Shift Happens Statistic of the Day

From Wired:

After a week of delays, Japan launched a new, experimental Internet satellite on Saturday that shows why Japan is still so much farther ahead than the United States in terms of bandwidth.

The "Kizuna" satellite (the name, selected through a public nomination process, means "ties" or "bonds," in the sense of linking people together) is designed to give extremely high Internet speeds to rural and other areas that have been left off the country's already high-speed grid.

According to the project's Web site, ordinary home users will ultimately be able to get Net download speeds of 155 megabits per second (Mbps), with upload speeds of 6 Mbps. Businesses and other organizations using a larger receiver dish will be able to get connections of 1.2 gigabits per second.

No word on what the cost of home access will be, but still . . . 155 Mbps download from a satellite. A satellite? Think access from everywhere. Think off the grid. I think I have bandwidth envy.