Goverment & Policy

MPT to develop satellite-based mobile telecom system

The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications plans to begin R&D for a low-orbit satellite-based mobile communications system. The ministry intends to develop a system that will support the transmission of both images and sound signals and will enable users to exchange TV-quality video pictures using portable terminals. The MPT plans, by 2002, to launch an experimental satellite that will be used in portable terminal-based international multimedia information exchange experiments. The satellite will be developed with communications carriers starting in FY1997.

Building conduits for Japan's information superhighway

The Ministry of Construction plans, between 1997 and 2010, to spend ¥7 trillion to build 150,000 km of dedicated conduits that will hold the fiber-optic cable for Japan's "information highway." The ministry sees its role as supporting t he efforts of the commercial sector, and will build the conduits under major roads to assist private companies in laying their fiber-optic cable. The ministry will also ease current restrictions on the shared use of electrical cable conduits and will make all its facilities available to the widest possible range of users.

MITI to link purchasers and contractors via Internet

The Small And Medium Enterprise Agency of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) will launch, this fall, an Internet-based service designed to link subcontractor companies with component purchasers. The new service, which MITI say s is designed to help small and mid-sized subcontractors amid the waning influence of Japan's traditional keiretsu system of industrial groupings, will allow potential buyers to search for suppliers using component specification, price, and deliver y time criteria. The online system will be usable 24 hours per day, and MITI says that once the project is on track, it may broaden participation to include firms from the rest of Asia.

Market News

NEC enjoys good PC year

NEC's PC shipments soared 66% year-on-year in FY1995, to 3.6 million units. Total company PC sales revenue, meanwhile, rose by 23%, to ¥750 billion. Server orders jumped 51% year-on-year, to 39,828 units. Orders for NEC's Express 5800 PC servers shot up over 3.5 times, to 19,335 units, and the total orders for PC servers reached 24,135 units.

Orders for NEC mainframe machines totaled 977 units, down 7%, although orders for its large and mid-sized models grew slightly to 197 and 270 units, respectively; orders for small models dropped 10%, to 510 units. Supercomputer orders increased 28%, to 41 units. Orders for EWS4800 UNIX workstation models expanded 10%, to 23,500 units, but office server orders dropped by 25%, to 35,300 units. Overall, NEC's total computer sales reached ¥1,557 billion in fiscal 1995, an increase of about 6%.

You saw the movie. Now play the game!

California-based Fox Interactive, the CD-ROM development unit of leading US motion picture production company Fox Group, will enter Japan's game software market within the year by releasing 12 titles through Tokyo-based Electronic Arts Victor (EAV). Movie production companies in the US are converting their motion picture story lines and characters to game applications at a rapid pace, and Fox, which has set up an in-house production unit for this type of work, will target the Japanese market with orig inal games based on such successful movies as "Die Hard." Fox plans to provide titles that will run on Sony's PlayStation and Sega's Saturn as well as on PCs.

Seeking the green PC

According to a report released by the Japan Electronics Industry Development Association (JEIDA), the recycling and reprocessing rates of mainframes and office computers surpass those of workstations and PCs. The JEIDA survey found that 87% of mainfra mes and 61% of office computers are recycled at the end of their useful lives, compared to just and 51% of workstations and 45% of PCs. The report concludes that the recycling of PCs is likely to become a problem within the next several years as the numbe r of PCs in use grows. JEIDA plans to conduct a related survey later this year, then in 1997 it will propose a system for recovering old computers.

A data warehousing solution from Hitachi

Hitachi has started a data warehouse solution service that includes planning for data warehouse installation, consulting, training, system development, and operation support. The company opened support centers at its Open System Technical Centers (OST Cs) in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya in June. In May, Hitachi released a parallel relational database management system (RDBMS) designed for data warehouse services. The company predicts that the data warehouse service market will expand to ¥300 billion o ver the next three years, and it hopes to capture a 10% to 20% share of the emerging market.

Coping with the new century

Compuware Japan, the wholly-owned Tokyo-based subsidiary of US software giant Compuware, has started a new business to offer consulting services and solutions to companies that will be affected by the "year 2000 problem." This will occur at the end of the decade because many corporate computer internal calendars, which have traditionally utilized only the final two digits of the calendar year, will be unable to cope with the 21st century calendar without difficult and expensive modification. Although several large hardware manufacturers have already announced similar services, the move is unusual for a software enterprise. Compuware Japan hopes to leverage its parent's track record in this area to expand its business in Japan.

Jumpstarting Japanese Java

JavaSoft, the section of Sun Microsystems responsible for the Java network programming language, will establish a dedicated Japan unit in September. The move, intended to strengthen the company's position in the Japanese market, will enhance Sun's abi lity to control Java licensing and localize products into Japanese. The new unit, which will start with a staff of ten based at Sun's Japan head office, aims to have an initial Japanese version of Java ready by September and will translate other technolog ies into Japanese by next summer.

International News

JustSystem sets up US research center

JustSystem is opening an advanced research center in Pittsburgh. To be capitalized at $1 million, JustSystem Pittsburgh Research Center (JPRC) will be headed by a Carnegie-Mellon University professor and carry out research into language processing and image recognition using artificial intelligence technology. The Japanese software firm will staff the subsidiary with about 20 researchers and develop software with inference capability using the language structural analytical technology it has created through Japanese-language software development.

Keeping an eye on the competition

Matsumoto-based AI Soft, a development subsidiary of Seiko Epson, has set up an office in Palo Alto, California, to gather information on the fast-moving US multimedia software and Internet peripherals markets. AI Soft has been using several US consulting firms to gather data, but from June it assigned a full-time expatriate engineer in its new office in order to monitor market trends more closely and seek out possibilities for sales and marketing partnerships.

NEC makes foreign venture capital investment

NEC is investing $1 million in Accel V, a venture capital fund run by high-tech venture capital firm Accel Partners. The Accel V fund manages about $150 million and concentrates investment in four sectors: networking, Internet, multimedia, and health care. The purpose of the NEC move is to gain first-hand information on leading-edge US technology firms and to develop in-house expertise in investing in and developing the smaller companies that are often responsible for bringing innovative new technolog ies to market.

Sumitomo, Global One cooperate in China telecom projects

Sumitomo Electric will cooperate with Global One (a joint venture of Sprint, Deutsche Telekom, and France Telecom) to enter the local telephone service business in Tianjin, China. They, along with a local communications facility installation company, will invest over ¥20 billion to install 300,000 lines in the city, in exchange for part of the telephone service revenues. Sumitomo is expected to invest more than half of the total amount, and it intends to recover its investment within ten years. S umitomo will cooperate with Global One to carry out similar projects in other major Chinese cities.

Telecom Topics

IDC, MCI team for international Internet gateway

Japanese international telecom carrier IDC has teamed up with MCI of the US to offer an international Internet gateway service. With this new service, which started in June, IDC became the first company in Japan (other than former monopoly KDD) to off er an international gateway service. IDC rates are initially about 5% lower than those of KDD: monthly rates of ¥308,000 for 64K-bps and ¥3.7 million for 2M-bps lines.

Telecompetition intensifies

Competition in Japan's domestic long-distance communications market has intensified with new initiatives from NTT and DDI. In June, NTT introduced its Super Telewise discount service for large-volume users. For payment of a fixed monthly fee (of ¥ ;300,000 or ¥600,000), users will receive discounts of 20% or 25% for all calls with no "time-of-day" restrictions. The discount can be claimed by an entire company with offices in separate locations, meaning that multiple operating divisio ns can combine to achieve cheaper communications rates. New common carrier DDI, meanwhile, is launching DDI Direct Line service to connect subscribers to its long-distance network via leased lines. This bypasses NTT's local networks, making all DDI calls of over 20 km cheaper than NTT rates.

Digital service plans pushed up by 5 months

Shikoku Cellular Phone intends to introduce digital services in October rather than wait until next March, as its original schedule called for. The move has been prompted by competition in the local market: NTT DoCoMo Shikoku has already launched its digital service, and Digital Tuka Shikoku is set to begin service within a year. Shikoku Cellular Phone has boosted capital spending this year to ¥23 billion, triple last year's level, and is installing digital base stations by adding a second antenn a to existing analog sites. The service to start in October will cover the largest city in each of Shikoku's four prefectures, reaching nearly 70% of the population, and coverage should rise to 86% by March of next year.

Japan phone shipments triple since 1991

Japan's consumer phone shipments, including cellular phones and PHS (personal handyphone system) handsets, for fiscal 1996 will likely surpass 16.5 million units -- a threefold increase from five years ago. The market broke the 10 million unit mark fo r the first time in FY1995, reaching 13.5 million units. With PHS shipments expected to soar 2.6 times in FY1996, combined cellular phone and PHS shipments are likely to top 10 million units, reaching ¥540 billion.

Multimedia mobile telecom market to triple in 4 years

Japan's multimedia mobile telecommunications market will reach ¥17 trillion by FY2010 and employ over 560,000 persons, says a Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) report. A ministry-affiliated study group has suggested that the governme nt help to develop high-speed radio access and radio LAN systems within the next four years. By 2000, the market is expected to reach ¥8.5 trillion and employ over 230,000 persons. An earlier (April 1995) MPT estimate for the year 2000 was just ¥ ;5.3 trillion. In FY 1995, the multimedia mobile telecommunications market was ¥2.8 trillion and provided employment for 60,000 persons.

Will NTT's open network close out the competition?

Within two years, NTT expects to win at least one million subscribers to its Open Computer Network (OCN), the new online Internet access service that it will launch early in 1997. The domestic telecom giant hopes to secure a 20% share of Japan's Inter net access market and rack up annual revenues of some ¥100 billion from OCN in FY1998. By 2000, NTT intends to have several million OCN subscribers. OCN will offer everything from 1.5M-bps leased lines to dial-up access under a comprehensive service menu that seems likely to completely change Japan's Internet access market and may drive a good percentage of Japan's smaller Internet access providers out of business. (One recent informal survey suggests that less than 10% of Japan's nearly 300 ISPs are actually earning a profit.)

Cellular dialing prefix system to be unified

The current numbering system for cellular phones, in which different numbers apply depending on the distance of the user from the caller, will be abandoned in October. At present, a call made to a cellular phone must be prefixed by 030 or 080 if the receiver is within 160 km, and by 040 or 090 if the distance is more than 160 km. The 040/090 prefixes will be abandoned in October to create a unified system. A new 010 prefix will be added at that time also, since the allocation for the 080 prefix is virtually used up (even though it was introduced only in January) due to stronger-than-expected cellular phone sales.

Research & Development

4X data transmission speeds attained

Ultra-High Speed Network and Computer Labs (UNCL) has successfully concluded a 622M-bps terminal-to-terminal data transmission experiment using NTT's ultrafast ATM network. The current commercial fastest data transmission speed is 150M bps; 622M bps is said to represent next-next-generation technology. Through its tests, UNCL has identified bottlenecks in data transmission between ultrafast networks and supercomputers, and developed relevant solutions (including an ultrafast gateway technique). UNCL was established by the Japan Key Technology Center and three computer makers with the goal of developing an integrated experimental system for implementing 2.4G-bps terminal-to-terminal transmission.

CPPACS achieves new gigaFLOP record

Tsukuba University's Center for Computational Physics has developed a massively parallel computer that reaches a processing speed of 300 gigaFLOPS (floating-point operations per second). This is faster than the previous record of 280 gigaFLOPS achieved by a massively parallel machine developed by the National Aerospace Laboratory of the Science and Technology Agency. Made by Hitachi, the CPPACS links 1,024 processors; it uses a coupled network to efficiently transfer data between processors, and a large-capacity disk system that distributes data for storage. The center hopes to double the number of processors, thereby increasing the processing speed to 600 gigaFLOPS by autumn.

In 50 words or less

Taiwanese LAN equipment maker Accton plans to establish Accton Technology Japan, while Etech, a Taiwanese modem maker, will set up Etech Japan. Both subsidiaries, to be set up in Tokyo, will be capitalized at about ¥ 100 million.

NEC and Yokogawa Digital Computer (YDC) will collaborate in sales, marketing, and development of ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks. Both companies will market NEC's ATM switches, multiplex systems, and packet frame relay switches, plus YDC's routers, hubs and other equipment.

Notebook computer shipments are likely to account for 35% to 40% of the Japanese domestic PC market in FY1996, or more than 2.6 million units.

Nomura Research Institute (NRI) has established NRI Data Service, a new firm to manage computer systems on behalf of corporate clients.

The nine DDI Pocket Phone Group companies will invest over ¥5 billion to launch PHS voice mail service centers in seven regions in October. The NTT Personal and Astel groups have already introduced similar services in some regions.

NEC has opened a representative office in Seoul in an effort to promote its computer and communications system sales in the Korean market, currently running at about ¥4 to ¥5 billion. The Seoul office is NEC's 26th such overseas office.

Taiwan shipped 7.16 million PCs in 1995, up 39% from the previous year; desktop PC production was 4.57 million, up 48%, while notebook output reached 2.59 million, up 26%. Taiwan's PC shipments are expected to grow 32%, to 9.44 million units, in 1996.