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My neighborhood was covered by a thick fog this morning. This kind of weather is quite unusual here. It happen once every one or two years. But the fog was cleared away soon and we enjoyed a rather warm fine day. I got the second injection against influenza. The morning newspapers reported that supply of influenza vaccine was short. It was lucky for me that I received the injections earlier. |
| The Telegeography, Washington D.C. announced on November 19, 1999 that the hubs of world Internet traffic are shifting to Europe. Up to now, the global traffic has always been hubbed through U.S. |
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New York to London is still the largest international Internet route, running more than 5 Gigabites per second (Gbps). But the next four top routes connect European cities at 3 to 4 Gbps, reports the Telegeography.
It said that London, New York, Amsterdam. Frankfurt and Paris are the Internet top international hub cities.
The November 24th issue of Nikkei Newspaper reported the world ranking of hub concentration at major cities announced by the Telegeograohy. Tokyo was not rated within top tens but no. 15 behind Vancouver, Canada. Tokyo's traffic capacity is 2.4 Gbps, less than one sixth of London where has a capacity of 18 Gbps.
Some diet members and government officials once claimed that Japan should have a big hub airport of air traffic in Asia. But it was impossible to have such a big airport because there was no available space within our small and over-populated land. The hubs of Internet are free from space. Even today Tokyo is the biggest hub city in Asia. Further efforts by persons related are required to contribute for developing Asian economy by expediting communication routes to Asian cities.
One of the biggest reasons why Japan delayed to utilize Internet is a extraordinary high price of telecommunications. Individual users have not been able to pay for 24 hour connection with Internet. But the 24 hour service at the cost of \6,000 per month has already started through cable television networks. NTT and a few other providers are making efforts to reduce the costs to a minimum. I am expecting the year of 2000 will be the first year of Internet era in Japan.