SON: I’ve always felt that the Internet should be much faster, much cheaper to use. Especially in Japan, it’s so expensive and so slow. I thought that we should change this, and if nobody else does it, we have to do it. That’s my attitude. We couldn’t do it much earlier because of the monopolistic situation that [phone giant NTT] has had. At the end of last year, a new law was passed. NTT became obligated to open up [its networks]. I said, “OK, the time has come. We can no longer complain. We have to act.”
First, I asked myself, if we were to provide such a service, what would be the ideal pricing and speed? Video on demand–full-screen video, full stereo sound, film and music–requires [data] throughput of two to four megabits per second. So I targeted that level of performance, and I have targeted a price of one fourth of what end users are paying today, which is $60 to $80, for narrowband. NTT charges by the minute. As you become a more avid user, the bill goes sky-high. What the end user needs is one fourth of today’s price of narrowband and a speed 100 times faster. So that is the target I set, and then I worked out everything around it.
Because we have a strong passion to make it happen. We are determined. Today in Japan, the number of PC-based Internet users is 25 million. In three years it will be 40 million. If we provide 100 times the speed at one fourth the price, the quality of the Yahoo brand and the content that Yahoo has in Japan, we can seek a much bigger market.
Both. Of course we will get revenues from the content, from more exciting commercials. Not just a small banner, but the full-screen video and full-sound commercials. Also, all kinds of paid content. All of those are great businesses, but we are counting also on great volume.
I imagine that people will call me crazy. I say that’s fine. One day, two or three years from now, we’ll revisit that subject, OK? If we get end users’ wishes to come true, the business will follow. That’s my thinking.
Yes. I feel so ashamed that all these intelligent students, these young people, are all being blamed, as if they’re stupid and not capable of being able to use broadband technologies, as if they don’t know that broadband is the future. That’s not really true. The only issue has been just one company that’s been preventing the usage of the broadband. But because of deregulation, they have to open up.
They are actually doing it today. I have to continuously fight with them. I find it’s not clear sky yet, but it’s 70 percent opened up. So I can see some sunshine in the cloud. As we go on, we have to clear the cloud. [An NTT spokesman declined to comment on Son’s remarks, except to say, “We have always observed the rules and fairly competed.”]
I don’t make comments on the size of the investment, because people get scared.
I’m confident. If you would like to short our stock, that’s fine, I don’t care. The key is we announced yesterday that since midnight, we’re accepting orders. When I woke up, a huge pile of orders jammed the site. So I’m confident.
I’m not much worried about that. It’s a 100-year revolution. As it was for the auto industry, or the electronics industry, or the telephone industry. Narrowband is only the very beginning of the true technological depth that the Internet can deliver. What kind of content can you deliver on narrowband? Do you get excited about text and still pictures? Do you cry over them? Broadband will enlarge the total market size. It is going to open up all kinds of new opportunities. The scale will be hundreds of times bigger. People will start paying for content.
It’s finally going to come. This is it.
