Japan designating Internet as Sunrise Industry
(With P6 being the last independent GLOBAL ISP any interest from Japan will make the Verio deal look nickel & dime)
Japan Launches Internet Strategy
The Associated Press, Fri 1 Sep 2000
TOKYO — Japan is drawing up a five-year plan to surpass the United States as an Internet powerhouse through massive investment in high-speed infrastructure and scuttling laws
that inhibit e-commerce.
Despite its technological prowess, high costs and a plethora of legal restrictions have prevented Japan from having its own Internet revolution — and officials are
worried the new economy will pass the nation by.
The government's IT Strategy Council, which opened this week under the leadership of Sony Corp. president Nobuyuki Idei, said if steps are taken now the Internet could lead Japan's bruised economy into a new era of super-fast expansion.
``Our country must aim to accomplish a new period of rapid economic growth by stimulating new businesses and existing industries, and overtaking the United States within five years as a major high-speed Internet nation,'' the council said in a report posted on the Prime Minister's office Web site.
The council said it is essential to grid Japan with fiber-optic lines that will permit the high-speed transmission necessary for growth of the Internet. It was scathing in its assessment of the current state of Japan's information technology infrastructure.
``There is hardly any high-speed infrastructure. ... The connection speed is so slow that using costs are extremely high,'' the council said.
``In Japan, the IT industry's development is being obstructed. ... The promotion of infotech has fallen way behind the United States.''
The council cited more than 700 legal impediments to the growth of e-commerce, including the obligatory exchange of paper documents in Internet transactions.
It highlighted the urgency of immediate steps to jump-start Japan's laggard information technology industry by recommending that laws to deregulate e-commerce be debated during this fall's special session of Parliament.
The government panel said it would complete its proposal of specific measures to promote the Internet in Japan within two months.
``The government's understanding is that it has to move fast,'' Akira Fujimoto, an official in the information technology bureau of the Prime Minister's office, said
Friday. ``We are hoping to put together a concrete plan by the end of the year.''
Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has promised to make information technology the backbone of Japan's economy in the future.
Much of the mammoth amount of public funding going into nursing Japan's economy back to life has been allocated to promoting information technology. Fujimoto said the council has not yet discussed whether
expanding IT infrastructure would be part of public works or accomplished by the private sector.
The Internet has been slow to catch on in Japan. Only about 11 percent of Japanese households have access to the Web, compared to 37 percent in the United States.
The main problem is cost. Local call fees in Japan make it expensive to go online with a telephone line, whereas such calls in America are almost free.
The U.S. has been aggressively lobbying Tokyo to bring down telecom fees and open the lucrative sector to competition.
In July, the Japanese government agreed to lower the connection charges that foreign telecom companies pay to local telephone giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Co. by 20 percent over two years.
One bright spot has been the country's embrace — in research and development and among consumers — of wireless technology.
The Internet-friendly i-mode mobile phone created by NTT subsidiary NTT DoCoMo now has more than 10 million subscribers.
Experts say Japanese wireless technology is about two years ahead of the United States and Europe.
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