David Isen posted in his blog the the VON Magazine article he wrote about Japan, which I highly recommend.  I will not rehash his themes and closer examination of what Japan is doing right to lead the way in the delivering broadband services to the consumer market. 

Instead, I will talk about how some of Japan's neighbors are tackling the best way to deliver FTTP (Fiber To The Premise) to their countries.  Without a doubt, Japan is the leader in broadband in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, with over 1.5 million FTTH customers currently getting the service.  After getting burned with ISDN, NTT made a slower foray into FTTH, but seems to be picking up speed in delivering the service (competing with the pioneer Usen Broad Networks) and establishing a goal of 2 million FTTH subs by 2005.

But what about the other countries?  Australia also seems to be getting quite serious about FTTH.  One of the first companies to deliver optic fiber in Australia was Bright Telecommunications, offering service to about 200k homes in Perth.  The company has several packages, including video, high speed Internet and voice services bundles.  Telstra is working on an FTTH trial at Brookwater Estate, Greater Springfield, a new housing estate on the outskirts of Brisbane.  Bundling will also be centered on voice, video and broadband access, with a caveat: Telstra will be tuning down the throughput to match that of existing cable and ADSL services.  In Canberra, TransACT Communications will be offering broadband at 36 Mbit/s downstream and 1.6 Mbit/s upstream, relying on FTTC (Fiber To The Curb) and ADSL 2+.

In China, China Telecom (the country's largest broadband Internet provider) plans to try out FTTH services in the future, but for now will primarily rely on DSL to provide broadband access to its customers. Despite that, with the 2008 Olympic Games looming on the horizon, many telecom service providers in Beijing have prepared study plans to further develop the region's infrastructure.  Beijing's metro fiber optical network is projected to connect to other cities and connect contest and non-contest venues.  China Telecom has been quite active, and recently bought some optical infrastructure from Nortel (NYSE:NT).  As well, China Netcom is rolling out a wireless broadband solution using the 3.5 GHz spectrum, relying on Alvarion's WalkAir 1000 platform.

Finally, Korea has already deployed more than 50,000 km of fiber.  Korea Telecom (KT) is rolling out a FTTH pilot service in Kwangju, a southwestern city in Korea, for 100 subscribers.  The aggressive target set was to deliver between 50 to 100 Mbps of bandwidth to about three quarters of the total households by the end of 2010.