I recently moved into a brand new, detached house (renting). I signed up for Softbank Hikari as it seemed the best option in my location, however when the guys from NTT came out they said they needed permission to perform construction on the house.
They didn’t speak English and my Japanese is not good so it wasn’t possible to drill down into exactly what they needed to do.
I went ahead and asked my management company, since installing fiber seems like a fundamental utility. Upon asking the property owner I was told no. In the end I signed up for one of those 5G mobile internet solutions (from Docomo) and it’s pretty terrible and doesn’t suit my needs at all.
I wanted to ask:
1. Is it really necessary for them to need to perform construction to install fiber? Does anyone know what kind of construction, and could I just get away with it if I did it anyway?
2. Are there any other alternatives? I.E. Would Nuro also have to do the same thing?
13 comments
Construction is usually attaching some kind of plate to the outside to fix the fiber line coming from a pole and then running the said fiber line into the building, which can usually be done through an aircon duct.
NTT has English-assistance phone line where you can ask all this, here: https://www.ntt-east.co.jp/en/contact/
They will 3-way call to your local NTT office (and maybe even the outsourced construction company) and will explain what needs to be done etc.
It is possible the owner may not want the outside “construction” done but you could remind them that a house pre-wired for NTT fiber is more valuable than one without.
>Is it really necessary for them to need to perform construction to install fiber?
Yes.
>Does anyone know what kind of construction, and could I just get away with it if I did it anyway?
Typically there is a hole that will need to be drilled from the outside to the inside of the home. A box outside will typically be installed on the wall. The fiber optic cable will need to be attached to a wall plug that will need to be mounted on the inside of the home. It’s not a question of can you get away with it it’s a question of will the installation company do it without the homeowners approval and the answer is no.
This is one of those should have gotten something in writing before moving in situations.
When I had Hikari installed to my semi-detached rental the engineers just attached the cable to pre-existing phone lines and ran the fibre-optic through the walls to the phone outlet. No drilling, hole making or construction required.
I wonder what’s different about your place?
If this is a brand new house, I would expect the builder included conduit from a utility junction outside the house near a utility pole to a closet somewhere inside. This would be used for either cable or internet — probably even for an external tv antenna. Even a regular POTS line would use this conduit.
The only structural modification for fiber would be screwing a relief bracket to the outside of the house to fix the cable to. Cable TV installations typically require even more equipment attached to the outside of the house.
It’s not a box — it’s a bracket to relive tension on the fiber cable. See the picture below. The top connection is power. The lower connection is fiber. The weatherproof boxes were installed by the builder. The metal bracket is all that is needed.
https://preview.redd.it/f30xyjmsg80c1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba38dcc87d9683df172bf9a85b5b7a6958601067
I have been using Docomo 5G home wifi internet service for over one year now. Let me offer one suggestion.
For context, I live in a 2 storey house and decided not to bother with fibre optic service when I moved in. The Docomo 5G wifi internet modem started off quite badly for first few months, and eventually got from bad to worse, and requiring daily soft reset and hard reset of the modem unit just to go online and Netflix / you tube etc. We are just regular internet users. That went on for months until I found a solution.
We talked to Docomo, and did some online research. Confirmed that DOCOMO network is overcrowded by their own admission, and a network upgrade is underway (may see bandwidth upgrade later).
Someone tipped me off about using a dedicated home wifi system in addition to the built-in wifi function of the docomo unit. I took out my old Netgear Mesh wifi modems (2 units system), and installed my own wifi mesh network inside my house, and hard wired connecting my Netgear base unit to the docomo 5G modem (only using the docomo as connection to the cell tower). This has dramatically improved our internet experience for the past 4 months. Everything just work – my Apple HomePod systems, Sonos, all the PC and Mac. all working without any issues we had experienced in the first 6 months of using the Docomo 5G with its built in wifi service.
If you are using the docomo 5G modem with its built-in wifi service, you might want to try my solution and see if this will improve your situation.
I hope this helps.
I had this situation and had 3 friends call (all fluent, one japanese person) they always said no. Softbank air is usable but no gaming on it. I had to move because I couldn’t take shit shit internet anymore
> Is it really necessary for them to need to perform construction to install fiber?
Yes, no, still yes.
The Japanese way is that your fiber is terminated inside your rental unit. Which means that NTT (cable owner) needs to pull the cable from some place outside the property through the building into your flat.
What they do in some other countries, is they terminate the fiber in a wireless unit attached to an electricity pole. That doesn’t traverse your landlord’s property and requires no permission. I haven’t heard of this method in Japan, but who knows, google it up.
I was in this same exact situation! Except I went with Sakura but when the guy came to install it, he was running around my apartment saying おかしい and 分からん because there was literally nowhere to install it. Turns out they have to drill a hole for it but unfortunately my landlord wasn’t keen on that idea. So in the end I got SoftBank Air which has been working well for me. I know there’s a lot of mixed reviews for it but I think it depends on the area. Turns out many in my building got it too lmao
1. Yes, it’s necessary if the fiber is not available yet in your building. I don’t know about other hikari but I checked Nuro and the construction includes inside and outside the building. Outside construction sucks. They have to dig the area around to install the cables or something like that. It’s written very detailed on the website so you might wanna use Google translate to check it. But need the landlord’s permission to do it. I moved to an apartment with VDSL of NTT so basically you can’t get fiber’s speed because the speed is limited even you paid for fiber. But luckily the building have Nuro fiber already so I just called them, they installed inside the apartment and done, we have internet next day.
2. If the building doesn’t have nuro, it’s gonna take you months to install it if you get the permission
Had to make it a negotiating point on my apartment contract renewal. Most caving happens then.
When I moved I asked them to add a clause in the rental contract stating “owner allows tenant to do required construction for internet connection”, as a condition for signing. They were ok with that. After you move in you lose all leverage. Similar if you want to bring a pet, they’ll generally say no after you’ve signed the lease.
There is a good likelihood that your house might be already wired to jcom for the tv, it’s not the best solution but would likely not require any heavy construction.
If you can see jcom channels on your TV it’s almost certain you are.