NTT Flet’s fails in the Covid traffic crunch

NTT FLET’S internet service has been around forever in many configurations, the latest being Flet’s Hikari ‘optical fiber’. I call it flexible fiber because NTT uses the term Hikari when they should not. My Hikari only comes into the apartment building junction box then branches into each apartment with good old cooper wire phone lines and a VDSL modem. NTT calls that Hikari, I don’t.

PPPoE/IPv4 traffic has been tapped out in Tokyo since at least 2017. When I first upgraded from PPPoE/IPv4 to IPoE/IPv6, I saw a pleasant bump in speed with none of the night time internet traffic meltdowns when using PPPoE.

I thought my problems were solved but over time IPoE/IPv6 download speed has slowed down while iPhone NTT Docomo 4G LTE speed has skyrocketed past NTT Flet’s:

A year ago Twitter user shao, who posts wonderful network and payment tech tweets with the deep tech background to back them up, noted that the Japanese Internet Provider Association was in a collective hissy fit with NTT. IPoE/IPv6 junction points to NTT main lines where tapping out and providers needed more junction points, they also wanted IPoE access pricing brought in line with PPPoE and better traffic control. NTT gave internet providers the cold shoulder with ‘we’ll consider it if you do the work.’ The result of that is NTT East/West Flet’s service is seriously slowing down in face of stay home telework, bored kids streaming content and too much online shopping.

As shao notes 4G and KDDI au Hikari nuro service are, so far, unaffected. The strange thing here is that KDDI is simply renting NTT dark fiber for nuro. So yes, NTT has the capacity, but doesn’t seem inclined to put in the effort to share it unless providers do the work, and also pay up. To be fair I think one of the problems is hinted at in a recent annual NTT financial report: a shortage of field engineers and technicians. Somehow it seems fitting that the human problem of Covid is also the human problem of slow internet speeds.