Japan's Hyper-Speed Internet Edit
Kizuna Satellite 1.2 Giga bps

Who is putting the “broad” in broadband? Japan is!

The Kizuna, which means “wind”, satellite was launched and it looks like it will be capable of making broadband obsolete. They have introduced the hyper-band 1.2 Gbps - Giga Bits Per Second (Billion bits per second.) That’s a tornado-like 150 times faster than DSL and 12 times faster than the best fiber connection. It cost $342 million and is expected to become available in July 2008.

“We’re talking super-high speed wireless Internet communication in a country that experiences dozens of moderate to major earthquakes each year, every year,” Inventorspot notes. “With KIZUNA orbiting above, uninterrupted communication can be maintained when a ground-based network is disrupted by an earthquake or any other natural disaster. Not only in Japan, mind you, but in almost any Asian country - the service will be available at 19 different locations across Southeast Asia.”

Stealing, uh, buying off the web would be almost instantaneous.