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Japan's Near-Universal Internet

In a crowd of 2,000 Japanese people, 1,700 are online. Japan has among the fastest broadband speeds in the world and near-universal access. The digital divide exists, but it's narrow.

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Japan's internet penetration is around 94%, but broadband adoption tells a more interesting story. Japan was an early broadband pioneer — fibre-optic internet was ubiquitous in Japanese homes while Americans were still on dial-up. What Japan never quite mastered was the smartphone-first internet shift: older institutions still run on fax machines and hanko seals.