Telecoms Developments and Market trends in Japan
Japan's telecommunications sector is one of the most active markets in the world. It goes without saying that Japan has a sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure. The development of local infrastructure in Japan has been dominated by the Telecommunications Council's push to have incumbent NTT open up access to the lines connecting households and businesses to local switching centres, or, in other words, opening up access to the 'last mile'. Although fixed-line services remain important, since the number of mobile subscribers passed the number of fixed-line users in April 2000, fixed-line subscriptions have begun to decline.
By end-2003, Japan had more than 13 million broadband lines in place, making it the second largest broadband country in the world. Much of the success of broadband in Japan is owed to the stunning growth in 2003 of ADSL broadband services. Japan is at last living up to earlier expectations of becoming a dominant player in broadband use; only the US has more broadband lines than Japan.
Japan has the second largest number of Internet users in the world after the US, if wireless Internet access is included in the tally. Broadband services made up much of the recent increase while dial-up growth has slowed. By early 2003, Japan had finally overtaken South Korea in number of broadband users, though China will no doubt pass Japan in 2004. Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) Internet access has been making impressive strides into the Japanese market.
Although Japan's 2G mobile telephone sector has entered a maturing market phase, the overall Japanese mobile market is in a dynamic period of growth, given the popularity of built-in camera mobile phones and 3G services. There has been strong growth in customers upgrading to wireless Internet access services, with the total number of such users reaching almost 52 million. By March 2004, Japan had almost 82 million mobile subscribers, with over 16.5 subscribers signed up for 3G services.
Paul Budde - Managing Director, Paul Budde Communication
Published by Totel www.totel.com.au
Date: Sept 18, 2004
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