Fiber-optic lines have eclipsed DSL (digital subscriber line) for the first time in Japan as the most popular broadband Internet connection at Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), the country's dominant telecommunications provider.

As of the end of March the carrier had 6.08 million broadband Internet customers using its B-Flets service, versus 5.32 million on DSL lines.

NTT has been building out its network and aggressively promoting fiber-optic services, which offer faster connection speeds than DSL. Today more than 80 percent of homes in Japan have access to fiber-optic service.

The B-Flets service is available in a variety of flavors and prices range from ¥2,625 (US$22) per month for apartment dwellers who share a 100M bps (bits per second) or 1G bps connection to ¥10,605 per month for a dedicated 100M bps fiber optic connection to the home. In contrast the DSL service costs between ¥1,680 for a 1M bps connection to ¥2,940 for a 47M bps connection.

Consumers can also get telephone and cable television service across the fiber-optic connection and the former has proved particularly popular.

There were 13.8 million IP telephone subscriber lines at the end of December 2006, the most recent period for which figures have been published. Of those, 10.4 million were national Internet phone service numbers carrying a "050" area code and the remainder were conventional local numbers connected via an IP circuit rather than analog, according to Japan's Ministry of Information and Communication. The Internet phone service offers national calling for the same price as a local phone call and cheaper international dialling.

Despite the fast rise of super-fast fiber connections there are still about 3 million households in Japan that have no access to broadband Internet service of any type. In reaction to this the government recently said it wanted to eliminate "zero-broadband" towns and villages by 2008 and ensure that all homes had broadband access available by 2010.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.