan for 5 years alot has changed since teh days of ntt's flets service I have read some reviews and it seems Yahoo!BB is terrible anybody have any insight as to what the best company woudl be? Also it doesnt look lik eteh building is wired for fiber optic wiring. I run a iMac G5 English OS latest verison of Tiger. I rememebr I had alot of problems with dial up with my old ibook because of the language difference. Any help woudl be MUCH appreciated!

[maninjapan]

I currently use ODN - no problems there and not capped so lots of pictures and online video is fine to watch.

My friend uses yahoo, i think, but has lots of problems with the modem he was given and it's prone to cutting off after a certain period of time. That's in Kanagawa btw.

[IkemenTommy]

If you can get Hikari where you live, get it.
If not, YahooBB is not bad especially if you are going with their phone service as an option. International calls are 7 yen/3 min plus all calls to other BB users are free.

[themark]

I've been using OCN for 5 years with no issues. They have english web pages and telephone help from 9-9pm daily. Very friendly and helpful. They are now offering Hikari (fat-pipe) service in a lot of areas, but perhaps not where you are.

[bruce_a]

I've been using OCN for 5 years with no issues. They have english web pages and telephone help from 9-9pm daily. Very friendly and helpful. They are now offering Hikari (fat-pipe) service in a lot of areas, but perhaps not where you are.

When you say fat pipe, is this the fabled 100mb/s we here in the states lust after? I'm terribly fortunate to have a 5mb/s cable connection here, just by way of comparison. Wish the US ISPs would get off their asses and give us REAL broadband. *sigh*

[drpepper]

100mbs? um... well there is 1000mbs as well now though that works only within the walls of NTT's realm. 5mbs.. I don't think we can get anything that slow here.. thought maybe 8mbs was the slowest broadband availible. Then again unlike overseas where people expect to get 75%+ of the advertised speed here in Japan it is decent if you can get 50% so it makes for a bit of a hard comparison.

[bruce_a]

100mbs? um... well there is 1000mbs as well now though that works only within the walls of NTT's realm. 5mbs.. I don't think we can get anything that slow here.. thought maybe 8mbs was the slowest broadband availible. Then again unlike overseas where people expect to get 75%+ of the advertised speed here in Japan it is decent if you can get 50% so it makes for a bit of a hard comparison.

Hm. Well, 50% of 8mb/s is still faster than most American DSL service. Cable tends to be faster than DSL, but hovers between 3 and 4 mb/s. And if that's the low end of the spectrum... *sigh* I'm in the wrong country.

[drpepper]

I have 30mbs cable (only 2 up though) and I am lucky to get 15mbs of that (my highest was 16mbs), though performance domestically is good overseas speeds really drop off big time. Most of those 100mbs lines will only give you around 30mbs in the real world too. Then again.. 30mbs isn't bad.

[Big Booger]

[IkemenTommy]

I ended up signing up with Usen Mansion Hikari. The price and the speed is all right.. except I can't get my wireless router to work!!

[Currawong]

I'm with Cable Station Fukuoka, and paying for 30/30 cable definitely isn't worth it, as I'm getting max 200-500kB/sec. Bullshit all things considering, but I couldn't get Hikari where I am.

When I lived in Tokyo years ago, i went with gol.com. Unless disaster has struck, they were decent and have an English website and support. Once I get a phone line, I'm going to call them up to switch to ADSL. The ADSL matrix is unnecessarily complex, but they claim to be able to get it all arranged with one phone call to them, after which they take care of the rest.

YahooBB seems to be good with 8/1 ADSL otherwise.

[gamma-ro]

I just moved to NTT Biglobe. AT first things were super great, but they seem to throttle communication on non "standard" ports. And that sucks hardcore, so I am thinking to perhaps switch to another ISP so I don't have to deal with that crap any longer.

Anyone else here run into issues of speed throttling?

[Taro Toporific]

DP DP DP

[Taro Toporific]

Anyone else here run into issues of speed throttling?

I just got speed throttled on my building's 100MB fiber connection via "itscom". Bah. Service was blazing fast for several months and then ---SLAMO!---the speed was throttled to 8kbs, acoustic modem speed for 1986. Lucky for me I also have seperate ADSL provider because I was warned that itscom service was not "stable."