Internet for our new house
13 Nov 2025 | #housing | #japan | #techWe just built our house in Tokyo. In this post I will cover how we got internet.
Choosing the company
I usually do a proper comparison, but for internet we had good experience with Sony Nuro in the past, so we decided to go with them. Most internet providers use the infrastructure of Docomo, but Nuro brings their own fiber optics to the homes, so it is usually faster and cheaper.
Timeline
Nuro told us that for detached houses you can apply from 2 months before the desired construction date. The construction can only happen after the house is completed and the handover is done, so we had to wait for that to be decided.
- September 26: Ichijo finalized the date of the handover (about a month before the handover)
- October 9: we signed up for Nuro online
- October 11: Nuro confirmed our application, and asked us to reserve the date of the construction. The earliest date was one months from then (November 10). We chose November 10 afternoon.
About 2 weeks before the construction we received the ONU decide by mail to our old address (we asked them to send it there instead of the new address). We had to bring this on the day of the construction with us.
Construction
Nuro’s afternoon time-slot was 13:00-17:00, so I was waiting for them from 1pm. They arrived at 3:30pm with a boom lift truck. They used the truck to pull the fiber optic from a nearby pole to the corner of our house, where Ichijo has prepared the intake for it.
Then they pulled through the conduit to the information box, and connected the Sony ONU device (ONU = Optical Network Unit, and this device includes a router with Wifi as well). I asked if we should test the WiFi, and the guy told me that he can’t help with that; his job is to bring the optics inside, and connect it to the ONU. Once the ONU’s LINE light turns green, his job is done.
The construction finished at 4:45pm, so overall took a little bit less than 2 hours.
I tested the internet and even on ONU’s built-in WiFi I got 710 Mbps download, 650 Mbps upload speed. We signed up for the 10 Gbps plan (but that’s of course the maximum speed it might do), but the speed is still very good, especially for WiFi.
I’ve heard from two friends (one for a house, one for a mansion) that Nuro sometimes comes with not enough equipment to actually do the construction on the first time, and they need to come back a second time to complete it. It seems like we got lucky that they bought the correct size truck that could do it all on the first try.