Is Internet in Japan really that slow?

Hi Forum, I am from Europe and crrently live in Gunma, Japan. I subscribed to the Hikari Flets 1GB recently and some company came and installed the glass fiber cable right inside my room.
When I do a speedtest (which goes to a tokyo server) I have a ping of 10ms, dl speed of anything between 8-50 Mbit and ul of 40-50 Mbit.

Now in Europe I had a 200Mbit plan and the speedtest had exactly that...200Mbit with a ping of 0ms.

I wonder if i should call NTT and complain or is that the norm in Japan that you pay for a 1Gbit plan but only have like average 30Mbit?? Where have the other 970Mbits gone???

Thanks for any advice.

1. Mbps is not same to Mbite.
1 Mbps is 8 Mbite.
in Japan, the speed is express in Mbps.

2. NTT provides the line in which 1G bps can reach at maximum.
you don't have 1G line by yourself. you share 1G line with others. we don't know how many persons use the same line simultaneously. also, if you chose a crowded provider, provider's backbone is another limitation.

3.in general, downloading is faster than uploading. your results seems to be strange. probably, so many people use the same line for downloading in the same provider with a few uploading.

4,my current results is downloading 70 M bps and uploading 12 Mbps in 100 M family course.

5.if you use in wireless circumstance, it will become slow. if you use wireless under high security mode, it becomes more slowly. it is better to use a LAN cable for high speed.

6. there is no practical problem if the values are 10-50 Mbps.

Thanks for your reply.
Yes I know about the Mbps is not the same as Megabyte.

Anyway, guess what, I did a speedtest just now (7h54 am) and got a ping of 7ms, dl of 807.13Mbps and ul of 768.79. Guess I`m ok with that.

Strange that all previous speedtests had a rather disappointing result.....

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3854892899

800 mbps? I live almost right outside of San Francisco and I get pretty crap speeds.

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3867400757

How much does the the 1 Gbps plan cost? I may consider it once I move to Japan.

Depends on where you end up living. Apartments start around 3000 yen/mo, while homes are more like 6000 yen. Also, I believe that the speeds that you get in apartments will be affected by the usage of the rest of the building, so you can probably expect it to be slower during periods of heavy usage.

and also depends on the time of day. My result above (with 800 Mbps) was done early morning, like between 7 an 8 am.
It is 10h00pm now and here is the result

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3868102327

I live in a house and as far as I understood they laid a line of ca. 30m from some kind of black box haning on one of these numerous posts and directly into my room.

Oh well, Speedtest is not everything, guess its all about how the internet feels and I do think pages are loading quite fast, except when i visit pages from my home country (probablu due to their server which isn@t really big or anything)

oh, i think something around 5-6000 yen but it also includes Hikari TV.
On a sidenote: I don`t know if I was unlucky or if this is a general rule in Japan but so far everything I got, from internet to hikari Tv or Tsutaya stick, nothing worked as easy as they tend to advertise. It was always complicated a feck....Hikari TV just stopped working and had a black screen, Tsutaya stick was a f***ing nightmare and internet just disappeared and came back the first few days. Have to say, my impression about Japan and everything always working fine was somehow shaken :)

i'll be living in my own apartment in japan come february. i'm a photographer and work requires me to do a lot of bulk uploading. (50-100 photos, 1200x800 at the smallest). think i'll have a problem uploading due to internet speeds in apartments?

@ lemonmartini
Compress first to ".zip" or.

But upload speed depends on traffic and recieving server(host) specs.
Speed test sites results are no worth. No always same and flat conditions.

If over 5MB/s(40Mb/s) 300MB total need under 1min(60sec)
500MB total need under 2min(100sec)
1GB total need under 4min(200sec) as no bottleneck.

(note)
In Japan internet service using "bps(b/s)" usual. (100Mbps/1Gbps plan)
Not using "Bps(B/s)" for traffic speeds only. (1Byte = 8bit)
Regular file size using "B(Byte)" same as world standard.

i'm a photographer and work requires me to do a lot of bulk uploading. (50-100 photos, 1200x800 at the smallest). think i'll have a problem uploading due to internet speeds in apartments?

No, that shouldn't be a problem. Even apartment internet speeds are plenty fast for that type of uploading.

nothing worked as easy as they tend to advertise.

I never does.

My bill's generally 50-60 for "50 mbps" but I only really get 25ish no matter what time it is. Gbps internet has only a pipe dream that Google has touted (in Kansas of all states lol) while the Silicon Valley gets destroyed by the ISP's monopolies.

That ping of 0 is interesting... Do you house the internet hub in your room?

this thread is strange and funny from the beginning.
OP complained the optical-fiber connection in Japan.
this complain is compared to:
if the roads are crowded and he can't drive easily, he complains it to the car manufacturing company and denies his car.

No, I think it's a valid question and one that I've fielded from different people several times this month. It's good to check to make sure you are getting what you paid for, especially with things like internet that are quoted with theoretical speeds. Of course you need to know the limitations of the product.

A better comparison would be to wonder why his car only goes 10 kph when the posted speed limit is 80, and then ask to see if everyone else's car only goes 10 kph too.

it is OK, if you ask the police (they know about traffic) why so slow.
but, if you ask the reason to the car company (the facility company), that is strange. don't you ?

NTT only provides us the optical fiber facility. NTT connects his house to the nearest NTT base server. NTT has no responsibility for the connection to other places after NTT server.
when the NTT staff finished the connection, they checked the actual speed from his house to their server to confirm the connection. that is a routine work. the result should be 1 GB. he agreed and he signed.

he must complain his internet provider (softbank) which he chose from many selections.

It is more complicated than that.The optical fiber line was not installed by NTT but by some electrical company subcontratced to NTT. My provider is Softbank but their router and BB Unit didn`t work although the guy in the shop pormised a "kantan sette", just connect and ready to surf.

The guy that installed the line did a speedcheck and it was nowhere near the advertised speed. Now, I am in a battle between NTT and Softbank and they just blame each other. Also, that same guy just used the Softbank ID and password with the NTT router.

Anyway, coming back to your comparison, the line can be compared to the street and the provider would be the car shop where you bought the car. Now if you go to Nissan and buy a GTR Nismo with 600hp but you actually find out that they mistakently built a K-car engine with 50hp under the hood, where do you complain? the police or Nissan. In my case, I ordered a race circuit with a Nismo GTR but most of the time, it only has a K-car engine under its hood :)

it is OK, if you ask the police (they know about traffic) why so slow.
but, if you ask the reason to the car company (the facility company), that is strange. don't you ?

No, I think you're missing the point of my post. In my example, the issue indicates that there may be a problem with your car (internet connection), So it would be most appropriate to find out if it is the car manufacturer (NTT or their ISP)'s issue.

NTT only provides us the optical fiber facility. NTT connects his house to the nearest NTT base server. NTT has no responsibility for the connection to other places after NTT server. when the NTT staff finished the connection, they checked the actual speed from his house to their server to confirm the connection. that is a routine work. the result should be 1 GB. he agreed and he signed.

he must complain his internet provider (softbank) which he chose from many selections.

Yes, the proper place to complain first would be to the ISP if he is indeed getting unreasonably slow service. But by asking here I think the OP got a sufficient answer to his questions on whether what he was seeing was irregular or not.

My provider is Softbank but their router and BB Unit didn`t work although the guy in the shop pormised a "kantan sette", just connect and ready to surf.

Ready to surf will always be just a dream until the ISPs get their act together. Half the time they don't even send over the correct equipment...

The guy that installed the line did a speedcheck and it was nowhere near the advertised speed. Now, I am in a battle between NTT and Softbank and they just blame each other.

Yea, that sucks when they do that. Might have to find a different provider if they can't meet their obligations to provide reasonable service.