Japanese telecommunications carrier KDDI will start offering in October 1Gbps fiber-optic Internet hook-ups for less than the current price of a connection one-tenth the speed, it said this week.

The Hikari One Home Gigabit service will cost ¥5,460 ($51.40) per month and provide an upstream and downstream connection speed of 1Gbps. Internet-based telephone service and cable TV service can be added to the connection for an additional fee.

It will be available to single-dwelling homes and apartment buildings up to three floors high in the Tokyo area and Hokkaido island in northern Japan. KDDI's current fiber-optic service for such buildings tops out at 100Mbps and costs ¥6,615 while the broadly available 10Mbps DSL service costs around ¥4,599.

Japanese Internet users already enjoy some of the fastest and inexpensive Internet connections in the world. Aggressive investment by carriers in fiber-optic networks and the country's densely packed cities leave many homes and buildings within easy reach of a fiber-optic connection.

As of the end of June subscriptions to fiber-optic Internet services totaled 13 million whereas those to DSL services stood at 12.3 million, according to figures from Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Cable Internet services, where speeds of up to 160Mbps are available in some regions, had attracted 4 million subscribers to bring the total number of high-speed connections in the country to 29.3 million.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.