Too-Much-TV

Japan broadband and communications policy

Yasu Taniwaki, Director, Telecommunications Policy Division, Telecommunications Bureau Ministry of Internal Affairs & Communications (MIC), has made two very useful slide packs covering Japan communication policy, and given permission for them to be put online (thank you.)

These are slides Taniwaki-san keeps updated on comms policy he and his colleagues are working on -- a new issue comes up, something changes, he adds a new slide or updates an old one.

The first pack provides a comprehensive overview of communications policy in Japan, from broadband, to NTT reform, NGN and mobile.

Download 080303_bb_policy_in_japaneu.ppt

The second covers some of the same issues, but written for an APEC TEL meeting last week and provides more information on packet shaping (and network neutrality.) 

Download 080326_bb_policy_japanapectel.ppt

It's a rapidly changing story, a new set of guidelines should have been released last week, so these slides will likely change soon.

Both files are 4MB or so.

Japan net traffic

Information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on Internet traffic in Japan.  Both are available on the MIC website http://www.soumu.go.jp, but I can't find the links so putting the files here.

The first:
Download JPN-traffic-vol-May07.pdf
is in English and is based on data from May 2007, the second:
Download JPN-traffic-vol-Nov07.pdf
is in Japanese and based on data from November 2007 (Japanese, but if you compare with the earlier English version the changes may make sense).

Good to read these files along side a slide pack made by Yasu Taniwaki, Director, Telecommunications Policy Division, Telecommunications Bureau, MIC. A very comprehensive view of Japanese broadband policy, http://www.mastel.or.id/files/NGN-Seminar/D1-S1_070919%20Taniwaki.pdf
(from September 2007.)

There have been a few developments since last September, importantly these three network neutrality principles have been adopted as official policy (November 2007)

• IP networks should be accessible to users and easy to use, allowing ready access to content and application layers
• IP based networks should be accessible and available to any terminal that meets  relevant technical standards and should support terminal-to-terminal (or "end-to-end") communication.
• Users should be provided with equality of access to telecommunications and platform layers at a reasonable price.

(MIC defines "user" to mean both the individual end user or network subscriber and also content providers and other related companies that conduct business using the Internet.)

Asian Civil Society Forum + WGIG

In Bangkok a couple of weeks ago to attend the Asian Civil Society Forum http://www.acsf.info. Spoke about Internet governance and the WSIS task force on financing mechanisms. Powerpoint (use view notes page) here ascfajp.ppt. Intended as an introduction to to issues. Unfortunately, confusion over the session start time (interesting when you expect a 9AM start and the audience turns up at 9:30 after an extended plenary session) meant we dropped the financing discussion.

Foundation for Media Alternatives organized two session on "WSIS and Beyond" as a Communications Rights track at ACSF. FMA have summarized both sessions http://mail.fma.ph/pipermail/commrights-asia/2004-December/000237.html and http://mail.fma.ph/pipermail/commrights-asia/2004-December/000238.html

Later in the day, Markus Kummer and Nintin Desai, a few members of the WGIG (Ang Peng Hwa and Avri Dori) and some old friends (Izumi Aizu and Bertrand de La Chapelle) joined us by video conference from Geneva. Kind of them to get up early so we we could chat for an hour.

Most interesting for me was to hear that some governments argued that they be allowed to sit in on the "closed" session of the WGIG. I think it's a bad idea. Civil Society worked hard to get good people on the working group, we succeed and my personal opinion is they are there because we trust them to do a good job. That was the point of pushing to get them on in the first place. I think these semi-open sessions will make it very hard for governments (and perhaps others?) on the WGIG to speak openly. Observers are allowed to ICANN board meetings, they are a show, not place for discussion. I would like to see WGIG hold it's meetings as a mix of private sessions and public consultations.

I summarized the discussion we had in Bangkok for the Geneva side as:

1/ Appropriate content. Raised by someone from a Youth organization. Basically protecting kids against porn. Speaker also talked about obsolete content in their educational materials. Think the issue of content will come up again and again, and could be an issue we hear often from Youth.

2/ Access. Comment was that it all begins with access, without the rest is moot. Essentially an ICT4D issue, but in the WG I think implies issues around interconnection and settlements (ICAIS came from the AP region.)

3/ Spam. Mentioned as a central concern.

4/ IPR and TRIPS. Patents (particularly on drugs) and commoditisation of knowledge. Lack of transparency of the processes.

5/ Multilingualism and localisation, character sets and domain names (IDN)

There are some minority languages where work still needed on character sets. Localization important for the region. And IDNs. Internationalised content and IDN as the main issues for non-English speaking groups.

6/ Issues of sovereignty important. Not discussed in depth but understood to be important: "next to sovereignty is language."

7/ Indigenous people raised, from point of view of minority languages and also need to protect cultural heritage.

[and I forgot to mention
8/ People with disabilities (not mentioned to Markus or in the meeting, but this is one of the issues Thailand pushed during WSIS. And there are governance issues.)]

Broadband in Japan, August 2004

Download japanbbsubsAug04.xls

Broadband subscribers in Japan, end of July 2004.

DSL 12,549,065 (12,325,694)
Fiber 1,601,432 (1,505,810)
Cable 2,768,000 (2,741,000)
Total 16,918,497 (16,572,504)

345,993 new broadband subscribers during August, penetration about 36.1% of households.

eAccess recently launched a new 47Mbps ADSL service. Information on their website is in Japanese, see http://www.eaccess.net/service/47m/index.html, and shows 3 charts: top is download speeds of various products (the red disk and associated table), upload speeds for those same products is the second table by the blue disk (e.g. the 47Mbps service has a 5Mbps upload)

The third graph shows deliverable speeds against distance from the local exchange -- DSL being distance dependent. 2KM is something of a tipping point.

Broadband in Japan, July 2004

Download japanbbsubsJuly04.xls

Broadband subscribers in Japan, end of July 2004.

DSL 12,325,694 (12,068,718)
Fiber 1,505,810 (1,417,483)
Cable 2,741,000 (2,702,000)
Total 16,572,504 (16,188,201)

Total increase of 384,303 during the month. Now just over 35% of households have broadband.

New DSL subscriber figures from August available, just 223,371 new subscribers so growth does seem to be slowing.

MPHPT released results of a survey a couple of weeks ago claiming Tokyo offers the world's cheapest broadband. Nikkei, August 31, reported as:

"The typical price of ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) Internet services in Tokyo in fiscal 2003 was 2,938 to 3,325 yen, compared with 6,648 yen for New York, and 6,630 yen for London."

Draft statement on Working Group on Internet Governance

Draft statement on the General Structure and Operating Principles for the Working Group on Internet Governance

Drafts in:

Spanish Download CaucusDraftIG_ES.rtf

Portuguese Download CaucusDraftIG-PT.rtf

French Download CaucusDraftIG_FR.rtf

English Download CaucusDraftVer3.rtf

Please send comments by Thursday, 9 September to [email protected]

Ian Thorpe, flowers and US ears

Twice now Ian Thorpe's stuck a bunch of flowers in the US competitor's face during the podium photograph.

During the 400 freestyle ceremony he put his non-flower encumbered hand around Grant Hackett's shoulder, and the flowers in Klete Keller's face. After the 200 freestyle today his clear hand went around van den Hoogenband, and the flowers to Michael Phelps. One more time and you'd think it might be deliberate...

(OK, so I find the first week of the Olympics boring. Still watching at 2:30AM, but it's definitely a little boring. Except Yawara-chan of course.)

Broadband Japan: users June 2004

Download japanbbsubsJune04.xls

Broadband subscribers in Japan, end of June 2004.

DSL 12,068,718 (11,819,177)
Fiber 1,417,483 (1,327,775)
Cable 2,702,000 (2,661,000)
Total 16,188,201 (15,807,952)

New subscribers for the month below 400,000 for the first time since September 2002. July will likely see a further drop.

Study reported in the Nikkei last week breaks down numbers for March 2004 by market share:
1. Softbank 35.8%
2. NTT East 20.4%
3. NTT West 16.1%
4. eAccess 13.4%
5. Acca Networks 10.4%

NTT's combined share is larger, but Softbank seen as the market leader. eAccess boosted sales when it introduce a 40Mbps service ahead of rivals (see http://www.too-much.tv/glocomish/2004/02/more_from_the_n.html), but dropped back again since and its market share on the year dropped 0.1%.

eBiscom, half year results

More about eBiscom. Half-yearly preliminary results are just out. Total of 417,500 subs, up 41,000 in the quarter. These are mainly individual households, on either high speed DSL (eBiscom won't accept customers who can't get all their broadband TV and movies services, so around 5/6Mbps minimum) or 10Mbps fiber.

Consolidated revenues of over 335 million Euro for January-June 2004, an increase of over 41% compared to the first 6 months of 2003. Consolidated EBITDA of over 98 million Euro, an increase of over 167% compared to 36.9 million Euro during the same period of 2003. Press release at http://www.ebiscom.it/index.php?sid=89&idc=779

EU: possible investigation into discrimination by content providers

The EU's competition commissioner Mario Monti is considering opening an inquiry into the provision of music, film and sports over the Internet.

Broadband providers, Italy's eBiscom and Spain's Terra Networks have complained of discrimination by content providers in giving them access to quality audiovisual content. Articles about this in the Seattle Post- Intelligencer and The Australian, by the same AP reporter, but different enough to read both -- important.

No surprise. Silvio Scaglia said pretty much the same thing when I met him last summer -- the deals he did with content providers were by far the most difficult part of building eBiscom. Hear similar stories from broadband providers everywhere. The Intertainer anti competitive action against major Hollywood studios is the prime example.

And...seems the Motion Picture Association is about to begin and RIAA-like campagin complaining (PDF file about 68Kb), about how the Internet and particualrly broadband is killing their industry.