This is not really a question on WHERE to
buy but on who OFFERS the service. I
moved into a rental mansion (kodan-
Japanese government) and there is one
phone jack. actually many plates--one in
all rooms, but the wires come only to the
least convenient one.

KDDI installed their router for TV, Internet
and phone service, what is called VLAN. It
uses the telephone jack. But I had to run a
long telephone extension cord to the room
with the TV since it won't work in that
room. KDDi (using Matushita Technical
Services) says they do not know what to
do, the Kodan says they cannot touch it
for some reason that was not all that clear
to me, I but am free to ask the phone
company. NTT says it is a KDDI number
so that they will not do it. The guy from
the Kodan construction firm says it
depends on the age of the building, but it
is not a hard job and that I could ask any
telephone company in principle to bring
the wires through the wall to the right
room.

He says in reality there is a turf war
between the two big companies, and KDDI,
having just started with in home
installations, is troublesome in getting
them to do construction. He said there
are also smaller telphone construction
companies and it should not cost more
than a few man to have one do it. Does
anyone know of such a company offering
to install and reroute wires? The kodan
office gives me permission, but beyond
that I am not sure what to do shorty of
telling KDDI I will cancel their service if
they do not reroute the wires. they
probably don't care though, so that
wouldn't work.

Thanks

I had a laugh and a half when the NTT crew came to put in my "hikari fiber" wires. It was such a tinker toy job. They used little self stick clips to hold the wire to the walls, which all came off with the first whiff of summer humidity. It took a long time for what was in the final analysis pretty sloppy (and unattractive). Completely surprised me, since in general I think service people here tend to go overboard in the other direction, well sort of anyway.

Finally, I have to say that I didn't really notice (and still don't notice) a real difference between the Hikari fiber and my previous ADSL service. Is it my neighborhood?

One very annoying problem with Hikari phone service (internet phone) is that I can't call any "00" numbers. Fortunately, when I want to use AT&T direct, I have a pay phone close by just a few houses down.